"By God he has, I'll warrant," chuckled the man who had found her.
"Hum," said Falve. "Are you hungry, Roy?"
"No."
"Then do you cook the supper and I'll eat it. Do you see this little
belt o' mine?"
"Yes."
"It's a terror, this belt. Don't seek to be nearer acquaint. Go and
cook."
The ram proved excellent eating--tender and full of blood. Humane,
even liberal, counsels prevailed over the sated assembly. The boy
seemed docile enough, and likely; just a Jack of the build needful to
climb the stacks of smouldering boughs, see to the fires, cord the cut
wood and the burnt wood, lead the asses, cook the dinner, call the men
--to be, in fact, what Jack should be. Jack he was, and Jack he should
be called. Falve held out for a thrashing as a set-off; it seemed
unnatural, he said, to have a belt and a boy at arms'-length. It was
outvoted on account of the lateness of the hour, but only delayed. The
beds were made ready, and Jack and his masters went to sleep.
The argument, which, holding as I do steadfastly with Socrates, I must
follow whithersoever it runs, assures me that charcoal-burning is a
grimy trade, and the charcoal-burners' Jack the blackest of the party;
for if he be not black with coal-smoke, he will be black and blue with
his drubbings. Isoult, in the shreds of Roy, grew, you may judge, as
black and uncombed as any of the crew. She had not a three-weeks'
beard, but her hair began to grow faster; the roses in her cheek were
in flower under the soot. Her hair curled and waved about her neck,
her eyes shone and were limpid, her roses bloomed unawares; she grew
sinewy and healthy in the kind forest airs. She worked very hard, ate
very little, was as often beaten as not. All this made for health; in
addition, she nursed a gentle thought in her heart, which probably
accounted for as much as the open air. This was the news of Prosper's
return to High March, and of the fine works he performed there in the
hall. It came to her in a roundabout way through some pony drovers,
who had it from Market Basing. The pietist at March, who made the
image of Saint Isolda, may have spread the news. At any rate it came,
it seeded in her heart, and as she felt the creeping of the little
flower she blushed. It told her that Prosper had avenged her--more,
had owned her for his. This last grain of news it was which held her
seed. If he owned her abroad--amazing thought!--it must be that he
loved her. As she so concluded, a delicate, throbbing fire fluttered
in her side, and stole up to burn unreproved and undetected in her
cheeks. Her reasoning was no reasoning, of course; but she knew
nothing of knightly honour or the dramatic sense, so it seemed
incontrovertible. At this discovery she was as full of shame as if she
had done a sin. A sin indeed it seemed almost to be in her, that one
so high should stoop to one so low, and she not die at once.
Sacrilege--should not one die rather than suffer a sacrilege to be
thrust upon one? So Clytie may have felt, and Oreithyia, when they
discerned the God in the sun, or wild embraces of the wind.