‘Have a care, Elfrida—a stranger comes!’ cried a squirrel one summer morning, staying his dancing feet to warn her. His up-cocked ears had caught the thud of some well-shod charger’s swift approach, and he guessed he would not be riderless.
‘Go back to thy palace, dear child!’ cooed a motherly pigeon who had reared many broods of snowy fledglings, and misdoubted the sparkle in Elfrida’s pale green eyes.
‘Haste thee home, Elfrida!’ cried the stream as it gurgled over the stones; ‘haste thee home, and hide thy face from the sunlight.’ But Elfrida pretended not to hear as she shook out the crystal drops from her gorgeous hair.
The horse and his rider were close to her now; the huntsman blew his golden horn, and in the excitement of the chase might have passed her by, unseeing, but for his hounds. In a moment they had surrounded her, baying like hungry wolves, and Elfrida sprang to a branch that overhung the water, where her white limbs gleamed against its green. The huntsman sent the dogs to heel, and dismounting from his horse, entreated the maiden to come down to him. Nothing loth, Elfrida coyly descended, and the huntsman was amazed anew at her perfect form. He sat at her feet through the hush of noonday, and at even he was there still. When the moon turned the glades to silver, Elfrida left him, but she promised to meet him again next day, and he could not sleep for thinking of her.
But although she smiled on him sweetly as she lay on the banks of the stream, and listened with languid pleasure to his fond fierce wooing, which passed for her many an idle hour, she would not consent to be his wife.
‘I like best the gems that I find on the lilies at daybreak,’ she said, when he vowed that the richest jewels that the earth could give should deck her fair white arms. ‘You must offer me something rarer than these if I am to forsake my kindred to go with you.’
Then the huntsman swore that he would give her all he had; only his honour would he hold back, for he was sick with love and longing.
Now behind Elfrida’s loveliness dwelt a spirit of malice and wanton cruelty, and though she loved not this wild Huntsman, and had no intention of being his bride, she wished to see how far her power over him could go. So she asked of him these three things: the crest of his House cut in the stone over his castle gates, where it had stood for centuries; the leaf from his dead mother’s Bible, whereon she had written the date of her marriage day, with the names of the children born to her; and his father’s sword.
