that prowls under heaven
Stab one for getting it? Had he wished power,
The thing was in the market-place for sale
At stated rates--so much for a man's soul!
His was a haughty spirit that bent not,
And one to rise had need to cringe and creep.
So had his brother into favor crawled,
Like slug into the bosom of a rose,
And battened in the sun. At thought of him,
Forgotten for a moment, Wyndham winced,
And felt his wound. "Why bides he not in Town
With his blond lovelock and wench-luring ways--
There runs his fox! What foul fiend sends him here
To Wyndham Towers? Is there not space enough
In this our England he needs crowd me so?
Has London sack upon his palate staled,
That he must come to sip my Devon cream?
Are all maids shut in nunneries save this one?
What magic philtre hath he given her
To thaw the ice that melted not for me?
Rich is he now that at his setting forth
Had not two silver pieces to his purse.
It is his brave apparel dazzles her.
Thus puts he bound and barrier to my love.
Another man were he abused as I...
I'll have no more of him! If I but dared--
Nay, I dare not. I have fawn's blood, I think;
I would, and dare not!" Thrice the hooded clock
Solemnly, like some old Carthusian monk
With meagre face half seen beneath his cowl,
Intoned the quarter. Memory went not back
When this was not a most familiar sound,
Yet as each stroke on the dead silence fell
Wyndham turned, startled. Now the sanguine moon,
To clouded opal changing momently,
Rose sheer above the pine-trees' ragged edge,
And through the wide-flung casement reaching hand
With cold and spectral finger touched the plates
Of his dead father's armor till it gleamed
One mass of silver. There it stood complete,
That august panoply which once struck dread
To foemen on the sunny plains of France,
Menacing, terrible, this instant stood,
With vizard down and jousting-lance at charge
As if that crumbled knight were quick within.

A footfall on the shingle walk below
Grated, a footfall light as Mercury's
Disdaining earth, and Wyndham in the dark,
Half crouched upon the settle with his nails
Indenting the soft wood-work, held his breath.
Then suddenly a blind rage like a flame
Swept over