She never added difficulty to their situation. She was no fine lady. She was yeoman born and bred, courageous and sane. It was yet the evening glow of the strong Elizabethan age. Men and women were more frank and free in one another’s company than grew to be the case in a later period. The wife or mistress, sometimes the sister, in the dress of page or squire, fellow traveller, attendant at court, sometimes fellow soldier, made a commonplace of the age’s stage-play or romantic tale. If the masquerade occurred oftener in poem or play than in fact, yet in the last-named, too, it occurred. Joan had native wit. Her being, simple-seeming, pushed forward complexes enough when it came to the touch. Aderhold marvelled to see her so skilful and wary, and still so quiet with it all that she seemed to act without motion, or with motion too swift for perception. She went unsuspected of all—a tall, fair youth with grey eyes and a manner of reserve, brooding aside over some loss of his own. Giles Allen, John Allen, George Dragon—it was George Dragon, Aderhold came to see, who furnished the danger point.—Humphrey Lantern was no artist to put forward a self complete, yet not your home and most familiar self. He had no considerable rôle to play; he was merely George Dragon, an old soldier of the Dutch Wars, who since had knocked about as best he might, and now would try his fortune in Virginia. He was at liberty to talk of the good wars and the Low Countries all he wished. He sought the forecastle and the company of the ruder sort and he talked of these. But he was forgetful, and at times the near past would trip up the far past. Never the very near past, but Aderhold had heard him let slip that for part time since the good wars, he had served as a gaoler—“head man in a good prison,” he put it with a grim touch of pride. Aderhold thought that some one had given him usquebaugh to drink. When he cautioned him, as he earnestly did at the first chance, Lantern could not remember that he had said any such thing, but, being sober, he agreed that the least thing might be spark to gunpowder, and that their lives depended upon discretion. He promised and for some time Aderhold observed him exercising due caution. But the fear remained, and the knowledge that Lantern would drink if tempted, and drunken knew not what he said.