girdle the little purse containing all her store. "Do
you think I am here to bargain? There's more than your price."

"However much it be," said Harding, "it is too little."

"Then say no more that I cannot buy of you, but rather that you will
not sell to me."

"And yet that is as the Proud Rosalind shall please."

She flushed deeply, and as though in shame of seeming ashamed said
firmly, "No, Smith, it is not in my hands. For I have offered you every
penny I possess."

"I do not ask for pence." Harding left his anvil and stepped outside
and stood close, gazing hard upon her face. "You have a thing I will
take in exchange for my sword, a very simple thing. Women part with it
most lightly, I have learned. The loveliest hold it cheap at the price
of a golden gawd. How easily then will you barter it for an inch or so
of steel!"

"What need of so many words?" she said with a scornful lip, that
quivered in her own despite at his nearness. "Name the thing you want."

"A kiss from your mouth, Proud Rosalind."

It was as though the request had turned her into ice. When she could
speak she said, "Smith, for your inch of steel you have asked what I
would not part with to ransom my soul."

She turned and left him and Harding went back to his work and laughed
softly in his beard. "Dream on, my gold queen up yonder," said he, and
blew on his waning fires. "You are not the metal I work in," said he,
and the river rang again to his hammer on the steel.

But Rosalind went rapidly down to the waterside saying in her heart,
"Now I will see whether I cannot get me a lordlier weapon of a better
craftsman than you, and at my own price, Red Smith." And when she had
come to the ferry she laid her full purse on the bank and cried softly
into the night:

"Wayland Smith, give me a sword!"

And then she went away for awhile, and paced the fields till the first
light glimmered on the east; and not daring to wait longer for fear of
encountering early risers, she turned back to the ferry. And there,
shining in the dawn, she found such a blade as made the father in her
soul exult. In all its glorious fashioning and splendid temper the hand
of the god was manifest. And in the grass beside it lay her purse, of
its full store lightened by one penny-piece.

Now to this tale of legends revived and then forgotten, gossips' tales
of Wishing-Pools and Snow-white Harts and a God who worked in the dark,
we must begin to add the legend of the Ru