When the last wood of the day was brought in, Caris went home by himself, by ways he knew. He was downcast and dull. He had been baulked of his knife-play with the carter, and he had not seen Santina.
At a bend in the hill-path, where the chestnut saplings grew taller than usual, and aged pines with scaly scarred trunks were left standing, he heard a laugh amongst the leafy scrub, and in the dusk of the moonless evening a slender straight figure shot up from its screen of heather.
'Eh, Caris!' cried the girl to him. 'What a poor day's work! Have you left Black Simon without an inch of steel in him? Fie for shame! A man should always write his name large when he has a stiletto for his pen.'
Caris gazed at her dumb and agitated, the veins in his throat and temples throbbing.
'It was your uncle stopping the play,' he muttered; 'and I could not begin to brawl in his house.'
Santina shrugged her shoulders. 'Brave men don't want excuses,' she said unkindly.
'Ask of me in Maremma,' said Caris sullenly. 'They will tell you whether men taste my blade.'
'Maremma is far,' said Santina, sarcastic and jeering; 'and the men there are weak!'
'You shall see what you shall see,' muttered Caris, growing purple, red, and then pale. 'Tell me a man you have a quarrel with—nay, one who stands well with you—that will be better.'
'Those are words,' she said, with curt contempt.