but
presently came one and put his eye to the grille. Richard saw him.

'Is that you, then, Bertran?' he shouted. There was no answer, but the
spyer was heard breathing hard at his vent.

'Come out of your earth, red fox,' Richard chid him. 'Show your grievous
snout to the hills; do your snuffling abroad to the clear sky. I have
whipped off the hounds; my father is not here. Will you let starve your
liege-lord?'

At this the bolts were drawn, the bridge went down with a clatter, and
Bertran de Born came out--a fine stout man, all in a pother, with a red,
perplexed face, angry eyes, hair and beard cut in blocks, a body too big
for his clothes--a man of hot blood, fumes and rages. Richard at sight
of him, this unquiet sniffer of offences, this whirled about with
stratagems, threw back his head and laughed long and loud.

'O thou plotter of thine own dis-ease! O rider of nightmares, what harm
can I do thee? Not, believe me, a tithe of thy desert. Come thou here
straightly, Master Bertran, and take what I shall give thee.'

'By God, Lord Richard--' said Bertran, and boggled horribly; but the
better man waited, and in the end he came up sideways. Richard swung
from his horse, took his host by the shoulders, shook him well, and
kissed him on both cheeks. 'Spinner of mischief, red robber, singer of
the thoughts of God!' he said, 'I swear I love thee through it all,
Bertran, though I should do better to wring thy neck. Now give us food
and drink and clean beds, for Gaston at least is a dead man without
them. Afterwards we will sing songs.'

'Come in, come in, Richard,' said Bertran de Born.

* * * * *

For a day or two Richard was bathed in golden calm, hugging his darling
thought, full of Jehane, fearful to share her. Often he remembered it in
later life; it held a place and commanded a mood which no hour of his
wildest possession could outvie. The mountain air, still, but latently
nimble, the great mountains themselves dreaming in the sunlight, the
sailing birds, hinted a peace to his soul whither his last conquest of
his baser part assured him he might soar. Now he could guess (thought
he) that quality in love which it borrows from God and shares with the
angels, ministers of God, the steady burning of a flame keen and hard.
So on an afternoon of weather serene beyond all belief of the North,
mild, tired, softly radiant, still as a summer noon; as he sat with
Bertran in a courtyard whe