‘A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!’ exclaimed the stranger. ‘Then, I was going to say--tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk. Only to wealth, or high baronry, will her father give her!’ The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won! ‘Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I should say, wait a while and watch your chance. But you’re a boy of pluck: I serve in the Kaiser’s army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be here in three days. If you ‘re of that mind then, I doubt little you may get posted well: but, look again! there’s a ripe brew yonder. Marry, you may win your spurs this night even; who knows?--‘S life! there’s a tall fellow joining those two lurkers.’ ‘Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?’ ‘Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year’s apprenticeship: “I learnt to watch the rats and mice At play, with never a candle-end. They play’d so well; they sang so nice; They dubb’d me comrade; called me friend!” So says the ballad of our red-beard king’s captivity. All evil has a good: “When our toes and chins are up, Poison plants make sweetest cup” as the old wives mumble to us when we’re sick. Heigho! would I were in the little island well home again, though that were just their song of welcome to me, as I am a Christian.’ ‘Tell me your name, friend,’ said Farina. ‘Guy’s my name, young man: Goshawk’s my title. Guy the Goshawk! so they called me in my merry land. The cap sticks when it no longer fits. Then I drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a feather. Now, what would be my nickname? “A change so sad, and a change so bad, Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing: Change is a curse, for it’s all for the worse: Age creeps up, and youth is flying!” and so on, with the old song. But here am I, and yonder’s a game that wants harrying; so we’ll just begin to nose about them a bit.’ He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out of the moonlight. The two figures and the taller one were evidently observing them; for they also changed their position and passed behind an angle of the Cathedral. ‘Tell me how the streets cross all round the Cathedral you know the city,’ said the stranger, holding out his hand. Farina traced with his finger a rough map of the streets on the stranger’s hand. ‘Good! that’s how my lord always marks the battlefield, and makes me show him the enemy’s posts. Forward, this way!’