"Impossible. It cannot be," cried the girl passionately.
"What cannot be? Do you think I am dreaming or lying?"
"If he were at home, he would have come to see me ere this."
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
"And yet he did not come. But the day before yesterday, about midnight, I found the three owl-feathers there in the window."
"The wind carried them thither."
"The wind did not carry them thither for they were stuck fast in putty. And only we three know what that means. Fatia Negra would speak with us and we are going to meet him in the Lucsia cavern."
"It cannot, cannot be—three days at home and never to come to me—to me!"
"Who knows?" said the old man coolly, tightening his saddle girth, "a whole month is a long while, long enough for the moon herself to change four times. There are many pretty wenches on the other side of the mountain."
"O no! such a one as I am he will not find there," said the girl proudly, glancing into the tremulous water-mirror which threw back a distorted likeness of her defiant face—"and besides he knows very well that I should murder him were such a woman to mock me."