"Look, darling; look!"
And the tears streamed down the girl's face as she flung out her arms.
"Irja Sooltan!" she called. "Irja Sooltan!"
Her voice carried on the still air like the note of a bell over water.
And the stallion, who had broken from his sayis as he was being led from the stable in readiness for the sad procession to the river, and who, terrified at the sight of the burning tents, had rushed on in search of his master, stopped dead, with his head up and tail and mane streaming in the wind.
He had not found his master, but he knew the voice that called.
"Irja Sooltan!" it came again. "Irja! Irja!"
And he reared and wheeled in the direction from whence it came, then raced to where he saw the girl standing.
He stamped, and whinnied, and nuzzled her hand and her shoulder as she stood in her lover's arms.
"Tell me you will marry me, sweetheart," Ben Kelham was saying, with one hand on the stallion's bridle. "Say it, Damaris."