“Nita Langrish ails me. I get no rest for wanting of you.”
“Why do all the men go daft for the little basket-weaver? I never ask it, Will o’ Wisp.”
“Maybe,” he growled, “but the lord Harry knows you maze us. I could throttle you where we stand, Nita—just for love of doing it.”
“You couldn’t. I’d put a hand on your arm—like this—and I’d ask you to be gentle with little Nita. And, see, you could not hurt me.”
The man stood there, smiling foolishly, and lost to all but the girl’s low, pleading voice. And she began to play on his infirmities, as skilled fingers might touch a fiddle’s strings, till she brought him to her purpose. It was true that she had checked the Wilderness Men in their second plot to fire Logie. It had been true, till her meeting with Logie’s Master, that she had crooned happily to herself as she wove her baskets, and planned the long do-little time which should break Hardcastle’s spirit and his pride before they broke his body. But now she could not wait.
Vanity, restless and impatient, cried for solace to its wounds.
“Why do I fret you so, Will o’ Wisp?”
“That’s past my wits to say. Happen you know yourself, and happen you don’t.”
“There’s Hardcastle of Logie, and not one in Garsykes dares bring him down—for my sake.”
“For your sake?”