ask the next question, who will be those war-taken thralls whom even
now I saw brought into the Burg by the host? of what nation be they,
and of what kindred?"

Straightway was the damsel all changed; she left her dainty tricks,
and drew herself up straight and stiff. She looked at him in the eyes,
flushing red, and with knit brows, a moment, and then passed by him
with swift and firm feet as one both angry and ashamed.

But the carline who had beheld the two with a grin on her wrinkled face
changed aspect also, and cried out fiercely after the damsel, and said:
"What! dost thou flee from the fair young man, and he so kind and soft
with thee, thou jade? Yea, I suppose thou dost fetch and carry
for some mistress who is young and a fool, and who has not yet
learned how to deal with the daughters of thine accursed folk.
Ah! if I had but money to buy some one of you, and a good one,
she should do something else for me than showing her fairness to
young men; and I would pay her for her long legs and her white skin,
till she should curse her fate that she had not been born little
and dark-skinned and free, and with heels un-bloodied with the blood
of her back."

Thus she went on, though the damsel was long out of ear-shot of her curses;
and Ralph tarried not to get away from her spiteful babble, which he now
partly understood; and that all those yellow-clad damsels were thralls
to the folk of the Burg; and belike were of the kindred of those captives
late-taken whom he had seen amidst the host at its entering into the Burg.

So he wandered away thence thinking on what he should do till
the sun was set, and he had come into the open space underneath