Dickon gazed in wonder at the queer figures upon the parchment. Then his slow mind recalled the archers talk of magic, and he let the thing drop, open and with crushed pages, flat to the ground.
The lad sprang up at this with a murmur of alarm, and lifted the fallen object, solicitously smoothing out the parchments and shutting the leather over them. Then he reached for the casket, and put it inside again, eying his companion with vexed regard meanwhile.
"It is ill to mar what thou canst not mend," he said sharply.
"There are more bolts to my bow, an you mean me harm," Dickon answered, with a stout voice enough, but much uncertainty within. He took up his weapon to point the words.
The lad in velvet laughed. "What harm could be in me?" he said, and laughed again. "Bolts and bows, forsooth! Why, thou couldst spoil me with thy thumb." And still he laughed on.
"Yon leathern gear – is it goodly?" Dickon pointed to the casket.
"What – my Troilus?" Looking into Dickon's honest face, he understood his fears, and answered gently: "Nay, ease thy mind. It is a book – a book not written, but made with types. It tells to the skilled eye a brave story – but not braver, good fellow, than to-day's tale of thee. Art a stout carle, by the rood! Who is thy master?"
Dickon bent his chin upon his throat to overlook the device stitched upon his breast, but did not reply. A formless idea crossed his brain that perchance one might live in forests without a lord. It was worth thinking upon.
"And by what mercy camest thou at my heels?" the lad pursued.
Then, as these words brought up before him the awful scene at the woodland's edge, he fell to shuddering and choked with sobs.
"My good old master, – to die thus foully, – oh, woe! woe!" he moaned, and put down his head again.
Dickon pricked up his ears at the word. "Had you then a master, too?" he asked, and on the instant there sprouted in his heart a kindlier feeling for the lad. They were more of a common clay, it seemed, than he had thought.
"But you have no badge!" he commented.
"Badge? Badge?" the boy said hesitatingly, and Dickon noted now a strangeness of sound in his speech which, the while he had held him to be of rank, had passed unheard.
"What means it – badge?" asked the lad; and when Dickon pointed to the two hares on his own breast, the stranger burst again into laughter. A droll boy this, surely, who could be so merry and so tearful all in the same breath.
"Nay, I wear no mans collar," he said at last; and then, in pity for Dickon's perplexity, explained. "The good old man, Geraldus Hansenius, was my master only in love and courtesy, and in that he taught me in all the deep mysteries of his craft.
"He brought me from my own land, and here, where Sir John gave us honor and fair lodgment, we printed the book. And now, lo! in this short hour Sir John and Geraldus are foully done to death, and Camber Dane is despoiled – and the Troilus and I are hiding for our lives, like hares in a thicket. Ach Gott! Ach Gott!"
At this there were more moans.
"No hare am I," said Dickon, stoutly, "but if they try me, more like a wolf. Pick me out these threads."
He knelt beside the lad, who with a bodkin from his doublet ripped one by one the hated lines that had shown Dickon to be evil Sir Watty's man.
Then Dickon stood upright, and filled himself with a great, deep breath. The new sense of liberty seemed to raise his stature and swell his girth. He took off his iron sallet, and shook his free head proudly, nearer to the sky than it had ever before been lifted.
"We will live in the greenwood," he said in bold, boyish confidence.
CHAPTER III.
A STRANGE CHRISTMAS EVE
When two nights and two days had passed, Dickon and Andreas found themselves on the furthermost edge of the forest. Here skirted the woodland a highroad which neither had seen before. Beyond this were a rolling moor country and distant mountains, the sight of which was strange to them; but house of any kind there was none.
When their eager gaze, sweeping all the prospect, had made certain that no habitation was to be seen, Dickon groaned deeply, and little Andreas wept outright.
As they stood thus, Andreas clenched his hands at his breast, lifting his white face upward toward the bare boughs. Then he closed his eyes, and staggering a single step, fell forward to the ground, and lay there on his face like a log.
Dickon lifted his comrade in his arms, and bore him back into the thicket. Out in the open where the two youths had viewed the highroad the earth was frozen stiff, and snow lay thin-spread upon it; but behind them, on the path they had made, lay warmer nooks sheltered by tangled shrubs.
To the first of these Dickon pushed his way, and putting the lad softly down, began gathering dry, dead leaves by armfuls and piling them over the senseless body. On these he laid branches, and then again more leaves, until only the boyish, sleeping face met the air.
