53: SELPERRON BUYS SOME FLOWERS

It was not often that Selperron—a merchant of Kabin— came up to Bekla. Indeed, he had done so only twice before in his life; once as a youth, together with his parents, though that, of course, had been many years ago now, and in the same of Senda-na-Say. Selperron was a dealer in oxhides and other animal skins, though he was also not above such side-lines as river shells and the plumes marketed by the Ortelgan forest hunters. For some time past business had been improving. Apart from the buoyant state of the market, however, his elder son was now of an age to be useful in the business, while his second wife (for Selperron had been widowed some four years before) was a brisk, competent woman, as good as a man when it came to dealing with customers and reckoning profit and loss.

For the first time in years, therefore, he had felt able, this summer, to afford time and money for a trip to Bekla, leaving the business in safe hands. It should not, in fact, prove an unduly expensive jaunt (unless he were to make it so), since he had arranged to stay with an old friend, one N'Kasit, a Kabinese in the same line of business, who had rather unexpectedly uprooted himself and gone to Bekla four years before. N'Kasit had been fortunate enough to obtain from General Kembri a contract (though not a monopoly) to supply leather to the army, and was now doing well. Selperron had sent him consignments of hides at profit, for Bekla's selling prices were higher than Kabin's; and N'Kasit, during a visit home the year before, had suggested that Selperron should himself accompany his next consignment up to Bekla. Selperron had felt attracted by the idea; and now, in short, the trip had really come about.

The journey, in a convoy of ox-cart carriers, slave-gangers and their wares, three or four other travelers like himself and the usual half-company of soldiers for protection (who cost far too much, but it was that or nothing), had been somewhat wearisome. Once, he might rather have enjoyed it, but Selperron had now reached a time of life (and fortune) when he preferred comfort and good food, and somehow the inns along the road had not proved all that he seemed to remember. Among the slaves there had been a girl who wept continually, and this, too—being a kindly and impressionable man—he had found a trial.

Once they reached Bekla, however, he had at once felt all the fascination and excitement of earlier days.

At the first, distant sight of the slender, balconied towers, the Peacock Wall extending above the lower city and the Pal-ace of the Barons crowning the Leopard Hill beyond, his spirits had soared. Coming in through the Blue Gate, he had been delighted by the tumult and crowds all about him. Forgoing a jekzha—for he fancied the idea of stopping as he pleased to look around him—he had hired a lad with a barrow for his baggage-roll and strolled beside him along the streets, noting not so much the buildings, or even the Tamarrik Gate and the temple, as the goods displayed for sale and the trafficking at the shops and stalls. Merely to see brisk business going on and things being bought and sold gave pleasure to Selperron, and by the time he reached N'Kasit's house, near the western clock tower, he was in even better humor and more than ready to reciprocate his friend's greetings and polite inquiries after his family and old acquaintances in Kabin. The first evening they had dined at home, after which Selperron had slept long and comfortably, undisturbed by any night-sounds of the city.

And now here they were together, idling on a midsummer day, taking their leisure and seeing the sights, the sun pleasantly warm on their backs and the city babble and savors and throngs all around them as they sauntered up the Kharjiz towards Storks Hill and Masons Street. On the bridge over the Monju Brook N'Kasit stopped and they leaned side by side over the parapet, looking upstream to where the water ran glittering round the curve at the base of the Tower of the Orphans. Further down in their direction was a little garden, and here a weeping willow overhung the stream, its branches forming a kind of watery arbor as they trailed in the slack current.

"Did you do well this last Melekril?" asked Selperron after a time. He spoke with appropriately off-hand diffidence—a blend between the natural interest of a business associate and a friend wishing to seem politely but not unduly inquisitive.

"That's—well—quite a difficult question to answer, even two or three months after," replied N'Kasit.

"As things have turned out, I'm still overstocked. It's a damned nuisance having money tied up in stuff that's been on my hands as long as this."

"Well," answered Selperron, "one beauty of our line of business is that at least stock doesn't go bad on you. That market-girl over there's got to sell her fruit quick, but you and I can always hang on to hides and wait for our return."

"Normally, yes," said N'Kasit, "and as a rule, if a proportion of Melekril stock's not been taken off my hands before the spring festival I'm not much troubled; but this time I was fully expecting to be robbed and possibly murdered into the bargain."

Selperron stared and shook his head, looking suitably concerned. "We heard all kinds of rumors in Kabin, but thank Cran everything stayed quiet enough down there."

