remembering also that this gentleman is under my protection."
Doffing his red cap, he stepped slowly backward out of the wide ring
about the market-cross. His example was followed by all; a few moments
and the last rays of the sinking sun lay only upon bare stone and earth.

Some hours later, Robin-a-dale asleep in the bed, and his master keeping
motionless watch at the window, Arden entered the room which had been
assigned to Sir Mortimer Ferne, and crossing the floor, sat himself down
beside his friend. Presently Ferne put forth his hand, and the two sat
with interlacing fingers, looking out upon the great constellations.
Arden was the first to speak.

"Dost remember how, when we were boys at school, and the curfew long
rung, we yet knelt at our window and saw the stars come up over the
moorland? Thou wert the poet and teller of tales--ah! thy paladins and
paynims and ladies enchanted!--while I listened, bewitched as they, but
with an ear for the master's tread. It was a fearful joy!"

"I remember," said the other. "It was a trick of mine which too often
brought the cane across our shoulders."

"Not mine," quoth Arden. "You always begged me off. I was the
smallest--you waked me--made me listen, forsooth!... Welladay! Old times
seem near to-night!"

"Old times!" repeated the other. "Pictures that creep beneath the shut
eyelid!--frail sounds that outcry the storm!--Shame's most delicate,
most exquisite goad!... You cannot know how strange this day has been
to me."

"You cannot know how glad this day has been to me," replied Arden, with
a break in his voice. "Do you remember, Mortimer, that I would have
sailed with you in the _Sea Wraith?_"

"I forget nothing," said the other. "I think that I reviled you then....
See how far hath swung my needle!" He lifted his school-fellow's hand to
his cheek in a long, mute caress, then laying it down. "There is one at
home of whose welfare I would learn. She is not dead, I know. Her
brother comes to me in my dreams with all the rest--with all the
rest,--but she comes not. Speak to me of Mistress Damaris Sedley."

A short pause; then, "She is the fairest and the loveliest," said Arden.
"Her beauty is a fadeless flower, but her eyes hold a history it were
hard to read without a clue. One only knows the tale is tragical. She is
most gentle, sweet, and debonair. The thorns of Fortune's giving she has
twisted into a crown, and she wears it royally. I saw her at Wilton six
months