Would he, Roland began to ask himself, have been hurried into the
hasty words, the passionate feeling, which were really the origin of
all this woe, but for his regard for her? No; he saw it all plainly
now. He had courted this quarrel; he obtained what he sought, and now
did he hold in his hands the bitter fruit.

'But he might have had his will; she is a lone girl; and her
unnatural father was no less eager that the marriage should be than
the baseborn himself. Let it be!' Then a startled gleam came into his
face.

'Ah, the sleuth-hounds are everywhere around,' he cried, as faint
and confused shouts came from the road and the country side. 'But I
am safe here, at least for a time;' and he looked gratefully at the
grand sheltering solitude about him. No footprint desecrated this
sanctuary of nature.

He had taken nothing to eat since the evening before; and pangs of
hunger began to gnaw him. He walked a short way toward a large, grey
rock near which he heard a gurgling sound; and as he advanced he saw
that a little stream of water gushed from beneath the base. He drank
copiously of the pure, cold spring, and bathed his temples; but in
carrying the water to his forehead he noticed that one of his hands
was crusted with blood. Then for the first time had the thought of
his wound recurred to him.

Stripping himself of his coat, waistcoat and shirt, he perceived
that he had lost an immense quantity of blood. Tearing a piece off
his linen shirt he proceeded to moisten the coagulated blood to
ascertain the nature of his hurt. He soon found that the ball had hit