‘He said you were no more a Judge, and I asked him why, and he answered you had resigned your Commission.’ He saw the eyes, as he spoke, blaze into an instant fire. ‘He said!’ cried Bagott. ‘A prating magpie, lacking tact and sense! No more a Judge, quotha? I’ll bridle him, by God!’ He fumed and rocked, muttering incoherences. ‘What further?’ he said presently. The boy faced the question steadily. ‘Only that you would love me,’ said he, ‘if I would love you--as I will.’ The other put his knife from him, leaning back in his chair. A wonderful new softness had come to his face. ‘Thou wilt?’ said he. ‘Then that’s a bargain with us. Shall we be done henceforth with subterfuge? I like thy trusty eyes. They are thy--heart, but we’ll be friends! What if I am no longer Judge? You’ll love me none the less?’ ‘No, Sir.’ ‘That’s sweet and well. What other question put and answered? Whither we go?’ ‘He told me ’twas to a house, the Moated Grange, where you was used to dwell in Devon.’ ‘A fair country, Brion, where we may live in peace and comfort, forgetting all the plots and hateful toils that stretch to snare men’s feet in these cursed warrens of the town. Harlequin is to take you.’ ‘Harlequin?’ ‘And I’ll follow betimes.’ ‘Uncle?’ ‘Well, boy?’ ‘Is not Master Clerivault mad?’ ‘How, mad?’ The black eyes conned him whimsically. ‘I know not,’ answered Brion. ‘His speech is so strange; and when I misdoubted his English blood, he skipped and sweat with fury.’ Bagott nodded, smiling. ‘He did? He would, child: ’tis to touch him on the quick. Whatever hybrid he, call him but out of his imagined birthright, and you put a match to tow. England is not only all the world, but all the stars and all the heavens to him. But, mad?’--the humour left his face; his brows bent down--‘If madness is in devotion, then is he mad; if madness is in incorruptible fidelity, then is he mad. And so, perchance, would Reason call him, but not I his master, who saved him from the gallows.’ Brion’s eyes and red lips opened together. ‘O, how?’ he said. ‘Poor Clerivault.’ ‘Poor Clerivault!’ echoed the other. ‘A mad fool, maybe, for that he held chivalry before self-interest. He was implicated in Ket’s rising against the gentry in ’49, and brought up at Norwich assizes to stand his trial. He would have been hanged, a mere tool of others, but that I won him off; and since he hath given me the devotion of a dog. Twenty years ago,’--his voice fell to rapt and wondering, as if he had forgotten his audience--‘through bright fortune and sour, and he hath never swerved from his allegiance. He hath learnt law; he is my liegeman, clerk and bodyguard in one. One third coxcomb, one gentleman, and one most rare poet and romantic--he dreams, and so lives in his dreams that he half believes them true. Vain as a peacock, simple as a child, sapient in vision--you must like poor Harlequin.’