maintained through all a kind of cleanness of palate, ready
for any vintage yet unbroached, be it white or red. The rough voice
of his companion stirred him from his reverie.

"My lady will see you," he said. "Follow me."

As the man spoke he started off at a brisk pace upon the avenue with
the evident intention of making his words the guide-marks to the
new-comer's deeds. But Halfman, never a one to follow tamely, with an
easy stretch of his long limbs, swung himself lightly beside his
uncivil companion, and without breathing himself in the least kept
steadily a foot-space ahead of him. "I was ever counted a good
walker," he observed, cheerfully. "I have taken the world's ways at
the trot; you will never outpace me."

The man of Harby slackened his speed for a second, and there came an
ugly look of quarrel into his face which made it plain as a map for
Halfman that there was immediate chance of a brawl and a tussle. He
would have relished it well enough, knowing pretty shrewdly how it
would end, but he contented himself for the moment, having other
business in hand, with cheerful comment.

"Friend," he said, "if we are both King's men we have no leisure for
quarrel, however much our fingers may itch. What is your name,
valiant?"

The serving-man scowled at him for a moment; then his frown faded as
he faced the smile and the bright, wild eyes of Halfman.

"My name is Thoroughgood," he answered, and he added, civilly enough,
as if conscious of some air of gentility in his companion, "John
Thoroughgood, at your service."

"A right good name for a right good fellow, if I know anything of
men," Halfman approved. "And I take it that you serve a right good
lady."

"My lady is my lady," Thoroughgood replied, simply. "None like her as
ever I heard tell of."

Halfman endeavored by dexterous questionings to get some further
information than this of the Lady of Harby from her sturdy servant,
but Thoroughgood's blunt brevity baffled him, and he soon reconciled
himself to tramp in silence by his guide. So long as he remembered
anything he remembered that passage through the park, the sweet smell
of the wet grass, the waning splendors, russet and umber, of October
leaves, the milky blueness of the autumn sky. This was, indeed,
England, the long, half-forgotten, yet ever faintly remembered, in
places of gold and bloodshed and furious suns, the place of peace of
which the fortune-seeker sometimes dreamed and to which the
f