"And who may you be, my pretty little young man with the babe's face, and where gat you the spirit that makes you speak so brisk and bold?"
Marie looked at Wat through the dim light as though to beseech him to answer for her.
Said Wat, overcoming a natural touch of shyness and reluctance, "This is the friend of mine who got me out of prison, and who was kind to me beyond all thanks when I abode therein. She is only 'the Little Marie,' whom you remember at the Hostel of the Coronation. After that night she went back there no more."
"She!" cried Scarlett; "she, did he say? 'Only the Little Marie,' quotha! Well, that is a good deal for a Scot of the Covenant, one that for lack of other helpers will have to company with the Hill-wanderers, so far as I can see, when he goes back to his own land."
"Aye," said Wat, dryly, "but we are not back yet."
"I kenned," returned Scarlett, every whit as dryly, "that we were on one love-quest. But had I kenned that we were on two of them at once, the devil a foot would I have stirred out of my good lodgings, or away from the bield of that excellent and truly buxom householder, the Frau Axel."
So far they had spoken in Scots, but the Little Marie, listening with tremulous eagerness to the tone of their conversation, laid her hand wistfully on Scarlett's arm.
"Fear not," she said in French, "I will never be a burden to you, nor yet troublesome. I am to stay with you only till you are clear of your difficulties. I can help you even as I helped him, for I know whither the maiden you seek has been taken. And when you are on the track of the robbers, then, so quickly as may be, the Little Marie will return to her own place."
Scarlett did not give back a single word of good or bad. As his manner was, he only grunted abruptly—yet, as it had been, not ill-pleased.
"Time we were in the saddle, at all events," he said; "that is, if we are to pass the posts ere the coming of the day."