"Ah," says he, quickly, "'tis her nature, Captain—'tis her heart that speaks. Yet is she denied by her parents. They will have none of me."
"The more to their shame," I said.
"They aspire high," says he, "as Anne's beauty and virtues of themselves would justify. Yet she does love me, and I her, and we are of one spirit and heart. See you how she loves me, poor thing, poor silly puss! And they would persuade her to renunciation. But she shall not—she shall not, I swear it," he cried in excitement. "She shall be free to choose whom she will."
"Spoken like a man of temper," said I, approvingly. "You will go win her forthright."
"I am on my journey to accomplish that now," says he. "She has wrote in this letter, as you have seen, that her father dissuades her, and she signs her renunciation, adding sweet words of comfort that her affection will not die—no, never, never; and that she will die virgin for me. Say you not, sir, that this is beautiful conduct, and say, am I not right to ride forth and seize her from her unnatural parents, to make her mine?"
"Young gentleman," said I, being struck by his honest sincerity and his bubbling over, "were you brother to me, or I to Mrs Anne, you would have my blessing."
At that he glowed, and, his spirits having risen with this communication, he babbled on the road of many things cheerfully, but mostly of love and beauty, and the virtues of Mrs Anne of Effingham Manor.
I will confess that after a time his prattle wearied me; 'twas too much honey, and cloyed my palate. If he had known as much of the sex as has fallen to my lot he would have took another stand and sung in a lower key. Well, 'twas late in the afternoon when we reached the hills beyond Ewhurst and began to climb the rugged way to the top. The wind had gone down with the sun in a flurry of gold in the west to which the eastern breeze had beat all day; and over the head of Pitch Hill last year's heather still blazed in its decay. When we had got to the Windmill Inn that lies packed into the side of the hill and woods there we descended for refreshment, and I saw the horses stalled below for baiting. Now that house, little and quiet, perches in a lonely way in the pass of the hill, and upon one side the ground falls so fast away that the eye carries over a precipitous descent towards the weald of Surrey and the dim hills by the sea. And this view was fading swiftly in the window under a bleak sky as Masters and I ate of our dinner in the upstairs room that looked upon it. He had a natural grace of mind, despite the rawness of his behaviour, and his sentiments emerged sometimes in a gush, as when, says he, looking at the darkening weald,—
"I love it, Captain. 'Tis mine. My home is there, and, God willing, Anne's too shall be."
"Amen," said I, heartily, for the boy had gone to my heart, absurd though he was.