“Then you’re not afraid of _me_?” Will asked, with a little thrill. She was only an alp-girl, but she sang like a goddess; and it’s always pleasant, you know, to find a woman trusts one. “I want you to stop,” Linnet answered, simply. She motioned him with one hand to a seat on a little heap of dry stones hard by. Will threw himself down on the heap in instant obedience to her mute command, and leaned eagerly forward. “Well, so this Robbler man wants to have you, Linnet,” he said, with some earnestness; “and you don’t want to have him. And he would have fought for you last night, against the man with the scar; and the girls in the inn will tease you about it this morning.” “Yes; the girls will tease me,” Linnet answered, “and will say cruel things, for some of them are not fond of me, because, you see, Franz Lindner and the other man, my cousin Fridolin, are both of them Robblers, and would both of them fight for me. Now, a village that has a Robbler is always very proud of him; he’s its champion and head; and if a Robbler pays attention to a girl, it’s a very great honour. So some of the other girls don’t like it at all, that the Robblers of two villages should quarrel about _me_. Though Gott in Himmel knows I’ve not encouraged either of them.” “And would you marry Franz Lindner?” Will asked, with genuine interest. It seemed to him a pity—nay, almost a desecration—that this beautiful girl, with her splendid voice, and all the possibilities it might enclose for the future, should throw herself away upon a Tyrolese hunter, whom the self-confidence engendered by mere muscular strength had turned for local eyes into a petty hero. “No; I don’t think I would _marry_ him,” Linnet answered, after a short pause, with a deliberative air, as though weighing well in her own mind all the pros and cons of it. “He’d take me if I chose, no doubt, and so also would Fridolin. Franz says he has left three other girls for me. But I don’t like him, of course, any better for that. He ought to have kept to them.” “And you like him?” Will went on, drawing circles with his stick on the grass as he spoke, and glancing timidly askance at her. “Yes; I like him—well enough,” Linnet responded, doubtfully. “I liked him better once, perhaps. But of late, I care less for him. I never cared for him much indeed; I was never his _Mädchen_. He had no right to say that, no right at all, at all—for with us, you know, in Tyrol, that means a great deal. How much, I couldn’t tell you. But I never gave him any cause at all to say so.”