“ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie

si belle qu’on put souhaiter.

n’avoit cure d’ailleurs plaider,

fors qu’avec lui manoir et estre.

bien est amour puissant et maistre.”

the eighth novel.—branwen of wales gets a king’s love unwittingly, and in all innocence convinces him of the littleness of his kingdom; so that he besieges and in due course occupies another realm as yet unmapped.

the story of the scabbard

in the year of grace 1400 (nicolas begins) king richard, the second monarch of that name to rule in england, wrenched his own existence, and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, harry of derby, who was now sometimes called henry of lancaster, and sometimes bolingbroke. the circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this henry was presently crowned king of england in richard’s place. all persons, saving only owain glyndwyr and henry of lancaster, believed king richard dead at that period when richard attended his own funeral, as a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body of edward maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel at langley bower. then alone sire richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.

holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and to detail his asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. but at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger from glyndwyr, supposed by richard to be the imp orvendile, who notoriously ran every day around the world upon the welshman’s business. it was in the isle of taprobane, where the pismires are as great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary brought the letter which read simply, “now is england fit pasture for the white hart.” presently richard holland was in wales, and then he rode to sycharth.

there, after salutation, glyndwyr gave an account of his long stewardship. it was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the barons who had ousted king log had been the very first to find their squinting king stork intolerable; and northumberland, worcester, douglas, mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt. “by the god i do not altogether serve,” owain ended, “you have but to declare yourself, sire, and within the moment england is yours.”

richard spoke with narrowed eyes. “you forget that while henry of lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in these islands. come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil for once in a way to serve god.”

“oh, but there is a boundary appointed,” glyndwyr moodily returned. “you, too, forget that in cold blood this henry stabbed my best-loved son. but i do not forget this, and i have tried divers methods which we need not speak of,—i who can at will corrupt the air, and cause sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires and shipwrecks; yet the life itself i cannot take. for there is a boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the master of our sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would.”

richard crossed himself. “you horribly mistake my meaning. your practices are your own affair, and in them i decline to dabble. i merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. for you have a fief at caer idion, i think?—very well! i intend to herd your sheep there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of apollo. it is your part to see that henry knows i am living disguised and defenceless at caer idion.”

the gaunt welshman chuckled. “yes, squinting henry of lancaster would cross the world, much less the severn, to make quite sure of richard’s death. he would come in his own person with at most some twenty trustworthy followers. i will have a hundred there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that place.” glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly. “sire,” he said without prelude, “i do not recognize richard of bordeaux. you have garnered much in travelling!”

“why, look you,” richard returned, “i have garnered so much that i do not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. with age i begin to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously. you barons here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the king of england, say, this time next year; you take sides between henry and me. i tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord. nor can i see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. no, owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of fools all. for i am as liberally endowed as most people; and when i consider my abilities, my performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as i would appraise those of another person, i can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, much less omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, impossible.”

“i have known the thought,” said owain,—“though rarely since i found the englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. he was more like me than the others, people said.... you are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless alike for help or hurt. ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as gods.”

“pardie! i have loved as often as salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms.”

“we of cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at all.”

“—and i hate henry of lancaster as i do the devil.”

“i greatly fear,” said owain with a sigh, “lest it may be your irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike. no, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly rationality: whereas sire henry views all matters with that heroic squint which came into your family from poictesme.”

“be off with your dusty scandals!” said richard, laughing.

so then glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of caerdyf, while at caer idion richard holland abode tranquilly for some three weeks. there was in this place only caradawc (the former shepherd), his wife alundyne, and their sole daughter branwen. they gladly perceived sire richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon; as caradawc observed: “it is perfectly apparent that the robe of padarn beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of owain glyndwyr.”

now day by day would richard holland drive the flocks to pasture near the severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute. he grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless and contented hours.

each day at noon branwen would bring his dinner, and she would sometimes chat with him while he ate. after supper he would discourse to branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales from the red book of hergest,—telling of gwalchmai, and peredur, and geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently discerned an inadequate forerunnership of richard’s existence.

this branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. she had the bold demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of suspicion. happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady of old, the wife of king matholwch, for this branwen, too, had a white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin which is a little worn. her eyes were large and brilliant, colored like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. in full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after sunset, richard decided. in all, a taking morsel! though her shapely hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else. branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young gwyllem ap llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and piggish eyes, and who sang divinely.

one day this gwyllem came to richard with two quarter-staves. “saxon,” he said, “you appear a stout man. take your pick of these, then, and have at you.”

