“Never mind, Lorna dear. It is not your fault, and you are sweet and lovely. And perhaps you are mistaken this time.”
“When the Doones go riding harm is pretty sure to befall,” Lorna said, though she ceased to cry. “And now let us play.”
Play they did. Rose and Ruth taught their hostess several new games—games they played at home. One was tree-tag, and what a runner Lorna proved. With flying hair and laughing eyes she slipped beyond touch, rushing from tree to tree, uncatchable as a wood-sprite. How they laughed.
Time flew. Flew faster than they dreamed. Suddenly, as they sank in a shouting heap after a hop-skip-and-a-jump race, they heard a heavy step crunching the gravel by the brook, and the next instant a tall, dark man with gloomy and disturbed features stood before them.
Lorna sprang to her feet.
“How is this, Queen?” asked the man, roughly enough. “What little maids are these, and how came they here with you in the valley of the Doones?”
Lorna met the man’s eye highly, with no sign of fear. “These are my friends,” she said, “here under my protection. I know not how they came, but they mean no harm—surely I can be allowed a playmate once in a while. I will tell Sir Ensor if ye affright them—or harm them.”
“Well, come and tell him,” answered the man. “Come ye all,” and his fierce look swept the two other girls with a glance that sent a quick shiver through their veins, “and we shall see how Sir Ensor takes the matter.”
He turned as he finished and strode off through the brush. Lorna gave her friends a somewhat tremulous smile.
“Dear me,” she whispered, all her fine show of courage gone, “I hope no harm will come to you. But truly I think not. Sir Ensor is kind when he wills to be, and we have but played together. They will take you beyond the gate and set you down on the moor, and then you must find your way to some of the good folk of Exmoor. Perhaps”—she hesitated and then a sudden smile chased the fear from her face, leaving it clear and rosy as a wild flower—“perhaps you will even make your way to the Ridds, and see that good boy, John, with his gentle voice and kind eyes. He came here once, long ago, in the earliest of spring when the snow still patched the ground here and there, though primroses had begun to bloom in the forest. And I like him. I would like, too, to send him a word by you....” She stopped talking suddenly, darted into her bower, and fumbling in a corner, brought out a sheet of paper and a quill pen and ink. “Wait but a moment, I will write a few words to him and if you see him you will give him my letter. That will be good fun.”