"It is quite safe," she said. "I live alone since my man fell into the crevasse and was killed because his rope broke when he was trying to save his comrade. So I have two rooms to spare and sometimes climbers are glad to sleep in them. Mine is a good warm house and I am well known in the village. You are very young," she added shaking her head. "You are very young. You must have good blood in your veins to be trusted with this."
"I have my father's blood," answered Marco.
"You are like some one I once saw," the old woman said, and her eagle eyes set themselves hard upon him. "Tell me your name."
There was no reason why he should not tell it to her.
"It is Marco Loristan," he said.
"What! It is that!" she cried out, not loud but low.
To Marco's amazement she got up from her chair and stood before him, showing what a tall old woman she really was. There was a startled, even an agitated, look in her face. And suddenly she actually made a sort of curtsey to him—bending her knee as peasants do when they pass a shrine.
"It is that!" she said again. "And yet they dare let you go on a journey like this! That speaks for your courage and for theirs."
But Marco did not know what she meant. Her strange obeisance made him feel awkward. He stood up because his training had told him that when a woman stands a man also rises.
"The name speaks for the courage," he said, "because it is my father's."