Garin laughed, but there was rue in his laughter. He suddenly grew grave, the rock-gate before his mind’s eye. “Come! let us have this stain. Shorten, too, my hair.” He took up Elias’s lute and tried its strings. “Play the jongleur—play the jongleur. Every man has in his _garde-robe_ every dress! The king can play the beggar, and the beggar play the king. Be quick, courageous, and certain in the change—so is the trumpet answered!” He put the lute’s ribbon over his head. “It falls night. Hasten, Elias of Montaudon, and while you work tell me your own life these six years! If I make another of you, I will make it like!” The man in brown and yellow worked.... At last there stood in the lighted room, not a knight and crusader and troubadour, but a jongleur with a brown face, with a somewhat tarnished brown and green attire, with a lute slung by a red ribbon, on his head a cap with a black cock’s feather, at his belt a dagger and sheath of the best Italian make. Dagger and sheath the knight had supplied. It was now full night, and not so long before, from every house of the religious in Roche-de-Frêne, complin would ring. The jongleur in brown and yellow took his leave. He had his fee, he said; likewise a command as to a bridled tongue. The jongleur in brown and green saw him go, then put out the candles, pushed a bench to the window, and sitting down waited for the signal next in order.... At last the bells spoke. Garin, rising, left the room and descended the stair. The passage below was in darkness, at the exit but one smoky torch. He drew the wide mantle closely about him, pulling the hood over head and face. His step said to the man at the door, “Sir Garin.” He passed, an unquestioned inmate, not clearly seen in the light blown by the autumn wind. CHAPTER XXI THE ROCK-GATE AT the northern point of the Mount of Roche-de-Frêne, castle wall and wall of the town made as it were one height, so close did each approach the other. Huge rock upon rock, Roche-de-Frêne lifted here from the plain. This was the impregnable face, sheer rock and double wall, at the bottom a fosse, and, grim at the top, against cloud or clear sky, Black Tower and Eagle Tower. In the high and thick curtain of stone between was pierced the postern called the rock-gate. Here Garin came, on a night not cold and powdered with stars. The gate had its turret, and within the shadow of the wall a long bench of stone. Ordinarily, day or night, there might be here a watch of twenty men. To-night he saw that this was not the case. There was a sentinel pacing to and fro before the turret. This man stopped him. “The princess’s errand,” said Garin. “The word?” “_Two Falcons._” “Just.” The speaker paced on.