The traveler drank copiously of his second pot of ale before he answered. And when answer he did it was in the rather surly manner of one who strongly desires to keep his own counsel and yet is not well enough trained in the art of politeness to be able to keep it gracefully. “That’s my affair,” he said bluntly. The player was too wise a man to pursue his inquiry at the moment. But by now his curiosity was fully engaged. There was a mystery here. And mystery of any sort was apt to engage that subtle mind. When he had first set eyes on that picturesque pair of young vagabonds he had been strongly inclined to believe that they were other than they seemed. Now this man’s coming, his agitation and his secrecy confirmed him in that theory. Clearly there was a good deal more in this matter than met the eye. The player was convinced that he had seen both these ragged robbins before. And in some vague way he felt he had seen them in circumstances and surroundings wholly different from those in which they were at present. He knew how to keep his own counsel, however. It was left to the traveler himself to renew the topic. And this the man presently did, and in the manner of one who against his natural judgment is driven by some remorseless, some irresistible force. “Did you say you _had_ seen a pair o’ gypsies pass along the road?” he asked. “I say neither that I have nor that I have not,” said the player. “Still, if you care to tell me more it is possible that I may be able to help you. But,” he added, with well-assumed indifference, “after all, it is hardly likely that the persons I have in mind are those whom you are seeking.” The man hesitated as one impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Evidently he was very loath to tell all he knew. Yet at the same time he realized that the information he sought could only be won by a measure of frankness on his own part. After a careful weighing of the pros and cons of the matter he seemed reluctantly to conclude that his silence might lose him more than it would gain. “I know not who you are,” he said at last. “But you have a fair-seeming air and the face of an honest man. And God send you are all of what you appear, for it is a very strange and grievous story that I have to tell.” The traveler spoke in the manner of one who is entirely desperate. He seemed to have been driven to the limit of his mental as well as his physical endurance. In the face of the player was that beacon of true sympathy which is as a talisman in the sight of all men. He had the power to put himself in the place of others. And here was a kindness, a candor, an openness for all men to read, and reading for all men to trust implicitly.