"You are quite a courtier, Master Huntoon," Peggy answered with a nervous laugh; "you are thrown away upon these colonial wilds and should betake yourself to Whitehall. The King would doubtless lend a favorable ear to your silver tongue."
"Alas!" sighed Romney, in the folly of his youth, "what care I what the King might say, if the Queen will not listen to me?"
What further softness he might have ventured on, no man knoweth, for there is no setting limits to the weakness of lovers; but his speech was interrupted by the crack of the fowling-piece from behind, and looking back they saw Cornwaleys stooping to pick up a brace of quail which his gun had just brought down; and which he straightway tossed over the saddle of Anne, the serving-woman, bidding her pick them as she rode.
The sun climbed higher and higher till its genial warmth began to make itself felt. The icicles let fall drop after drop of water, slowly trickling themselves away. The snow-banks melted into gurgling streams, which ran along on the surface till they sank noiseless into the softened ground. The air, balmy with the scent of pine trees and mild with the bracing mildness of dry midwinter, pulsated in the perpendicular rays of the noonday sunlight. "Come, friends," called Giles Brent, reining in his horse and turning in his saddle to await the arrival of the rest of his party, who could by no means keep the pace he set, "I know not how it is with the rest of you, but one man here hath an appetite which tells him that the dinner hour is come."
"Here is another!" cried Cornwaleys.
"Ay, and a third," came from Neale.
"How say you, Huntoon, has your walk given you a zest for an hour's rest and a bite of good victual?"
"I?" stammered Huntoon. "Why, to say truth, I thought we had but just set out."
At this Brent laughed and cast a meaning glance at Peggy, who colored redder than the bunch of berries she had tucked into the front of her cloak.
"There may be a magic in the bridle-rein of beauty to ward off hunger and fatigue from him who touches it; but the rest of us poor mortals have felt the pangs of both; so, as we are come to a clearing, with two logs convenient for a seat, I counsel that we make a halt and build a fire wherewith to test Anne's skill as a cook."