asked Miranda to tell him who had struck
her dumb. For a long time she would not answer. "We don't name
him--it's not lawful. He that has the power--the Master--I can go no
nearer." He urged her to openness, got her at last to mention "The
King of the Wood." The King of the Wood! There she stuck, and nothing
he could say could move her from that name, The King of the Wood.

He left it so, knowing his people, and having other things to ask
about. What tongue or speech had the respectable, the staid Miranda
King in common with the scared waif? To that she answered that she
could not tell him; but that it was certain they could understand each
other. How? "By looks," she said, and added scornfully, "she's not
the kind that has to clatter with her tongue to have speech with her
kindred."

Miranda, then, was a kinswoman! He showed his incredulity, and the
woman flushed. "See here, Mr. Robson," she said, "I am of the sea, and
she of the fell, but we are the same nation. We are not of yours, but
you can make us so. Directly I saw her I knew what she was; and so did
she know me. How? By the eyes and understanding. I felt who she was.
As she is now so was I once. As I am now so will she be. I'll answer
for her; I'm here to do it. When once I'd followed my man I never
looked back; no more will she. The woman obeys the man--that's the
law. If a girl of your people was taken with a man of mine she'd lose
her speech and forsake her home and ways. That's the law all the world
over. God Almighty's self, if He were a woman, would do the same. He
couldn't help it. The law is His; but He made it so sure that not
Himself could break it."

"What law do you mean?" she was asked. She said, "The law of life. The
woman follows the man."

This proposition he was not prepared to deny, and the end of it was
that Mr. Robson baptised the girl, taking Miranda for godmother.
Mabilla they called her by her sponsor's desire, "Mabilla
By-the-Wood," and as such she was published and married. You may be
disposed to blame him for lightness of conscience, but I take leave to
tell you that he had had the cure of souls in Dryhope for
five-and-thirty years. He claimed on that score to know his people.
The more he knew of them, the less he was able to question the lore of
such an one as Miranda King. And he might remind you that Mabilla King
is alive to this hour, a wife and mother of children. That is a fact,
and it is also a fact, as I am about to tell