“Would, sir, that I could, but I know not where the master is. And who, may I ask, are you, that show so deep an interest?” “Not one to be feared,” returned Marlowe, smiling; “an idle poet who has sung of braver men than his eyes have yet beheld, and would see a man still braver than the song—Kyt Marlowe, at your service, good my Rouse,” and so saying, the poet, with a hand through the big soldier’s arm, led the way from the shop out to the High Street of Southwark. “Had you not another comrade in the wars, a vagabond of most preposterous paunch and waddling legs? I have heard that he, too, follows milord, the Wolf.” “There is such an one,” said Rouse, “but, alack! he also is missing. I pray you, though, call not our leader ‘Wolf’ again; none save fools and his enemies so name him.” “But I have heard that he is ferocious as a wolf, lean and very gray. The sobriquet is not ill-fitting.” “Nay,” said the soldier, “in truth it fits most aptly in description of his looks, for though he is but five-and-thirty, his head and beard are grizzled, that before were black as night.” “’Tis not strange,” observed the poet, leading his new acquaintance toward a favorite hostelry; “campaigning in the South ages many a man before his time.” “Ay, but that is not all.” “What more, then?” “It is briefly told,” answered the soldier. “His father was sent by her Majesty, our queen, with messages to Henry of Navarre, in whose army we two fought side by side. The envoy and his wife, who were passing through Paris—” “What!” interrupted the poet, “were _they_ his parents? I had forgot the story. It was the night when Papists murdered Huguenots, the night of St. Bartholomew. An Englishman and his wife were slain ere their son, who had come from the South to warn them, could intervene. He saw his mother struck down, saw the sword and the bared breast in the glare of a dozen torches, and saw his father killed, too, after a brief struggle. Then the youth, who had cut his way nearer to the scene, found himself beset on all sides by a bristling thicket of steel that no man could divide. He fell. The Catholics laughed and left him for dead across the bodies of his parents. But the lad was not so easily undone. He rose, despite a wound beneath the heart, and, dripping blood, carried the two dead forms to the Seine, where, in the shadow of the Pont Neuf, he weighted his burdens with stones and buried them beyond the reach of desecration. The tale came to me as come so many legends of the wars from nameless narrators. That youth, then, is—” “John Vytal,” concluded the soldier, gravely. “He had fought before then at Jarnac and Moncontour; but now he warred against the Catholics with redoubled fury. ’Twas through him, I tell you, came the victorious peace of Beaulieu and Bergerac, and the fall of Cahors.” “Find me this man!” The words burst from the young poet in a voice of eager, impetuous command. “I must see him!”