Can you remember that?'
'What if I can?' groaned Raymond, clinging to the rock. 'We shall both be drowned in another minute!'
'Not at all,' answered the dwarf with composure. 'My left foot is a trifle wet; but what of that? By-the-by, I shall be passing through Honeymead again this evening; shall I drop in at the Brindled Cow and tell Rosamund that you are all right?'
'I am not all right. I wish I were at the Brindled Cow myself.'
'Tut! tut! Ambition should not be so easily damped. Well, I'll make a point of calling on the young lady. But, stay; I must carry some token to prove that I am an authorised messenger. What shall it be? Ah! this will do—this half of a spade guinea that you wear at your neck. Permit me to remove it,' And he began to fumble with the silken string.
'Stop! that is my betrothal pledge—you can't have that!' cried Raymond, putting up his hand to withhold the dwarf's claw.
'And who was it gave it to you, in the first place, I should like to know?' exclaimed the dwarf tartly. 'Fie! have you so little confidence in your friends? It is for your own good that I must have the token. Give it me at once.'
The place in which this discussion was carried on was so inconvenient to Raymond, he was getting so exhausted, both in body and mind, and the dwarf had spoken the last sentence so imperiously, that Raymond thought he had better yield. Moreover, the yellow cap squeezed his brain just in those places where the proper arguments lay, and thus prevented his using them. The end of it was that he said—
'I suppose you'd better take it, but——'
He never finished his sentence. The dwarf whipped the silken string over his head, and the golden pledge was gone. The next moment Raymond was floundering headlong in the stream. How he reached the opposite bank he never knew—he seemed to be under the water half the time. At last he got his hands on a bush growing beside the margin and pulled himself out.