Now he made another journey to the outer place which they had won, and gleaning from the ground the three things he had left there, brought them back to where the lad lay under his leaves, and put them down beside him. These were the crossbow, the book in its casket, and the mangled carcass of a boar which he had killed, but had eaten of more to his harm than good, since there was no fire with which to cook the meat.
Dickon looked down to his friend, and saw that the boy was awake, and sick unto death. Cold and hunger and the toil of wild wandering had dealt harshly with even Dickon's own tough English flesh and blood. They were killing the fragile lad from foreign parts.
"Do you get warmth?" he asked dolefully, as he had asked scores of other times.
For answer the lad closed his eyes and shook his head in weakness.
Then Dickon knelt down and did a thing strange to all his knowledge of customs. He kissed the pale forehead which lay half-hid among the leaves. Then, as if in shame, he sprang to his feet.
"Bide you here till I come," he said, and turning, strode off toward the open, with the crossbow under his arm.
For warmth's sake and the peril which brooded behind him, he swung himself forward at a swift pace down the highroad. The air and the movement kindled his blood a little.
A full league it seemed to him he must have tramped, over barren moorland and through winding defiles with steep, unfriendly sides of bare rock, before he came to anything that spoke of human habitation. Then, as the skies were darkening into twilight, he entered unawares into the deeper shadows of a great wall, gray and forbidding, rising above the highway like a part of the boulders themselves.
At the base of this, as if entering upon the heart of the earth, was a small, black door of wood, framed in frowning stone.
On this door of the monastery Dickon pounded with his fists, and with the handle of his weapon, and presently there came a sound as of bolts withdrawn. The door opened half-way, and a chalk-faced young friar in white gown and hood stood before him.
"Enter," this spectral figure said, and trembled with the cold.
"Nay, fire is what I seek," stammered Dickon, almost in fright at the ghost-like form before him, and at the strange sound of a tinkling bell echoing from the rocks overhead.
"Canst not wait till thou art dead for that?" the white-robed phantom said, in tones of earthly vexation. He would have shut the door at this, but that Dickon sprang forward, thrust his bow against the inner frame, and clutched the friar by the arm.
"Fire! fire!" he cried. "Give me that to kindle fire, or I kill you – like the others!"
The monk stood stock-still, and curled the thin corners of his lips in scorn at this rude boy, and held him with his bright, sneering gaze. Dickon looked into these sharp, cold eyes, and felt himself a noisy fool.
"Nay, father," he stumbled on, pleadingly, "if I get not a fire, he dies!"
"Hast thy head full of dead men, seemingly," the young Cistercian replied.
He cast his glance down over this rough visitor, and noting the blood-splashes upon his hose, lifted his brows in wrathful inquiry. Then he snatched up the crucifix from the end of the chain at his girdle, and thrust it swiftly into Dickon's face.
"Who art thou, churl?" he demanded. "Whose blood is this?"
Dickon's nerve sank into his shoes.
"A boar that I have slain, good father," he answered in a mumbling whimper, "and lack fire wherewith to roast it; and the raw flesh is ill food, and he can eat naught of it, and gets no warmth, and must die if I win not a fire."
At this the monk softened. He led Dickon into the outer porch, and gleaned the purport of his story. Only Dickon said nothing of the book or of the two men he had killed.
"Fire thou shalt have," the young monk said, more kindly, when Dickon's tale was finished. "But first go through the gates before thee to the hall, and take all thou wilt of meat and ale. None will deny thee. 'Tis the eve of holy Christmas, and though we fast, thou and thy kind may feed in welcome."
"It is only fire I seek," said Dickon, doggedly, though all his vitals clamored in revolt against the speech. "Food I will none till he hath supped."
"So be it," said the monk, and left Dickon alone under the groined archway in the growing darkness.
Presently he came again, and put flint and steel and tinder into the lad's hand. He gave him also a leathern bottle stopped with wax and a little cheese wrapped in fine straw.
"Bear these along," he said. "It is the Christmas eve. Peace be with you," and so motioned the boy away.
Dickon's tongue was not used to words of thanks, and he had turned in silence to go out when the monk called to him, and then came forward to the outer door.
"You were to kill me – like 'the others,'" he said, with a grim smile curling his lips. "What others?"
"Two of Sir Watty's men, whom I smote down as they would have fallen upon him," said Dickon, pride struggling with apprehension.
