I might have stood there as stolid and grim as any one of those ancient monoliths all through the storm but for the dear one by my side. Her nestling presence roused me, and, gulping down the last of my astonishment, and seeing no respite in the yellow eye of the night over my shoulder, I took the hand that lay in mine with such gentle trust and, with a strange feeling of awe, led her into the magic circle of the old religion.
The very altar of my despatch was still there in the center, but time and forest creatures had worn out from under that mighty slab a little chamber, roofed with that vast flagstone and sided by its three supports—a space perhaps no bigger than the cabin of my first trading felucca, yet into this we crept, with the reluctant hounds behind us, while the tempest thundered round, and, loth to lose us, sought here and there, piping in strange keys among those time-worn relics of cruelty, and singing uncouth choruses down every crevice of our wild retreat.
Pleasure and Pain are sisters, and the little needs of life must be fulfilled in every hour. I comforted my comrade, piling for her a rough couch of the broken litter upon the floor, stuffing up the crannies as well as might be with damp sods, and then making her a fire. This latter I effected with some charcoal and burned ends of wood that lay upon an old shepherd’s hearth in the center of the chamber, and we kept it going with a little store of wood which the same absent wanderer had gathered in one corner but had failed to use. More; not only did we mend our circumstances by a ruddy blaze that danced fantastically upon our rugged walls and set our reeking clothes steaming in its flicker, but I rolled a stone to the opposite side of the hearth for Editha, and found another for myself, and soon those venison steaks were hissing most invitingly upon the glowing embers, and filling every nook and corner of the Druid slaughter-place with the suggestive fragrance of our supper.
Manners were rude and ready in that time. We supped as well and conveniently that night, carving the meat with the little weapons at our girdles, and eating with our fingers, as though we sat in state at the high thane’s table of distant Voewood and looked down the great rushy hall upon three hundred feeding serfs and bondsmen. And Editha laughed and chattered—secure in my protection—and I echoed her merriment, while now and then my thoughts would wander, and I heard again in the tempest’s whistling the scream of the hungry kites who had seen me die, and in the lashing of the branches the clamor and the beating of the British tribesmen who many a long lifetime before had shouted around this very place to drown my dying yells.
The good food and the warmth and a long day’s work soon brought my fair mistress’s head upon her hand, and presently she was lying upon the withered leaves in the corner, a fair white flower shut up for the night-time. So I finished the steak and divided the remnants between the dogs, and lay back very well contented. But here only commences the strangest part of that evening!
I had warmed my cross-gartered, buskined Saxon legs by the blaze for the best part of an hour, thinking over all the strange episodes of my coming to these ancient isles, and seeing again, on the blank hither wall, this very circle all aglow with the splendid color of its barbarous purpose, the mighty concourse of the Britons set in the greenery of their reverent oaks—the onset of the Romans, the flash and glitter of their close-packed ranks, and the gallant Sempronius—alas! that so good a youth should be reduced to dust—and thus, I suppose, I dozed.
And then it seemed all on a sudden a mighty gust of wind swept down upon the flat roof overhead, shaking even that ponderous stone—those fierce and brawny hounds of mine howled most fearfully—crouching behind with bristling hair and shaking limbs—and, looking up, there—strange, incredible as you will pronounce it—seated beyond the fire on the stone the Saxon had so lately left, drawing her wild, rain-wet British tresses through her supple fingers—calm, indifferent, happy—gazing upon me with the gentle wonder I had seen before, was Blodwen, once again herself!
Need it be said how wild and wonderful that winsome apparition seemed in that uncouth place, how the hot flush of wonder burned upon my swart and weathered cheeks as I sat there and glared through the leaping flame at that pallid outline? Absently she went on with her rhythmical combing, bewitching me with her unearthly grace and the tender substance of her immaterial outline, and as I glowered with never a ready syllable upon my idle tongue, or any emotion but wonder in the heart beating tumultuously under my hunter tunic, the dogs lay moaning behind me, and the wild fantastic uproar of the tempest outside forced through the clefts of our retreat the rain-streaks that sparkled and hissed in the fire-heap.
That time I did not fear, and presently the Princess looked up and said, in a faint, distant voice, that was like the sound of the breeze among seashore pine-trees:
“Well done, my Phœnician! Your courage gives me strength.” And as she spoke the words seemed gradually clearer and stronger, until presently they came sweeter to me than the murmur of a sunny river—gentler than the whispers of the ripe corn and the south wind.