Lessingham, now for two days, scarce took bite nor sup. Whether he slept none knew: only that not an hour in the night but somewhere was he to be seen about the camp, armed and in his riding-coat. Save to give orders, not a word had he for any man, neither durst any speak with him. It was, through these days, as if there rode there a man abiding indeed in his bodiness, but lapped in lead: in all else deceased, but his great heart carried him. And now began to be heard in a susurration about men's ears, the thing that in all those months past in Rialmar had not been spoke nor imagined except by Derxis, with so wise a discretion had Lessingham and the Queen refrained themselves: but now it was said, What grief was this that should so benumb a man, for but loss of  his Queen? and it was answered, Past question, she loved him paramour and no other. Which coming to Amaury's ears, he was highly displeased: said to him that let fall the word, 'I should slit thy tongue for chattering so wide,' and by all discreet means wrought to scotch this prittle-prattle. But the rumour, once sown, ran like quitch-grass in a garden, much underground; and yet to no bad effect, knitting their hearts the closer in his service as to a man not great only, but great and unhappy. For of such kind were most that followed Lessingham, that their loves grew up as the watercresses, slowly, but with a deep root: not so ready to praise the sun at his uprising as worship him at his downgate.

The third afternoon they came to Mornagay. Lessingham would not lie here, but press on by Killary and so by the Tivots and Scorradale Heath to be in Bardar-dale before nightfall. Amaury rode with him, and, after the carriage beasts were well through the ford, they two drew ahead. On the great open mile-wide ridge of the heath Lessingham reined in Maddalena and, turning in the saddle, looked back northwards. The sun was set in a clear sky: the heath was become a darkness made up of all shades of blackish greens: the sky a pal-lour of all greys akin to blue: tarns and standing waters gleamed lighter than the sky itself, as if lit from under.

From the east, little white wisps of mist came like feelers drifting from right to left over the dark heathland.

Lessingham spoke: "You were with me that night thirteen months ago, in Mornagay.'

'Yes’

'Never name it again. Never name to me again aught that came of it' ‘No, my lord.'

'What think you, Amaury? is it true that all things have their life, their limits, their diseases, and their death?'

'All things?'

'Yes, all.'

‘Not all, my lord.'

'What then? what hath not?'

'You have bid me never name it'

'I say, all things, Amaury. Dispute it not, else God knows I might murder you. I am in these days become a wild beast, first made fierce with tying, and then let loose. And not I alone: so is all become.'

*I hope, not murder me, that loved you 'bove the world.'

'Yes, you and all. Then gallop apace to my ruin.' 'O, this is madness.'

*No,' said Lessingham, and his voice was like the muttering of distant thunder: 'it is like the Twilight of the Gods: the baying of the hell-dog before Gnipa's cave: the crowing of the cocks in the three worlds: will you call that nightingales?—

Yes, Amaury: "The fast must be loos'd, and the Wolf run free."'

Amaury sat silent, his jaw set. Those feelers had by now drawn a coverlet of mist over all the heath, hiding the ground. On the hummock where Lessingham and Amaury waited, their horses' feet were in the mist but their own heads in clear air, and the stars clear and bright above them.

Lessingham laughed. 'Say over to me again, those words he used. For God knows I have dreamed and waked and dreamed till I know not well which is dream and which true.'

'I dare not say it.'

'Say it,' said Lessingham terribly.

Amaury obeyed: 'He said, "If not to be my Queen, then you shall at least be no longer the strumpet of a soldier of fortune." '

A full minute Lessingham neither spoke nor moved. His face, seen sideways, proud and unreadable against the May night, showed like stone or iron. There came the ring of bridles up from the Scorradale side, of the vanward nearing the brow. Lessingham shook rein, turned and rode away down before them into Bardardale. Amaury, following beside Maddalena's off hind quarter, heard him say in his teeth, ‘I have shut my mind against these things.' Then suddenly drawing rein and staring into Amaury's eyes through the darkness: 'Remember that,' he said. 'But remember, too, not winged horses shall prevail him to outskip my vengeance. And so, Amaury, to work.'