The monk smiled at this outright, and departing again abruptly, returned with a pasty in a dish, enfolded in cloths.
"Now God be with you!" he said, heartily. "Hither bring your strange gossip on the morrow, if he find his legs."
Once outside the rock-girt postern, Dickon set to running, his arms full with the burden of the friar's gifts, and his heart all aglow with joy. It was a wearisome enough ascent, and the darkness of even was drawing ever closer over the earth, and the lad's empty stomach cried aloud at every furlong for food; but still he pressed on.
When at last he had gained the point on the road whence his quest had begun, the light had altogether failed. Then only he struck his flint, and set fire to some leaves. From these he kindled a knot of dry branches, and with this for a torch pushed his way into the woods.
"Andreas," he called out, when at last he stood above his friend, "here is fire and food!"
The white face among the leaves was the color of the snow he had left behind him. The eyes were half-open, but no answering light came into them. The boy lay as if dead.
With a startled cry Dickon let fall his spoils, and dropping to his knees, lifted the other's head up against his waist. It twisted inertly upon the thin neck and hung forward. Was life truly gone?
Like one in a daze, Dickon laid the boy down again among the leaves, and rose to his feet, still holding the burning sticks in his hand. The flames came painfully near to his flesh before he started into sense again.
Then he swiftly built a fire in a cleft among the rocks at the end of the little hollow, piling dry wood and leaves upon it till the blaze lighted up everything about. This done, he knocked off the waxen cover of his leather bottle, cut out the stopper, and kneeling once more, put its mouth to the dying lad's lips.
Strange tears came into his eyes as, after only a brief moment, those of his friend opened in truth, and gazed wonderingly upward at the luminous volume of ascending smoke. Then the slight frame shuddered piteously with a recurring chill, and the dread sleep fell upon it once more.
Dickon dragged him to the fire, piling leaves behind for support, and holding the lad's hands almost into the flames, so desperate did the strait seem to be. Then he stripped off his own leathern jacket, and wrapped it about Andreas.
He heaped fresh fuel on the fire, he rubbed the slender limbs for warmth with his rough hands, he forced more of the wine-drink down the boy's throat – all at once, as it were, in a frenzy of resolve that death should at all hazards be fought off.
And so it came about, for presently Andreas was sitting propped up upon the mound of leaves, smiling faintly with pleasure at the new warmth in his veins, and sucking bare the last bird-bones from the pie.
Dickon gnawed ravenously upon the smoky and half-cooked piece of tough meat he had cut from the ham of the boar, and watched the sweet spectacle of his friend restored to life, in an abstraction of dumb joy.
Andreas lifted his hand in air, and uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"It is Christmas eve!" he said. "I had forgotten!"
"So said the friar," Dickon mumbled between mouthfuls, tearing at the food meanwhile with his teeth. "He was in two minds about having me flogged, but for that. The monks have a fear of the king, they say, and on the days he marks for them durst not break bread for themselves. Thus this friar must needs fast to-day – so he said. How could the king know, if he slipped in some food while-times? He hath not been in these parts this many years."
"It is not the king, Dickon," answered Andreas. "A greater than any king ordereth these matters."
"Aye, the lord of Warwick," said Dickon. "My father rode with him, in far countries, when he was lusty. But the king slew him years agone, in a battle by London town. Wist you not that?"
"Tut, tut," the lad in ragged velvet made reply, smiling at first, and then more gravely. "Your Warwick is dust and bones, as every man shall be, the king not less than the meanest knave. But God does not die, and He ruleth all things."
"Sir Watty swore ever by Him," said Dickon. "But He hath not once set foot in Shropshire, in my time."
Andreas lifted himself at this, with eyes marvelling at such ignorance.
"Oh, Dickon lad, thou hast the very mother's milk of learning to find thy way to," he cried, and crossed his knees by the ruddy blaze, tailor-fashion, to begin.
The story that he told to Dickon was such a one as never Christian child in these times needs to hear, but rather draws in from every source, unconsciously, like speech and the shapings of thought. But to Dickon it was brand new, since at Egswith no godly man had ever shown his face. He listened to it all with open mouth and brain.
As for Andreas, he grew presently conscious of fatigue, and lay back upon his couch of leaves as his narrative unfolded. Then, the instant spur of food and warmth becoming spent, his voice grew fainter, and in the returning weakness his thoughts wandered from the thread of the sublime story to tender memories of how it had been illumined and decked out in his old German home.
