d. "If it do but happen pat, we
shall have served the King and punished two cozening faint-hearts.
For the best of it is that neither can complain. Each is neck-high in
the mire of lies, each has plundered the other, and must be dumb for
shame of his knavery."

"It will be brave to spy their faces," Halfman commented, "when they
smell out the snare."

"Look to it," Brilliana suggested, "that they be kept apart when they
come here. The jest must not spoil. How these old hawks will fly at
each other when we unhood them."

"Trust me, lady," said Halfman. "I have been a play-actor and know
how to stage a pair of gabies to the show."

He saluted her and made to depart. She had learned to like his
company through the long days of siege, and this dull day of quiet
she felt lonely. Moreover, she was grateful to him for having helped
her so well in her plot against the niggards.

"Come again when you have taken order for this," she said. "There is
still much to do, much to think for."

The man saluted anew, intoxicated with pleasure. He knew that she
liked his company, and whatever was well in him burgeoned at the
knowledge. His play-actor passion had bettered him, if it had not
accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into
the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought
lewdly of her; he would have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal
maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought
well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he
first scorched his stripling's fingers, and he would have killed
twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when he
talked with her, ever in his chastened part of the rough old soldier,
he laughed in his sleeve at the difference between part and true man.
The nut-hook humor of it was that both were realities, or, perhaps,
that neither were realities.

As he quitted the pleasaunce he countered Mistress Tiffany, and saw
at a distance, standing by the laurels, a foppish, many-colored,
portly personage negligently twirling a long staff. Halfman guessed
the name, grinned, and went on his business. Tiffany burst wellnigh
breathless into her lady's presence.

"My lady," she gasped, "here is Sir Blaise Mickleton, who entreats
the honor to speak with you."

Brilliana's face darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just
then to the laggard in war. Then her face cleared again.

"Admit him," she sa