have guessed at
once that the woman referred to her absent son, about whose good
qualities she had been descanting at various times for several days
past. The poor girl shuddered as the light broke in on her, and a
feeling of dismay at her helpless condition, and being entirely in the
power of these savages, almost overcame her, but her power of
self-restraint did not fail her. She laughed, blushed in spite of
herself, and said she was too young to look at the matter in _that_
light!

"Not a bit; not a bit!" rejoined Ortrud. "I was younger than you when
my husband ran away with me."

"Ran away with you, Ortrud?" cried Branwen, laughing outright.

"Ay; I was better-looking then than I am now, and not nigh so heavy. He
wouldn't find it so easy," said the woman, with a sarcastic snort, "to
run away with me now."

"No, and he wouldn't be so much inclined to do so, I should think,"
thought Branwen, but she had the sense not to say so.

"That's a very, very nice hunting shirt you are making," remarked
Branwen, anxious to change the subject.

The woman was pleased with the compliment. She was making a coat at the
time, of a dressed deer-skin, using a fish-bone needle, with a sinew for
a thread.

"Yes, it is a pretty one," she replied. "I'm making it for my younger
son, who is away with his brother, though he's only a boy yet."

"Do you expect him back soon?" asked the captive, with a recurrence of
the sinking heart.

"In a few days, I hope. Yes, you are right, my dear; the coat is a
pretty one, and he is a pretty lad that shall wear it--not very handsome
in the face, to be sure; but what does that matter so long as he's stout
and strong and kind? I am sure his elder brother, Addedomar, will be
kind to you though he _is_ a bit rough to me sometimes."

Poor Branwen felt inclined to die on the spot at this cool assumption
that she was to become a bandit's wife; but she succeeded in repressing
all appearance of feeling as she rose, and, stretching up her arms, gave
vent to a careless yawn.

"I must go and have a ramble now," she said. "I'm tired of sitting so
long."

"Don't be long, my dear," cried the old woman, as the captive left the
hut, "for the ribs must be nigh roasted by this time."

Branwen walked quickly till she gained the thick woods; then she ran,
and, finally sitting down on a bank, burst into a passion of tears. But
it was not her nature to remain in a state of inactive woe. Having
part