"You are drunk!" he shouted, purple in the face, and fumbling for the stick which usually leaned against his seat ready for emergencies. "How dare you bring cock-and-bull stories to me?" "It is true enough!" muttered Baldwin sullenly: a stout, dour man, not much afraid of his master, but loving him exceedingly. "I knew him again myself." Sir Anthony strode firmly out of the room, and in the courtyard near the great gate found a man and a woman standing in the dusk. He walked up to the former and looked him in the face. "What do you here?" he said, in a strange, hard voice. "I want shelter for a night for myself and my wife; a meal and some words with you--no more," was the answer. "Give me this," the stranger continued, "which every idle passer-by may claim at Coton End, and you shall see no more of me, Anthony." For a moment the knight seemed to hesitate. Then he answered, pointing sternly with his hand, "There is the hall and supper. Go and eat and drink. Or, stay!" he resumed. And he turned and gave some orders to Baldwin, who went swiftly to the hall, and in a moment came again. "Now go! What you want the servants will prepare for you." "I want speech of you," said the newcomer. Sir Anthony seemed about to refuse, but thought better of it. "You can come to my room when you have supped," he said, in the same ungracious tone, speaking with his eyes averted. "And you--do you not take supper?" "I have finished," said the knight, albeit he had eaten little. And he turned on his heel. Very few of those who sat round the table and watched with astonishment the tall stranger's entrance knew him again. It was thirteen years since Ferdinand Cludde had last sat there; sitting there of right. And the thirteen years had worked much change in him. When he found that Petronilla, obeying her father's message, had disappeared, he said haughtily that his wife would sup in her own room; and with a flashing eye and curling lip, bade Baldwin see to it. Then, seating himself in a place next Sir Anthony's, he looked down the board at which all sat silent. His sarcastic eye, his high bearing, his manner--the manner of one who had gone long with his life in his hand--awed these simple folk. Then, too, he was a Cludde. Father Carey was absent that evening. Martin Luther had one of those turns, half-sick, half-sullen, which alternated with his moods of merriment; and kept his straw pallet in some corner or other. There was no one to come between the servants and this dark-visaged stranger, who was yet no stranger.