with her cloak drawn about her face, but we clasped hands,
and each knew the other for his friend indeed. They were gone, the
gaoler closing and locking the door behind them. As for me, I went back
to the settle beneath the window, and, falling on my knees beside it,
buried my face in my arms.

CHAPTER XXIX IN WHICH I KEEP TRYST

THE sun dropped below the forest, blood red, dyeing the river its own
color. There were no clouds in the sky,--only a great suffusion of
crimson climbing to the zenith; against it the woods were as black as
war paint. The color faded and the night set in, a night of no wind and
of numberless stars. On the hearth burned a fire. I left the window and
sat beside it, and in the hollows between the red embers made pictures,
as I used to make them when I was a boy.

I sat there long. It grew late, and all sounds in the town were hushed;
only now and then the "All's well!" of the watch came faintly to my
ears. Diccon lodged with me; he lay in his clothes upon a pallet in the
far corner of the room, but whether he slept or not I did not ask. He
and I had never wasted words; since chance had thrown us together again
we spoke only when occasion required.

The fire was nigh out, and it must have been ten of the clock when, with
somewhat more of caution and less of noise than usual, the key grated
in the lock; the door opened, and the gaoler entered, closing it
noiselessly behind him. There was no reason why he should intrude
himself upon me after nightfall, and I regarded him with a frown and an
impatience that presently turned to curiosity.

He began to move about the room, making pretense of seeing that there
was water in the pitcher beside my pallet, that the straw beneath the
coverlet was fresh, that the bars of the window were firm, and ended by
approaching the fire and heaping pine upon it. It flamed up brilliantly,
and in the strong red light he half opened a clenched hand and showed
me two gold pieces, and beneath them a folded paper. I looked at his
furtive eyes and brutal, doltish face, but he kept them blank as a wall.
The hand closed again over the treasure within it, and he turned away
as if to leave the room. I drew a noble--one of a small store of gold
pieces conveyed to me by Rolfe--from my pocket, and stooping made it
spin upon the hearth in the red firelight. The gaoler looked at it
askance, but continued his progress toward the door. I drew out its
fellow, set it too to spinn