“What ails you just now, Beniah?” asked Bladud, one evening as they walked together to Gadarn’s booth, having been invited to supper. “You seem out of condition mentally, if not bodily, as if some one had rubbed you the wrong way.”
“Do I?” answered Beniah, with a frown and something between a grin and a laugh. “Well, it is not easy to understand one’s mental complaints, much less to explain them.”
Fortunately their arrival at the booth put a timely end to the conversation.
“Ha! my long-legged prince and stalwart Hebrew!” cried the jovial chief in a loud voice, “I began to fear that you had got lost—as folk seem prone to do in this region—or had forgotten all about us! Come in and sit ye down. Ho! varlet, set down the victuals. After all, you are just in the nick of time. Well, Beniah, what think you of our search to-day? Has it been close? Is it likely that we have missed any of the caves or cliffs where robbers might be hiding?”
“I think not. It seems to me that we have ransacked every hole and corner in which there is a chance that the lad could be found.”
“The lad!” exclaimed Gadarn.
“I—I mean—your daughter,” returned the Hebrew, quickly.
“Why don’t you say what you mean, then? One expects a man of your years to talk without confusion—or is it that you are really more anxious about finding the boy than my girl?”
“Nay, that be far from me,” answered the Hebrew. “To say truth, I am to the full as anxious to find the one as the other, for it matters not which you—”
“Matters not!” repeated Gadarn, fiercely.