“Very much obliged for your kindness, and sorry to have been such a bore; shouldn’t have intruded if I’d known ladies were present. Will you oblige me by accepting the inclosed”—he hesitated a moment, put back the sovereign which he had taken from his pocket, and filled up the line—“for your wife.”
Instead of the coin, he wrapped up a ring, which he took from his little finger.
He smiled, as he wrapped it up, for he remembered that the wife had particularly large hands; and he thought, cunningly, “she will get it.”
Having placed this packet on the top of the cheese, he took a last look round the room, glanced toward the stairs rather wistfully—it was neither the woodman nor his wife that he longed to see—gently unbarred the door, and started on his road.
Choosing a sheltered spot, the Savage pulled out his crust, ate it uncomplainingly, and then lay down at full length, with his soft hat over his eyes, and while revolving the strange events of the preceding night, and striving to recall the face of the young girl, fell asleep.
CHAPTER IV.
A more beautiful spot for a siesta he could not have chosen. At his feet stretched the lake, gleaming like silver in the sun, and set in a frame of green leaves and forest flowers; above his head, in his very ears, the thrushes and linnets sang in concert, all the air was full of the perfumes of a summer morning, rendered sweeter by the storm of the preceding night, which had called forth the scent of the ferns and the honeysuckle.
As he lay, and dreamt with that happy-go-lucky carelessness of time and the daily round of duties which is one of the privileges of youth, there rose upon the air a song other than that of the birds.
It was a girl’s voice, chanting softly, and evidently with perfect unconsciousness; faintly at first, it broke upon the air, then more distinctly, and presently, from amongst the bushes that stood breast high round the sleeping Savage, issued Una.