'
He smiled kindly on her and nodded as they both rose up from the
earth: she had taken off her foul-weather gloves while they spake,
and he kissed her hand, which was shapely of fashion albeit somewhat
brown, and hard of palm, and he said in friendly wise:
'Thou art a merry faring-fellow, Bow-may, and belike shalt be withal
a true fighting-fellow. Come now, thou shalt be my sister and I thy
brother, in despite of those three shafts across the snow.'
He laughed therewith; she laughed not, but seemed glad, and said
soberly:
'Yea, I may well be thy sister; for belike I also am of the people of
the Gods, who have come into these Dales by many far ways. I am of
the House of the Ragged Sword of the Kindred of the Wolf. Come,
brother, let us toward Wildlake's Way.'
Therewith she went before him and led through the thicket as by an
assured and wonted path, and he followed hard at heel; but his
thought went from her for a while; for those words of brother and
sister that he had spoken called to his mind the Bride, and their
kindness of little children, and the days when they seemed to have
nought to do but to make the sun brighter, and the flowers fairer,
and the grass greener, and the birds happier each for the other; and
a hard and evil thing it seemed to him that now he should be making
all these things nought and dreary to her, now when he had become a
man and deeds lay before him.
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