The French boy had to pause outside the gateway door, to battle with the suffocating rage that suddenly invaded him. Rather would he have received fresh insults from his enemy than this perfect courtesy—a courtesy which at once seemed to remember and to pass over. In that last glance that rested upon him, in that deep, brooding look, there had almost lurked (or so he thought) pity. Pity! Enguerrand tore open the ruffle at his throat and gasped for breath. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the paroxysm passed. Weakling, to waste his energies on fruitless curses! Was not his hour nigh, and did he not need the cool head, the steady hand, the quick eye?… He once had offered his honour and his sword for a chivalrous test … they both had been broken and cast from him.… Vastly well! Now would he pass the secret thrust for which there is no parry! He fastened his ruffle again with fingers that now scarcely trembled. And, as he ran back to the royal apartment, he broke shrilly into a stave of song: that same _frondeur_ lilt that had tickled the royal ears from Sister Jeanne’s lips on yonder night when she had met fortune and jilted her—at the King’s supper party:— _“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,_ _De te laisser abattre…!”_ rose the high notes. “Master Page,” said a yeoman sternly, “have you taken leave of your wits? The King is within.…” “I know, I know,” said Enguerrand, poising himself for a moment on one springing foot, and looking back over his shoulder like some light Mercury in satin and ringlet. “I know, good old greybeard, and ’tis I serve his Majesty’s supper to-night!” Then, as he leaped forward again, he took up the song, under his breath, this time, and in English,— “Tower, have a care, O Tower, beware!” Halfway down the corridor he paused once more, and once more looked back:— “Look out for my Lord Constable of the Tower, you, Master Beefeater … for he sups with the King to-night!” His laugh echoed as he disappeared in the antechamber. “A murrain on these French crickets to whom his Majesty is fain to give what should belong to honest English lads!” grumbled the yeoman, as he ordered his halbert with a thud. “’Tis mercy we have such gentlemen as my Lord Constable about the person—to keep balance. And here indeed comes my noble lord.” Rockhurst halted a second beside the old yeoman. The gnarled hand that grasped the halbert had lost one finger: Rockhurst knew in what fight. Kings may forget what leal subjects have suffered for them, and ladies what lovers have sighed and served, but the captain forgets not the man who has stood in his ranks. Rockhurst’s hair was turning grey and the yeoman’s was white—but they had been young together in the days of Edge Hill. “A sultry evening, good Ashby,” said the Lord Constable, with his kind, sad eyes on the rugged face that crimsoned with joy under the honour.