With a small brass kettle in her hand, Maren Le Moyne was coming down
the open way toward the well.
With a colossal coolness he forgot the presence of the factor and the
ready light began to sparkle in his blue eyes with every step of the
approaching girl. Swiftly he glanced to right and left, as if in search
of something, and meeting only the green slope of the shore, a growing
excitement flushed his face.
Suddenly he snatched from a crevice of the stockade a tiny crimson
flower which nodded, frail and fragrant, from its precarious foothold,
and sprang forward as she set her vessel on the well's stone wall.
Unsurpassed was the bow he swept her, this daring soldier of fortune,
to whose delicate nostrils the taking of chances was the breath of
life, and his smile was brilliant as the spring morning itself.
"A chance is a chance, Ma'amselle," he said winningly, "and who would
not risk its turning? For me,--I looked upon your face but now, and
behold! I must give you something, and this was all the moment
offered."
With hand on heart he held forth the little flower.
"In memory of a passing stranger far from all beauty, wear it, I pray
you, this day in the dusk of that braid, just there above the temple.
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