ith the Lady
Brilliana Harby?"

He plucked off his hat as he spoke and waved it in the air with a
flourish. "God save the King!" he shouted, loyally, and for the
moment his heart was as loyal as his voice, untroubled by any thought
of a venal sword and a highest bidder. Just there in the sunlight,
facing the red walls of Harby and the flapping standard of the
sovereign, on the eve of an interview with a bold, devoted lady, it
seemed so fitly his cue to cry "God save the King!" that he did so
with all the volume of his lungs.

The man with the musketoon seemed mollified by the new-comer's
specious show of allegiance.

"We shall see," he muttered. "We shall see. Stay where you are, just
where you are, and I will inquire at the hall. The gate is fast, so
you can do no mischief while my back is turned."

As he spoke he turned on his heel and, plunging among the trees in
pursuit of a shorter cut than the winding avenue, disappeared from
view. Halfman eyed the gateway with a smile.

"I do not think those bars would keep me out long if I had a mind to
climb them," he said to himself, complacently. But he was content to
wait, walking up and down on the wet grass and running over in his
mind the playhouse verses most suited to a soldier of fortune at the
gate of a great lady. He had not to wait long. Before the
jumble-cupboard of his memory had furnished him with the most
felicitous quotation his ears heard a heavy tread through the trees,
and the man with the musket hailed him, tramping to the gate. He
carried a great iron key in his free hand, and this he fitted to the
lock of the gate, which, unused to its inhospitable condition,
creaked and groaned as he tugged at it. As at length it yielded the
man of Harby opened one-half wide enough to admit the passage of a
human body, and signalled to Halfman to come through. Halfman,
smilingly observant, obeyed the invitation, and looked about him
reflective while the gate was again put to and the key again turned
in the lock to the same protesting discord. Many years had fallen
from the tree of his life since he last trod the turf of Harby. All
kinds of queer thoughts came about him, some melancholy, some full of
mockery, some malign. He was no longer a poor lad with the world
before him to whom the Lord of Harby was little less than the
viceregent of God; he was a free man, he was a rich man, he had
multiplied existences, had drunk of the wine of life from many casks
and yet