There went messengers now, while Lessingham and the Admiral lay in Bardardale, betwixt them and the Chancellor before Laimak. By this, in a few days it was brought to a meeting betwixt them, and a charter of peace sealed with Lessingham upon provisoes and a truce to endure until the fourteenth day of June, and in the mean season counsel to be had for that matter with the Duke, late come up to Argyanna after sojourning at home awhile in Zayana. Upon the tenth of June came these lords, Lessingham, Beroald, and Jeronimy, with Amaury, to Argyanna. Here with the Duke was Count Zapheles, and the Lords Melates and Barrian and a dozen besides, men of mark. Medor, wielding by procuration the ducal power, abode yet in Zayana.

Lessingham was greatly feasted and nobly received, nor, when they fell to their business, seeking of agreement, were they slow to find sured ground: at first, common cause against Derxis, to destroy him and revenge his abomination in Rialmar: secondly, King Mezentius's lawful issue being by two murders in this short while miserably dead, there remained no colourable pretender to the throne but the Duke, whose claim thus stood wa-terfast. But when it was to speak of the Lord Horius Parry, and upon what terms the Duke and his would take him into their peace again, straight they lost (as for agreeing) more in a minute than they got in a day: Lessingham of the one side, all they of the other against him. The Duke required surrender without all conditions: 'Which, come what will, he cannot choose but be forced unto, in a month or less. By God, I discommend your wit, my Lord Lessingham, if you think I know not a fox by his bush now, or think, now I hold him earthed in Laimak, I'll let this one wend free at your asking, to play me such another touch as last winter he did.'

'He will never surrender without conditions,' said Lessingham. 'Why should he? Would you or I?'

'Well,' said the Duke, 'no more blind reckonings. This is the one sure card: soon as ever I have him, to cut off his head.'

Lessingham answered, 'We be all agreed that it is time we began to destroy our enemies, and first let us begin at Derxis that hath done villanies not to be spoken and threateneth our mere being. For this, we must give over even rightful quarrels amongst ourselves, else can we never achieve it. And the Vicar is a great captain not easily to be spared in the manage of so great a war as this. Besides, our folk of Rerek are stubborn and hard and can not easily digest the government of a stranger.'

'They have by many a hundred rebelled against him now,' said Barganax.

'That,' replied Lessingham, 'was when I was not by.' 'They will obey you sooner than him. Let him go.'

Lessingham stroked his beard. 'No. If your grace take that way, I sit out.'

Two days they argued it. The second, the Chancellor took Lessingham apart: said, 'My Lord Lessingham, you have gotten the right ear of his grace; butin this you will not move him. This ill weed of yours, maugre your warming and watering, hath now been parched up. Only bethink you: upon what consideration, but of this man alone, should the Duke have seized power in Rerek and, by implication, in Fingiswold? 'Gainst his sister he'd ne'er a stood usurper, but 'gainst this man only that under her name cloaked his large ambitions. Your lordship hath heard how myself did in aid of that enterprise allege a law which barreth women from kingdom to the end the realm fall not into the hands of a strange prince or nation. 'Tis of questionable authority: I lent it mine, not for any quarrel with the Queen's highness (on whom be peace), but because I would not trust this man. You and he sort very ill together. If conscience will not suffer you to oppose his interest, then get you gone for a season: leave him to us. We shall speedily deal with him.'

'The things,' replied Lessingham, 'which be main counts against his highness my cousin were done when I was beyond the Wold upon the Queen's business. For all that was then misdone I have, upon his behalf, offered atonement.'

‘I see your lordship will not hear reason,' said Beroald. 'Well, you are like to pay dear upon your bond.'

'That the Gods must rule,' answered he. 'But remember, I am upon safe conduct here in Argyanna, and with right upon safe conduct to return to that army I have afoot, and with that, be it little in numbers, I have ere this done somewhat. And remember the lord Admiral is upon parole to go back with me if this peace be not concluded. And if his grace will have no peace (and a hard peace for the other is this I offer you, and good for his grace), but will, as is now said, slay the Vicar, then I will promise you this: it shall be so countervenged that it shall be spoken of a hundred years hereafter.'

