"Lest her own heart betray her and open its gates to the enemy," she answered, very low. She walked on more sharply for a space. She was still thinking, and Wat had the sense not to interrupt her meditation. "Yet the chief matter of her thought," she went on, "the thought of the girl who is wooed and is in danger of loving, is only to keep the castle so long--and then, when she is sure that the right besieger blows the horn without the gate, she leaps up with joy to draw the bolts of the doors, to fling them wide open, to strike the flag that waves aloft. Then, right glad at heart, she runs to meet her lord in the gateway, with the keys of her life in her hands." She turned herself suddenly about with a lovely expression of trust in her eyes, and impulsively held out both her own hands. "Take them," she said, "my lord!" And Wat Gordon took the girl's hands in his, and falling on his knee he kissed them very tenderly and reverently. Then he rose, and keeping her left hand still in his right, they walked along silently for a time into the sunset, their eyes wet because of the sound of their hearts crying each to each, and the shining of love glowing richer than the rose of the west on their faces. It was Wat who spoke first. "Love," he said, "you will never change when the days darken? You will stand firm when you hear me spoken against, when you cannot thus hearken to my voice pleading with you, when there is none to speak well of me?" "My lad, was it not then that I loved you most," she replied, very gently, "when men spoke evil things in my ears, and told me how that you were unworthy, unknightly, untrue? Was it not even then that my heart cried out louder than ever, 'I will believe my king before them all--before the hearing of my friend's ears, the seeing of my mother's eyes, before the sworn word on the tongue of my father?'" "Ah, love," said Wat, "it is sweet, greatly sweet, to listen to the speaking of your heart." And well might he say it, for it was, indeed, a lovely thing to hear the throb of faith run rippling through her voice like the sap of the spring through the quickening forest trees. "But," he added, with quickly returning melancholy, "doubtless there are dark days before us, of which, however, we now know the worst. Will my Kate be sufficient for these things? We have heard what Barra says--bewitched by what cantrip I know not; but certain it seems that your father hath ta'en him a new wife, and she hath so worked on his spirit that he would now deliver you to our enemy over there, on the isle from which I took you. Suppose that all things went against us, Kate, and that I was never more than a wanderer and an outcast; suppose your father ordered, your friends compelled, your own heart told you tales of our love's hopelessness, or others carried to you evil things of me--would you be strong enough to keep faith, Kate, to hold my hand firmly as you do now, and having done all, still be able to stand?"