Again she smiled and made a sheaf of the herbs, preparatory to binding it. The bundle was unruly, and several of the plants dropped. She bent to pick them up and others fell. Kenkenes came to her rescue and gathered them all into his large grasp. "Now, while I hold it," he suggested. With the most gracious self-possession she smoothed out the fiber, put it twice, thrice about the sheaf and knotted it, her fingers, cool and moist after their contact with the marsh sedge, touching the sculptor's more than once. "There! I thank thee." "Are there any sick in the camp?" "Only those who have been blinded by the stone-dust. But I prepare for sickness during health." "A wise provision. Would we might prepare for sorrow during contentment." "We may lay up comfort for us against the coming of misfortune." "How?" "In choosing friends," she answered. His mind went back to the scene of that morning. Did she speak of the taskmaster? "Thou hast found it so?" he asked. "Thou hast said." She added no more, though the sculptor was eager for an example. "How goes it with the statue?" she asked, seeing that he did not move out of her path. "Slowly," he answered. "But it shall hasten to completeness when I once begin." "What wilt thou do with it when it is done? Destroy it?" He shook his head with a smile. "Leave it there to betray thee to the vengeance of the priesthood one day?" "I have no fear of discovery." "Nay, but fear or unfear never yet warded off misfortune," she said gravely. "It is better to entertain causeless concern than unwise confidence." He eagerly accepted this establishment of equality between them, and overshot his mark. "Advise me, Rachel. What should I do?" She gazed at him for a moment distrustfully, wondering if he mocked her and asking herself if she had not deserved it in assuming comradeship with him. "Nay, it is not my place, my master," she said. "I did forget." He put his hand on hers with considerable determination in his manner. "Let us make an end to this eternal emphasis of different rank. I would forget it, Rachel. Wilt thou not permit me? I am thy friend and nothing harsher--above all things, not thy master." Never before had he spoken so to her. She ventured to look at him at last. His face was grave and a little passionate and his eyes demanded an answer. "Aye, I shall gladly be thy friend," she answered; "but never hast thou been so much of a master as in the denial that thou art." The first gleam of girlish mischief danced in her blue eyes. The young sculptor noted it with gladness. He took the free hand and pressed it, and when she turned toward the roadway through the wheat he turned with her and hand in hand they went. As they neared it he spoke again. "Again would I ask, when wilt thou advise me concerning the statue? Here is my boat. Let us turn it into a high seat of council and I will sit at thy feet and learn."