fare for all
that."

* * * * *

There then lay the choice before this lad, and surely it was as hard a
choice as ever a man had to make. On the one side lay such an excitement
as he had never yet known--for Anthony was no merely mad fool--a path,
too, that gave him hopes of Marjorie, that gave him an escape from home
without any more ado, a task besides which he could tell himself
honestly was, at least, for the cause that lay so near to Marjorie's
heart, and was beginning to lie near his own. And on the other there was
open to him that against which he had fought now day after day, in
misery--a life that had no single attraction to the natural man in him,
a life that meant the loss of Marjorie for ever.

The colour died from his lips as he considered this. Surely all lay
Anthony's way: Anthony was a gentleman like himself; he would do nothing
that was not worthy of one.... What he had said of warfare was surely
sound logic. Were they not already at war? Had not the Queen declared
it? And on the other side--nothing. Nothing. Except that a voice within
him on that other side cried louder and louder--it seemed in despair:
"This is the way; walk in it."

"Come," whispered Anthony again.

Robin stood up; he made as if to speak; then he silenced himself and
began to walk to and fro in the little room. He could hear voices from
the room beneath--Anthony's men talking there no doubt. They might be
his men, too, at the lifting of a finger--they and Dick. There were the
horses waiting without; he heard the jingle of a bit as one tossed his
head. Those were the horses that would go back to Dethick and Derby,
and, may be, half over England.

He walked to and fro half a dozen times without speaking, and, if he had
but guessed it, he might have been comforted to know that his manhood
flowed in upon him, as a tide coming in over a flat beach. These
instants added more years to him than as many months that had gone
before. His boyhood was passing, since experience and conflict, whether
it end in victory or defeat, give the years to a man far more than the
passing of time. So in God's sight Robin added many inches to the
stature of his spirit in this little parlour of Froggatt.

Yet, though he conquered then, he did not know that he conquered. He
still believed, as he turned at last and faced his friend, that his mind
was yet to make up, and his whisper was harsh and broken.

"I do not know," he