She sat a moment, silent, studying his face. “Or if thou art, upon my word I like the breed. It is a stubborn, froward dog; but Hold-fast is his name. Ay, sirs,” she said, and sat up very straight, looking into the faces of her court, “Brag is a good dog, but Hold-fast is better. A lad who loves his mother thus makes a man who loveth his native land—and it’s no bad streak in the blood. Master Skylark, thou shalt have thy wish; to London thou shalt go this very night.” “I do na live in London,” Nick began. “What matters the place?” said she. “Live wheresoever thine heart doth please. It is enough—so. Thou mayst kiss our hand.” She held her hand out, bright with jewels. He knelt and kissed it as if it were all a doing in a dream, or in some unlikely story he had read. But a long while after he could smell the perfume from her slender fingers on his lips. Then a page standing by him touched his arm as he arose, and bowing backward from the throne, came with him to the curtain and the rest. Old Master Gyles was standing there apart. It was too dark to see his face, but he laid his hand upon Nick’s head. “Thy cake is burned to a coal,” said he. CHAPTER XXIX BACK TO GASTON CAREW So they marched back out of the palace gates, down to the landing-place, the last red sunlight gleaming on the basinets of the tall halberdiers who marched on either side. Nick looked out toward London, where the river lay like a serpent, bristling with masts; and beyond the river and the town to the forests of Epping and Hainault; and beyond the forests to the hills, where the waning day still lingered in a mist of frosty blue. At their back, midway of the Queen’s park, stood up the old square tower Mirefleur, and on its top one yellow light like the flame of a gigantic candle. The day seemed builded of memories strange and untrue. A belated gull flapped by them heavily, and the red sun went down. England was growing lonely. A great barge laden with straw came out of the dusk, and was gone without a sound, its ghostly sail drawing in a wind that the wherry sat too low to feel. Nick held his breath as the barge went by: it was unreal, fantastical. Then the river dropped between its banks, and the woods and the hills were gone. The tide ran heavily against the shore, and the wake of the wherry broke the floating stars into cold white streaks and zigzag ripplings of raveled light that ran unsteadily after them. The craft at anchor in the Pool had swung about upon the flow, and pointed down to Greenwich. A hush had fallen upon the never-ending bustle of the town; and the air was full of a gray, uncanny afterglow which seemed to come up out of the water, for the sky was grown quite dark. They were all wrapped in their boat-cloaks, tired and silent. Now and then Nick dipped his fingers into the cold water over the gunwale. This was the end of the glory. He wished the boat would go a little faster. Yet when they came to the landing he was sorry.