hat he was almost
overcome. But the daughter of Charles, running towards the hut with
pretty curiosity, cried out merrily:

"I see a moss-bank in the hut and a supply of dry wood. Let's light a
fire. There are still some embers burning. Hurry. Hurry."

The lad hastened to join his companion and stumbled over a large log of
wood that rolled at his feet. Stooping, he saw strewn about it a large
number of burrs that had dropped down from the tall chestnut trees
overhead. At once forgetting his embarrassment, he exclaimed with
delight:

"A discovery! Chestnuts! Chestnuts!"

"What a find," responded Thetralde, no less delighted. "We shall roast
the chestnuts. I shall pick them up while thou startest the fire."

The young Breton did as suggested by his girl companion, all the more
readily seeing that he hoped to find in the sport a refuge from the
vague, tumultuous and ardent thoughts, big at once with delight and
anxiety, that he had been a prey to from the moment of his meeting with
Thetralde. He entered the hut, took up several bunches of dry wood and
rekindled the brasier into flame, while the daughter of Charles, running
hither and thither, gathered a large supply of chestnuts which she
brought into the hut in a fold of her dress. Letting herself down upon
the moss-bank that lay at the further end of the hut, the interior of
which was now brightly lighted by the glare of the fire which burned
near the entrance, she said to Vortigern, motioning him to a seat near
her:

"Sit down here, and help me shell these chestnuts."

The lad sat down near Thetralde and entered with her into a contest of
swiftness in the shelling of chestnuts, during which, like herself, he
more than once pricked his fingers in the effort to extract the ripe
kernels from their burrs. Presently, looking into her face, he said
archly:

"And here you have the daughter of the Emperor of the Franks; seated
inside of a peat hut and shelling chestnuts like any woodchopper and
slave's daughter."

"Vortigern," answered Thetralde, returning the look of her companion
with a radiant face, "never was the daughter of the Emperor of the
Franks more happy than at this moment."

"And I, Thetralde, I swear to you that since the day I left my mother,
my sister and Brittany, I have never been more pleased than to-day, than
now, near you."

"And if to-morrow should resemble to-day? and if it should be thus for a
long time, a very long time--wouldst thou alwa