"Ay," responded the man, frowning. "An outspoken one, too; I heard him at the bottom of the Chase and thought to give him the slip, but he was cunning, he teased the dog and ran us down. I had hard work to get rid of him; he looked sore tired. No matter, he's gone," and he gave a sigh of relief. "'Tis the first stranger that has come upon us since she came."
"Lost his way," murmured the woman, as she lifted a saucepan from the fire, "and a gentleman. It is a rare sight in Warden Forest. Why, Gideon, what has happened to thee?" and saucepan in hand, she stared at her husband's cloudy brow.
"Tut--nothing!" he answered, thrusting a projecting log into the fire with his foot. "The young man's face seemed--as I thought--'twas but a passing fancy--but I thought it was familiar. It was the voice more than the face. And a bold face it was. I wish," he broke off, "that the lass would come in. From to-night I will have no more wanderings after sunset! One stranger follows another, and it is not safe for her to be out so late----"
"Hush!" interrupted the woman, holding up a forefinger. "Here she comes."
As he spoke the door opened, the dog bounded in with a short yelp of satisfaction, and close behind him, framed like a picture in the dark doorway, stood a young girl.
She had evidently run some distance, for she stood panting and breathless, the color coming and going on her face, which shone out of the hood which half covered her head.
She was dressed in a plain cotton dress which a woodman's daughter might wear, and which was short enough in the skirt to reveal a shapely foot, and scant enough in the sleeves to show a white, shapely arm.
But no one would have wasted time upon either arm or foot after a glance at her face.
To write it down simply and curtly, it was a beautiful face; but such a description is far too meager and insufficient. It requires an artist, a Rembrandt or a Gainsborough, to describe it, no pen-and-ink work can do it. Beautiful faces can be seen by the score by anyone who chooses to walk through Hyde Park in the middle of the season, but such a face as this which was enframed by the doorway of the woodman's hut is not seen in twenty seasons.
It was a face which baffles the powers of description, just as a sunset sky laughs to scorn the brush of the ablest painter. It was neither dark nor fair, neither grave nor sad, though at the moment of its entrance a smile played over it as the moonbeams play over a placid lake.