old forest gods, smacking of rest and comfort in the heart of solitude.
And what odour can vie for hungry folk with that of roasting meat in
the clear hush of twilight? The sight of that little camp is still in
my memory. Elspeth flitted about busied with her cookery, the glow of
the sunset lighting up her dark hair. Bertrand did the roasting,
crouched like a gnome by the edge of the fire. Grey fetched and carried
for the cooks, a docile and cheerful servant, with nothing in his look
to recall the proud gentleman of the Tidewater. Donaldson sat on a log,
contentedly smoking his pipe, while Ringan, whistling a strathspey,
attended to the horses. Only Shalah stood aloof, his eyes fixed
vacantly on the western sky, and his ear intent on the multitudinous
voices of the twilit woods.

Presently food was ready, and our rude meal in that darkling place was
a merry one. Elspeth sat enthroned on a couch of pine branches--I can
see her yet shielding her face from the blaze with one little hand, and
dividing her cakes with the other. Then we lit our pipes, and fell to
the long tales of the camp-fire. Ringan had a story of a black-haired
princess of Spain, and how for love of her two gentlemen did marvels on
the seas. The chief one never returned to claim her, but died in a
fight off Cartagena, and wrote a fine ballad about his mistress which
Ringan said was still sung in the taverns of the Main. He gave a verse
of it, a wild, sad thing, with tears in it and the joy of battle. After
that we all sang, all but me, who have no voice. Bertrand had a lay of
Normandy, about a lady who walked in the apple-orchards and fell in
love with a wandering minstrel; and Donaldson sang a rough ballad of
Virginia, in which a man weighs the worth of his wife against a tankard
of apple-jack. Grey sang an English song about the north-country maid
who came to London, and a bit of the chanty of the Devon men who sacked
Santa Fe and stole the Almirante's daughter. As for Elspeth, she sang