The voice was different. When she had turned swiftly she saw that it was another man, a lean, nervous, quaint-faced man in a stained leather jerkin. Across the years since the huntsman’s house and the castle wood and the castle and its servants there shot a memory. “Gervaise!” she said: “Gervaise, Sir Richard’s man!” “Ah,” said Gervaise with a jerk of his head; “you’ve got a good memory! I hope that others’ aren’t as good! I’ve been out of these parts for the length of two Indies voyages.” He opened the door, put out his head and glanced up and down the passageway, then, with a satisfied nod, drew back, shut the door, and came close to Joan. “But I’m Sir Richard’s man still, though not, I would have you note, to the world—no, not to the world!—The man who up till now locked and unlocked this door had a dream of a purse of gold, and so yesterday he quit the gaol’s service with a speech to all men that he was sick halfway to death with a shaking cold palsy! But by good fortune he had a cousin to slip in his place. I am the cousin—for the nonce, for the nonce! Hist, Joan; I remember thee well at thy uncle’s there in the wood! I’ll tell thee what I once said to him. I said, said I, ‘That niece of thine’s got courage and wit!’—Joan, see this bundle!” He placed it beside her upon the straw. “Aye,” said Joan. “What’s in it?” “Good, plain apprentice doublet, hose, cap, and shoon! Scissors likewise to cut long hair.” Joan’s hand closed upon it, but she said nothing. She looked at him with parted lips and a light in her eyes. “Just so!” said Gervaise. “It’s now close to sunset. At nine of the clock I’ll be here again. Put everything you have on—put your long cut hair—into the smallest bundle you may. So, if I win you forth as a youth, my helper—God blinding them to the fact that I never brought you in!—they’ll find no stitch of you to-morrow. ‘The witch—the witch hath vanished into thin air! No other one than Master Satan did ever help her forth!’” “And when I’m forth?” said Joan. “One thing at a time!” answered the new gaoler. “A before B; bud before flower! Roads may open. Here’s no road at all.” “And that’s true,” said Joan. “But all the others?” Gervaise gazed at her with his head on one side. “The others—the others! How do you think it possible that I should make a complete gaol delivery? It is not possible—not in the least possible.” “Why do you choose out me? And I thank you, Gervaise, but I think that I will not go.”