well
whatso we have done good work for. That goes for something. In the
second, I've broken bread in this house. Put down that in the reckoning.
In the third; well! in the third, add up all together, and the sum
total's at your service, young sir.'

Farina marked him closely. There was not a spot on his face for guile to
lurk in, or suspicion to fasten on. He caught the stranger's hand.

'You called me friend just now. Make me your friend. Look, I was going to
say: I love this maiden! I would die for her. I have loved her long. This
night she has given me a witness that my love is not vain. I am poor. She
is rich. I am poor, I said, and feel richer than the Kaiser with this she
has given me! Look, it is what our German girls slide in their back-hair,
this silver arrow!'

'A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!' exclaimed the stranger.

'Then, I was going to say--tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and
wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk. Only to wealth, or high
baronry, will her father give her!'

The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as
elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their
mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!

'Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I
should say, wait a while and watch your chance. But you're a boy of
pluck: I serve in the Kaiser's army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be
here in three days. If you 're of that mind then, I doubt little you may
get posted well: but, look again! there's a ripe brew yonder. Marry, you
may win your spurs this night even; who knows?--'S life! there's a tall
fellow joining those two lurkers.'

'Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?'

'Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year's
apprenticeship:

"I learnt to watch the rats and mice
At play, with never a candle-end.
They play'd so well; they sang so nice;
They dubb'd me comrade; called me friend!"

So says the ballad of our red-beard king's captivity. All evil has a
good:

"When our toes and chins are up,
Poison plants make sweetest cup"

as the old wives mumble to us when we're sick. Heigho! would I were in
the little island well home again, though that were just their song of
welcome to me, as I am a Christian.'

'Tell me your name, friend,' said Farina.

'Guy's my name, young man: Goshawk's my title. Guy the Gosha