Her voice was low, but it waked Bow-may, who sat up at once broad awake, after the manner of a hunter of the waste ever ready for the next thing to betide, and moreover the Sun-beam had been in her thoughts these two days, and she feared for her, lest she should be slain or maimed. Now she smiled on the Sun-beam and said:
‘What is it? Does thy mind forebode evil? That needeth not. I tell thee it is not so ill for us of the sword to be in Silver-dale. Thrice have I been there since the Overthrow, and never more than a half-score in company, and yet am I whole to-day.’
‘Yea, sister,’ said Face-of-god, ‘but in past times ye did your deed and then fled away; but now we come to abide here, and this night is the last of lurking.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘a little way from this I saw such things that we had good will to abide here longer, few as we were, but that we feared to be taken alive.’
‘What things were these?’ said Face-of-god.
‘Nay,’ she said, ‘I will not tell thee now; but mayhap in the lighted winter feast-hall, when the kindred are so nigh us and about us that they seem to us as if they were all the world, I may tell it thee; or mayhap I never shall.’
Said the Sun-beam, smiling: ‘Thou wilt ever be talking, Bow-may. Now let the War-leader depart, for he will have much to do.’
And she was well at ease that she had seen Face-of-god again; but he said:
‘Nay, not so much; all is well-nigh done; in an hour it will be broad day, and two hours thereafter shall the Banner be displayed on the edge of Silver-dale.’
The cheek of the Sun-beam flushed, and paled again, as she said: ‘Yea, we shall stand even as our Fathers stood on the day when, coming from off the waste, they beheld it, and knew it would be theirs. Ah me! how have I longed for this morn. But now—Tell me, Gold-mane, dost thou deem that I am afraid? And I whom thou hast deemed to be a God.’