"But did you promise to be his wife? Is he the man you love?" he insisted. She stared at him in surprise and no little resentment.
"I beg of you, Mr. King—" she began, but he interrupted her.
"Forgive me. I'm a fool. Don't mind me." He sank back against the wall, the picture of dejection. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I've got to die in a day or two, so what's the odds?"
"How very strangely you talk. Are you sure—I mean, do you think it is fever? One suffers so—"
He sighed deeply. "Well, that's over! Whew! It was a dream, by Jove!"
"I don't understand."
"Please go on."
She waited a moment and then, looking down, said very gently: "I'm so sorry for you." He laughed, for he thought she pitied him because he had awakened from the dream.
Then she resumed her story, not to be interrupted again. He seemed to have lost all interest.
She had gone six or eight miles down the Ganlook road when she came up with five troopers of the Royal Guard. It was a lonely spot at the junction of the King's Highway and the road to the mines. One of the troopers came forward and respectfully requested her to turn off into the mine road until a detachment passed, in charge of a gang of desperadoes taken at the Inn of the Hawk and Raven the night before. Unsuspecting, she rode off into the forest lane for several hundred yards.