"You should just have been up here, then," replied N'Kasit. "After the murder of the High Counselor that night, no one knew what to expect. People were burying their valuables and even sending their wives and children away—those who could afford to. A lot of them were expecting another revolution, like the time when Senda-na-Say was killed."

"But of course it didn't come to that," replied Selperron.

"No: but there was a fair amount of robbery and looting, you see, and some people were saying it must have been organized. And then not long after the murder Santil-kè-Erketlis came out against Bekla, and young Elleroth joined him from Sarkid. So we didn't know but what there mightn't be some sort of heldro bunch organizing trouble here in the city—just as Fornis's supporters did before she came up from Dari getting on for eight years ago. I don't mind telling you, I was scared. There simply weren't enough soldiers here, you see; most of them had just left for the Valderra. I asked for an armed guard for the warehouse, but I never got a man. Think of it—forty or fifty thousand melds' worth of portable stock and only me and a night-watchman! I slept there myself for three or four nights— me and my man Malendik. We had one sword and a knife between us, that's all. But nothing came of it, thank the gods; and as I was saying, about half the stock's still there now, waiting to be sold. Well, it's no good worrying."

Wandering on down the Kharjiz, they came to the foot of Storks Hill and then to the edge of the temple precinct and the Tamarrik Gate beyond. Here they stopped to watch Fleitil and his men on their scaffolding, putting the finishing touches to big-bellied Airtha of the Diadem, while below, a painter was beginning his task of coloring the relief panels round the plinth, which depicted the seven beatific acts of the goddess. Selperron wondered what proportion of the taxes he had paid last year might have gone into the gold leaf of the goddess's cloak, her jeweled nipples and the silver wire braiding her hair. He himself was not much in favor of spending public money on this kind of thing, but maybe such civic splendors were indirectly good for business—who could tell?

"They say Santil's got all of two thousand men under arms in the Chalcon hills," said N'Kasit after a time.

"I suppose he would have, counting Elleroth's lot," answered Selperron. "But surely that's nowhere near enough to bother the Leopards, is it? After all, he can't really do more than lurk about in Chalcon, playing tip-and-run. He couldn't even consider trying to take Thettit, for instance."

"Maybe not," said N'Kasit. "But all the same, the Leopards have got to take some notice of him, haven't they? Kembri's had to drop his idea of attacking Karnat in Suba, I know that. Thettit's been garrisoned, you know, and that takes men away from the Valderra for a start."

"Was anyone ever arrested for the murder?" said Selperron.

N'Kasit shook his head. "That's the extraordinary thing. Of course, there were hundreds of people coming into the upper city all that afternoon and evening—guests and so on—and I suppose the surveillance at the gate can't have been as strict as usual. After the murder, of course, the whole place was searched from end to end, but there wasn't anyone who couldn't account for themselves."

Selperron chuckled. "That High Counselor—he was basting one of his girls in a boat, or something, wasn't he? A black girl, didn't I hear?"

"Yes, that's right. They had her into the temple for questioning, and that's the last I remember hearing about her. But if they've put her to death it certainly wasn't in public, so I suppose they must have decided she wasn't involved. She was rumored to be some sort of witch or sorceress, I remember hearing. Quite a lot of the young bloods in the upper city were very taken with her at one time; but that was last year. Once the temple got hold of her she just vanished; dead, for all I know. Anyway, no one's any nearer the truth about the murder."

"There've been arrests in Kabin, you know," said Selperron. "Eight or nine since the spring, and more than that in Tonilda and north Yelda, so I heard: people who've been acting as messengers between heldro barons and so on."

"They're contenting themselves with arresting little people because they can't spare troops to tackle the bigger ones," said N'Rasit, "that's about the size of it. They'll bring them up here and execute them and hope that'll damp the heldril down until they can spare more troops from the Valderra and mount an expedition against Erketlis in Chalcon."

They turned up Storks Hill, N'Kasit heading for the Caravan Market and "The Green Grove," for he was prosperous enough to be able to afford the best class of tavern, and anxious to show as much to his friend.

"All the same, no great loss, Sencho, was he?" asked Selperron in a cautious undertone, as they came within sight of the colonnade. "He was a foul brute, by all accounts."

