At the sound of the horse's hoofs the reader marked his page with his apple, and with a single movement of his lithe body was on his feet, a-stare to see a visitor where for many days visitors had been none. Declining autumn and snowy winter and greening spring, he could count upon the fingers of one hand the number of those who had come that way where once there had been gay travelling beneath the locked elms. Another moment and he was at Arden's side, clinging to that gentleman's jack-boot, raising to his hard-favored but not unkindly countenance a face aflame with relief and eagerness. Presently came the big tears to his eyes, he swallowed hard, and ended by burying his head in the folds of the visitor's riding-cloak. "Where is your master, Robin-a-dale?" Arden demanded. The boy, now red and shamefaced because of his wet lashes, stood up, and squaring himself, looked before him with winking eyes, nor would answer until he could speak without a quaver. Then: "He sits in the north chamber, Master Arden. This side o' the house the sun shines." Despite his boyish will the tears again filled his eyes. "'Tis May-time now, and there's been none but him above the salt since Lammas-tide. Sir John came and Sir Philip came, but he would not let them stay. 'Tis lonesome now at Ferne House, and old Humphrey and I be all that serve him. Of nights a man is a'most afeard.... I'll fasten your horse, sir, and mayhap you'll have other luck." Arden dismounted, and presently the two, boy and adventurer, passed into a hall where the latter's spur rang upon the stone flooring, and thence into a long room, cold and shadowy, with the light stealing in through deep windows past screens of fir and yew. Touched by this wan effulgence, beside an oaken table on which was not wine nor dice nor books, a man sat and looked with strained eyes at the irrevocable past. "Master, master!" cried Robin-a-dale. "Here be company at last. Master!" Sir Mortimer passed his hand across brow and eyes as though to brush away thick cobwebs. "Is it you, Giles Arden?" he asked. "It was told me, or I dreamed it, that you were in Ireland." "I was, may God and St. George forgive me!" Arden answered, with determined lightness. "Little to be got and hard in the getting! Even the Muses were not bountiful, for my men and I wellnigh ate Edmund Spenser out of Kilcolman. He sends you greeting, Mortimer; swears he is no jealous poet, and begs you to take up that old scheme which he forsook of King Arthur and his Knights--" "He is kind," said Ferne, slowly. "I am well fitted to write of old, heroic deeds. Nor is there any doubt that the man-at-arms who hath lost his uses in the struggle of this world should take delight in quiet exile, sating his soul with the pomp of dead centuries." "Nor he nor I meant offence," began Arden, hastily. "I know you did not," the other answered. "I have grown churlish of late. Robin! a stirrup-cup for Master Arden!"