‘You are right,’ replied Farina; ‘so it is!’

’Pretty wines inside there, and a rare young maiden.  She has a throat like a nightingale, and more ballads at command than a piper’s wallet.  Now, if I hadn’t a wife at home.’

‘You’re married?’ cried Farina, seizing the stranger’s hand.

’Surely; and my lass can say something for herself on the score of brave looks, as well as the best of your German maids here, trust me.’

Farina repressed an inclination to perform a few of those antics which violent joy excites, and after rushing away and back, determined to give his secret to the stranger.

‘Look,’ said he in a whisper, that opens the private doors of a confidence.

But the stranger repeated the same word still more earnestly, and brought Farina’s eyes on a couple of dark figures moving under the Cathedral.

‘Some lamb’s at stake when the wolves are prowling,’ he added:  ’’Tis now two hours to the midnight.  I doubt if our day’s work be over till we hear the chime, friend.’

’What interest do you take in the people of this house that you watch over them thus?’ asked Farina.

The stranger muffled a laugh in his beard.

’An odd question, good sooth.  Why, in the first place, we like well whatso we have done good work for.  That goes for something.  In the second, I’ve broken bread in this house.  Put down that in the reckoning.  In the third; well! in the third, add up all together, and the sum total’s at your service, young sir.’

Farina marked him closely.  There was not a spot on his face for guile to lurk in, or suspicion to fasten on.  He caught the stranger’s hand.

’You called me friend just now.  Make me your friend.  Look, I was going to say:  I love this maiden!  I would die for her.  I have loved her long.  This night she has given me a witness that my love is not vain.  I am poor.  She is rich.  I am poor, I said, and feel richer than the Kaiser with this she has given me!  Look, it is what our German girls slide in their back-hair, this silver arrow!’

‘A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!’ exclaimed the stranger.

’Then, I was going to say—­tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk.  Only to wealth, or high baronry, will her father give her!’

The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their mistresses:  and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!

’Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I should say, wait a while and watch your chance.  But you’re a boy of pluck:  I serve in the Kaiser’s army, under my lord:  the Kaiser will be here in three days.  If you ’re of that mind then, I doubt little you may get posted well:  but, look again! there’s a ripe brew yonder.  Marry, you may win your spurs this night even; who knows?—­’S life! there’s a tall fellow joining those two lurkers.’