“Ay, that is in your own manner,” answered Dickie; “you think fine speeches will pass muster instead of good-will.  However, as to this honest porter, you must know that when we presented ourselves at the gate yonder, his brain was over-burdened with a speech that had been penned for him, and which proved rather an overmatch for his gigantic faculties.  Now this same pithy oration had been indited, like sundry others, by my learned magister, Erasmus Holiday, so I had heard it often enough to remember every line.  As soon as I heard him blundering and floundering like a fish upon dry land, through the first verse, and perceived him at a stand, I knew where the shoe pinched, and helped him to the next word, when he caught me up in an ecstasy, even as you saw but now.  I promised, as the price of your admission, to hide me under his bearish gaberdine, and prompt him in the hour of need.  I have just now been getting some food in the Castle, and am about to return to him.”

“That’s right—­that’s right, my dear Dickie,” replied Wayland; “haste thee, for Heaven’s sake! else the poor giant will be utterly disconsolate for want of his dwarfish auxiliary.  Away with thee, Dickie!”

“Ay, ay!” answered the boy—­“away with Dickie, when we have got what good of him we can.  You will not let me know the story of this lady, then, who is as much sister of thine as I am?”

“Why, what good would it do thee, thou silly elf?” said Wayland.

“Oh, stand ye on these terms?” said the boy.  “Well, I care not greatly about the matter—­only, I never smell out a secret but I try to be either at the right or the wrong end of it, and so good evening to ye.”

“Nay, but, Dickie,” said Wayland, who knew the boy’s restless and intriguing disposition too well not to fear his enmity—­“stay, my dear Dickie—­part not with old friends so shortly!  Thou shalt know all I know of the lady one day.”

“Ay!” said Dickie; “and that day may prove a nigh one.  Fare thee well, Wayland—­I will to my large-limbed friend, who, if he have not so sharp a wit as some folk, is at least more grateful for the service which other folk render him.  And so again, good evening to ye.”

So saying, he cast a somerset through the gateway, and lighting on the bridge, ran with the extraordinary agility which was one of his distinguishing attributes towards the Gallery-tower, and was out of sight in an instant.

“I would to God I were safe out of this Castle again!” prayed Wayland internally; “for now that this mischievous imp has put his finger in the pie, it cannot but prove a mess fit for the devil’s eating.  I would to Heaven Master Tressilian would appear!”