CHAPTER VIThe pretty daughter of the squire,
She mourned and would not eat;
The Mink he tried to tempt her
With barley bread and meat.
“O no, O no, you rebel cur,
I’ll never eat nor drink,
Till father’s hall I see again!
Till death has trapped the Mink!”
—Ruck’s Ballad of the Mink
* * * *
There were seven hundred silent men in the amphitheater of the forest, and more came in each minute, slipping from the trees without a sound, taking seats on the sloping grass. Miner’s lanterns, the marvelous contraptions that hung in the shafts beside the veins of coal or pockets of diamonds, glowing with a dull penetrating radiance, had been filched from the mines one by one over years, and now illumined the strange hall like blue glowworms spaced around a pit.
Revel sat, uneasy, on the sward
