I remember stumbling down a grassy slope and through a tangle of
bushes and dense-growing trees, amid whose whispering leafage shadows
were deepening, and so at last to a half-ruined barn, very remote and
desolate, into which she conducted me.
Here, from amid a pile of mouldy hay, she dragged a ladder which she
reared to a small hatch or trap in the floor above and bade me mount.
This I did, though very clumsily and presently found myself in an
upper chamber or loft, illuminated by a small, unglazed window that
opened beneath the eaves at one end. Scarcely was I here than she was
beside me and brought me to an adjacent corner where was a great pile
of hay that made the place sweet with its fragrance, whereon, at her
behest, I sank down and would have expressed my gratitude, but she
checked me, frowning.
"Are ye hungry?" she demanded ungraciously.
"Indeed, no, I thank you," I answered, lying back upon my fragrant
couch.
"Well, I am!" she retorted sullenly. "And you will be, sooner or
later, so I'll go afore the storm ketches me."
"Go where, and for what?"
"To buy supper with money as I stole, for you an' me to eat--"
"I'd rather starve!" quoth I, sitting up the better to say it.
"Starve!" she repeated, with a scornful flash of her great eyes. "You?
d'ye know what starvation means? Ha' you ever tried it?"
"No," I admitted, "but none the less--"
"Then don't talk foolishness!" said she disdainfully.
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