'Oh, tell me to: never ask.'
'Take the rowan, and finish what I was about.'
She broke down at last, and turned away in such a passion of sobbing as owned desertion of hope.
'Rhoda! You desert me, Rhoda!' in so broken a voice he said, that against all sense she cried: 'But I will! Yes, yes; trust me, I will!' and could not after retract when she saw his face.
'I am not mad,' he said; 'look at me: I am not.' And with that she knew not how to reconcile evidence.
'Be speedy against my return.'
'Is it possible? How?' she whispered.
'As God wills, I cannot know; but some way will show, must show.'
Again she entreated against temerity, and for answer he taught her of a lonely spot, asking her to carry the threaded rowan there, and to wait his coming. 'If I do not come,' he said, 'I shall be——'
'Not dead!' she breathed.