ow sorely he longeth for me!"

"Nay, my sweetling," said the Carline, "hold up thine heart; no
thraldom shall befal thee from these men, for I shall most surely
deliver thee; but let them first bring us safe toward the edge of the
mountains, and [we will] take their false guesting the while for what
it is worth, and trust me I shall watch them all the while." So the
Maiden stayed her weeping, but was shy and timid these days, and her
loathing of these thieves of folk's bodies and souls made her
downcast.

Two nights after, when they were resting at the day's end, the Carline
(she hidden in the brake) came across the three men contending
together in speech, and the words of the elder ending his talk she
just caught: "Two thousand nobles at the least would the Lord James
pay down for her; he hath none like her in the house." "Nor will have
ever," said the second man. "And for my part I will not give her up
for my share of a two thousand nobles." Spake the third thereon, and
he was the stoutest-built and the gallantest-looked of the three:
"Thou wilt not, thou! What sayest thou to me then? The beginning and
the end of it is that I will take her to myself alone and sell her to
none." "Yea, yea," said the elder, jeering, "and what shall we do?"
"Thou shalt give her to me for a price," said the youngest. "Nay, but
to me," said the second: "every one of thy pieces can I cover with a
piece." "Now," said the elder, "we get on swimmingly; since, forsooth,
I know not where either thou or he shall get all that gold from.
Wherefore now the best thing ye two may do at this present is to fall
both upon me, and slay me; and after that ye two can try it out
betwixt yourselves, and he who is left can go back to our carles, who
will straightway slay him when they have found the other two corpses.
How say ye, my masters, is this a good game to play?"

They sat looking surlily on him, but said nought. Then he said: "Since
this is come above ground, which to say sooth I looked for, as ye are
two such brisk lads, and the woman such a pearl of beauty, I bid you
this way to take: let us bring her down into the peopled parts in
peace and good fellowship, and then go all three before a priest and
take God's Body at his hands, and pray it may choke us and rot us if
we take her not straight to the Lord James and sell her unto him for
the best penny we may, and share all alike, even as the honest and
merry merchants we be. Ha, what say ye now?" B