"That's true enough, but all the same he's a loss to us, as merchants," said N'Kasit. He grinned sideways at Selperron. "Why not admit it? He only did what we'd all like to do. Wasn't it only last night you were talking about Beklan shearnas and saying you wouldn't mind meeting a nice one?"

"I wouldn't, either," replied Selperron. "Beautiful girls, some of them, a captain of the guard in Kabin was saying only the other day. He told me they—"

"Yes, but the really good ones are impossibly expensive," broke in N'Kasit. "Upper city stuff, you know, and inclined to be choosy with it even then. Sencho didn't bother with shearnas, though. Bought his own girls and kept them for himself."

Selperron fell silent. The truth was that he did indeed take a keen interest in girls, but in a somewhat less carnal way than his friend supposed. To him they were less a means of gratification than one of the most delightful forms of beauty, like jewels or flowers. His head was often turned, but he seldom went further, and in his memory certain girls whom he had never actually possessed tended to stand out as vividly as those he had.

"So a lot of your last year's stock's still in the warehouse?" he asked, to change the subject. "Do you think the army'll buy it off you soon?"

N'Kasit wrinkled his nose and spat in the dust, "Well— they've given me an advance to secure it, though not nearly as much as I was hoping for. The trouble is, as I was telling you, that the Lord General was expecting a hard summer's campaign in Suba, with quite a bit of wear and tear. There'd have been reinforcements to equip and so on. But as things turned out, Karnat moved first, and Kembri and Sendekar were lucky not to be taken completely by surprise. Amazing thing, that; all on account of one girl, acting entirely on her own. You heard, of course? She saved Bekla, did that lass, nothing less. Saved us all."

"Yes, everyone's been talking about it in Kabin," replied Selperron. "Tonildan girl, isn't she? I know she swam across the river and brought news of the attack in time for Sendekar to put paid to it, but there's a lot I don't really understand. I mean, what was she doing in Suba in the first place, and how did she come to find out about Karnat's plans at all?"

"Nobody knows," answered N'Kasit. "Whatever it was, they've kept that part of it very quiet—the Leopards, I mean. I've got a customer I'm on fairly close terms with, a wine-merchant called Sarget, who's done so well that he actually lives in the upper city now, and he told me that even up there no one really knows. All he could say was that the girl belonged to Sencho at the time he was murdered and she was in the gardens with him the night he was killed—she and the black girl. They were both taken to the temple for questioning, but somehow or other she escaped and actually managed to get as far as Suba—"

"By herself? I don't believe it!"

"Nobody knows whether she had any help or not. All that's known is that she happened to be in Suba."

"She must have had something to do with the murder, don't you think, and been trying to clear out of the empire altogether; to Katria or somewhere like that?"

"Well, that's what anybody would have thought, I suppose; but what happens then? Somehow or other she finds out that the Terekenalt army's going to cross the Valderra at a place Sendekar hasn't got guarded. In the middle of the night, she finds her way alone to the Suban bank of the Valderra and proceeds to swim it. Well, that's not just heroism; that's a basting miracle. No one, man or woman, could swim it; it's a raging torrent for miles above and below Rallur. Even the soldiers who pulled her out couldn't believe she'd swum it; they thought she must be an Urtan girl who'd been trying to make away with herself."

"But had she swum it, then?"

"She must have, because she knew about Karnat's plan. That's why Sendekar was able to drive him back across the river: otherwise he might very well have reached Bekla in three days. He'd have had complete surprise, you see."

"Well, perhaps she did mean to get out of the empire in the first place, but then, somehow or other, she happened to find out the Terekenalt plan and saw it as a chance to make her fortune."

"Not if it meant swimming the Valderra, Selpo. Gran, you should just see it! I was up in Rallur myself three years ago, buying from the Urtan graziers. That was just before midsummer—this time of year, more or less—and even then it was like nothing so much as a boiling caldron full of axe-heads."

"D'you think perhaps the Terekenalters may have found out she knew, and thrown her in to drown, but somehow or other she just didn't?"

"Well, you can think that by all means, but if I were you I shouldn't be heard saying it. The whole city's crazy about the girl. One of my tanners actually told me he believed she was Lespa come down to save the empire. Made her fortune? Great Cran, she's made her fortune all right! They'd give her the stars if they could!"

"Well, what does she say happened?"

"Sarget told me she's never said a word about it to anyone in the upper city: so probably no one ever will know precisely what happened."

"Oh, how I'd love to see her!" said Selperron. "Just to be able to say I had, back in Kabin, you know."

