me to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the
day's wages fairly earned, or to come as some roisterer haled before
the magistrate."

"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy
interval, "although I decline--and emphatically--to believe you."

The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as
though he were a patriarch; "but we have sung, we two, the Eternal
Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my
little Miguel."

Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very
dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" but Miguel de
Rueda choked. "Oh, I understand! in part I understand!" the page
wailed, and now it was Prince Edward who comforted Miguel de Rueda.

For the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the
darkness to note how soft it was, since the man was less a fool than at
first view you might have taken him to be, and said:

"One must play the game, my lad. We are no little people, she and I,
the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth; and it was
never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cog at dice."

The same night Miguel de Rueda sobbed through the prayer which Saint
Theophilus made long ago to the Mother of God:

"_Dame, je n'ose,
Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose,
En qui li filz Diex se repose,_"

and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that
art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the
blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the
very Son of God! Hearken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that
am ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end
of praying. O Virgin debonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once
a woman--!"

You would have said the boy was dying; and in sober verity a deal of
Miguel de Rueda died upon this night of clearer vision.

Yet he sang the next day as these two rode southward, although half as
in defiance.

Sang Miguel:

"_And still, whate'er the years may send--
Though Time be proven a fickle friend,
And Love be shown a liar--
I must adore until the end
That primal heart's desire._

"_I may not 'hear men speak of her
Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir
Whene'er she passes by,
And I again her worshipper
Must serve her till I die._

"_Not she that is doth pass, but she
That Time h