n good earnest.

"Lordamercy! do you think I would sit at meat with a rebel? Have I
not set him a room apart, to spare myself the sight of him? Serve him
in his own rooms, but look you serve him well."

Dame Satchell wagged her head with an air of the deepest
significance.

"I warrant you," she muttered, "he commended my soused cucumbers."

And so nodding and chuckling she moved like a great galleon over the
green, and soon was out of sight. The moment her broad back was well
turned, Tiffany permitted herself to utter the protests which had
been boiling within her.

"To listen to Dame Satchell, one would think that no man had ever
seen a horse or known one dish from another before this."

Brilliana gave her handmaid a glance of something near akin to
displeasure.

"I think you all talk and think too much of the gentleman. I see
little to praise in him save a certain coolness in peril. Let us have
no more of him. We must use him well, but he will soon be gone, and a
good riddance. Is my lute tuned, Tiffany?"

Tiffany answered "Ay," and her lady took up the lute and picked at
a tune, yawning. The world seemed to have grown very tedious all of
a sudden, and it did not seem so pleasant as she deemed it would
prove to sit again in the yew circle and sing. She began a song or
two, to leave each unfinished with a yawn, and, because yawning is
contagious, Tiffany yawned too, discreetly behind her fingers. It
was while Tiffany looked away to conceal a vaster yawn than its
fellows, too vast for masking with finger-tips, that she saw a
soldierly figure coming across the garden towards the pleasaunce.

"My lady," she cried, turning to Brilliana, "here comes Captain
Halfman. Let us ask him his mind as to the Parliament man."

Brilliana's face brightened. Here was company, and good company. She
had believed him too busy to be seen so soon, for she had bade him
see about raising a troop of volunteers in the village, and she
turned round readily to greet her companion of the siege.

Through the yew portal Halfman came, gravity reigning in his eyes and
slaking their wild fire. He saluted Brilliana with the deep reverence
he always showed to his fair general. Brilliana turned to her
adjutant eagerly:

"Master Halfman, Master Halfman," she cried, "how do you measure our
rebel?"

Halfman's gravity lightened amazingly at the thought of his prisoner.

"I take him," he answered, emphatically, "for as proper a fellow as
ever