Beroald said, 'We will not talk on thunder.'

'Lessingham,' said the Duke, coming upon them in this: 'the man is not by a noble heart such as yours in any way to be avouched or defended. Must our friendship fly in pieces for sake of such a villain?'

'If our friendship, my lord Duke, (which the Gods forfend) must fly in pieces, 'tis because, to end his he-roical great defence that hath so long time held you off and your armies, you will in cold blood use this same cruelty I have so oft checked in himself, of the beheading-block. But if my friendship be aught, then prove it: for I have told your grace I will, so you give him but to me, be answerable upon my honour and upon my life that he shall all repay and no more disease you.'

'But to what wild purpose—?' Barganax paused silent for a minute, looking in Lessingham's eyes. There sat in them a bantering mocking look that he knew, but as belonging to other eyes: not to these speckled grey eyes of Lessingham, but to green eyes, beaconing as from every unrest and from every incertitude and peril, which things, taking on those eyes' allurance, burned high and desirable beyond all lusts and fires.

'Each to his taste,' Lessingham said. ‘I have given you reasons enough in policy. And if you will have more, say he is a dangerous horse: say I taste a pleasure in such riding.'

'Say you will break your neck, my Lord Lessingham,' said the Chancellor.

But Barganax and Lessingham, like as formerly at the council-board in Ilkis, now faced one another as if, for all their company about them, they stood alone, and a third presiding: a third, perceived but by them alone; and scarcely, indeed, to be named a third, as being present strangely to the Duke in the person of Lessingham, and to Lessingham in the Duke.

Two days later, a little before noon, Lessingham rode into Laimak. It was a day of close, hazy weather, boiling up for thunder-storms. The Chancellor's armies still held siege before the castle, for the allies had no mind that the Vicar should use this truce for getting in of provision, then defy them anew and so drag on. Lessingham and his they let through with no delays, for he bare letters of credence under seal of Zayana. All the valley for a mile about the castle was wasted with fire and eaten up. The Vicar greeted Lessingham as a man might greet a son long given up for lost. He carried him -to his closet in the keep, and hither was dinner brought them, poor campaigning fare indeed: bacon pies, black rye bread, cheese, and smoked fish, with a runlet of muscadine to wash it down and a little joy the heart withal.

'Are you come with a treaty in your wallet?' said the Vicar when the waiting-men had set all in order and, upon his command, left them to dine private.

Lessingham smiled. 'No more treaties, cousin, of my making. I have somewhat here: but you shall sign for yourself, if it like you; and no room for cavil afterward.'

'It will keep till after dinner.'

'Yes. It will keep so long: not much longer.'

The Vicar looked swiftly up. Lessingham's face, careless and with eyes averted, was not to be read. 'You're come none too soon,' said the Vicar then, and took in a great mouthful. 'Rations left for seven days. Starving men make best fighters; but 'tis not a discipline fit to hold 'em to too long: though it be good to savage 'em, yet in this other 'tis as bad, that drawn out beyond a day or two it sloweth and feebleth the animal spirits. And so ninth day from this had I set for the grand carousal, warm meat and blood puddings i' the field below there, and the leavings for the crows to pick on.'

'Rant it not to me as if I were a woman,' said Lessingham. 'You have not sufficiency to withstand their forces: not one hour, in the open.'

'Well: end so, then.' He watched Lessingham through half-shut lids. 'Better so than swallow another treaty like the last you crammed down my throat, cousin.'

'Your highness is a great soldier,' said Lessingham; *but politician, not so good. How should you now look for so good a treaty as that? which was just and equal, but you did break every article and published your every breach too from the house-tops. Be thankful if I have saved you your life, and some few false beams of your supposed honour.' 'So!'

For a long while, eyeing each other, they ate and drank in silence. The Vicar's neck swelled like a puff-adder's. At length, 'You've been a weary while,' he said, 'dallying on the door-step: more than a fortnight. Talking with those devils (the sweat and swink they've cost me!) Might a talked to me ere this, I'd have thought?'

