ughgood responded, "if she had a mind for the masking."

"Perhaps you are right," Halfman answered, meditatively. "My lady's
example would make a Hippolyta of any housemaid of them all."

"I do not know what it would make of them," Thoroughgood answered;
"but I know this, that it matters very little now."

Halfman swung round on his seat and stared at him curiously.

"Why?" he asked.

"Now that this truce is called," Thoroughgood answered, "that the
Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady."

"Why, what then?" questioned Halfman, with his eyes so fixed on
Thoroughgood's that Thoroughgood, dogged as he was, averted his gaze.

"Naught's left but surrender," he grunted, between his teeth. The
words came thickly, but Halfman heard them clearly. He raised his
right hand for a moment as if he had a thought to strike his
companion, but then, changing his temper, he let it fall idly upon
his knee as he surveyed Thoroughgood with a look that half disdained,
half pitied.

"My lady will never surrender," he said, quietly, with the quiet of a
man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. "You know that well enough."

Thoroughgood shrugged plaintive, protesting shoulders.

"We've stood this siege for many days," he muttered. "Food is running
out; powder is running out. Even the Lady Brilliana cannot work
miracles."

Halfman rose to his feet. His eyes were shining and he pressed his
clinched hands to his breast like a man in adoration.

"The Lady Brilliana can work miracles, does work miracles daily. Is
it no miracle that she has held this castle all these hours and days
against this rebel leaguer? Is it no miracle that she has poured the
spirit of chivalry into scullions and farm-hands and cook-wenches so
that not a Jack or Jill of them but would lose bright life blithely
for her and the King and God? Is it not a miracle that she has
transmuted, by a change more amazing than anything Master Ovid hath
recorded in his Metamorphoses, a villanous old land-devil and
sea-devil like myself into a passionate partisan? But what of me? God
bless her! She is my lady-angel, and her will is my will to the end
of the chapter."

He dropped in his chair again as if exhausted by the vehemence of his
words and the emotion which prompted them. Thoroughgood contemplated
him sourly.

"You prate like a play-actor," he snarled. Halfman's whole being
flashed into activity again. He was no more a sentimentalist but now
a roaring ranter.