At this Sholto let his horse go where it would, and, as they were passing at the time through a coppice of hazel, he caught his saucy sweetheart quickly by the wrist.

“Mistress Maud, you shall not play with me!” he said; “you will tell me plainly—­do you love me or do you not?”

Maud Lindesay puckered her pretty face as if she had been about to cry.

“You hurt my arm!” she said plaintively, looking up at him with the long pathetic gaze of a gentle helpless animal undeservedly put in pain.

Sholto perforce released the pressure on her arm.  She instantly put both hands behind her.

“You did not hurt me at all—­hear you that, Master Sholto,” she cried, “and I do not love you—­not that much, Sir Noble Bully!”

And she snapped her finger and thumb like a flash beneath his nose.

“Not that much!” she repeated viciously, and did it again.  Sholto turned away sternly.

“You are nothing but a silly girl, and not worthy that any true man should either love or marry you!” he said, walking off in the direction of the castle.

Maud Lindesay looked after him a moment as if not believing her eyes and ears.  Then, so soon as she made sure that he was indeed not coming back, she tripped quickly after him.  He was taking long strides, and it required a series of small hops and skips to keep up with him.

“Not really, Sholto?” she said beseechingly, almost running beside him now.  He walked so fast.

“Yes, madam, really!” said that young knight, still more sternly.

She took a little run to get a step in front of him, so that she might advantageously look up into his face.

“Then you will not marry me, Sholto?”

Her hands were clasped with the sweetest petitionary grace.

“No!”

The monosyllable escaped from his lips with a snort like a puff of steam from under the lid of a boiling pot.

“Not even if I ask you very nicely, Sholto?”

“No!”

The negative came again, apparently fiercer than before, almost like an explosion indeed.  But still there was a hollow sound about it somewhere.

At this the girl stopped suddenly and, drawing a little lace kerchief from her bosom, she sank her head into it in apparent abandonment of grief.

“Oh, what shall I do?” she wailed, “Sholto says he will not marry me, and I have asked him so sweetly.  What shall I do?  What shall I do?  I will e’en go and drown me in the Dee water!”

And with her kerchief still held to her eyes—­or at least (to be wholly accurate) to one of them—­the despised maiden ran towards the river bank.  She did not run very fast, but still she ran.

Now this was more than Sholto had bargained for, and he in turn pursued her light-foot, swifter than he had ever run in his life.  He overtook her just as she reached the little ascent of the rocks by the river margin.