“such are not the weapons i would have named,” richard answered: “yet in reason, messire gwyllem, i can deny you nothing that means nothing to me.”

with that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. in these unaccustomed bouts richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. by what method he contrived this he never ascertained.

“i have forgotten what we are fighting about,” he observed, after ten minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; “or, to be perfectly exact, i never knew. but we will fight no more in this place. come and go with me to welshpool, messire gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and claret.”

“content!” cried gwyllem; “but only if you yield me branwen.”

“have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?” richard demanded; “like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy? then devil take me if i am not heartily ashamed of my folly! though, look you, gwyllem, i would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is only their not infrequent misuse which i would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. yet since time’s youth have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for example, were hercules and merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more i reconsider the old gallantries of salomon, and of other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am i ashamed of my sex.”

gwyllem said: “this lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. perhaps it is also reasonable. only when you love you do not reason.”

“i was endeavoring to prove that,” said richard gently. then they went to welshpool, ride and tie on gwyllem’s horse. tongue loosened by the claret, gwyllem raved aloud of branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture richard affably assented. in his heart he likened the boy to dionysos at naxos, and could find no blame for ariadne. moreover, the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and richard was content.

“she does not love me?” gwyllem cried. “it is well enough. i do not come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. listen, saxon!” he caught up richard’s lute. the strings shrieked beneath gwyllem’s fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

sang gwyllem:

“love me or love me not, it is enough

that i have loved you, seeing my whole life is

uplifted and made glad by the glory of love,—

my life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred

with tavern-catches, which that pity of his

erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,

o branwen!

“i have accorded you incessant praise

and song and service, dear, because of this;

and always i have dreamed incessantly

who always dreamed, when in oncoming days

this man or that shall love you, and at last

this man or that shall win you, it must be

that, loving him, you will have pity on me

when happiness engenders memory

and long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,

o branwen!

“of this i know not surely, who am sure

that i shall always love you while i live,

and that, when i am dead, with naught to give

of song or service, love will yet endure,

and yet retain his last prerogative,

when i lie still, and sleep out centuries,

with dreams of you and the exceeding love

i bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,

and give god thanks for all, and so find peace,

o branwen!”

“now, were i to get as tipsy as that,” richard enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, “i would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. and were i to fall as many fathoms deep in love as this gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with a splurge, i would perform—i wonder, now, what miracle?”

for he was, though vaguely, discontent. this gwyllem was so young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. richard saw that in a fashion gwyllem was superb. “and heigho!” said richard, “i am attestedly a greater fool than he, but i begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded.”

the next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. he declared himself a tinker. he chatted out an hour with richard, who perfectly recognized him as sir walter blount; and then this tinker crossed over into england.

richard whistled. “now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my anxious cousin will come to speak with richard of bordeaux. and now, by every saint in the calendar! i am as good as king of england.”

he sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of grass between his fingers while he meditated. undoubtedly he would kill this squinting henry of lancaster with a clear conscience and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of vermin, but, hand upon heart, richard was unable to avow any particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel’s death. thus crudely to demolish the knave’s adroit and year-long schemings savored actually of grossness. the spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and envy. true, the process would recrown a certain richard, but then, as richard recalled it, being king was rather tedious. richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be king, and, in consequence, be daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. “i shall miss the little huzzy, too,” he thought.

“heigho!” said richard, “i shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled. life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: presently branwen will be married to this gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and i shall be remarried to little dame isabel, and shall be king of england: and a trifle later all four of us shall be dead. pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself.”

next day he despatched caradawc to owain glyndwyr to bid the latter send the promised implements to caer idion. richard, returning to the hut the same evening, found alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at the threshold. her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and through tearless sobs told of what had happened. a half-hour earlier, while she and branwen were intent upon their milking, gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home. “that i will do,” said gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl. alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with branwen.

richard made no observation. in silence he fetched his horse, and did not pause to saddle it. quickly he rode to gwyllem’s house, and broke in the door. against the farther wall stood lithe branwen fighting silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, where gwyllem had torn away her garments. he wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent.

