ket he carried, "it's my girl's wedding-day too! I had clean
forgot. Bless my soul!"

"Y--yes, papa," faltered Elaine.

"And you, young fellow!" her father called out to Geoffrey with lusty
heartiness. "You're a lucky rogue, sir."

"Yes, sir," said Geoffrey, but not gayly. He was wondering how it felt
to be going mad. Amid his whirling thoughts burned the one longing to
hide Elaine safe in his arms and tell her it would all come right
somehow. A silence fell on the group as they walked. Even to the
Baron, who was not a close observer, the present reticence of these
two newly-betrothed lovers was apparent. He looked from one to the
other, but in the face of neither could he see beaming any of the soft
transports which he considered were traditionally appropriate to the
hour. "Umph!" he exclaimed; "it was never like this in my day." Then
his thoughts went back some forty years, and his eyes mellowed from
within.

"We'll cook the Dragon first," continued the old gentleman, "and then,
sir, you and my girl shall be married. Ha! ha! a great day for
Wantley!" The Baron swung his bucket, and another jet of its contents
slid out. He was growing more and more delighted with himself and his
daughter and her lover and everybody in the world. "And you're a stout
rogue, too, sir," he said. "Built near as well as an Englishman, I
think. And that's an excellent thing in a husband."

The Baron continued to talk, now and then almost falling in the snow,
but not permitting such slight mishaps to interrupt his discourse,
which was addressed to nobody and had a general nature, touching upon
dragons, marriages, Crusades, and Burgundy. Could he have seen
Geoffrey's more and more woe-begone and distracted expression, he
would have concluded his future son-in-law was suffering from some
sudden and momentous bodily ill.

The young man drew near the Dragon. "What shall we do?" he said in a
whisper. "Can I steal the keys of the pit? Can we say the Dragon
escaped?" The words came in nervous haste, wholly unlike the bold
deliberateness with which the youth usually spoke. It was plain he was
at the end of his wits.

"Why, what ails thee?" inquired Sir Francis in a calm and unmoved
voice. "This is a simple matter."

His tone was so quiet that Geoffrey stared in amazement.

"But yonder pit!" he said. "We are ruined!"

"Not at all," Sir Francis replied. "Truly thou art a deep thinker!
First a woman and now thine enemy has to assist thy dist