Lessingham said nothing, only with a delicate air raised his cup and drank, regarding his cousin the while with level and thoughtful eyes. The Vicar took a gobbet of bacon-rind out of his mouth: leaned sideways to give it to Pyewacket. The play of the light revealed, as might some great master's brush, the singularity that belonged, but seldom so lively seen as now, to his strangely-sorted countenance: heavy eyelids, wide-winged jutting nose, lean lips like a snake's, delicate ears, ruffianly reddish-be-bristled jowl, serene smooth forehead, small swift-darting eyes: a singularity of brutish violence joined with some nobler element in a marriage wherein neither was ever all subdued to other, nor yet ever all distinct; so that divorce must needs have crippled a little both, as well the good as the bad. And upon Lessingham, while he so watched this renewing of a pageant he knew well, a mantle seemed to fall, enduing limb and sinew and poise of neck and head with a grander and yet more pantherine grace. And the Grecian lineaments of Lessingham, and the eyes of him thus savouring his cousin, seemed not so much to be informed now with a swift beast's majesty or an eagle's, but rather as if strength and mastery should. take to itself the airy loveliness of a humming-bird, and so hang hovering on viewless wings, as the bird quivers bodiless upon air beside a flower, uncertain into which honeyed fold amid petals it shall aim its long and slender beak.

'You were ever at your best,' he said after a little,

‘back to the wall. Trouble is, set you at your ease, you fall athinking. And that is bad for you.'

'I know not, cousin, what you account good for a man. My belt's half a foot the shorter since Yule-tide.'

'What dispossessed your wits,' Lessingham said, 'soon as my back was turned, treat this Duke as you would some poor-spirited slow boy? And did I not tell you what he is? and could you not use him accordingly?'

'That which is, is,' said the Vicar, and drank and spat 'That which was, was. That which shall be, 'tis that con-cerneth me and you. This new turn in Rialmar,' fleet as a viper's his eyebeam flashed upon Lessingham's face and away,' 'hath upsyversied all, ha? Or how think you on't? Look you,' he said, after a silence, and leaned forward, elbows on the table: 'I will tell you a thought of mine: may be good, may be naught, howsome'er hath come me oft in mind since Kutarmish set all afire here. That Derxis. Could a been used, ha? matter of marriage, had't been nicely handled:' he paused, studying through red eyelashes Lessingham's face, inscrutable and set now as a God's likeness done in marble. 'And so, using Akkama to put down Zayana, afterward—, well, there be ways and means.'

Lessingham toyed with his wine-cup. 'Ways and means!' He tossed off the wine, sprang up, walked to the window, and there stood looking down on him as in a high displeasure. 'Pray talk to me of your soldiering, for there I can but admire, and even love you. But these twisting policies, I can but laugh at 'em.'

'Nay, but hangeth together. My wardship's lost: so. Well, shift weight to the well-lodged foot then.' He paused, sat back in his chair. Their eyes met. 'I know not what this paper may say which you have in your purse, cousin; but would you'd a talked to me first ere talk to Zayana. You had not thought on this other way, ha? and yet opened fair before you: to use Derxis, I mean, as our instrument? And not too late now, neither, if rightly handled.'

'What are you,' said Lessingham, 'but a bloody fool? Have I not told you long ago there's no way but the straight cut? the Mezentian way, not these viperine crawl-ings: weld all fast under Barganax now, and -crush this vermin, this of Akkama. Sweet Gods in heaven, cousin, is't not your own kith and kin? (in a distant way, I grant). And as for use Derxis, I'd as soon the putrid skull of some invenomed serpent, and use't for my wine-cup.'

'Go,' said the Vicar, and there was the look in his eyes as of one that weigheth pro and contra as he gazed on Lessingham: 'here's a talker.'