“on guard!” richard barked. gwyllem wheeled. his head twisted toward his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped upward, so that his teeth were bared. there was a knife at richard’s girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. he stepped eagerly toward the snarling welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and hairy throat. what followed was brutal.

for many minutes branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. she very dimly heard the sound of gwyllem’s impotent fists as they beat against the countenance and body of richard, and heard the thin splitting vicious noise of torn cloth as gwyllem clutched at richard’s tunic and tore it many times. richard did not utter any articulate word, and gwyllem could not. there was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the thudding fall of something ponderous and limp.

“come!” richard said then. through the hut’s twilight he came, as glorious in her eyes as michael fresh from that primal battle with old satan. tall richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in his arms lest branwen’s skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which sprawled across their path. she never spoke. she could not speak. in his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content. the horse trod with deliberation. in the east the young moon was taking heart as the darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke. branwen noted these things incuriously.

richard was horribly afraid. he it had been, in sober verity it had been richard of bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. he had been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain from killing. it was a full three minutes before he had got the better of his bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this branwen, who was so near his heart....

next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket. it contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and mushrooms. “behold a feast!” said richard. he noted then that she carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine, and two cups of oak-bark. she thanked him for last night’s performance, and drank a mouthful of wine to his health.

“decidedly, i shall be sorry to have done with shepherding,” said richard as he ate.

branwen answered, “i too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is ended.” and it seemed to richard that she sighed, and he was the happier.

but he only shrugged. “i am the wisest person unhanged, since i comprehend my own folly. yet i grant you that he was wise, too, the minstrel of old time that sang: ‘over wild lands and tumbling seas flits love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean or some fierce denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, o love, thine alone is the power to make playthings of us all.’”

“your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such terms that gwyllem sang of this passion. lord,” she demanded shyly, “how would you sing of love?”

richard was replete and contented with the world. he took up the lute, in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory. “in courtesy, thus—”

sang richard:

“the gods in honor of fair branwen’s worth

bore gifts to her:—and jove, olympus’ lord,

co-rule of earth and heaven did accord,

and hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth,

and venus her famed girdle (to engirth

a fairer beauty now), and mars his sword,

and wrinkled plutus half the secret hoard

and immemorial treasure of mid-earth;—

“and while the careful gods were pondering

which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was,

young cupid came among them carolling

and proffered unto her a looking-glass,

wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing

that earth had borne, and heaven might not surpass.”

“three sounds are rarely heard,” said branwen; “and these are the song of the birds of rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a speech of wisdom from the mouth of a saxon. the song you have made of courtesy is tinsel. sing now in verity.”

richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade abashed. presently he sang again.

sang richard:

“catullus might have made of words that seek

with rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways,

the perfect song, or in remoter days

theocritus have hymned you in glad greek;

but i am not as they,—and dare not speak

of you unworthily, and dare not praise

perfection with imperfect roundelays,

and desecrate the prize i dare to seek.

“i do not woo you, then, by fashioning

vext analogues ’twixt you and guenevere,

nor do i come with agile lips that bring

the sugared periods of a sonneteer,

and bring no more—but just with, lips that cling

to yours, in murmuring, ‘i love you, dear!’”

richard had resolved that branwen should believe him. tinsel, indeed! then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. he was very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. he was superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning came the knowledge that what branwen believed was the truth.

richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. branwen stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. the affairs of earth and heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that trembled now at full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of pity. then the lute fell from his spread out hands, and richard sighed, and shrugged.

“there is a task set me,” he said—“it is god’s work, i think. but i do not know—i only know that you are very beautiful, branwen,” he said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness.

and he said also: “go! for i have loved many women, and, god help me! i know that i have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! yonder is god’s work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of devils. child! child!” he cried, “i am, and ever was, a coward, too timid to face life without reserve, and always i laughed because i was afraid to concede that anything is serious!”

for a long while richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.

“i love her. she thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. she has never even entertained the notion of loving me. that is well, for to-morrow, or, it may be, the day after, we must part forever. i would not have the parting make her sorrowful—or not, at least, too unalterably sorrowful. it is very well that branwen does not love me.

