"It means that thou hast lived through some drear months, little one, and the memory of them takes thee at unawares in sleep.—Come, now, fill up my wine-cup for me, and light the candles, for ’tis gloomy here in hall—and then I’ll tell thee tales until thou’rt ready for thy bed again." She was quick at all times to shift her mood to his; and soon her face smoothed itself, her hands ceased moving restlessly, as she lay back against his knee and listened to his voice. Only the softer tales he told her, of the Wayne men and the Wayne women, their loves and the fashion of their wooing. And in the telling he, too, began to lose the discomfort which her dreams had roused. "Tell me, Ned," she said, looking up on the sudden; "had any of thy folk so strange a wooing as thine?" "Ay, three generations back. But that tale has a drear ending, bairn, and I’ll not tell it thee." "Often and often I dream of thee and Mistress Janet; sometimes she stands at the far side of Wildwater Pool and bids thee cross to her—and thou goest waist-deep, Ned, to reach her—and then the sun sets red behind the hill and the waters turn to blood." "Of a truth, little one, thou’rt minded to have me sad to-night," he muttered. "Nay, not sad!" she pleaded. "There’s much that is dark to me, Ned, but one thing I never doubt—that Janet will come safe to thee. Let the waters redden as they will, thou’lt cross to her one day." "Over her kinsfolk’s bodies? Ay, it may be so," said Wayne bitterly. They both fell silent then, and by and by Wayne looked down and saw that her eyes were closed and her breath came soft and measured. He let her lie so for a while, then took her gently in his arms. "Poor bairn!" he said. "She’s sadly overwrought; I’ll take her to her room again before she wakes." He came down again presently to hall, and threw fresh peats on the fire, and settled himself beside the hearth; for Mistress Wayne had given him fresh food for thought, and sleep was far from him. This little woman, half witless and altogether weak, had echoed Nell’s words of the morning—that, weary of it or no, he must take on the feud. He recalled Nell’s look, the quiet and settled hatred that had seemed so ill in keeping with her bridal-morn; and he understood, with the clearness that comes to a man at lonely night-time, how deep the memory of her father’s death had gone. _He_ had been revelling when the blow was struck on that stormy winter’s afternoon, and it had been to him no more than a disastrous tale re-told; but she had seen the blow, had looked into Wayne’s dying face, had watched the life ebb out to nothingness. Ay, there was scant wonder that she could not loose her hold upon the quarrel.