Rome. The Solomon that cometh after shall be the gracious princeling
that ye wot of, for already he is wise beyond his years and beyond most
grown men.'

The citizens around the walls cried 'Amen.' And because the strangers
tarried to come, he called to his journeymen that stood in the inner
doorway to bring him the sheets of the Bible whereon he had printed the
story of Ehud and Eglon.

'This king that ye shall hear of as being slain,' he cried out, 'is that
foul bird the Kaiser Carl, that harries the faithful in Almain. This
good man that shall slay him is some German lord. Who he shall be we
know not yet; maybe it shall be this very stranger that to-night shall
sit to hear us.'

His brethren muttered a low, deep, and uniform prayer that soon, soon
the Lord should send them this boon.

But he had not got beyond the eleventh verse of this history before
there came from without a sound of trumpets, and through the windows the
light of torches and the scarlet of the guard that, it was said, the
King had sent to do honour to this stranger.

'Come in, be ye who ye may!' the printer cried to the knockers at his
door.

There entered the hugest masked man that they ever had seen. All in
black he was, and horrifying and portentous he strode in. His sleeves
and shoulders were ballooned after the German fashion, his sword clanked
on the tiles. He was a vision of black, for his mask that appeared as
big as another man's garment covered all his face, though they could see
he had a grey beard when sitting down. He gazed at the fire askance.

He said--his voice was heavy and husky--

'_Gruesset Gott_,' and those of the citizens that had painfully attained
to so much of that tongue answered him with--

'_Lobet den Herr im Himmels Reich!_'

He had with him one older man that wore a half-mask, and was trembling
and clean-shaven, and one younger, that was English, to act as
interpreter when it was needed. He was clean-shaven, too, and in the
English habit he appeared thin and tenuous. They said he was a gentleman
of the Archbishop's, and that his name was Lascelles.

He opened the meeting with saying that these great strangers were come
from beyond the seas, and would hear answers to certain questions. He
took a paper from his pouch and said that, in order that he might stick
to the points that these strangers would know of, he had written down
those questions on that paper.

'How say ye, masters?' he finished. 'Will ye g