“You quiet-faced thing—why, you are quite a vixen after all!”
“Ah, Igraine, was there ever a woman without a temper?”
“No, dear, and I wouldn’t give a button for her either.”
Suddenly, as they sat and talked, the beggar woman lifted up her head to listen, and the children turned from feeding the fish in querulous, childish wonder. There was something strange on the wind. Igraine and Lilith heard a gradual sound rising afar off over the city—a noise as of men shouting, a noise that waxed and waned like the roar of surges on a beach. It grew—rushed nearer like a storm through trees,—deep, sonorous, triumphant. The girls sat mute a moment, and looked at each other in conjecture.
“What can it be?”
“God knows!”
“The heathen?”
“Not that shout.”
“Then—Uther.”