The fire was low and ashy in the big fire-place. The Baron blew a silver whistle, and while waiting for a servant to answer the call, he kicked together the chunks of logs, sending a train of fiery sparkles up the chimney.
“Make haste, man!” he said, impatiently. “Heap on the wood.”
The obedient servant piled it from a box like a high, old-fashioned bedstead, which held at least a half cord of logs.
“Quick! quick! What carelessness! This room is cold as death.”
The man went out soon as he could escape, and reported to the servants that the Baron was in one of his tiger fits. They wondered why, when he was so pleased over the wedding, and in their own hall they talked it over with many wonderments.
But the lord of the castle had no dark mood, no tiger fit for Ginevra.
“Now, my darling,” said he, holding the light shape across his breast, while he wrapped the fur round her feet, “now I have my little girl all mine own for the last time. What shall I sing?”
“About the Norse kings, father. How they used to steal their brides and sail away over the foaming North seas to the lands of snow and ice.”
The Baron was not much of a singer; but the deep roll of his voice well suited the thunder of the storm without. A strange cradle-song, to be sure, of fighting, of hunting, of blood, and of victory. An hour passed. There was no rift in the clouds, no lull in the dismal wind. Then the snow began to fall—the hushing snow, which seems to quiet heaven and earth.
“It will be fair to-morrow,” said Ginevra, sleepily, rousing a little. “That was a brave song of the pirates. Now the wind goes down.” She opened the clear blue eyes once more and smiled, showing the pearly little teeth. “Good-night. Do not let me tire you, father dear;” and so, murmuring love words her nurse had taught, she went to her innocent dreams—in all the kingdoms of sleep, the sweetest thing that breathed.