When they had all gone and the hall was quiet, Thoroughgood came slowly down with a puzzled frown on his honest, weather-beaten face to where Halfman humped over his map. "Where's the good of drilling clowns and cooks?" he asked, surlily. He talked like one thoroughly weary, but his mood of weariness seemed to melt before the sunshine of Halfman's smile as he lifted his head from the map. "Where's the harm?" he countered. "'Twas my lady's idea to keep their spirits up, and, by God! it was a good thought. She knows how it heartens folk to play a great part in a great business: keeps them from feeling the fingers of famine in their inwards, keeps them from whining, repining, declining, what you will. But I own I did not count on the presence of Gammer Cook in the by-play." "I could not see why she should be kept out of the mummery," Thoroughgood responded, "if she had a mind for the masking." "Perhaps you are right," Halfman answered, meditatively. "My lady's example would make a Hippolyta of any housemaid of them all." "I do not know what it would make of them," Thoroughgood answered; "but I know this, that it matters very little now." Halfman swung round on his seat and stared at him curiously. "Why?" he asked. "Now that this truce is called," Thoroughgood answered, "that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady." "Why, what then?" questioned Halfman, with his eyes so fixed on Thoroughgood's that Thoroughgood, dogged as he was, averted his gaze. "Naught's left but surrender," he grunted, between his teeth. The words came thickly, but Halfman heard them clearly. He raised his right hand for a moment as if he had a thought to strike his companion, but then, changing his temper, he let it fall idly upon his knee as he surveyed Thoroughgood with a look that half disdained, half pitied. "My lady will never surrender," he said, quietly, with the quiet of a man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. "You know that well enough." Thoroughgood shrugged plaintive, protesting shoulders. "We've stood this siege for many days," he muttered. "Food is running out; powder is running out. Even the Lady Brilliana cannot work miracles." Halfman rose to his feet. His eyes were shining and he pressed his clinched hands to his breast like a man in adoration. "The Lady Brilliana can work miracles, does work miracles daily. Is it no miracle that she has held this castle all these hours and days against this rebel leaguer? Is it no miracle that she has poured the spirit of chivalry into scullions and farm-hands and cook-wenches so that not a Jack or Jill of them but would lose bright life blithely for her and the King and God? Is it not a miracle that she has transmuted, by a change more amazing than anything Master Ovid hath recorded in his Metamorphoses, a villanous old land-devil and sea-devil like myself into a passionate partisan? But what of me? God bless her! She is my lady-angel, and her will is my will to the end of the chapter."