"You look tired and sad, lord," Nsharra murmured. "You are — lonely?"
Nelson's first impulse was to toss her a coin and be on his way. In his ten years in China he hadn't sunk so low as to meddle with village street-girls.
But this girl was different. It might be the Scotch that made her seem so, but her smooth face and slumbrous eyes had a beauty that held him.
"My hut is very near," she was saying, looking up at him with an oddly shy little smile.
"And why not?" Nelson said suddenly in English. "What difference does it make now?"
Nsharra understood his tone if not his words.
Her small hand on his arm guided him softly through the shadows.
The mud hut was on the fringe of the village. In the starlight Nelson saw the looming bulk of a great black stallion standing outside it.
The horse was fire-eyed, its ears alertly erect, yet it stood quietly and there was neither rope nor halter upon it.
"Yours?" Nelson said to her, and then laughed. "Good thing Nick Sloan hasn't seen him. He likes fine horses."