d. "It was told
me, or I dreamed it, that you were in Ireland."

"I was, may God and St. George forgive me!" Arden answered, with
determined lightness. "Little to be got and hard in the getting! Even
the Muses were not bountiful, for my men and I wellnigh ate Edmund
Spenser out of Kilcolman. He sends you greeting, Mortimer; swears he is
no jealous poet, and begs you to take up that old scheme which he
forsook of King Arthur and his Knights--"

"He is kind," said Ferne, slowly. "I am well fitted to write of old,
heroic deeds. Nor is there any doubt that the man-at-arms who hath lost
his uses in the struggle of this world should take delight in quiet
exile, sating his soul with the pomp of dead centuries."

"Nor he nor I meant offence," began Arden, hastily.

"I know you did not," the other answered. "I have grown churlish of
late. Robin! a stirrup-cup for Master Arden!"

A silence followed, then said Arden: "And if I want it not, Mortimer?
And if, old memories stirring, I have ridden from London to Ferne House
that I might see how thou wert faring?"

"Thou seest," said Ferne.

"I see how bitterly thou art changed."

"Ay, I am changed," answered Sir Mortimer. "Your thought was kindly, and
I thank you for it. Once these doors opened wide to all who knocked, but
it is not so now. Ride on to the town below the hill, and take your rest
in the inn! Your bedfellow may be Iscariot, but if you know him not, and
as yet he knows himself but slenderly, you may sleep without
dreaming. Ride on!"

"The inn is full," answered Arden, bluntly. "This week the Queen rests
in her progress with your neighbor, the Earl, and the town will be
crowded with mummers and players, grooms, cutpurses, quacksalvers, and
cockatrices, travellers and courtiers whom the north wind hath nipped!
'Sblood, Mortimer, I had rather sleep in this grave old place!"

"With Judas who knows himself at last?" asked Ferne, coldly, without
moving from his place. The door opened, and old Humphrey, shuffling
across the floor to the table, placed thereon a dish of cakes and a
great tankard of sack, then as he turned away cast a backward glance
upon his master's face. Arden noted the look, that there was in it fear,
overmastering ancient kindness, and withal a curiosity as ignoble as it
was keen. Suddenly, as though the fire of that knowledge had leaped to
his own heart from that of his host, he knew in every fibre how
intolerable was the case of the master of the