Blair Collection > Beside the fire

GULEESH NA GUSS DHU. 121
That was true for them, indeed, for it was seldom the
day went by but Guleesh would go to the priest's house,
and have a talk with him, and as often as he would come
he used to hope to find the young lady well again, and
with leave to speak ; but, alas ! she remained dumb and
silent, without relief or cure. Since she had no other
means of talking she carried on a sort of conversation
between herself and himself, by moving her hand and
fingers, winking her eyes, opening and shutting her
mouth, laughing or smiling, and a thousand other
signs, so that it was not long until they understood each
other very well. Guleesh was always thinking how he
should send her back to her father; butthere was no one
to go with her, and he himself did not know what road
to go, for he had never been out of his own country be-
fore the night he brought her away with him. Nor had
the priest any better knowledge than he; but when
Guleesh asked him, he wrote three or four letters to the
king of France, and gave them to buyers and sellers of
wares, who used to be going from place to place across
the sea; but they all went astray, and never one came to
the king's hand.
This was the way they were for many months, and
Guleesh was falling deeper and deeper in love with her
every day, and it was plain to himself and the priest that
she liked him. The boy feared greatly at last, lest the
king should really hear where his daughter was, and take
her back from h imself, and he besought the priest to write
no more, but to leave the matter to God.
So they passed the time for a year, until there came a
day when Guleesh was lying by himself on the grass^
on the last day of the last month in autumn [i.e., Octo-
ber), and he thinking over again in his own mind of
everything that happened to him from the day that he