Again I saw the bright light of the fire
reflected in each well-scrubbed crock and pannikin; again I heard
the cheerful hum of the wheel; again the face of the forester's
daughter smiled upon me. The old gray manor house, where my
mother, a stately dame, sat ever at her tapestry, and an imperious
elder brother strode to and fro among his hounds, seemed less of
home to me than did that tiny, friendly hut. To-morrow would be
my thirty-sixth birthday. All the numbers that I cast were high. "If I
throw ambs-ace," I said, with a smile for my own caprice, "curse
me if I do not take Rolfe's advice!"
I shook the box and clapped it down upon the table, then lifted it,
and stared with a lengthening face at what it had hidden; which
done, I diced no more, but put out my lights and went soberly to
bed.
CHAPTER II IN WHICH I MEET MASTER JEREMY SPARROW
MINE are not dicers' oaths. The stars were yet shining when I left
the house, and, after a word with my man Diccon, at the servants'
huts, strode down the bank and through the gate of the palisade to
the wharf, where I loosed my boat, put up her sail, and turned her
head down the broad stream. The wind was fresh and favorable,
and we went swiftly down the river through the silver mist toward
the sunrise. The sky grew pale pink to the zenith; then the sun rose
and drank up the mist.
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