‘One for me,’ she cried with some exultation; and then she observed that Mr. Archer had grown pale, and was kneeling on the rock, with his hand raised like a person petrified. ‘Why,’ said she, ‘you do not mind it, do you?’
‘Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which a fortune hangs?’ said Mr. Archer, rather hoarsely. ‘And this is more than fortune. Nance, if you have any kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I launch the next one.’
‘A prayer,’ she cried, ‘about a game like this? I would not be so heathen.’
‘Well,’ said he, ‘then without,’ and he closed his eyes and dropped the piece of rush. This time there was no doubt. It went for the rapid as straight as any arrow.
‘Action then!’ said Mr. Archer, getting to his feet; ‘and then God forgive us,’ he added, almost to himself.
‘God forgive us, indeed,’ cried Nance, ‘for wasting the good daylight! But come, Mr. Archer, if I see you look so serious I shall begin to think you was in earnest.’
‘Nay,’ he said, turning upon her suddenly, with a full smile; ‘but is not this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy to-day for the first time.’
CHAPTER VIII—THE MAIL GUARD
Somewhere about two in the morning a squall had burst upon the castle, a clap of screaming wind that made the towers rock, and a copious drift of rain that streamed from the windows. The wind soon blew itself out, but the day broke cloudy and dripping, and when the little party assembled at breakfast their humours appeared to have changed with the change of weather. Nance had been brooding on the scene at the river-side, applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation, which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as if the idea that had so long hovered before him had now taken a more solid shape, and, while it still attracted, somewhat alarmed his imagination.
At this rate, conversation languished into a silence which was only broken by the gentle and ghostly noises of the rain on the stone roof and about all that field of ruins; and they were all relieved when the note of a man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps in the grassy court announced a visitor. It was the ostler from the ‘Green Dragon’ bringing a letter for Mr. Archer. Nance saw her hero’s face contract and then relax again at sight of it; and she thought that she knew why, for the sprawling, gross black characters of the address were easily distinguishable from the fine writing on the former letter that had so much disturbed him. He opened it and began to read; while the ostler sat down to table with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make himself agreeable after his fashion.