le?" Lisle suggested.

"No," retorted his companion. "A man with a heart constant and stout
enough to face the risks he ran would be hard to kill. When you read
between the lines, it's a moving tale. Think of the long, perilous rides
he made through an enemy's land, all for a glance at his disdainful lady!
They watched the fords in those days, but neither brawling rivers nor
well-mounted horsemen could stop him. At last, he came one night with a
dozen spears, broke in the barmkin gate and carried her off. All her
relatives rode hard after them and came up with them in this ghyll. Then
there happened what was, in one way, a rather remarkable thing--the
abducted maid firmly declined to be rescued. There was a brisk encounter,
I believe two or three were killed; but she rode off to Scotland with her
lover. I suppose I needn't point the moral?"

"I can see only the ancient one--that it's unwise to take a lady's 'No'
as conclusive," Lisle ventured.

She laughed at him in a daring manner.

"The pity is that we haven't often a chance of saying it to any one worth
while. But I'll express the moral in a prettier way--sometimes
disinterested steadfastness and real devotion count with us.
Unfortunately, they're scarce."

There was a challenge in her glance, but the man, not knowing what was
expected of him, made no answer. At first he had been almost repelled by
the girl, but he was becoming mildly interested in her. She could, he
thought, be daring to the verge of coarseness, and he did not admire her
pessimism, which was probably a pose; but there was a vein of elfish
mischief in her that appealed to him. Sitting among the heather, small,
lithe, and felinely graceful, watching him with a provocative smile in
her rather narrow eyes, she compelled his attention.

"Well," she laughed, "you're not much of a courtier. But doesn't that
story bring you back into touch with elemental things--treacherous
mosses, dark nights, flooded rivers, passion, peril, dauntlessness? Now
we're wrapped about with empty futilities."

He understood part of what was in her mind and sympathized with it. He
had lived close to nature in stern grapple with her unbridled forces.
From women he demanded no more than beauty or gentleness; but a man, he
thought, should for a time, at least, be forced to learn the stress and
joy of the tense struggle with cold and hunger, heat and thirst, on long
marches or in some dogged attack on rock and flood. He had on