"The stargeshina has a red goitre like a turkey cock? I know every hut in the hamlet," interrupted Amesa. "But why think you she is there?"
"Why? I have seen her, and him with her. I followed the fellow day after day. Once I saw him yonder on the spur. He clipped the bark of a tree, and in the smoothed spot cut a line. A little beyond he did the same thing again. He spied this way and that way with all the pains one would take to pick a way for an army. Then he took a roll of paper from his bosom, and marked down something for every mark he had made upon the trees. And when he was out of sight I took the range of his marks, and by St. Theckla! they pointed straight to a path which led down the mountain to the ford in the great river that is opposite the old turkey cock's konak."
"But you may have mistaken the man," suggested Amesa.
"Not I, Sire. I know his head as well as a bull knows a red rag; and his duck legs, and his walk like an ambling horse."
"It is he," submitted Amesa. "But how know you that the girl was there in the hamlet?"
"Did I not see her, my noble Amesa? And could I not know her from the look of her father? If I could forget him living, I have never passed a night without seeing his face as it was dead, when we dragged him to the burning beams of the old house that stood on this——"
"Silence!" cried Amesa in a sudden burst of rage. "How dare you allude to my uncle's death without my bidding?"
There was a pause for a few moments, during which Amesa stamped heavily upon the stone pavement of the court as he walked, like one endeavoring to shake off from his person some noisome thing that troubled him. The man resumed—
"Besides, the children of the village said she was a stray kid there, and not of kin to anybody. And while I was there the same stump-headed fellow who marked the direction came to the hamlet."
"Be ready to accompany me to-morrow, Drakul. You can say that we are scouting."