Lessingham took two parchments from his doublet: tossed them before the Vicar among the dishes. 'Take it or no, 'tis you to choose, cousin: but if yes, to-day's the last day: sign it or say good-bye. You may thank the kind Gods and me, that have hooked you out of this quagmire you have by your own curst mulish obstinacy rushed and stuck fast in. May be, since indeed I think you're mad now, you'll liefer choose your feast of tripes in Laimak home-mead a week hence; or t'other choice: that the Duke will give you, and please him best. Three livelong days I wrought for you, and little thanks I see for it, ere I won him to offer you this good bargain, 'stead as he would a had it: and that was, get you dead or alive, as in a month's time or less no power on earth could a letted it: head you and side you, and nail the meat up so for crows to eat on Laimak walls.'

But the Vicar had snatched the parchment and was by now half-way through it, his great stubbed finger following the words as he read. When he came to the end, he read all again, this time the duplicate copy: then, without word spoken, reached pen and ink from the sideboard and signed and sealed. He then stood up: came to Lessingham beside the window, took him by both hands. 'Think not I forget it, cousin, that this is by the great wit and prowess that is in you, the which I mind me well hath stood me in good stead many a time and yet shall do again.'

'Good, then we're friends,' said Lessingham. 'You have ta'en it well, cousin, as a wise prince should do. And the sixth day from to-day, as there writ down, your highness will come to him in Areyanna, enact that ceremony? your allegiance full and perfect?' 'Ay, as a cat laps milk.'

'You do well, cousin.' He took up one copy of the concordat, scanning the hands and seals: the Duke's, Beroald's, Jeronimy's, and now the Vicar's. 'This raiseth the siege to-day. I'll begone with it, and we meet 'pon Wednesday in Argyanna. But remember, cousin,' he said upon departing: 'I look for deeds from you upon this: no more false closes designed to shun a final end.'

'Go, you have read me a fair lecture,' answered he. 'Think not I'll stumble at a straw now that I've leapt over a block. Fare you well.'

The twentieth day of June was appointed a great festival and holiday for ratifying of this peace whereby, Barganax being now in both Rerek and Meszria taken for King, the lords of those countries should in his service fare shortly with great armies north across the Wold, win back Rialmar, and so carrying the war through Akkama ravish and ruinate all the cities and people thereof and lay them under subjection, seizing above all King Derxis whom they meant to punish and kill not as befits a noble person.

Betimes that morning was the main army of the Chancellor, come down on purpose from Hornmere side and Ristby and those parts, besides the Duke's two thousand that he how held in Argyanna and thereabouts, marched under banners and with singing of war-songs and music of trumpets and drums three times round the bluff without the moat. The Duke, with fifty red-bearded men of his bodyguard bearing their great two-handed swords, had place of honour before the drawbridge. He rode upon a fierce white stallion with sweeping mane and tail and with harness all black and trappings and saddlecloth of black sendaline. Of like sad hue were the Duke's cloak and bonnet with black estridge-feathers and all his armour: black gloves upon his hands: the very ruff about his throat black, that should have been white: all this in formal sign of mourning and lamentation. The Lords Beroald and Jeronimy wore plumes of mournings in their hats and black mourning cloaks: the like tokens wore every one, high or low, man or woman, soldiers, townsfolk, that day; but the Duke alone, both for his royal estate and near kinship, that extremity of blackness.

And now, well upon the hour appointed, marching from the north down the granite-paven causeway that in a ten-mile span, laid on a foundation of thousands upon thousands of strong oaken piles, bridges the quaking-bogs in the midst of which is Argyanna, came the Vicar and his following. Twenty trumpeters on horseback headed the march: great was the flashing of their helms and trumpets, all of silver: their kirtles and hose were dyed with saffron: they had black mourning saddle-cloths and black cloaks: at every twenty paces they sounded upon their trumpets the owl-call of the house of Parry. Behind them, guarded by two score of Lessingham's black riders, went the royal banner of Fingiswold, by him brought victorious from the northland through many deadly chances and the bloody battles at Ridinghead and Leveringay. The owl of Laimak, sable, armed and beake'd gules upon a field or, followed after: its motto, Noctu noxiis noceo, 'Nightly I prey upon vermin.' There went a company of veteran spearmen of Rerek four by four behind it, helmed and byrnied and with great oblong shields. The Vicar himself rode with Lessingham a score of paces behind these footsoldiery, and a score of paces before the rest of their following: Amaury, Brandremart, Bezardes, Thrasiline, Daiman, and so horse and foot to the number of five hundred or more bringing up the rear.

