Then Will o’ Wisp would yield to the slender helplessness of this girl who showed him open favour. And all Garsykes laughed, to watch the stranger going the way of many men before him.
“She has him in her lap,” growled Long Murgatroyd, sitting in the inn one afternoon among his cronies, “and the Lord knows which o’ them I’d like to throttle first.”
“Choose Nita,” they answered, in snarling chorus.
“Happen I will,” said Murgatroyd, and fell back into the sullen brooding that shadowed his every thought these days.
Will o’ Wisp cared nothing at all for what they said of him in Garsykes. He cared only to be with Nita Langrish, to grow wilder each day for her elusive beauty.
On one of these windless, moist afternoons, near dusk, he came from the benty lands and found her at the bridge that spanned Crooning Water.
“That’s a fine hare you’re dangling in your hand,” she said, with a welcoming smile.
“I was thinking to leave it at your door as I went by.”
“I’d best come with you, then, as soon as I’ve finished my basket. Hares left at Garsykes doors don’t stay there long.”
“They wouldn’t,” agreed Will o’ Wisp, with a random laugh. “I should have thought of that.”