The salt smell of the sea came up fresh and keen from the tumbling waves below, and the girl looked wistfully towards the south.
She felt very lonely, more so now than ever, for her father, always preoccupied before, seemed gloomier of late, and to notice her less than he used. There had been much going to and fro on the part of the seamen, and Magdalen had herself brought a missive from the Hermit only the day before, which had caused a great display of feeling on the part of her father, a flush of fierce joy passing over his countenance, as he muttered, after reading the cartel,--
"At last! Thank the saints! the matter will be settled once for all."
While Magdalen stood looking down the strange water-worn chasms, she was startled by hearing Bowerman say in a scoffing voice, but in an undertone, to Simon,--
"Marry, Simon, we are to take no part in the fray, eh?"
And then he laughed derisively, while the seaman added gruffly,--
"Not us! Well, I never; that be a good 'un. But I'll have some of their fine harness and gew-gaws, if I swing for it."
"Tush, man! thou canst have them easy enough; but 'tis their lives first we must have. He's sure to be there. He makes such a stir about him; all the more since this wound of his. Curse the weak stroke! why couldn't it have gone home?" broke off the esquire bitterly.
"Ay, ay, 'twas a bungling business that. He was but a greenhorn at that sort of work, whoever he was," said the seaman, eyeing Bowerman with a grim twinkle in his bleared eyes, as he went on furbishing up a steel breastpiece. "But he's a fine youth, that I will say," he added.
Magdalen changed her position so as to get a view of the faces of the speakers, but trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible. She noticed a flush pass over Bowerman's face as he bit his lip, but said nothing, only he felt the edge of a sword he had been scouring.