Now when they were come close under Argyanna before the gates and the drawbridge, the Count Rossilion bearing the Vicar's Jpanner rode forth with two trumpeters that blew a fanfare. And Rossilion, doffing cap to the Duke and reading from a writing in his hand, cried out with a loud voice that all might hear: 'For behalf of his most excellent lordship Horius Parry I do salute the Lord Barganax, Duke of Zayana, and do receive and acknowledge him the said Duke to be great King of Fingiswold and of all states and dominions appertaining thereto, and in particular of all Meszria and the Marches and of all this territory or land of Rerek and places situate therewithin, being especially the fortresses or strong holds of Laimak, Kessarey, Megra, Kaima, and Argyanna, and of this March of Ulba. And thus saith the Lord Horius Parry: I hereby give, O King, into the hands of your princely highness all those estates and powers whatsoever which, whether as private-vassal and subject, whether as Vicar of the Queen, whether as Lord Protector, I herebefore have held under kingdom of Queen Antiope of glorious memory (upon whom be peace), hoping that your serenity may adjudge them to have been truly and diligently by me administrated and used, in the behoof of the weal public and the great glory of the crown of the three kingdoms. Humbled on my knee I now kiss your grace's hand, tendering my love and service true and perfect, and fearfully expecting your royal commands.'

The Vicar meanwhile, being dismounted from his horse, and standing ten paces or so behind Rossilion, looked on and listened with no outward sign save the great puffing out and great redness of his neck. He was all armed, with a byrny of polished iron edged at throat and wrists and skirt with links of gold; thigh-pieces and greaves and toe-pieces and golden spurs. No weapon he bore, only in his right hand his staff vicarial. Two boys, dressed in the russet and purple livery of his bodyguard, bare up behind him the train of his great black cloak.

'But look upon him,' said Zapheles in the Chancellor's ear. 'What charter of peace can you contrive, my lord, but this great devil will break it?'

Beroald shrugged his shoulders.

'Well, now a hath put his head in the lion's mouth,' said Melates, as Rossilion ended, 'cannot some contrive to set the King in a fume against him? Bite it off, and all were well.'

"Tis but yonder Lessingham standeth 'twixt this and that,' said Barrian. 'A thing past man's understanding.' 'That he so stands? or that his grace should heed him?' 'Both,' said the Chancellor with a tart smile. Lessingham said in the Vicar's ear, 'Your highness would

be well advised, put off your bonnet: he did the like for you, if I am told aright, in the Salimat last autumn. Besides there is about your bonnet the diadem, which you must assume again but at his bidding.'

'Let be. I'm afeared of this sun. Shall not fry my brains, concordat or no concordat.'

Men noted that in the very act of homage the Parry wore still his crown vice-royal with rich stones and orient pearl beset. Some murmured at it: the Duke, whose eye no littlest thing might ever escape, could not but note it, but yet let it go unremarked. Upon kissing of hands, the trumpets of either side blew a fanfare. The Vicar upon that, taking from off his head the coronal, presented it to the Duke, who straightway raised it on high that all should see, then set it again upon the head of the Vicar, saying, for all to hear: 'Be witness whom it may concern, and the blessed Gods Who keep the wide heaven, that, upon homage thus made to me in my estate as high master of these kingdoms and agreeably to articles of peace late sealed and made betwixt us, I do hereby assign unto you, Horius Parry, the strong holds and demesnes of Laimak, Kaima, and Kessarey, and all the country and principality of old Rerek, but not Megra nor the lands north of Swaleback, and not Argyanna nor the Ulba March, to hold as my vicar or vicegerent, answerable to no man save to me, but to me to be answerable with your head. In witness whereof, receive this coronal and name of Vicar of Rerek.'

