“Do you desire to have it of me again?” she asked, without any expression on her sun-freckled face.

“What? The ring?”

“Aye “Desire it!” I repeated, turning red. “No more than you desire the withered bud you left beside me while I slept.”

“What bud, sir?”

“Did you not leave me a rose-bud?”

“I?”

“And a bit of silver birch-bark scratched with a knife point?”

“Now that I think of it, perhaps I may have done so — or some such thing — scarce knowing what I was about — and being sleepy. What was it that I wrote? I can not now remember —