“Where the fire is lighted there must the meat roast, and where it roasts there must it be eaten; for nought travels worse than your roasted meat.”
“Well, eat thou, Denys, an thou canst! but I am cold and sick; there is no room for hunger in my heart after what mine eyes have seen,” and he shuddered over the fire. “Oh! how they creak! and who is this man, I wonder? what an ill-favoured churl!”
Denys examined him like a connoisseur looking at a picture, and in due course delivered judgment. “I take him to be of the refuse of that company, whereof these (pointing carelessly upward) were the cream, and so ran their heads into danger.
“At that rate, why not stun him before he wakes?” and Gerard fidgeted where he sat.
Denys opened his eyes with humorous surprise. “For one who sets up for a milksop you have the readiest hand. Why should two stun one? tush! he wakes: note now what he says at waking, and tell me.”
These last words were hardly whispered when the watcher opened his eyes. At sight of the fire made up, and two strangers eyeing him keenly, he stared, and there was a severe and pretty successful effort to be calm; still a perceptible tremor ran all over him. Soon he manned himself, and said gruffly. “Good morrow. But at the very moment of saying it he missed his axe, and saw how Gerard was sitting upon it, with his own laid ready to his hand. He lost countenance again directly. Denys smiled grimly at this bit of byplay.
“Good morrow!” said Gerard quietly, keeping his eye on him.
The watcher was now too ill at ease to be silent. “You make free with my fire,” said he; but he added in a somewhat faltering voice, “you are welcome.”
Denys whispered Gerard. The watcher eyed them askant.
“My comrade says, sith we share your fire, you shall share his meat.”