The youth's dry lips could frame no answer, nor did he take the proffered hand. Kindly concern, where he had expected contempt and reproach, completely unnerved him. Dorothy's hand was still held out, and her eyes grew kinder as he looked into them. He took the dainty fingers in his trembling hand and pressed them to his hot, dry lips. Dorothy had almost the sensation of a burn, and she winced. Windybank took the movement as a repulse, and threw the hand from him. "Art thou going to torture me too?" he cried harshly. "Why do you all hate me so?" "Hate!" echoed Dorothy. "La! Master Windybank." "I am shunned like a leper," he went on. "Shall I get me into a sheet, carry a bell, and cry 'Unclean! unclean!' as I walk the roads?" "But I do neither hate thee nor shun thee, else I had not called to thee. 'Tis thou dost make a hermit of thyself. And thou art ill and fevered," she added compassionately; "thou art wasted well-nigh to a shadow." "I have no rest, no peace," he groaned. "I am scorned of my neighbours, spied upon, suspected, insulted. Do ye all think I have no heart to feel these things, no spirit to resent them? But I can return hate for hate, injury for injury. Let some men look to themselves!" His tones were so fierce that Dorothy quailed. She recovered herself quickly. "Come into the garden," she said. "I cannot come where I am not welcome." "I am asking thee." "I shall not come." "Then must I come to thee." Suiting action to the words, the maiden hurried through the gate, and in a minute more Windybank was sitting beside her in the arbour. Now Mistress Dorothy was a maiden very prone to act upon impulse. She would do a thing, and then, after accomplishment, consider the action, and ofttimes repent. She had never entertained any very great liking for Master Andrew, although her father had at one time made much of him and favoured him as an acceptable suitor for his daughter's hand. But the fact that the young gentleman was in serious disgrace, and spoken ill of by those who smoked their pipes and sipped their ale around the captain's table, softened her heart towards him. Ugly clouds of suspicion hung over him, and men said bitter things concerning him; but to Dorothy's mind the alleged treason seemed impossible. The accused man, she would argue, was a gentleman and a forester; he had sat at her father's board, he had spoken of love to her: such a one could not be a traitor; she would not condemn him unheard. But she had resolved to put him upon trial if opportunity offered. The opportunity had come, and, believing in his innocence, she seized upon it.