“Well, of course, I mean that my friendship for you and Bladud makes me wish to see you each satisfied by finding both the boy and the girl.”
“For my part,” said Bladud, quietly, “I sincerely hope that we may find them both, for we are equally anxious to do so.”
“Equally!” exclaimed Gadarn, with a look of lofty surprise. “Dost mean to compare your regard for your young friend with a father’s love for his only child!”
The prince did not easily take offence, but he could not refrain from a flush and a frown as he replied, sharply—
“I make no useless comparisons, chief. It is sufficient that we are both full of anxiety, and are engaged in the same quest.”
“Ay, the same quest—undoubtedly,” observed the Hebrew in a grumbling, abstracted manner.
“If it were possible,” returned Gadarn, sternly, “to give up the search for your boy and confine it entirely to my girl, I would do so. But as they went astray about the same place, we are compelled, however little we like it, to hunt together.”
“Not compelled, chief,” cried Bladud, with a look and a flash in his blue eye which presaged a sudden rupture of friendly relations. “We can each go our own way and hunt on our own account.”
“Scarcely,” replied the chief, “for if you found my daughter, you would be bound in honour to deliver her up; and if I found your boy, I should feel myself bound to do the same.”
“It matters not a straw which is found,” cried the Hebrew, exasperated at the prospect of a quarrel between the two at such an inopportune moment. “Surely, as an old man, I have the right to remonstrate with you for encouraging anything like disagreement when our success in finding the boy,—I—I mean the girl,—depends—”