"I doubt you'll have the chance," replied N'Kasit. "It's not as if it were the spring festival, you see, or the Sacred Queen's birth ceremony. There's not a great deal to bring upper city people down here at this time of year."

"Is she living with one of the Leopards, or what?"

"No; I'm told she hasn't taken a man since she got back. But everyone's expecting her to make a wealthy marriage as soon as she feels ready. She could have anyone she likes, you see, but for the moment she's probably in no hurry. After all, the Council voted her a house, and money, and Cran knows what besides. I believe the army would have mutinied if they hadn't. Half the officers are said to be wild about her and I don't know that I so very much blame them. After all, they wouldn't have lasted long, would they, if Karnat had got to Bekla?"

During the days that followed, the thought of the miraculous Tonildan whose lonely heroism had saved the empire kept recurring to Selperron. She must be a most remarkable, girl. What did she look like, he wondered, and what could be the real truth behind her incredible exploit? Had she ever been in love?

What sort of a girl was she really, alone or among her friends, behind her radiant guise of a savior princess so dazzling that simple folk could actually see her as Lespa incarnate?

"Just suppose," he thought, awake in bed one morning before N'Kasit's servant had come in to call him, "just suppose I happened to meet her, what would I say to her? And what would she say to me, I wonder? I'm not really all that old: forty's no age."

He tried to imagine the Tonildan girl breasting the cataract in the roaring darkness, the whole fate of the empire resting on her shoulders as she struggled on. Suppose it had been he who had pulled her out on the bank, he who had first perceived that she was telling the truth and ordered that she should be taken at once to General Sendekar? Sighing, he heaved himself out of bed and began to dress. Tomorrow he had to start the journey home.

"N'Kasit's a good friend," he thought. "I must slip off on my own and buy him a present today—a good 'un, ay. He's really done me very well and I've had a fine time up here. Only I can't help wishing I'd just seen the Tonildan girl. People in Kabin are sure to ask, when I get back."

That afternoon he accompanied N'Kasit to his warehouse. This lay high up in the lower city, south of the Tower of Sel-Dolad and actually abutting on the western ramparts. Like almost every building in Bekla it was of stone, its long rows of recessed bays cool and dusky, the whole place echoing whenever a door slammed or a crate was grounded by the winch. Selperron could not help envying his friend these solid, well-appointed premises which, compared with his own at Kabin, seemed so secure against fire and robbery.

"I only rent the place, of course," said N'Kasit, in reply to his admiring remarks. "And quite enough it costs me too. But you know how important it is to keep up an appearance of prosperity—even more here than in Kabin. Can't make money without spending it, can you?"

"Who's the landlord?" asked Selperron.

"It used to be the High Counselor. He owned half the city—or so you'd have thought. He left no heir, of course, so all his property's been taken over by the temple. I don't know whether they'll sell me this place—I've made them an offer—but in point of fact it's the Sacred Queen I'm paying rent to now. So I shouldn't think the temple sees much of that, would you?"

Before Selperron could hear more about this interesting state of affairs, however, the quartermasters of the Belishban and Lapanese regiments—whom N'Kasit had been expecting—made their appearance and began discussing such matters as shoe-leather, helmets and shield-facings. As N'Kasit got up to conduct them through the warehouse and show them the various qualities of leather in stock Selperron, taking his opportunity, slipped away as he had planned, merely telling his friend that he would see him back at home for supper.

He had already decided that N'Kasit's hospitality—to say nothing of his own business prospects in the capital— called for nothing less than some kind of gold artifact as a farewell present, and accordingly he made his way down-hill towards the Sheldad—the thoroughfare running westward from the Caravan Market—out of which branched the streets of the goldsmiths' and jewelers' quarters. Although he was carrying a considerable sum in coin he was not afraid of robbery, for the streets were well frequented in the cooling afternoon, he did not look a particularly wealthy or likely victim and his business was going to be transacted behind the locked door of a reputable dealer to whom he had been recommended in Kabin.

He was still some way short of the side-street leading to his destination when he became aware of some sort of commotion in front of him, apparently near the point where the Sheldad ran into the Caravan Market. He stopped, looking ahead rather nervously, for after N'Kasit's account of the troubles in the spring he had no wish to find himself caught up in a riot or a street-fight. He hoped, too, that it would not turn out to be prisoners or criminals being led through the streets (for to his credit Selperron was sensitive and hated the kind of ugly jeering and mob cruelty that commonly took place at such times). In a few moments, however, he realized that whatever else it might be, this occasion was neither brutal nor violent. The clamor ahead was plainly some sort of acclamation. It had a happy quality, as if those shouting were taking part in some kind of shared delight, such as a homecoming or a wedding. People began running past him, some calling out to others in front.

