In flame-colored satin he was clad, which shimmered with each movement
like a high flame, and his countenance had throughout the color and the
glow of amber. His eyes were dark and very tender, and the tears
somehow had come to Maudelain's eyes because of a sudden and great love
for this tall stranger. "Eh, from the dead to the dead I travel, as
ever, with a message and a token. My message runs, _Time is, O fellow
satrap!_ and my token is this."

And in this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a golden
cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow serpent in
Maudelain's palm. "And yet five years ago," he mused, "this hair was
turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary
puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled
cloak waver and spread like ink, and the white parchment slowly
dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained
the lock of yellow hair.

"O my only friend," said Maudelain, "I may not comprehend, but I know
that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me." Hair by hair he
scattered what he held upon the floor. "_Time is!_ and I have not need
of any token wherewith to spur my memory." He prized up a corner of
the hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a
horse and a sword.

At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in this novel guise. It was
two weeks later when he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the
same morning the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to
consider...

_Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain's successful imposture
of Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their physical
resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are now,
however, tolerably notorious. It would seem evident, from the Argument
of the story in hand, that Nicolas attributes a large part of this
mysterious business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King
Richard's infant wife. And (should one have a taste for the deductive)
the foregoing mention of Bembo, when compared with_ "THE STORY OF THE
SCABBARD," _would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in
the affair_.

_It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this
Edward Maudelain was eventually substituted for his younger brother.
Nicolas, if you are to believe his_ "EPILOGUE," _had the best of
reasons for knowing that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Cas