“why should she? i am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now, battered and selfish and too indolent to love her—say, as gwyllem loved her. i did well to kill that gwyllem. i am profoundly glad i killed him, and i thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross nature. i love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion, it is true, but only a half of me loves her. the other half of me remembers that i am aging, that caradawc’s hut is leaky, that, in fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. i am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man, precisely as owain said.” this settled, richard whistled to his dog.

the sun had set. there were no shadows anywhere as richard and his sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were more sombre. twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had settled for the night. the screech-owl had come out of his hole, and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. there was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he trudged away from this star.

next morning the welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for henry of lancaster.

it befell just two days later, about noon, that while richard idly talked with branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in number, rode down the river’s bank from the ford above. their leader paused, then gave an order. the men drew rein. he cantered forward.

“god give you joy, fair sir,” said richard, when the cavalier was near him.

the new-comer raised his visor. “god give you eternal joy, my fair cousin,” he said, “and very soon. now send away this woman before that happens which must happen.”

“do you plan,” said richard, “to disfigure the stage of our quiet pastorals with murder?”

“i design my own preservation,” king henry answered, “for while you live my rule is insecure.”

“i am sorry,” richard said, “that in part my blood is yours.”

twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods arose the half-naked welshmen. said richard: “you should read history more carefully, cousin henry. you might have profited, as i have done, by considering the trick which our grandfather, old edward longshanks, played on the french king at mezelais. as matters stand, your men are one to ten. you are impotent. now, now we balance our accounts! these persons here will first deal with your followers. then they will conduct you to glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you himself, in privacy, since that whit-monday when you murdered his son.”

the king began, “in mercy, sire—!” and richard laughed a little, saying:

“that virtue is not overabundant among us of oriander’s blood, as we both know. no, cousin, fate and time are merry jesters. see, now, their latest mockery! you the king of england ride to sycharth to your death, and i the tender of sheep depart into london, without any hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. to-morrow you are worm’s-meat, cousin henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, i am king of england.”

then branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and richard forgot all things saving this girl, and strode to her. he had caught up her hard, lithe hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close.

“branwen—!” he said. his eyes devoured her.

“yes, king,” she answered. “o king of england! o fool that i have been to think you less!”

in a while richard said: “well, i at least am not fool enough to think of making you a king’s whore. so i must choose between a peasant wench and england. now i choose, and how gladly! branwen, help me to be more than king of england!”

low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and neither seemed to breathe. of what she thought i cannot tell you; but in richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment. why, between this woman’s love and aught else there was no choice for him, he knew upon a sudden. perhaps he would thus worship her always, he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations: meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy. no, he could not go back to the throne and to the little french girl who was in law his wife.

and, as if from an immense distance, came to richard the dogged voice of henry of lancaster. “it is of common report in these islands that i have a better right to the throne than you. as much was told our grandfather, king edward of happy memory, when he educated you and had you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his love was so strong for his son the prince of wales that nothing could alter his purpose. and indeed if you had followed even the example of the black prince you might still have been our king; but you have always acted so contrarily to his admirable precedents as to occasion the rumor to be generally believed throughout england that you were not, after all, his son—”

richard had turned impatiently. “for the love of heaven, truncate your abominable periods. be off with you. yonder across that river is the throne of england, which you appear, through some lunacy, to consider a desirable possession. take it, then; for, praise god! the sword has found its sheath.”

the king answered: “i do not ask you to reconsider your dismissal, assuredly—richard,” he cried, a little shaken, “i perceive that until your death you will win contempt and love from every person.”

“yes, yes, for many years i have been the playmate of the world,” said richard; “but to-day i wash my hands, and set about another and more laudable business. i had dreamed certain dreams, indeed—but what had i to do with all this strife between the devil and the tiger? no, glyndwyr will set up mortimer against you now, and you two must fight it out. i am no more his tool, and no more your enemy, my cousin—henry,” he said with quickening voice, “there was a time when we were boys and played together, and there was no hatred between us, and i regret that time!”

“as god lives, i too regret that time!” the bluff, squinting king replied. he stared at richard for a while wherein each understood. “dear fool,” sire henry said, “there is no man in all the world but hates me saving only you.” then the proud king clapped spurs to his proud horse and rode away.

more lately richard dismissed his wondering marauders. now he and branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid of that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet.

so richard laughed. “praise god!” he wildly cried, “i am the greatest fool unhanged!”

she answered: “i am the happier for your folly. i am the happiest of god’s creatures.”

and richard meditated. “faith of a gentleman!” he declared; “but you are nothing of the sort, and of this fact i happen to be quite certain.” their lips met then and afterward their eyes; and each of these ragged peasants was too glad for laughter.

the end of the eighth novel