The girl gave him a deliberate glance from her dark eyes, then dropped them demurely and said, with an innocent air, "Must have been some of the young colts broken out of the top field, I suppose." "That's all right," thought Victor, not knowing the ways of women though he thought himself so wise in them. After that, feeling braver, he began to make play with the girl, asking her how far she had come, and if she wouldn't be lonesome going back without company. She looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then said, with her eyes full of merriment, "What sort of company, sir?" "Well, mine for instance," he answered. She laughed, a fresh and merry laugh from her throat, and said, "You daren't come home with me, Sir." "Why daren't I?" "You'd be afraid of father. He's not used of young men coming about the place, and he'd frighten the life out of you." Victor put down his tea-pot and made a stride forward. "Come on--where is he?" But the girl swung away, with another laugh, crying over her shoulder, "Aw, no, no, plaze, plaze!" "Ah, then it's you that are afraid, eh?" said Victor. "It's not that," replied the girl. "What is it?" said Victor. She gave him another deliberate glance from her dark eyes--he thought he could feel the warm glow of her body across the distance dividing them--and said, "The old man might be sending somebody else up with the heifers next time, and then...." "What then?" She laughed again with eyes full of mischief, and seemed to prepare to fly. "Then maybe I'd be missing seeing something," she said, and shot away at a bound. Victor stood for a moment looking down the glen. "God, what a girl!" he said. "I've a good mind to go after her." "I shouldn't if I were you," said Gell. "You know who she is?" "Who?" "Bessie Collister." "The little thing who was in Castletown?" "Yes." "Then I suppose she belongs to you?" "Not a bit. I haven't spoken to her from that day to this," said Gell, and then he told of the promise he had made to his father. "But Lord alive, that was when you were a lad." "Maybe so, but 'as long as you live'--that was the word, and I mean to keep it. Besides, there's Dan Baldromma." "That blatherskite?" said Victor. "He'd be an ugly customer if anything went wrong, you know." "But, good Lord, man, what is going to go wrong?" When they had finished breakfast and Gell was washing up at the water's edge, Victor was on a boulder, looking down the glen again, and saying, as if to himself, "My God, what a girl, though! Such lips, such flesh, such...." "I say, old fellow!" cried Gell. Victor leapt down and laughed to cover his confusion. "Well, why not? We're all creatures of earth, aren't we?" CHAPTER SEVEN THE DAY OF TEMPTATION