Selperron, excited, ran too, jostling along with the rest.

"What is it?" he panted to an old woman whom he found beside him. "What's all the fuss about, grandmother?"

Beaming, she turned her wrinkled face towards him and toothlessly mumbled something that sounded like "Share flinders." Selperron, mystified, elbowed his way on, finally coming out into the sanded space of the market. He looked about, but could still see very little over the heads of those around him.

Suddenly he realized that he was standing beside the plinth of the brazen scales of Fleitil—one of the wonders of the city, which could weigh an ox, a cart and its contents without unloading—and all in a moment had scrambled up it as nimbly as any street lad. A green-uniformed market official shouted angrily to him to come down, but Selperron ignored him, clambering round the plinth to gaze in the direction of the excitement—whatever it might be.

Across the sanded expanse of the market was approaching a jekzha, drawn by two soldiers of the Beklan regiment, resplendent in their undress uniform of scarlet surcoats with silver lacing and Leopard cognizances, but such a jekzha! Its workmanship was so delicate and fine as to create the illusion of a kind of celestial car, lighter than air, floating on the ground as a bubble on a stream. The doors, as well as the foot-rail and screen, all made of gold filigree, put Selperron in mind of the sparkle of gossamer on a clear autumn morning. The slender spokes of the wheels were painted alternately red and blue, so that in turning they merged to form a flickering, vivid purple. From the top of the canopy rose long, bronze-colored plumes—whether of eagle, heart-bird or kynat he could not tell. Nor, for the matter of that, did he spend much time glancing at them, for his eyes were drawn elsewhere as a needle to the north.

Seated in the jekzha was a girl so beautiful that, gazing at her, he was overcome by a sort of stupefaction, as though he had not hitherto known (as indeed he had not) that any such being could exist. In this moment he was not unlike a small child seeing for the first time a crimson humming-bird, colored lamps at a festival or moonlight upon a lake. This was the stilled amazement of revelation. Yet though startled beyond reflection, he was instinctively in no doubt that this could only be the Tonildan, the savior of Bekla.

Like a flame the sight of her leapt upon him, consuming in an instant all the outworn trivialities about girls littering his memory. He found that he was trembling, and steadied himself with a groping hand upon some random projection of the scales. As the girl drew nearer, it appeared to Selperron as though she shed about her a kind of radiance, airy and fertile, like a sunlit drift of pollen from catkins. All gold she seemed—hair, shoulders, arms; and golden sandals enclosing the feet which rested side by side on the rail in front of her; feet made for dancing, surely. They were like golden butterflies: if they happened at this moment to be still, poised fan-like in the sunshine, nevertheless that very stillness implied a kind of tension, the suggestion that it was their nature at any moment to be up and off about their happy mystery of swift play. But that, indeed, was no more than might be said of the girl herself. Her posture, leaning a little forward, one perfect, bare arm resting on the rail beside her, was instinct with a light, quick energy, as though from sheer vitality she might leap suddenly forward, land weightless as a dragonfly and pirouette on the sand.

Most of all he was astonished by her graceful elegance. In talking to N'Kasit, he had formed in his mind a picture of a big, strong girl, hefty, a sort of warrior lass, a hardy survivor in rough places. Sturdy and well-built she was certainly, but with a kind of softness and the air of a merry child, mischievous and innocently sensual as an urchin with a stolen pie. She was smiling on those around her and gazing down from huge, blue eyes; yet a little disconcerted, too, she seemed, as though by no means sure how to maintain her self-possession in the face of such a welcome; and as she turned her head Selperron was deeply moved to see in those eyes a glint of unshed tears.

And well she might, he thought, be moved to the verge of weeping. Round the jekzha, as it was wafted on across the market-place, people were hastening together from every direction—porters, baggage slaves, hawkers, beggars, guttersnipes, street-traders, nondescript idlers, passers-by like himself and others whose dress—Ortelgan, Belishban or Yeldashhay—denoted them as from the provinces. From all sides came cries of greetings and praise. "May all the gods bless thee, my little swimmer!" called out a brawny market-woman, flinging up her rough, red hands as the jekzha came abreast of her stall. The lovely girl responded with a wave of her hand before turning to her other side to touch the hilt of the sword which a Beklan tryzatt was holding up to her in an improvised gesture of allegiance and devotion.

