Tall he was, worn down to the bone, gaunt and prematurely grey, hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed. His dress might be described, with no great stretch of language, as little but nakedness visible. But it was sweet with the scent of the sea, and the roll of the sea was in his long legs, as he wound his way to the central square. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. Arrived at his destination he took no heed of the ominous carpenters, nor of the wood-work to which they were putting the finishing touch. He walked straight--and as if by instinct rather than by eye--into a certain tavern of those that debouched upon that place. He might have been supposed to be dumb as well as blind, since he merely made a pantomime expressive of hunger as he sank into one of the seats. The landlord looked with doubt at his visible assets. A sad thing of the nature of a smile flickered upon the burnt and blistered visage of the sailor. He evolved a coin from some miraculous hiding-place in the cobweb that was his apology for raiment. The landlord bit it, rang it, and bit it again. Ultimately he appeared satisfied, and placed food before his customer. The speed with which it vanished would have justified an observer in antedating considerably the stranger's previous meal. Leaving a clean plate he threw himself back in his chair and steadily regarded the landlord. Then he asked, not without emotion, "Don't you know me, old comrade?" The landlord started as if shot. "By all the saints and saintesses! _Marquard!_" "Aye, Marquard it is; but not the Marquard you knew of old. It was an evil hour I ran away to sea." "But why have you not returned these years?" "Returned! He asks me why I did not return! I that--before I had been long enough aboard to be on good terms with my inner man--was captured by the Algerine! I that have been chained to an oar in the galley of Barbarossa every day of these years of which you speak! But pay no heed to what I say. There is news for which I burn. You that have lived humdrum can tell me of _her_, for whose coquetries I lost patience and exiled myself." "She lives," murmured the landlord, in a half-hearted way, and he looked upon the floor. "She lives! And what of my rival that I thought she preferred to me?" "He lives, if you mean the Hungarian, whose name we could never pronounce, and whom we used to call Teremtette from his favourite oath." "Come, tell more about them both." The landlord cast a troubled eye upon him, and again looked down. He spoke with distinct embarrassment. "Prepare yourself for the worst, my friend. Remember that he of whom we speak was always a hobnobber with sorcerers, and a sorcerer suspect. After your departure he became a sorcerer confessed." "And _she_, man! What of her?" "Alas! She followed wherever he led, though the devil's shadow was all his light. She lived with him for a time after you abandoned the field to him."