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. Nothing more, I
do assure you.'

"'That may be,' says Billy Fish, 'and yet I should be sorry if it was.'
He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks.
'King,' says he, 'be you man or God or Devil, I'll stick by you to-day.
I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. We'll go to
Bashkai until the storm blows over.'