the
niggard once, and that, it might be deemed, was but one youngling's
doing.

Chapter XXX. Osberne Goes to the Trysting-Place

But on the morrow ere the day was old, the guests departed in all
contentment each to his own folk, and Osberne and the Wethermel men
led them out with blessings.

When they were all gone and the unwonted stir was over, it seemed to
Osberne as if he were awaking from a dream, and his heart was in a
turmoil of hope and fear, so that he knew not what to do till he was
once more at the Bight of the Cloven Knoll. He tarried for nought save
to take up the gifts of Eastcheaping, and he had no weapon with him
save his bow and arrows wherewith to flit the said gifts across the
water, but he was gaily clad in a coat of green, flowered with gold,
which he had bought him at Eastcheaping; and a fair and lovely youth
he looked, as he strode along at his swiftest toward the
trysting-place, his face flushed, his brows a little knit with mingled
trouble and joy, his lips parted with his eager breathing. Whiles as
he went he said to himself, How many chances and changes there were,
and how might he expect to find Elfhild there again? And next, when he
had enough afflicted himself with thinking of her sick, or dead, or
wedded, his strong heart of a youth threw it off again, and he
thought, How could evil such as that befal him, the stalwarth and
joyous?

So he fared till he came within sight of the ness, and saw no figure
there on the top of it: yet he straightway fell to running, as though
he knew she had been waiting for him a long while; but as he ran he
kept his eyes down on the ground, so that he might not see her place
empty of her. But when he came to his place he lifted up his eyes, and
there to his great joy saw her coming up the ness; and when she saw
him she uttered a great cry and spread out her arms and reached out to
him. But as for him, he might make neither word nor sound a great
while, but stood looking on her. Then he said: "Is it well with thee?"

"O yea, yea," she said, "and over-well as now."

"Art thou wedded?" said he.

"Yea," she said, "unto thee."

"O would that we were, would that we were!" said Osberne.

"O!" she said, "be not sad this morning, or wish for aught so that it
grieve thee. Bethink thee how dear this moment is, now at last when
our eyes behold each other."

"Hast thou come here often to look for me?" said he. She said: "It was
the fourteenth of May was a