"Ach, lieber Tannenbaum!" he murmured, with the firelight in his dreamy eyes. "It was a sight to live for, Dickon – the beautiful fir tree before you, with burning candles fastened in among the branches, and Christmas gifts hanging underneath, – every little minute something new you found, – and father, mother, brothers, sisters, all in the happy ring around the tree, with joyful songs and good wishes – woe! woe! I shall never see it again!"
"That thou shalt, and hundreds of them," said Dickon, cheerily.
But Andreas shook his head in sadness, and gazed into the crackling blaze as though it were a tomb.
"Old Geraldus and I would have had a tree," he sighed at last. "Each year since we came out from Augsburg we made us one, and sang the dear old German songs, and gave each other gifts. And this year we were both to give this goodly 'Troilus' to Sir John – and lo! they are both murdered, dead, and I am following them, close at their heels – and 'Troilus' will come to naught. And never had more cunning and shapely work been done, not even in Augsburg!"
"Is it far – that 'Owg' – what name do you call it?" asked Dickon. "As far as London town?"
The lad smiled faintly from where he lay. "It is across the sea, and many days' journey still."
"And does the king come there oftener than into Shropshire?"
"Dull boy! There your king durst never come. It is not his country. There is an emperor, and then a Wittelsbach Duke, but even these may not come into Augsburg if the burghers say them nay. The tongue is different there from yours, and so, glory be to the saints, are the manners, too. There learning flourishes, and men are gentle, and books like poor Troilus yonder are monthly made by dozens."
"Wherefore came you hither, then?" queried Dickon, with rude islander logic.
"It was the madness in my master's head. He deemed that here he should be welcome, bringing a new craft to make knowledge common. But these be beasts here in Shropshire, not men. They desire not books, but only blood and battle and red meat."
"Men come by knowledge to their hurt," said Dickon. "There was a clerk turned thief in Egswith with Sir Watty, and he was skilled to fashion marks on paper so wise men might know their meaning – and him they hanged at Rednal for a rogue four winters syne."
"For that he was a robber, and no true clerk," retorted Andreas.
Dickon looked into the fire for answer, and then at the black, starless sky overhead. He rose, and busied himself for a time in gathering fresh fuel, and then in roughly wattling some side shelter at the back of the bed of leaves. Some vagrant flakes of snow sifted through the branches above, and he reflected upon the chances of making a roof on the morrow. Or doubtless it would be better to go farther back, and build more securely there.
He put the question to Andreas by way of talk, restoring the fire meanwhile. The German boy smiled in wonder.
"Why, on the morrow, if strength comes back to me, hie we to the good white friars. They bade you come, and me, too!"
Dickon's face clouded over.
"Nay, I'm for the greenwood," he said stubbornly. "I will wear no man's collar more, nor sleep under roof. To be free, here in the open, it maketh a new man of me. And so, an you leave me, here I abide alone, or in these parts."
"How should I leave thee, Dickon?" said the other, softly. "That could not be. But freedom lies not alone out under the skies, in wind and cold. Was any other more free than I, with my old master? Come, thou shalt be ruled by me – and we will make our way out from these ruffian parts together, and somewhere we shall light upon a gentle patron, and there I will carve new types and build a press, and thy stout arms shall turn the screw, and I will teach thee learning, and – "
He broke off all at once, and gazed wistfully upward at the mounting volume of smoke and snapping sparks for a long time in silence. Dickon looked on him, speechless but with great things dawning confusedly in his head.
CHAPTER IV.
UP IN THE WORLD
Save the crackling of flame, and the small sound of branches overhead that were swayed a little by the draught from the fire on the forest floor, Dickon heard nothing while he waited for Andreas to finish the matter of which he had been speaking.
For the rude smithy-bred boy there was little meaning in the other's promise to teach him learning. No more meaning was there for Dickon in the young scholar's craving for types and a press to begin printing anew.
But the promise that Andreas would not part from him lingered in Dickon's ears, and uplifted his heart as he waited reverentially to hear again the gentle, convinced, and loving accents of the German youth.
At last Andreas spoke – as if he had not paused, and yet with a strange new wailing weakness in his voice: —
"And if the saints willed, thus might we win our way back to Augsburg. But that may never be, for I shall die here, here where I lie, and thou wilt turn to wild beast or robber when I am gone, and brave, goodly Augsburg will press on, leading all men, with never a thought of poor little me, dead here in the forest."
