“Mortimer Ferne,” he said, “I came here as thy aforetime friend.  I will not believe that it is my stirrup-cup that I have drunk.”

“Ay, your stirrup-cup,” answered the other, steadily.  “Nowadays I see no company—­my aforetime friend.”

“That word was ill chosen,” began Arden, hastily.  “I meant not—­”

“I care not what you meant,” said Sir Mortimer, and sitting down at the table, shaded his eyes with his hand.  “Of all my needs the least is now a friend.  Go your ways to the town and be merry there, forgetting this limbo and me, who wander to and fro in its shadows.”  Suddenly he struck his hand with force against the table and started to his feet, pushing from him with a grating sound the heavy oaken settle.  “Go!” he cried.  “The players and mummers are there.  Go sit upon the stage, and in the middle of the play cry to your neighbors:  ’These be no actors!  Why, once I knew a man who could so mask it that he deceived himself!’ There are quacksalvers who will sell you anything.  Go buy some ointment for your eyes will show you the coiled serpent at the bottom of a man’s heart!  Travellers!—­ask them if Prester John can see the canker where the fruit seems fairest.  Nipped courtiers! laugh with them at one against whom blow all the winds of hell, blast after blast, driving his soul before them!  Ballad-mongers—­”

He paused, laughed, then beckoned to him Robin-a-dale.  “Sirrah,” he said, “Master Arden ever loved a good song.  Now sing him the ballad we heard when the devil drove us to town last Wednesday.”

“I—­I have forgotten it, master,” answered the boy, and cowered against the wall.

“You lie!” cried Ferne, and the table shook again beneath his hand.  “Did I not exercise you in it until you were perfect?  Sing!”

The boy opened his mouth and there came forth a heart-broken sound.  His master stamped upon the floor.  “Shall I not also torture where I can?  Sing, Robin, my man!  Fling back your head and sing like the lark in the sky!  What! am I fallen so low that my very page flouts me, kicks obedience out-of-doors?”

Robin-a-dale straightened himself and began to sing, with bravado, a fierce red in his cheeks, and his young voice high and clear: 

     “Now list to me, ladies, and list to me, gentles;
     I’ve a story for your ears of a false, false knight,
     Whom England held in honor, but he treasured Spain so dearly
     That he sold into her hands his comrades in fight.

     “’Twas before a walled city with the palm-trees hanging over;
     He was Captain of the Cygnet, and it sank before his eyes;
     The Englishmen ashore, they’re taken in the pitfall,
     Good lack! they toil in galleys or their souls to God arise.

     “He sees them in his sleep, the craven and the traitor. 
     The sea it keeps their bones, their bloody ghosts they pass—­”

“For God’s sake!” cried Arden; and the boy, snatching with despairing haste at the interruption, ceased his singing, and in the heavy silence that followed crept nearer and nearer to his master until he touched a listless hand.