Perhaps because he preferred asking questions to answering them, Robert Sans-Peur began an earnest conversation, concerning the harvest, the traps, and the fishing.  But as the hour grew, the gaps between his inquiries stretched wider.  As the tree-heads ceased even their nodding and hung motionless, the chief’s answers became briefer and slower.  At last the moment arrived when no response at all was forthcoming.  Glancing up, the Norman found his host tilted back against the maple trunk in placid slumber.

The young man let something like a sigh of relief escape him.  Still, watching the sleeping face warily, he tried the effect of another question.  Oblivion.  He rose to his feet with a daring flourish of yawns and stretching, and awaited the result of that test.  The deep breathing never faltered.

Then Alwin the Lover hesitated no longer.  Quietly and directly, as one who treads a familiar path, he walked around the corner of the last hut and disappeared among the trees.

Many feet had worn a distinct trail through the woods to the edge of the bluff, and down the steep to the water; but only two pair of feet had ever turned aside, midway the descent, and found the path to Eden.  Like a rosy curtain, a tall sumach bush hid the trail’s beginning; the overhanging bluffs concealed it from above; the tangle of shrubs and vines which covered the bank from the water’s edge screened it from below.  Hardly more than a rabbit track, a narrow shelf against the wall of the steep, it ran along for a dozen yards to stop where a ledge of moss-covered rock thrust itself from the soil.

When Alwin pushed aside the leafy sprays, Helga stood awaiting him with outstretched hands.  “You have been long in coming, comrade.  I dare not hope that it is because Leif delayed you with some new friendliness?”

Her lover shook his head, as he bent to kiss her hands.

“Do not hope anything, sweetheart,” he said, wearily.  “That is the one way not to be disappointed.”  He threw himself down on the rock at her feet, unaware that her smooth brows had suddenly drawn themselves into a troubled frown.

She said with grave slowness, “I do not like to hear you speak like that.  You are foremost among men in courage, yet to hear you now, one would almost imagine you to be faint-hearted.”

Alwin’s mouth bent into a bitter smile, as his eyes stared away at the river.  “Courage?” he repeated, half to himself.  “Yes, I have that.  Once I thought it so precious a thing that I could stake honor and life upon it, and win on the turn of the wheel.  But I know now what it is worth.  Courage, the boldness of the devil himself, who of the North but has that?  It is cheaper than the dirt of the road.  If I have not been a coward, at least I have been a fool.”