For the next hour she kept well ahead of him, refusing to be inveigled into any topic of conversation whatever. She could have done nothing more in harmony with his mood. Jean François wanted a time for thought. Night was coming on. There was a question upon his mind that made him laugh to himself when he realized its nature. It caused him to think of Aunt Barbara. He knew what she would have advised straightway.... What would Nance expect? Should he stop at the next farmhouse and leave her a victim for the spare bedroom? Heaven forbid! And yet—
He raised his eyes and with pleasure watched, as she walked with ample stride before him, the graceful, free motions of her body. After all how like a gipsy's were her movements. He thought of what she had just said concerning a woman who might have been her mother. This led him to wondering about her father and mother. He had never given her parentage a thought before. He knew that they were dead, and that Doctor Longstreet was certainly her grandfather. No elf-child, she. Yet there was a strain of wild, untamed blood in her that he could scarcely account for in the staid, conventional family of which she was a member. For, notwithstanding his rebellion against Miss Barbara's sense of propriety, the old physician was distinctly the product of the civilization of the aristocratic South.
She is of herself complete, he thought, and no man's child. Then it suddenly occurred to him that she was just such a being to whom he would have loved to have been father. She was his child! The idea pleased him and he smiled. So far as concerned kith and kin he was alone in the world. Also had he not touched her sensitive mind and quickened it into a genuine understanding of the life of the highways, the woodland, and all of the birds therein, the river, the poetry of the starlight, the sunshine and the moonbeams? Had he not shown to her the ways of fairies and elf-kings?... In fact was she—the real, true, immortal she—not his creation? Did not the dominant spirit within her bear a close likeness to his own phantasmagoric soul? Indeed, in his own image he had fashioned her.... She was his child!... He would have her for his daughter. No one could prevent.... He raised his head and called her.
She, who waited for him to catch up with her, saw a gentle, tender humor in his eyes, a sweet smile upon his lips, which bespoke confidence and trust. With childlike faith she put her hand in his and together they walked down the hill into the coming twilight.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NIGHT IN THE GREENWOOD
In the dusk, near a little river which came tumbling down from the mountainside, they stopped and prepared their camp for the night. Rogue was unharnessed, led to water, and turned to roam where the grass seemed most toothsome. Jean François knew that she would be standing by the van at morning waiting with patience for her measure of oats. After building a crackling fire of sticks and limbs of dead trees, he went in search of a spring. Some minutes later a great black pot, taken from a hook beneath the cart, was swinging over the flames, the sparkling water beginning to bubble within it.
It was then the pedler climbed upon the wheel, removed the pair of steps from the top, adjusting them at the rear door so one might easily climb in and out of the cart. Next he proceeded to remove many things from the mysterious depths of Columbine. Nance stood by receiving them. Among many things were these: a smoke-cured old ham, doubtless taken in trade from some lusty farmer; a basket of eggs and a bucket of milk bought at the last farmhouse on the road; a huge loaf of what the housewives term "salt-rising" bread; a flagon of Burgundy wine; a skillet, a coffee-pot, and a teakettle. Then came bundles, boxes, and drawers containing the knick-knacks of the pedler's pack. These he lifted to the earth himself, placing them softly beneath a near-by tree, covering them with a heavy canvas. Afterward, from the front end of the almost empty small room, he produced bedding which he spread down upon one side of the floor. Next, from the side near the open door, he let down a table hinged to the wall and supported by a prop. Above it he hung a mirror; upon it he laid a brush, comb, and a basin; before it he placed an open camp-stool. He had done his best.... Turning to Nance with a characteristically elaborate bow, he said: