“So the woman thought.”
I could see in the dusk the lift of Prassade’s shoulders, and the slight inclination of his palms outward. He had had all that day and the night for wondering what his daughter’s part in the theft of the treasure might have been. Perhaps—who knew?—some unadmitted fact had gone to the shaping of his conclusion. He turned to Persilope, and his voice cracked with hardness.
“It seems to me,” he said, “we have affairs more important than the flight of a dishonored girl.”
“No, by the Friend!” cried a man, one of those who had gone with the Treasure party. “It seems to me that it is all one affair, and we shall find the girl when we find the King’s Desire. They have gone together.”
At this, which was the first announcement of the loss so plainly intimated by the demeanor of the party, there ran a sound of unbelief and bewilderment around the camp.
“Gone!” they cried, and “Gone! The King’s Treasure!” in every accent of incredulity and surprise.
“Ay, gone,” said Prassade, “seized, stolen away,” unconsciously repeating the words of the keeper, “gone with my honor and the faith of the Outliers.”
While the keeper told his story the listeners, in the manner of crowds, surged forward, closing between him and the dispirited Treasure party. At Prassade’s admission of his dishonor, they were disrupted suddenly by sharp, explosive sounds which I knew for the rapping of Mancha’s hammer. At the instant of the keeper’s announcement I had seen him rise and gird himself, beginning to look about like a man missing some necessary thing, too perturbed to recall just what he wanted. One of his young men slipped his hammer into his hand, and at the feel of its familiar handle a little of the strained look left his face. Then the crowd swallowed him in its eagerness to hear what Prassade and the keeper said.
Now as the circle broke back from him and the sound of his whirling hammer, I saw the pale blotch of his face and hair distinct in the twilight.
“Oh, Persilope,” he said, “take what measures you will for the recovery of the King’s Desire, but this is my business. Here should be no talk of honor or dishonor, but simple outrage. A man of the Far-Folk has crossed into our country and stolen the Maiden Ward. Let no man put any other name to it until I have brought her back again. But first bring me the smith. Before I go I would ask of him how it is, while the hostage stands, men of his breed have trespassed on my borders. Where is Ravenutzi?”