Dickon would have spoken in homely protest, but the change on his friend's face scared him to dumbness. Not even the flame-light could make it ruddy now. In the eyes there was a dimmed, far-away look which chilled Dickon's blood.
"Aye, when I lie forgotten here," – the thin, saddened voice went on in increasing slowness, – "there the old gray walls and tiled gables will be, with the storks making their nests in the spring, and the convent boys singing at daybreak in the streets, and the good housewives stopping in the market-place on their way home from mass, and the smell of new grass and blossoms in the air … and when Christmas comes I shall not know it … these eyes shall not look again on the Tannenbaum. Woe! woe!"
"Is that the tree?" asked Dickon, some impulse to words and action stirring vaguely in his frightened heart.
"Aye," groaned Andreas, "the beautiful tree with candles blazing on its branches and shining gifts." He followed on in a weak murmuring of foreign words, seemingly without meaning.
Dickon bent one intent, long glance upon this childish, waxen face before him. Then he plucked a burning bough from the fire, and without a word pushed the bushes aside and plunged into the outer darkness of the forest.
After some time he returned, bearing an armful of rushes. He warmed himself for a moment, and then, seated so that Andreas might not observe his work, began with his knife to cut these down into lengths of a span, and to strip off all but a winding rim of their outer cover.
Then he hacked with his knife into the frozen boar's carcass. Cutting out portions of white, hard fat, he melted these a little at the fire, and then rolled them thinly between his palms about the trimmed rushes. This done, he flayed off a part of the boar's skin, scorched off the bristles, rubbed it all with ashes, and spreading it over his sallet, sliced it into a rude semblance of fine thongs.
Then, still uttering no word, he was gone again, once more bearing with him a lighted torch.
In front of Andreas, but to one side, as he lay in half trance and utter faintness watching the smoke, there rose at two rods' distance the dark outline of a fir tree, the lower parts of which were hidden by shrubs.
Suddenly the sick boy's gaze was diverted to the dim black cone of this tree, where a reddish radiance seemed spreading upward from the tangle underneath. Then a sparkling spot of white light made itself visible high up among the dusky branches – then another – and another. At last nearly a dozen there were, all brightly glowing like stars brought near.
Andreas gazed in languid marvelling at the development of this strange thing – as one quietly contemplates miracles in sleep. It seemed but a natural part of his dying vision of Augsburg – the Tannenbaum making itself weirdly real before his fading sight.
The rosy smoke parted to shape a frame for this mystic picture in its centre, and Andreas saw it all – the twinkling lights, the deep-shadowed lines of boughs, the engirdling wreaths of fiery vapor – as a part of the dreamland whose threshold he stood upon. And his heart sang softly within him at the sight.
Then all at once he awoke from the dream; for Dickon was standing over him, flushed with a rude satisfaction in his work, and saying: —
"Gifts had I none to hang, Andreas, save it were the bottle and what is left of the cheese. Look your fill at it, for boar's fat never yet was tallow, and the rushes are short-lived."
The dream mists cleared from the German boy's brain.
"Oh, it is thine!" he faintly murmured, in reviving comprehension. "Thou hast made it – for me!"
Dickon glanced out to where, in his eyes, some sorry dips guttered for a brief space on a tree-top. More than one of the lights was already flickering to collapse in the breeze.
"You said you never would see one again," he urged triumphantly. "Belike your speech about dying was no whit truer."
Andreas had no further words, but lifted his hand weakly upward, and Dickon knelt down and took it in his own hard palms.
Thus the two boys kept silence for a period – silence which spoke many things to both – and looked at the little rush-dips fluttering on the boughs against the curtain of black night.
Of a sudden, the stillness which had tenderly enwrapped them was roughly broken. If there had been warning sounds, the lads had missed them – for their hearts almost stopped beating with the shock that now befell.
A violent crushing of the bushes, a chance clank of metal – and two fierce-faced bowmen in half-armor stood in the firelight before their frightened gaze.
"Stir not – on your lives!" cried one of these strange intruders, with the cold menace of a pole-axe in his mailed hand. "What mummery is this?"
