Now, Elsie had heard the man’s impassioned appeal when the Indians were first sighted, so Courtenay felt that she, too, was acting. “You look nice and cool up there,” he answered, “and your words do not belie your looks.” “Please, what does that mean exactly?” “Need I tell you? You treat our troubles airily.” “Shall one ‘wear a rough garment to deceive’?” she quoted with a laugh. “Don’t you remember the next verse? You ought to retort: ‘I am no prophet, I am an husbandman!’ But that would not be quite right, for you are a sailor.” She blushed a little at the chance turn of the phrase. Neither the girl nor her hearers recalled the succeeding verses, wherein the destruction of Jerusalem is foretold: “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried.” Indeed, a new direction was given to Elsie’s thoughts by the somewhat scowling aspect of Christobal’s face. He was looking at Courtenay in a manner which betokened a certain displeasure. The Spaniard’s cultivated cynicism was subjugated by a more powerful sentiment. It seemed to Elsie that he envied Courtenay his youth and high spirits, for, in very truth, the mere exchange of those harmless pleasantries had tuned the younger man’s soul to the transcendental pitch of the knight errant. In his heart he was vowing to rescue this fair lady from the dangers which beset her, though he said jokingly with his lips: “If a husbandman has to do with a tiller I may claim some expert knowledge, Miss Maxwell.” Elsie dared not meet his eyes; a flood of understanding had suddenly poured its miraculous waters over her. Incidents unimportant in themselves, utterances which seemed to have no veiled intent at the time, rushed in upon her with overwhelming conviction. Christobal suspected her of flirting with Courtenay, and disapproved of it as strongly as she herself had condemned Isobel’s admitted efforts in the same direction. Though not a little dismayed, she resolved to carry the war into the enemy’s territory. “Why are you looking so glum, Dr. Christobal?” she demanded. “Has the captain’s quip given you a shock, or is it that you are surprised at my levity?” “I am neither shocked nor surprised, Miss Maxwell. I have not lived fifty years in this Vale of Tears without being prepared for the unexpected.” “Does that imply that you are disillusioned?” “By no means. My heart is amazingly young. ‘There is no fool like an old fool,’ you know.” “Oh, please don’t speak of age in that way. You are far from being an antiquity. Why, within the past twenty-four hours I have come to look on you as a sort of elder brother, who can be indulgent even while he chides.”