"Long live the Serrelinda!" shouted a voice from some rooftop. "Serrelinda! Serrelinda!" echoed others, and for a few moments a perfect storm of acclaim broke out round the jekzha, which was forced to a gradual halt in the crowd like a boat grounding on the slope of a sand-bar.

"Come along now, missus! Easy there, sir, please! Easy now!" repeated the soldiers in the shafts, wiping the sweat from their foreheads and grinning about them like men not unused to it all. "Let the young säiyett through, now. We've got to get her home safe, you know!"

"She can have my home!" shouted a young fellow in a leather apron, who was carrying in one hand a newly-turned chair-leg and looked as though he had downed tools and left his work-bench the minute before. "Ah, and mine, bed and hearth!" bellowed a red-haired man in the livery of Durakkon's household.

Helpless to prevail, as it were, against this deluge of benediction, the voices tossing hither and thither about her like gusts of wind, the girl could only smile speechlessly and then, with a charming pantomime of helplessness and frustration, hold out her arms and shake her head in a mute appeal to her well-wishers to let her pass. She was clad, Selperron now noticed for the first time, very simply, in a short dress of white silk, low-cut and gathered at the waist with a gold belt matching the only jewel she was wearing, a brooch in the likeness of a leopard holding a golden lily. As she half-rose in her seat, grasping the rail and leaning forward to speak to her soldiers, he caught sight, along her lower thigh, of a long, livid scar, plainly the vestige of a wound as grievous as any battle-hardened veteran could boast of.

Evidently she was not concerned to hide it. Selperron, as he realized why, was carried away by a surge of adoration and fervor, such as he might have felt in watching some sacred dance performed by the Thlela. If he could have found words, he might perhaps have declared that despite all its folly and vice, there must be something to be said for the human race if it could produce a girl like this.

Such feelings must find expression or else tear him to pieces. Leaping down from the plinth, he ran across the market-place towards the Street of the Armorers where it curved uphill to the Peacock Gate.

Here, just at the foot of the hill, a flower-seller was seated, surrounded by her summer wares—tall, maculate lilies in tubs of water; roses and scarlet trepsis, sharp-scented planella, pale gendonnas and ornate, curve-bloomed iris—yellow, blue and white.

"Give me those—and those—and those!" he said, pointing here and there and in his impatience tugging out the bunches with his own hands and piling them into her astonished arms. "Ay, that'll do!"—for the jekzha was fast approaching.

"Wait, sir! Oh, can't ye just wait a minute, now!" cried the old soul, flustered, and torn between annoyance at his haste and gratification at making such a fine sale. "Let me see, that's twenty meld the lilies, fifteen the roses; and this planella, now—"

"Oh, never mind!" cried Selperron. Dragging out his purse, he thrust five twenty-meld pieces into her hand, gathered up the flowers in one great scented, dripping mass and turned about fust as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill. Stumbling forward, he gripped the jekzha's near-side shaft and looked up into the girl's face. At this moment there was nothing in the world but himself and her.

"Säiyett, honor me by accepting these!" he said, lifting up the flowers. "They're nowhere near so beautiful as you, but take them all the same, so that I may never forget you till the day I die."

For a long and terrible instant he waited, standing at the shaft, seeing her initial, startled look and the surprise and uncertainty momentarily crossing her face. Then she smiled full in his eyes, bent forward and took the flowers from him in a single embrace of her open arms. Her neck and shoulders were covered with drops of water and the upper part of her dress was soaked; but of this she took not the least notice.

For an instant only she looked away from him to lay the huge, tumbling bouquet beside her on the seat. Then, once more stooping, she took his face between her two hands and kissed him.

"Happen I shan't forget you, either," she said.

Then the wheel went over his foot. But it was not very heavy, and even though he stifled a quick cry and doubled up his leg, he was hardly aware of the pain, for as the jekzha rolled away up the hill, the girl turned her head, looked back at him and waved.

Selperron was as good as his word. He never saw the Serrelinda again; and he never forgot her for the rest of his life. N'Kasit's present, perforce, was not quite so lavish as he had originally intended, but what matter? He could always give him another next year.