Somehow it dawned upon Dickon's consciousness that these warlike men, for all their terrifying mien, were as much frightened in their way as he was. This perception came doubtless from the lessons of a life spent with bold soldiers who yet trembled at sight of a will o' the wisp. He kept his jaw from knocking together with an effort, and asked as if at his ease:
"What mean you, good sir? No mummery is here."
"There! there!" shouted the other man-at-arms, pointing with his spear to where the rush-lights – or what remained of them – twinkled fitfully in the tree.
"Oh, that," said Dickon, with nonchalance. "It is a trick of foreign parts, made by me to gladden the heart of this poor lad, my master, who lies here sore stricken with sickness. Wist you not it is Christmas? This is our Tonnybow, meet for such a time."
The two men looked sharply at the boys, and then, after a murmured consultation, one turned on his heel and disappeared. The other, espying the leathern bottle, grew friendlier, and lifted it to his lips by an undivided motion from the ground. Then he said, drawing nearer to the blaze and heaving a long, comforted breath: —
"Whose man art thou?"
"This is my master," replied Dickon, with his thumb toward Andreas, "who was most foully beset by robbers, and is like now to die if he win not help and shelter."
"That shall be as my lord duke willeth," said the soldier.
As he spoke, the sound of more clanking armor fell upon the air. In a moment a half-dozen mailed men stood at the entrance to the copse, gazing in with curious glances.
Behind them were men with flaring torches, and in their front was the stately figure of a young knight, tall and proudly poised. A red cloak and fur tippet were cast over his shining corselet.
This young man had a broad brow under his hanging hair, and grave, piercing eyes, which passed over Dickon as mere clay, and fastened a shrewd gaze on the lad in velvet.
"It is the German gift-tree," he said to those behind him, whom Dickon saw now to be gentles and no common soldiers. "I have heard oft of this, but looked not to see it first in Shropshire. What do you here?" he asked at Dickon, rather than of him, and with such a flash of sharp, commanding eyes that the lad's tongue thickened, and he could make no answer.
Andreas it was who spoke, when words failed Dickon, in a voice firmer than before, and lifting himself on his elbow.
"He saved my life, my lord," he said. "And I am dying, I think, and this tree the good fellow tricked out to please my sick fancy. And I pray you, for a dead lad's sake, have a care for him when I am gone."
The knight, with the promise of a smile on his straight lips, looked from eager, fragile Andreas to burly, hang-dog Dickon, and back again.
"Art from the German countries?" he asked. "And how here, of all spots under the sky?"
"I am Andreas Mayer, from Augsburg," said the lad, "driven hence by robbers from the house of Sir John Camber, who was slain along with my good master, Geraldus Hansenius."
The young knight took a hasty step forward, and peered down upon the lad.
"Geraldus of the types and press – the printer?" he asked hurriedly. "And thou art skilled in his craft?"
"This is even more my handiwork than his," replied Andreas, with a boy's pride, reaching out for the casket containing his beloved "Troilus."
Dickon undid the cover, and handed out the volume to the young noble, who took it with a swift gesture, and turned over here and there a page, bending the book to the firelight and uttering exclamations of delight. Suddenly he closed the book, and gave it back to Dickon to replace in the casket.
"I thank thee, Sir Francis," he said to one of those behind him. "But for thy wonder at the lights in yon tree, we had passed this treasure by. Ho there, Poynter! Fashion me a litter on the moment, and we will bear this lad onward to the abbey as we go. Let some one ride on to say I am belated; hasten the others."
Then he took the precious volume from its casket once more, and mused upon its pages again, and spoke of them to the gentlemen closest behind him. Again and again he put pointed questions to young Andreas upon the method of their making.
"Thou hast heard of Master Caxton?" he asked the German boy.
"Aye, he of Bruges, and I have seen his work. Geraldus did as fair."
"Thou shalt help Caxton, then, to do fairer still. He is of Bruges no longer, saints be praised, but practises his good craft in his own native England now this two months syne at my own house in Westminster; and he will fall upon thy neck in joy when I do bring thee to him."
The boy's eyes sparkled with elation. Forgetting his weakness, he sat upright.
"I would not be over-bold," he said, "but with these mine hands have I held proofs for the Emperor to read from, and there is none of higher state in this thy island of a surety. Art thou the duke of these parts?"
"Rather a duke who fain would be of all parts," the young knight answered, and then smiled to note that the quip was lost upon the foreign lad. He made a little movement of his hand to signify that he would be no longer unknown, and one of the others informed the questioner.