"So they sent you to tell me not to come back?" "Yes. I tried to bring my bow and a quiver of arrows for you when I saw how things were, but Tefior had them taken away." Yorgh's face flushed, and he tugged angrily at his beard. "I will go in and knock the old man's jaw loose from his head!" he growled. "Even if it does lose me all hope of his daughter. He has no right!" In the end, however, Kwint dissuaded him. Yorgh was touched to find that his friend had brought his own cloak together with a bag of salt and a water-skin. They parted, and Yorgh trudged out to his fire again. On the way, he cut a tall, straight sapling by the brook, about two inches thick, which he trimmed with his knife as he walked. III After uncovering the embers and building up the fire again, he rigged sticks to roast as much meat as he thought he could carry, and carved the end of the pole to fit his copper spearhead. The Star had set and it was nearly dark by the time he got the metal tip fitted on and secured with the narrow strip of leather that had bound Kwint's cloak. With the alert senses of one who lives in the open, Yorgh looked up before the girl came within a hundred yards. He watched wonderingly as she plodded out of the dusk and up to his fire. The flames put copper glints in her hair, like rays of The Star on water, but her features were set in a harsh expression. "You walked out?" asked Yorgh cautiously. Vaneen curled her lip at him. "Thanks to _you_!" she said, and the "you" was like a blow. "Some meat?" invited Yorgh, trying not to show his hurt. "No." He considered. On the whole, even putting the best possible interpretation on it, he did not think he could call the girl's visit friendly. "They didn't chase you out too, did they?" he asked mildly. "My father sent me!" she all but spat at him. "He found me with something of yours, and nothing would do but I must get the accursed thing out of camp to fling in your face before nightfall!" She took her hand from the belt of the blue dress, and Yorgh saw the gleam of the metal stick from the desert. "It's already dark," he said hastily. Vaneen sneered and dropped the object at his feet. Yorgh showed no resentment, thinking that she was beautiful even with a sneer. He could think of any number of girls whose faces became twisted and ugly with anger, but not Vaneen. "Are you going back?" he asked. "What do you think?" "I think you ought to sit down and make yourself comfortable with a steak." Vaneen glared at him. "I can't sit down and be comfortable, if you must know!" "Why not?" "My father took a stick to me when he found out that thing belonged to you." Yorgh peered at her, and saw that she did not joke. "If Moyt hadn't been there to stop him, I probably couldn't have even walked out here. You made a fine, merry day, Yorgh!"