Nevertheless, the chieftain’s wife sat by the pallet until her guest had sobbed herself to sleep, and slept like a tired child.
Then the unhappy lady threw herself upon her own bed, and fell into a fitful slumber.
Elfie slept long and well, and did not awake until the beating of the reveillé aroused her.
“It is like enchantment,” she said, sitting up on her pallet, and gazing around on the leafy walls of her hut, through the interstices of which the first rays of the rising sun pierced redly.
Alberta was already up and dressed. She brought a clean towel and some water in a broken bowl, and set them before her guest, saying with a smile:
“You must make the best toilet you can under the circumstances, my dear. We are not even so well off here as we were at the old mansion house.”
Elfie followed the advice of her hostess as well as she could. And by the time she had washed her face and arranged her hair and her dress, Alberta was ready to take her out, where, upon the dried grass before the hut, a substantial breakfast was spread.
The Free Sword joined them at the meal.
“I am sorry to tell you, Miss Fielding,” he said, with a bow to Elfie, “that Colonel Goldsborough has left the camp for an absence of several days.”
Elfie looked up in surprise.