lour with a little brush!"

Answered Beltane: "An so ye seek to do your duty as regardfully as I
now daub this colour, messire, in so much shall the world be bettered."

"My duty, youth," quoth the stranger, rasping a hand across his
grizzled chin, "my duty? Ha, 'tis well said, so needs must I now fight
with thee."

"Fight with me!" says Beltane, his keen gaze upon the speaker.

"Aye, verily!" nodded the stranger, and, forthwith, laying by his long
cloak, he showed two swords whose broad blades glittered, red and evil,
in the sunset.

"But," says Beltane, shaking his head, "I have no quarrel with thee,
good fellow."

"Quarrel?" exclaimed the stranger, "no quarrel, quotha? What matter for
that? Surely you would not forego a good bout for so small a matter?
Doth a man eat only when famishing, or drink but to quench his thirst?
Out upon thee, messire smith!"

"But sir," said Beltane, bending to his brush again, "an I should fight
with thee, where would be the reason?"

"Nowhere, youth, since fighting is ever at odds with reason; yet for
such unreasonable reasons do reasoning men fight."

"None the less, I will not fight thee," answered Beltane, deftly
touching in the wing of an archangel, "so let there be an end on't."

"End forsooth, we have not yet begun! An you must have a quarrel, right
fully will I provoke thee, since fight with thee I must, it being so my
duty--"

"How thy duty?"

"I am so commanded."

"By whom?"

"By one who, being dead, yet liveth. Nay, ask no names, yet mark me
this--the world's amiss, boy. Pentavalon groans beneath a black
usurper's heel, all the sins of hell are loose, murder and riot, lust
and rapine. March you eastward but a day through the forest yonder and
you shall see the trees bear strange fruit in our country. The world's
amiss, messire, yet here sit you wasting your days, a foolish brush
stuck in thy fist. So am I come, nor will I go hence until I have tried
thy mettle."

Quoth Beltane, shaking his head, intent upon his work:

"You speak me riddles, sir."

"Yet can I speak thee to the point and so it be thy wish, as thus--now
mark me, boy! Thou art a fool, a dog, a fatuous ass, a slave, a
nincompoop, a cowardly boy, and as such--mark me again!--now do I spit
at thee!"

Hereupon Beltane, having finished the archangel's wing, laid by his
brush and, with thoughtful mien, arose, and being upon his feet, turned
him, swift and sudden, and caught the stranger in a fier