This done, amid great noise of trumpets and drums and shouting of all the soldiers and people there assembled, this solemnity had its end. But first the Duke let proclaim silence, and bade the Lord Beroald say forth on his behalf this, in a great voice, that all might know: 'Thus saith the most renowned and most mighty prince and lord, Barganax, great Duke of Zayana, our sovereign master and King: that it is his pleasure, even as he will change not these mourning colours till he shall have beat the out-born usurper from the land and with the Gods' help punished him with death, so will he think it scorn, and not suitable with his princely dignity, to take yet the King's name, but will first, like as all other Kings of Fingiswold, be crowned in Rialmar. At his command publish it so accordingly. God save his serene and most excellent highness, Barganax, Duke of Zayana, of the three kingdoms our sovereign lord.'

They rode now in a progress once about the hold with their bodyguards, the Vicar and Barganax riding in the midst somewhat apart, jointly taking the salute from those on the walls and those in the field and all the army drawn up beside the way in double line, so as men should perceive with their eyes this new condition of peace and friendship, and the conclusion of the war and hate there had been so long betwixt them.

'This is a great pride in you, my lord Duke,' the Vicar said, 'not to take the style of King.'

Barganax smiled. ‘I had thought it a great modesty.'

'It was to shame me,' said the Vicar. 'Not clip the wings only of my vicariate, a thing I honourably endured, but make me do homage but to a ducal cap.'

' 'Las,' said the Duke: 'I fear I was thinking of my own affair, and not at all of you, my lord.'

'I was gulled in it,' said the Vicar. There shone in his eyes, the Duke's head being for the moment turned away to acknowledge acclamations upon his right, a most cruel, mortal, and inexorable hatred.

'Give credit, the thing ne'er entered my head,' said the Duke. 'But indeed,' he said, 'now I think on't, I can but praise your courteous carriage and affability; for indeed, God knoweth well enough without remembrancer, myself did bow as low, and to a like necessity, not a year since, i' the Salimat.'

' 'Tis of no moment,' said the Vicar. 'Only for this I thought fit to speak on't to your grace, considering we shall wisely avoid now whatsoever might diminish my estimation and authority, and so tie me shorter when we should work together for common ends.'.

The Duke said, 'I'll not forget it. I have bespoke a banquet about noon, which I hope your highness and whom you will of your following will honour me to share with us. After that, hold council of war. Midsummer already, and much to do ere we may march in full force. And it were folly think to lead a great army over the Wold once it be turned September.'

The same night, when save for the sentinels upon the walls and at the gates none was astir, Barganax and Lessingham went forth alone together to take the air and so came slowly a mile or more down the causeway from Argyanna southwards, walking and talking. The leavings of sunset, dusky orange-tawny on the horizon, crept slowly round towards the north. Bats skimmed overhead.

'A month to-day, then,' said Lessingham: 'that's the twentieth. In Mornagay.'

Tn Mornagay,' said the Duke. 'What shall we be? Seven thousand?'

'That's not to count the princes and the free towns.' 'We shall be too many.'

'A stroke that shall not miss,' Lessingham said, and they fell silent.

After half an hour they came to a stand. Barganax picked up a stone and tossed it in a reed-bed to wake the reed warblers that forthwith began their chattering. He said, 'What make you of that light, there in the darkest bit among the moss-hags? A pool? A broken goblet throwing back the sky? A broken sword? A whole nation of glow-worms gone astray? A chink in the saucepan lid to let us see 'tis here they brew the marsh-fires?'

‘I think you shall find it but stagnant water if you go to it,' said Lessingham. 'Here, it might be all those things.'

'A light asleep in the dark,' said the Duke. ‘I should like to paint this night,' he said, after a little. 'The past: all gone. The thing to come, crouching in those obscurities of ooze and reed-bed, ready to spring. The thing present: you and me. And that is strangest of all: unpaintable, too, like as are most things worth painting.'

Lessingham was silent.

'Were you a tenderer of your own safety, you'd now leave me,' said the Duke. 'Espousing my cause thus wholly, and enforcing this last settlement of peace upo'n him, you now go naked to his claws. No argument remains of self-interest, as before most strongly served, why he should not destroy you.'

'I have now a kind of freedom,' said Lessingham. 'I'll not give up you; nor I'll not give up him.'

