"Were I but young for thee, as I haz been,
We should have been gallopin' down in your green.
And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea;
And ah, gin I were but young for thee!"

Of a sudden he sat up stiffly, at the sound of a tap-tap on the
window-pane behind him.

Yes, decidedly the sound came from the window. The wind--as Archelaus
had said--was rising; but this was no wind. Someone stood outside there
in the darkness. He sprang up, stepped to the casement and threw it
open. For a moment his eyes distinguished nothing. He peered again and
drew back a little as a figure stepped close to the sill, out of the
night.

"You!"

"Who else?" answered Vashti, with a little laugh. "Give me your hand,
please." He stretched it out obediently, and she took it and clambered
in over the sill.

"It is cold outside," she announced, looking around her with something
between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same
furred cloak in which she had come ashore from the _Milo_. Spray clung
to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the
lamplight.

"The wind has been getting up ever since sundown," she announced. "I
have had a pretty stiff crossing; but the boat is all right, under the
Keg of Butter." Then, as he still stared at her, "You don't keep too
warm a fire, my friend."

"I had given you up, and was getting ready for bed."

"Then you expected me? The guitar has come?"

Before he could answer she had caught sight of it, and picking it up
from the arm-chair where the Commandant had dropped it, settled herself
and laid the instrument across her lap.

"Also," she went on, throwing back her cloak, while she examined and
tightened the strings, "I will confess that your guest is hungry." She
looked up with a laugh. "In fact I came not only to fetch my guitar,
but to sup with you and tell you of my doings."

The Commandant turned to the door. His face had suddenly grown gray and
desperate.

"Ah, yes--supper, to be sure!" he said, and strode from the room.

As the latch fell behind him, Vashti glanced over her shoulder, put the
guitar aside, and arose to stir the fire. The poker plunged into a heap
of flaked ashes. "Paper? But the whole grate is choked with it. And,
what is more, the whole room smells of burnt paper."

She turned about, and, with her back to the hearth, surveyed the room
suspiciously. Her gaze fell upon the waste-paper basket, heaped high
and brimming over w