No, I won't wait for you, Falk. Why must I wait for a man who will be lying dead in the forest, or shot by Wanderers out on the prairie, or brainless in the City of the Shing, or gone off a hundred years to another star? What should I wait for? You needn't think I'll take another man. I won't. I'll stay here in my father's house. I'll dye black thread and weave black cloth to wear, black to wear and black to die in. But I won't wait for anyone, or anything. Never."

"I had no right to ask you," he said with the humility of pain—and she cried, "O Falk, I don't reproach you!"

They were sitting together on the slight slope above the Long Field. Goats and sheep grazed over the mile of fenced pasture between them and the forest. Yearling colts pranced and tagged around the shaggy mares. A gray November wind blew.

Their hands lay together. Parth touched the gold ring on his left hand. "A ring is a thing given," she said. "Sometimes I've thought, have you? that you may have had a wife. Think, if she was waiting for you…" She shivered.

"What of it?" he said. "What do I care about what may have been, what I was? Why should I go from here? All that I am now is yours, Parth, came from you, your gift—"

"It was freely given," the girl said in tears. "Take it and go. Go on…" They held each other, and neither would break free.

The House lay far behind hoar black trunks and inter-tangling leafless branches. The trees closed in behind the trail.

The day was gray and cool, silent except for the drone of wind through branches, a meaningless whisper without locality that never ceased. Metock led the way, setting a long easy pace. Falk followed and young Thurro came last. They were all three dressed light and warm in hooded shirt and breeches of an unwoven stuff called wintercloth, over which no coat was needed even in snow.