But I must e’en think of them that are to read me, and of their pain if I overstretch my privilege.  Besides, if I prove over-long in the wind they may not read me at all, which, I own it, would somewhat mar my purpose.

I was speaking, therefore, of being in the watch and ward of two women, each of whom (in my self-conceit I thus imagined it) certainly regarded me without dislike.  God forgive me for thinking so much when they had never plainly told me!  Nevertheless I took the thing for granted, as it were.  And, as I said before, it has been my experience that, if it be done with a careful and delicate hand, more is gained with women by taking things for granted than by the smoothest tongue and longest Jacob-and-Rachael service.  The man who succeeds with good women is the man who takes things for granted.  Only he must know exactly what things, otherwise I am mortally sorry for him—­he will have a rough road to travel.  But to my tale.

Jorian ushered Ysolinde and Helene into the rooms from which he had so unceremoniously ousted the former tenants.  How these chambers were lighted in the daytime I could not at first make out, but by going to the end of the long earth-hewn passage and leaning out of a window the mystery was made plain.  The ravine took an abrupt turn at this point, so that we were in a house built round an angle, and so had the benefit of light from both sides.

“And where are our rooms to be?” I asked of the stout soldier when he returned.

Jorian pointed to the plain, hard earth of the passage.

“That is poor lodging for tired bones!” I said; “have they no other rooms to let anywhere in this hostelry?”

He laughed again; indeed, he seemed to be able to do little else whenever he spoke to me.

“Tired bones will lie the stiller!” said he, at last, sententiously.  “There is some wheaten straw out there which you can bring in for a bolster, if you will.  But I think it likely that we shall get no more sleep than the mouse in the cat’s dining-room this night.  These border rascals are apt to be restless in the dark hours, and their knives prick most consumedly sharp!”

With that he went out, leaving the doors into the passages all open, and presently I could hear him raging and rummaging athwart the house, ordering this one to find him “Graubunden fleisch,” the next to get him some good bread, and not to attempt to palm off “cow-cake” upon honest soldiers on pain of getting his stomach cut open—­together with other amenities which occur easily to a seasoned man-at-arms foraging in an unfriendly country.

Then, having returned successful from this quest, what was my admiration to see Jorian (whom I had so lately called, and I began to be sorry for it, a Wendish pig) strip his fine soldier’s coat and hang it upon a peg by the door, roll up his sleeves, and set to at the cooking in the great open fireplace with swinging black crooks against the front wall, while Boris stood on guard with a long pistolet ready in the hollow of his arm, and his slow-match alight, by the doorway of the ladies’ apartment.