t hear, sir, the whistling and the
laughter and the sound of the falling trees, that merry time when Smith
made axemen of all our fine gentlemen?"

"Ay, Diccon," I said. "And the sound of the water that was dashed down
the sleeve of any that were caught in an oath."

He laughed like a little child. "It is well that I was n't a gentleman,
and had not those trees to fell, or I should have been as wet as any
merman.... And Pocahontas, the little maid... and how blue the sky was,
and how glad we were what time the Patience and Deliverance came in!"

His voice failed, and for a minute I thought he was gone; but he had
been a strong man, and life slipped not easily from him. When his eyes
opened again he knew me not, but thought he was in some tavern, and
struck with his hand upon the ground as upon a table, and called for the
drawer.

Around him were only the stillness and the shadows of the night, but
to his vision men sat and drank with him, diced and swore and told wild
tales of this or that. For a time he talked loudly and at random of the
vile quality of the drink, and his viler luck at the dice; then he began
to tell a story. As he told it, his senses seemed to steady, and he
spoke with coherence and like a shadow of himself.

"And you call that a great thing, William Host?" he demanded. "I can
tell a true tale worth two such lies, my masters. (Robin tapster, more
ale! And move less like a slug, or my tankard and your ear will cry,
'Well met!') It was between Ypres and Courtrai, friends, and it's nigh
fifteen years ago. There were fields in which nothing was sowed because
they were ploughed with the hoofs of war horses, and ditches in which
dead men were thrown, and dismal marshes, and roads that were no roads
at all, but only sloughs. And there was a great stone house, old and
ruinous, with tall poplars shivering in the rain and mist. Into this
house there threw themselves a band of Dutch and English, and hard
on their heels came two hundred Spaniards. All day they besieged that
house,--smoke and flame and thunder and shouting and the crash of
masonry,--and when eventide was come we, the Dutch and the English,
thought that Death was not an hour behind."

He paused, and made a gesture of raising a tankard to his lips. His
eyes were bright, his voice was firm. The memory of that old day and its
mortal strife had wrought upon him like wine.

"There was one amongst us," he said, "he was our captain, and it's of
hi