A feeble piteous sound answered him, and following the direction of the reply, he strode along, between the rocks and thorn-bushes that guarded the slope of the hill, to a valley covered with thick moss, veiling treacherously marshy ground in which it was easy to sink.
The cry came from the further side, where a mountain stream had force enough to struggle through the swamp. There were stepping-stones across the brook, which the boy knew, and he made his way from one to the other, calling out cheerily to the little figure that he began to discern in the fading light, and who answered him with tones evidently girlish, ‘O come, come, shepherd! Here I am! I am lost and lorn! They will reward thee! Oh, come fast!’
‘All in good time, lassie! Haste is no good here! I must look to my footing.’
Presently he was by the side of the wanderer, and could see that it was a maiden of ten or twelve years old, who somehow, even in the darkness, had not the air of one of the few inhabitants of that wild mountain district.
‘Lost art thou, maiden,’ he said, as he stood beside her; ‘where is thine home?’
‘I am at Greystone Priory,’ replied the girl. ‘I went out hawking to-day with the Mother Prioress and the rest. My pony fell with me when we were riding after a heron. No one saw me or heard me, and my pony galloped home. I saw none of them, and I have been wandering miles and miles! Oh take me back, good lad; the Mother Prioress will give thee—’
‘’Tis too far to take thee back to-night,’ he said. ‘Thou must come with me to Hob Hogward, where Doll will give thee supper and bed, and we will have thee home in the morning.’
‘I never lay in a hogward’s house,’ she said primly.
‘Belike, but there be worse spots to be harboured in. Here, I must carry thee over the burn, it gets wider below! Nay, ‘tis no use trying to leap it in the dark, thou wouldst only sink in. There!’
And as he raised her in his arms, the touch of her garment was delicate, and she on her side felt that his speech, gestures and touch were not those of a rustic shepherd boy; but nothing was said till he had waded through the little narrow stream, and set her down on a fairly firm clump of grass on the other side. Then she asked, ‘What art thou, lad?—Who art thou?’