t had been kept
vacant and reserved for the Paladin's needs. At the end of it was a
platform ten or twelve feet wide, with a big chair and a small table on
it, and three steps leading up to it.

Among the wine-sippers were many familiar faces: the cobbler, the
farrier, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the armorer, the maltster, the
weaver, the backer, the miller's man with his dusty coat, and so on; and
conscious and important, as a matter of course, was the barber-surgeon,
for he is that in all villages. As he has to pull everybody's teeth and
purge and bleed all the grown people once a month to keep their health
sound, he knows everybody, and by constant contact with all sorts of folk
becomes a master of etiquette and manners and a conversationalist of
large facility. There were plenty of carriers, drovers, and their sort,
and journeymen artisans.

When the Paladin presently came sauntering indolently in, he was received
with a cheer, and the barber hustled forward and greeted him with several
low and most graceful and courtly bows, also taking his hand an touching
his lips to it. Then he called in a loud voice for a stoup of wine for
the Paladin, and when the host's daughter brought it up on the platform
and dropped her courtesy and departed, the barber called after her, and
told her to add the wine to his score. This won him ejaculations of
approval, which pleased him very much and made his little rat-eyes shine;
and such applause is right and proper, for when we do a liberal and
gallant thing it is but natural that we should wish to see notice taken
of it.

The barber called upon the people to rise and drink the Paladin's health,
and they did it with alacrity and affectionate heartiness, clashing their
metal flagons together with a simultaneous crash, and heightening the
effect with a resounding cheer. It was a fine thing to see how that young
swashbuckler had made himself so popular in a strange land in so little a
while, and without other helps to his advancement than just his tongue
and the talent to use it given him by God--a talent which was but one
talent in the beginning, but was now become ten through husbandry and the
increment and usufruct that do naturally follow that and reward it as by
a law.

The people sat down and began to hammer on the tables with their flagons
and call for "the King's Audience!--the King's Audience! --the King's
Audience!" The Paladin stood there in one of his best attitudes,