“I on yonder mossy stone, and Sidney, chin in hand, full length beneath that oak, and he standing there, his arm about the neck of his gray!  And what says monsieur the traitor?  ’I like it well as it stands, nor will I tear down what my forefathers built.  Plain honor and plain truth are the walls thereof, and encompassed by them, the Queen’s Grace may lie down with pride.’  Brave words, traitor!  Gulls, gulls (saith the world), friend Sidney!  For a modicum of thy judgment, Solomon, King of Jewry, I would give (an he would bestow it upon me) my cousin the Earl’s great ruby!”

He laughed again, then sighed, and gathering up his reins, left the little eminence and trotted on through sun and shade to a vacant, ruinous lodge and a twilit avenue, silent and sad beneath the heavy interlacing of leafy boughs.  Closing the vista rose a squat doorway, ivy-hung; and tumbled upon the grass beside it, attacking now a great book and now a russet pippin, lay a lad in a blue jerkin.

At the sound of the horse’s hoofs the reader marked his page with his apple, and with a single movement of his lithe body was on his feet, a-stare to see a visitor where for many days visitors had been none.  Declining autumn and snowy winter and greening spring, he could count upon the fingers of one hand the number of those who had come that way where once there had been gay travelling beneath the locked elms.  Another moment and he was at Arden’s side, clinging to that gentleman’s jack-boot, raising to his hard-favored but not unkindly countenance a face aflame with relief and eagerness.  Presently came the big tears to his eyes, he swallowed hard, and ended by burying his head in the folds of the visitor’s riding-cloak.

“Where is your master, Robin-a-dale?” Arden demanded.

The boy, now red and shamefaced because of his wet lashes, stood up, and squaring himself, looked before him with winking eyes, nor would answer until he could speak without a quaver.  Then:  “He sits in the north chamber, Master Arden.  This side o’ the house the sun shines.”  Despite his boyish will the tears again filled his eyes. “’Tis May-time now, and there’s been none but him above the salt since Lammas-tide.  Sir John came and Sir Philip came, but he would not let them stay.  ’Tis lonesome now at Ferne House, and old Humphrey and I be all that serve him.  Of nights a man is a’most afeard....  I’ll fasten your horse, sir, and mayhap you’ll have other luck.”

Arden dismounted, and presently the two, boy and adventurer, passed into a hall where the latter’s spur rang upon the stone flooring, and thence into a long room, cold and shadowy, with the light stealing in through deep windows past screens of fir and yew.  Touched by this wan effulgence, beside an oaken table on which was not wine nor dice nor books, a man sat and looked with strained eyes at the irrevocable past.

“Master, master!” cried Robin-a-dale.  “Here be company at last.  Master!”