'Pity that savage mare of yours, who biteth and striketh all men else, will not content you.'

'Would she content your grace, and you stood where I stand?'

They began to walk slowly, in their companionship of silence, back again towards Argyanna that stood squat, square, and black, against the sky to the north. They were half-way home when the Duke began to say, under his breath, as if the words had been not words but echoes only, answering the measured tread of his musing footsteps along the causeway.

 

Earth I will have, and the deep sky's ornament:                      

Lordship, and hardship, and peril by land and sea.—

And still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,

 Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have Thee.

 

Lessingham, who had listened with breath held back lest a word should be lost, suddenly, when the stave was ended, checked in his stride. They halted and faced one another in the stillness. 'Who are you?' Lessingham said at last, staring through the soft darkness into Barganax's face: so like to his sister's, save for the varying characters of he and she, that Lessingham's very being was, for that likeness, confounded within him. Barganax made no answer. The silence was full of bird-voices afar on marshes that never go quite to sleep: now a redshank's cry, now some littie plover. Lessingham said, 'Who made that stave?'

'That? I made it.'

'You?' In the stillness a curlew whistled far away, awake in the night.

'I like it,' Barganax said, 'if for its very vanity.'

'Its vanity!' said Lessingham, and they stood silent.

'Why did you bid me,' he said then, 'to your love-feast upon Ambremerine? Why that night did she draw me through doors? What changed then in your throne-room? Why did she send me to Rialmar? Who is she?' he said, last of all.

Barganax shook his head. ' 'Las,' he said, 'I can answer none of these riddles.' He met Lessingham's eyes through the dark. Inch for inch he and Lessingham stood of a height. It was as if he could not easily resolve to let loose that which was upon his tongue. At last he spoke: 'Lessingham, I can, as I said, answer none of your riddles. But I will tell you this: upon Michaelmas night, taking my ease in a certain house of Vandermast's, I looked in a mirror and I beheld there not my own face, but yours.'

Lessingham neither spoke nor moved.

'Well/ Barganax said. 'What was it? Know you such a house?'

'And I beheld', said Lessingham, stare for stare, 'your face, not mine. In that house. Upon Michaelmas night.'

He swung round: began walking again homeward. Barganax, at his elbow, heard the gritting of his teeth upon a smothered groan, as a man might grit them with the turning of the blade in a wound. But in time, as they walked on in that commerce of mind with mind in which speech were but a troubling of the stream that else runs crystal clear, Lessingham tasted again, as upon Ambremerine, the leaning of Barganax's spirit towards that seeming woman of his; and strangely in the tasting took balm to his own mortal hurt, until his own spirit within him was borne up on high like a great violent flame of fire, as for the grand last act indeed.

The Duke wrote that night, and sent it south by safe
hand betimes the next morning:                  

 

'Righte Expectable and Noble Lady, these to kiss your hands and informe you that matters occurent must hold me in the north now well till autumne. I would be sured therefore that your Ladyship will keep my private lodging as your own upon Akrozayana till these inconveniences be over past. I have todaye with the Parry sealed againe the infringible band of faith, but fear I shall never love him, nor would you, not for the honesty of his conversation neither nice in bodie but grossly sett and thick. And kinde will creep where it may not go, hee is enemy I think to all men save to such as will subject themselves to him. As for I. I doo think your Ladyship knoweth more than I of his affair, I mean not my Sisters parte which was with so much wisedome kept close as never a whisper went on it, I mean things deeper farre than that. My thoughts growe busy that some way there bee iv of us but some way ij only. O beguiler of guiles, opening of your garments, sudden flashing of your Beauty, what webs are these. But no more, it is coriander in swete wine. I shall never have done when I am once in, and never settle my self for want of lipwork in stead of penwork. O Blacke Lily one and onemost, disdainer, and hallower, of all things, blinder of sight, bedde of the dragon and the dove, robe state and crowne imperiall of my desire, in daylight acte my Cynosura, wanting you here, in my dreames I taste you, and wanting wordes to endear you, call you but Mine, me, Yours.'