Gathering her skirts of neat-patterned printed calico around her to keep them from the surrounding grime, the new-comer stole noiselessly behind the unconscious smith, laid her dainty hands on his brawny shoulders, and springing high enough to catch a kiss from his swarthy cheek, landed again on _terra firma_, and, with a ripple of laughter which sounded like a strain of music, stood with merry, upturned face to greet Blithe Natty’s startled gaze. “Give me that back again, you unconscionable thief!” said Nathan, laying his big hand on her dainty little wrist. “It’s flat felony, and I’ll prosecute you with the utmost rigour of the law.” “Can’t do it, sir. You’ve no witnesses, and the offence isn’t actionable;” and the doughty little damsel took another from the same place with impunity. There was a wondrous light in the eyes of Nathan Blyth, as he looked in the fair face of the beautiful girl, the light of a love surpassing the love of women, for was she not his only child, and the very image of the wife and mother, now a saint in heaven, and still loved by him with a tender fidelity that seemed to deepen and strengthen with the lapse of time? No deeper, truer, more concentrated affection ever glowed in the breast of man, than that which filled the heart of Nathan Blyth for his peerless Lucy, and sure I am that none was ever more richly merited. CHAPTER III. “MASTER PHILIP.” “A Knight there was, and that a worthy man, That from the tyme that he first bigan To ryden out, he loved chyvalrie, Truth and honour, freedom and curtesie. * * * * * With him ther was his sone, a yong Squyer, A lovyer and a lusty bachelor, With lockkes crulle, as they were laid in press. Of twenty year he was of age, I guess.” _Chaucer._