“Ran away with you, Ortrud?” cried Branwen, laughing outright.
“Ay; I was better-looking then than I am now, and not nigh so heavy. He wouldn’t find it so easy,” said the woman, with a sarcastic snort, “to run away with me now.”
“No, and he wouldn’t be so much inclined to do so, I should think,” thought Branwen, but she had the sense not to say so.
“That’s a very, very nice hunting shirt you are making,” remarked Branwen, anxious to change the subject.
The woman was pleased with the compliment. She was making a coat at the time, of a dressed deer-skin, using a fish-bone needle, with a sinew for a thread.
“Yes, it is a pretty one,” she replied. “I’m making it for my younger son, who is away with his brother, though he’s only a boy yet.”
“Do you expect him back soon?” asked the captive, with a recurrence of the sinking heart.
“In a few days, I hope. Yes, you are right, my dear; the coat is a pretty one, and he is a pretty lad that shall wear it—not very handsome in the face, to be sure; but what does that matter so long as he’s stout and strong and kind? I am sure his elder brother, Addedomar, will be kind to you though he is a bit rough to me sometimes.”
Poor Branwen felt inclined to die on the spot at this cool assumption that she was to become a bandit’s wife; but she succeeded in repressing all appearance of feeling as she rose, and, stretching up her arms, gave vent to a careless yawn.
“I must go and have a ramble now,” she said. “I’m tired of sitting so long.”