“She’s used to it,” the man said, gruffly, with half a sneer, his fingers twitching.
“That may be,” Will retorted, with quiet self-possession; “but I’m not used to allowing her to do so.”
For a minute the stranger put one sturdy foot forward, held his head haughtily, with his hat on one side, and half lifted his fist, as if inclined to rush forthwith upon the offending Englishman, and settle the question between them then and there by open violence. But Linnet, biting her lip and knitting her brow in suspense, rushed in to separate them. “Take care what you do,” she cried hurriedly in English to Will. “Don’t let him strike. Stand away of him. He’s a Robbler!”
“A what?” Will replied, half smiling at her eagerness, for he was not at all alarmed himself by her truculent fellow-countryman.
“A Robbler,” Linnet repeated, looking up at him pleadingly. “You know not what that is? Then will I tell you quickly. The feather in his hat, it is turned the wrong way. When a Tyrolese does so, he wills thereby to say he will make himself a Robbler. Therefore, if any one speaks angry to him, it is known he will strike back. It is—I cannot say what it means in English, but it invites to fight; it is the sign of a challenge.”
“Well, Robbler or no Robbler, I’m not afraid of him,” Will answered, with quiet determination; “and if he will fight, why, of course, he must take what he gets for it.”
“Perhaps,” Linnet said, simply, gazing back at him, much surprised, “in your own country you are also a Robbler.”
The naïveté of her remark made Will laugh in spite of himself. That laugh saved bloodshed. The Tyrolese, on his part, seeing the absurdity of the situation all at once, broke into a smile himself; and, with that unlucky smile, his sole claim to Robblerhood vanished incontinently. Linnet saw her advantage. In a moment, she had poured into the young man’s ear a perfect flood of explanatory eloquence in their native dialect. Gradually the Robbler’s defiant attitude relaxed; his face grew calmer; he accepted her account. Then he turned to Will with a more mollified manner: “You may go on,” he said, graciously, with a regal nod of his head; “I allow the sennerin to continue her way with you.”
As for Will, he felt half inclined, at first, to resent the lordly air of the Robbler’s concession. On second thoughts, however, for Linnet’s sake, in his ignorance of who the young man might be, and the nature of his claim upon her, he judged it better to avoid any quarrel of any sort with a native of the valley. So he raised his hat courteously, and let the stranger depart, with a very bad grace, along the road to the village.
“What did you tell him?” he asked of Linnet, as the Robbler went his way, singing defiantly to himself, down the grassy zig-zag.