Morn came.  They had heard or seen nothing of the prince and his men.  Mr. Heatherbloom walked back for a cold plunge in a stream that had whispered not far from their camping spot throughout the night.  He and Betty Dalrymple breakfasted together on an old log; it wasn’t much of a meal—­a few crackers and crumbs that were left—­but neither appeared to mind the meagerness of the fare.  With much gaiety (the dawn seemed to have brought with it a special allegrezza of its own) she insisted upon a fair and equitable division of their scanty store, even to the apportioning of the crumbs into two equal piles.  Then, prodigal-handed for a castaway who knew not where her next meal might come from, she tossed a bit or two to the birds, and was rewarded by a song.

All this seemed very wonderful to Mr. Heatherbloom; there had never before been such a breakfast; compared to it, the dejeuner a la fourchette of a Durand or a Foyot was as starvation fare.  It was surprising how beautiful the dark places of the night before looked now; daylight metamorphosed the spot into a sylvan fairyland.  Mr. Heatherbloom could have lingered there indefinitely.  The soft moss wooed him, somewhat aweary with world contact; she filled his eyes.  The faint shadowy lines beneath hers which he had noted at the dawn had now vanished; the same sun-god that ordered the forest flowers to lift their gay heads commanded the rosebuds to unfold their bright petals on her cheeks.  Her lips were as red berries; the cobwebs, behind, alight with sunshine, gleamed no more than the tossed golden hair.  She had striven as best she might with the last, not entirely to her own satisfaction but completely to Mr. Heatherbloom’s.  His untutored masculine sense rather gloried in the unconventionally of a superfluous tangle or two; he found her most charming with a few rents in her gown from branch or brier.  They seemed to establish a new bond of camaraderie, to make blithe appeal to his nomadic soul.  It was as if fate had directed her footsteps until they had touched and lingered on the outer circle of his vagabondage.  Both seemed to have forgotten all about his excellency.

“Rested?” queried Mr. Heatherbloom.

“Quite,” she answered.  There was no trace of weariness in her voice.  “And you?”

“Ditto,” he laughed.  Then, more gravely, “You see, I fell asleep while watching,” he confessed.

“I’m glad.”

“You’d make a lenient commanding officer.  Shall we go on?”

“Where?”

“I don’t exactly know,” he confessed.

“That’s lovely.”  Then, tentatively, “It’s nice here.”

“Fine,” he assented.  There was no hardness in the violet eyes as they rested on him.  He did not pause to analyze the miracle; he only accepted it.  A moment he yielded to the temptation of the lotus-eater and continued to luxuriate in the lap of Arcadia.  Then he bestirred himself uneasily; it was not sufficient just to breathe in the golden gladness of the moment.  “Yes; it’s fine,” he repeated, “only you see—­”