r that, too.

"We waste time," she cried, impatiently, "with any other business
than your swift submission."

Then as she saw him make an amiably protesting gesture she raged at
him with a rising voice.

"Oh, if you knew how hard it is for me to stand in the same room with
a renegade traitor you would, if such as you remember courtesy, be
brief in your errand."

The man showed no consciousness of the insult in her words and in her
manner save than by a courteous inclination of the head and a few
words of quiet speech.

"Much may be pardoned to so brave a lady."

Brilliana struck her hand angrily upon the table once and again.

"For God's sake do not praise me!" she almost screamed, "or I shall
hate myself. Your errand, your errand, your errand!"

The enemy was provokingly imperturbable.

"You have a high spirit," he said, "that must compel admiration from
all. That is why I would persuade you to wisdom. I came hither from
Cambridge by order of Colonel Cromwell."

Brilliana's lips tightened at the sound of the name which the envoy
pronounced with so much reverence.

"The rebel member for Cambridge," she sneered--"the mutinous brewer.
Are you a vassal of the man of beer?"

There was a quiet note of protest in the reply of the envoy.

"Colonel Cromwell is not a brewer, though he would be no worse a man
if he were. I am honored in his friendship, in his service. He is a
great man and a great Englishman."

"And what," Brilliana asked, "has this great man to do with Harby
that he sends you here?"

"He sends me here," the Puritan answered, "to haul down your flag."

"That you shall never do," Brilliana answered, steadily, "while there
is a living soul in Harby."

The Puritan protested with appealing hands.

"You are in the last straits for lack of food, for lack of fuel, for
lack of powder."

Brilliana made a passionate gesture of denial.

"You are as ignorant as insolent," she asserted. "Loyalty House lacks
neither provisions nor munitions of war."

There was a kind of respectful pity in the stranger's face as he
watched the wild, bright girl and hearkened to the vain, brave words.

"Nay, now--" he began, out of the consciousness of his own truer
knowledge, but what he would have said was furiously interrupted by a
volume of strange sounds from the adjoining banqueting-hall. There
was a rattle and clink as of many pewter mugs banged lustily upon an
oaken table; there was a shrill explosion of laug