"'I'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says Dan. 'I don't want to interfere
with your customs, but I'll take my own wife.' 'The girl's a little bit
afraid,' says the priest. 'She thinks she's going to die, and they are a-
heartening of her up down in the temple.'
"'Hearten her very tender, then,' says Dravot, 'or I'll hearten you with the
butt of a gun so you'll never want to be heartened again.'
"He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the
night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I wasn't
any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings with a woman in foreign parts,
though you was a crowned King twenty times over, could not but be risky. I got
up very early in the morning while Dravot was asleep, and I saw the priests
talking together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together too, and they
looked at me out of the corners of their eyes.
"'What is up, Fish?' I say to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his furs
and looking splendid to behold.
"'I can't rightly say,' says he; 'but if you can make the King drop all this
nonsense about marriage, you'll be doing him and me and yourself a great
service.'
"'That I do believe,' says I. 'But sure, you know, Billy, as well as me,
having fought against and for us, that the King and me are nothing more than
two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made.
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