e to the great gate of the
courtyard. It was kept by soldiers, and superintended by a pompous
major-domo, glittering in an embroidered collar and a gold chain of
office, and holding a white staff with a gold knob. There was a crowd of
persons at the gate endeavouring to soften this official rock. They came
up in turn like ripples, and retired as such in turn. It cost Gerard a
struggle to get near him, and when he was within four heads of the
gate, he saw something that made his heart beat; there was Peter, with
Margaret on his arm, soliciting humbly for entrance.

"My cousin the alderman is not at home; they say he is here."

"What is that to me, old man?"

"If you will not let us pass in to him, at least take this leaf from my
tablet to my cousin. See, I have written his name; he will come out to
us.

"For what do you take me? I carry no messages, I keep the gate."

He then bawled, in a stentorian voice, inexorably:

"No strangers enter here, but the competitors and their companies."

"Come, old man," cried a voice in the crowd, "you have gotten your
answer; make way."

Margaret turned half round imploringly:

"Good people, we are come from far, and my father is old; and my cousin
has a new servant that knows us not, and would not let us sit in our
cousin's house."

At this the crowd laughed hoarsely. Margaret shrank as if they had
struck her. At that moment a hand grasped hers--a magic grasp; it felt
like heart meeting heart, or magnet steel. She turned quickly round at
it, and it was Gerard. Such a little cry of joy and appeal came from her
bosom, and she began to whimper prettily.

They had hustled her and frightened her, for one thing; and her cousin's
thoughtlessness, in not even telling his servant they were coming,
was cruel; and the servant's caution, however wise and faithful to her
master, was bitterly mortifying to her father and her. And to her so
mortified, and anxious and jostled, came suddenly this kind hand and
face. "Hinc illae lacrimae."

"All is well now," remarked a coarse humourist; "she hath gotten her
sweetheart."

"Haw! haw! haw!" went the crowd.

She dropped Gerard's hand directly, and turned round, with eyes flashing
through her tears:

"I have no sweetheart, you rude men. But I am friendless in your boorish
town, and this is a friend; and one who knows, what you know not, how to
treat the aged and the weak."

The crowd was dead silent. They had only been thoughtless, and