to pride myself upon gentle blood and knightly training, and then throw
insult and taunt upon a woman's unshielded head! Nay, Barbara, had any
man three days agone forecast my doing such a thing, I had hurled the
lie in his teeth, and haply crammed it down with Gideon's hilt. Nay--the
good sword may well be ashamed of his master; well may I look for him to
shiver in my grasp when next I draw him"--

"Myles! Myles, I'll hear no more! Nay then, not a word, or I shall hold
it proven that my wish is naught to thee, for all thy contrite sayings.
I fear me Priscilla is right, and thou 'rt truly ill. This hot sun hath
touched thy head with some such distemper as sped poor Master Carver.
Sit thee down here beside me, and I'll fetch cool water from the spring
to bathe thy temples."

"It needs not, cousin. My distemper is of the mind, the heart; nay, it
is wounded honor, lass, and there's no ill of body can sting a man so
shrewdly as that. Say that I have thy pardon, Barbara, if thou canst say
it in truth, and 't will be better than any med'cine in Fuller's
chest."

"Why, certes, Myles, thou hast my forgiveness and over and over for any
rough word thou mayst have said, and in sober sadness I mind not what
they were, for all my thought hath been of my unkindness to thee. Myles,
I never told thee, but when thy mother lay a-dying, and thou far away,
fighting the Spaniards in Holland, she bade me care for thee even as she
would have done, and fill a sister's place--and more, and I laid my hand
in hers and promised sacredly, and so she rested content."

"And why didst never tell me this before, cousin?"

"I know not--nay, but that's not all out true, and I'll tell thee no
lies, Myles. When next thou camest to our poor home at Man, thou didst
see Rose, and from the first I knew well enow that there'd be no need of
sister-care for one who found so sweet a wife."

"Ay, she was sweet,--sweet as her pretty name. Dost know, Barbara, when
these bushes burgeon in early summer with their soft and fragrant bloom
it ever minds me of that sweet and fragile Rose that lies beneath."

But Barbara was silent.

"Ah well, ah well, 't is a brief chapter strangely at odds with the rude
life wherein it found itself, and now 't is closed, and better so for
her. She could not have bloomed among these dreary sands and savage
woods; it was not fitting."

He paced a few steps back and forward, and Barbara rose, her clear eyes
full of a woman's nobl