But he had been busy with his scrip which he had left cast down there, and therewithal reached out to her a mighty hunch of bread and a piece of white cheese, and said:

"Now shall I fetch thee milk." Wherewith he took up a bowl of aspen tree that had lain by the scrip, and ran off to one of the kine and milked the bowl full, and came back with it heedfully, and set it down beside her and said: "This was the nighest thing to hand, but when thou hast eaten and rested then shall we go to our house, if thou wilt be so kind to me; for there have we better meat and wine to boot."

She looked up at him smiling, but her pleasure of the meat and the kindness was so exceeding, that she might not refrain from tears also, but she spake not.

As for him, he knelt beside her, looking on her wistfully; and at last he said: "I shall tell thee, that I am glad that thou wert hungry and that I have seen thee eating, else might I have deemed thee somewhat other than a woman of mankind even yet."

She said: "Yea, and why wouldst thou not believe my word thereto?"

He said, reddening: "I almost fear to tell thee, lest thou think me overbold and be angry with me."

"Nay," she said, "tell me, for I would know."

Said he: "The words are not easy in my rude mouth; but this is what I mean: that though I be young I have seen fair women not a few, but beside any of them thou art a wonder;....and loth I were if thou wert not really of mankind, if it were but for the glory of the world."