what am I to dare hope for such a prize? for I never can be worthy.  And she is one who, giving her heart, gives it all.  Do I not know her?  How lovely she looked thanking the stranger!  The blue of her eyes, the warm-lighted blue, seemed to grow full on the closing lids, like heaven’s gratitude.  Her beauty is wonderful.  What wonder, then, if he loves her?  I should think him a squire in his degree.  There are squires of high birth and low.’

So mused Farina with his arms folded and his legs crossed in the shadow of Margarita’s chamber.  Gradually he fell into a kind of hazy doze.  The houses became branded with silver arrows.  All up the Cathedral stone was a glitter, and dance, and quiver of them.  In the sky mazed confusion of arrowy flights and falls.  Farina beheld himself in the service of the Emperor watching these signs, and expecting on the morrow to win glory and a name for Margarita.  Glory and the name now won, old Gottlieb was just on the point of paternally blessing them, when a rude pat aroused him from the delicious moon-dream.

‘Hero by day! house-guard by night!  That tells a tale,’ said a cheerful voice.

The moon was shining down the Cathedral square and street, and Farina saw the stranger standing solid and ruddy before him.  He was at first prompted to resent such familiar handling, but the stranger’s face was of that bland honest nature which, like the sun, wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness.

‘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.’