Overhead the mother-birds were wheeling--crying piteously each time that one or other of the searchers stopped to a fresh nest, yet striving all the while to lure them from this strip of heath that held a year's hopes for them. Birds and beasts were always sure of friendliness from Janet, and something in the plovers' screams touched a soft chord in her.
"They have a human sort of wit, Ned," she murmured, stopping to watch them when the basket was three-quarters filled. "See how they coax, and make feint, and do all to persuade us that their nests lie otherwhere. 'Tis pity we should rob them, when all is said."
Wayne was looking at her with his old bitter smile; for he had been thinking, not of love, but of the father who called him from the grave to gird his loins for the fights to come.
"Wilt take this basket to the Lean Man, Janet, and say that Shameless Wayne sends greeting with it?" he said.
"'Twould be a fairer token than thy last."
"Why, what dost thou know of tokens? They did not tell thee, surely?"
"I was the first to chance on it--the hand that lay on the boundary-stone, with thy greeting scrawled beside it."
He came and put his hand on hers, half tenderly. "It was no sight for thee. God knows I never thought a maid's eyes would light on it."
Janet, bewildered by the ebb and flow of feeling, could not withstand this touch of kindliness. She read his trouble with new understanding, and for the first time she realised how at each step she had made the struggle harder for him. Her pride in him took clear shape on the sudden. Nay, in this moment she loved the very stubbornness that held her from him. He had fought her as he had fought her kinsfolk, and he had won. One by one her doubts grew clearer; her folk were Waynes, as they had not been until now; and some day she would prove to him that she was as little a Ratcliffe as any who dwelt at Cranshaw or at Marsh. All this passed through her mind, in hurried, half-formed fashion; and then she needs must tell him of it.
"Speech has been hindered, Ned, between us," she said, "and we know not when another chance may come. I'll tell thee now what I have wished to tell thee many a long day past. Thou art one, and they are many; and it stirs my blood, Ned, to see the gallant fight thou'rt making."