"Dost ride from Marsh?" he sneered, blocking the stable-door.
"From seeing a better man than thou? Nay. I have no dealings with Wayne of Marsh."
"Thou'lt have no chance of such dealings by and by."
"Indeed?" Lifting her brows a little, but disdaining to ask his leave to pass the door. "Indeed, Ratcliffe the Red? I thought—it might have been but fancy—that somehow thou didst shirk talk with Wayne of Marsh?"
"The Lean Man does—but there's younger blood than his to carry on the feud. We're sick of waiting for the call that never comes, and soon we mean to show Nicholas that what he has not wit to compass, we can."
"So eager to clinch the bargain?" she mocked. "Should I make thee a good wife, think'st thou?—There, take him to stall thyself," she added, putting the bridle into his hand. "I know thou canst stable a horse, if thou hast scant knowledge of how to woo a maid."
"'Tis a knowledge I may gather by and by—and thou shall teach me," he answered, meeting her eye with more than his accustomed boldness.
CHAPTER XIX
HOW WAYNE KEPT THE PINFOLD
The marshland beyond Robin Hood's Well was noisy this morning with the shouts of men, the sharp, impatient bark of dogs, the shrill bleating of sheep. A warm, lush-hearted day of June it was, with a yellow sun rising clear of the flaked strips of cloud that hung about the middle blue of heaven, and a low wind shaking the budding heather-tips and wrinkling the surface of standing pools; just such a day as fitted a sheep-washing, for wind and sun together would be quick to dry the fleeces.