eir
ladies, lords, and gentlemen, guests bidden to a royal banquet. 'Twas
then in that bleak and dismal country--the Palace of Forres. Torches
flared in the hall; to every man a servant or two: we sat in pomp."

He paused again, and gravely withdrew behind the tapestry.

"And presently," he cried therefrom, suiting his action to the word,
"to the blast of hautboys enters the king in state thus, with his
attendant lords. And with all that rich and familiar courtesy of which
he was master in his easier moods he passed from one to another,
greeting with supple dignity on his way, till he came at last softly
to the place prepared for him at table. And suddenly--shall I ever
forget, it, sir?--it seemed silence ran like a flame from mouth to
mouth as there he stood, thus, marble-still, his eyes fixed in a
leaden glare. And he raised his face and looked once round on us all
with a forlorn astonishment and wrath, like one with a death-wound--I
never saw the like of such a face.

"Whereat, beseeching us to be calm, and pay no heed, the queen laid
her hand on his and called him. And his orbs rolled down once more
upon the empty place, and stuck as if at grapple with some horror seen
within. He muttered aloud in peevish altercation--once more to heave
up his frame, to sigh and shake himself, and lo!--"

The viol-strings rang to his "lo!"

"Lo, sir, the Unseen had conquered. His lip sagged into his beard, he
babbled with open mouth, and leaned on his lady with such an impotent
and slavish regard as I hope never to see again man pay to woman....
We thought no more of supper after that....

"But what do I--?" The doctor laid a cautioning finger on his mouth.

"The company was dispersed, the palace gloomy with night (and they
were black nights at Forres!), and on the walls I heard the sentinel's
replying.... In the wood's last glow I entered and stood in his
self-same station before the empty stool. And even as I stood thus, my
hair creeping, my will concentred, gazing with every cord at stretch,
fell a light, light footfall behind me." He glanced whitely over his
shoulder.

"Sir, it was the queen come softly out of slumber on my own unquiet
errand."

The doctor strode to the door, and peered out like a man suspicious or
guilty of treachery. It was indeed a house of broken silences. And
there, in the doorway, he seemed to be addressing his own saddened
conscience.

"With all my skill, and all a leal man's gentleness, I so