silence came once more upon the house.

III

Three o'clock went into four. The room paled, the dark outside was
shot through with damp and chill, and Wessel, cupping his brain in his
hands, bent low over his table, tracing through the pattern of knights
and fairies and the harrowing distresses of many girls. There were
dragons chortling along the narrow street outside; when the sleepy
armorer's boy began his work at half-past five the heavy clink and
clank of plate and linked mail swelled to the echo of a marching
cavalcade.

A fog shut down at the first flare of dawn, and the room was grayish
yellow at six when Wessel tiptoed to his cupboard bedchamber and
pulled open the door. His guest turned on him a face pale as parchment
in which two distraught eyes burned like great red letters. He had
drawn a chair close to Wessel's _prie-dieu_ which he was using as
a desk; and on it was an amazing stack of closely written pages. With
a long sigh Wessel withdrew and returned to his siren, calling himself
fool for not claiming his bed here at dawn.

The dump of boots outside, the croaking of old beldames from attic to
attic, the dull murmur of morning, unnerved him, and, dozing, he
slumped in his chair, his brain, overladen with sound and color,
working intolerably over the imagery that stacked it. In this restless
dream of his he was one of a thousand groaning bodies crushed near the
sun, a helpless bridge for the strong-eyed Apollo. The dream tore at
him, scraped along his mind like a ragged knife. When a hot hand
touched his shoulder, he awoke with what was nearly a scream to find
the fog thick in the room and his guest, a gray ghost of misty stuff,
beside him with a pile of paper in his hand.

"It should be a most intriguing tale, I believe, though it requires
some going over. May I ask you to lock it away, and in God's name let
me sleep?"

He waited for no answer, but thrust the pile at Wessel, and literally
poured himself like stuff from a suddenly inverted bottle upon a couch
in the corner, slept, with his breathing regular, but his brow
wrinkled in a curious and somewhat uncanny manner.

Wessel yawned sleepily and, glancing at the scrawled, uncertain first
page, he began reading aloud very softly:

_The Rape of Lucrece

"From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathing Tarquin leaves the Roman host--"_

"O RUSSET WITCH!"

Merlin Grai