ok it so coolly, just as if paying for goods
across a counter.'

'And he had something to bear, Braney, when you fell on him,' said Potts,
and murmured aside: 'He can be smartish. Hears me call Braney Rufus, and
says he, like a fellow-chin on his fiddle--"Captain Mountain, Rufus Mus'.
Not bad, for a counter."'

Fleetwood glanced round: he could have wrung Woodseer's hand. He saw
young Cressett instead, and hailed him: 'Here you are, my gallant! You
shall flash your maiden sword tonight. When I was under your age by a
long count, I dealt sanctimoniousness a flick o' the cheek, and you
shall, and let 'em know you're a man. Come and have your first boar-hunt
along with me. Petticoats be hanged.'

The boy showed some recollection of the lectures of his queen, but he had
not the vocables for resistance to an imperative senior at work upon
sneaking inclinations. 'Promised Lady F.'--do you hear him?' Fleetwood
called to the couple behind; and as gamblers must needs be parasites,
manly were the things they spoke to invigorate the youthful plunger and
second the whim of their paymaster.

At half-past eleven, the prisoner of his word entered under the Schloss
partico, having vowed to himself on the way, that he would satisfy the
formulas to gain release by a deferential bow to the great personages,
and straightway slip out into the heavenly starlight, thence down among
the jolly Parisian and Viennese Bacchanals.

CHAPTER XII

HENRIETTA'S LETTER TREATING OF THE GREAT EVENT

By the first light of an autumn morning, Henrietta sat at her
travelling-desk, to shoot a spark into the breast of her lover with the
story of the great event of the night. For there had been one, one of our
biggest, beyond all tongues and trumpets and possible anticipations.
Wonder at it hammered on incredulity as she wrote it for fact, and in
writing had vision of her lover's eyes over the page.

'Monsieur Du Lac!

'Grey Dawn. 'You are greeted. This, if you have been tardy on the journey
home, will follow close on the heels of the prowest, I believe truest, of
knights, and bear perhaps to his quick mind some help to the solution he
dropped a hint of seeking.

'The Ball in every way a success. Grand Duke and Duchess perfect in
courtesy, not a sign of the German morgue. Livia splendid. Compared to
Day and Night. But the Night eclipses the Day. A summer sea of dancing.
Who, think you, eclipsed those two?

'I tell you the very truth when I say