“Why, I think I can promise that,” she said slowly, though puzzled again and perplexed by his earnestness. “I think one could place confidence in you, although you are so strange and unaccountable both in your ways and talk. I think you would be as vehement in your friendship as you seem to be in your thoughts. I think you would grieve very much,” she continued, examining him, “if you were to fail in carrying out a mission for a friend.” “For you,” he interjected. “My service is not so freely placed at everybody’s disposal. You will have no rival claimant on my obedience.” “Well, I will give you my promise,” she said, “though I would have you understand, Mr. Calladine,” she added with a childish importance, “that I am not in the least likely to make any call upon you. I am very well able to take care of myself, nor is any trouble, as you say, likely to come upon me.” “Hush, don’t boast,” he cried, looking fearfully round, and half in mocking he added, “Who knows what sardonic spirits may be listening to your boasting? Anyway, you have given me your promise, and I should like you to seal it. Give me your hand,--not so reluctantly,”--for he had felt it struggle faintly like a caught bird,--“we are friends, you know,--and for one who professes to have confidence in me, I declare you give proof of having very little,--now lay your hand upon this stone, and I will put mine over it,--now repeat this vow after me....” “No, no,” she said, frightened, and trying to draw her hand away; “it’s profane; that may be a sacrificial stone for all we know....” “And so resent the invocation of a Christian God?” he completed for her with a laugh, but the extreme agitation of his manner underneath his laughter alarmed her. “Or is it of me, and not really of the stone, that you are afraid? Surely you cannot think that your own Grey Wethers would harm you? So it must be of me,--a bad beginning to your confidence! Why, before very long you will be giving the same promise to another man lest you should require defence against myself.” “I was never afraid of any one yet,” she said, flaming up, “Mr. Calladine, and as a proof of it there is my hand; now do what you like with it. I think that you are very bitter and wild, but I am sure that you would not make the worse ally for that. And no woman would say less than that you were wild and bitter, if she had heard you talk the way I have often heard you talk; but that does not mean that I am afraid of you, for I am not, nor of any one in this world,” she repeated, challenging him to contradict her. “No, daughter of the Downs,” he said with much gravity, still holding her hand in his own. She stamped her foot. “You laugh at me, Mr. Calladine; well, if you treat me as a child, why exact such promises from me as the one you have just asked for? But I am not a child; I am nineteen,” she said.