But of all bewildered faces there was never a blanker, I believe, since the world began than my uncle Gervase’s; who now appeared in the doorway, a bucket in his hand, straight from the stables where he had been giving my father’s roan horse a drench.  Billy’s summons must have hurried him, for he had not even waited to turn down his shirt-sleeves:  but as plainly it had given him no sort of notion why he was wanted and in the State Room.  I guessed indeed that on his way he had caught up the bucket supposing that the house was afire.  At sight of the monks he set it down slowly, gently, staring at them the while, and seemed in act of inverting it to sit upon, when my father addressed him from the dais over the shaven heads of the audience.

“Brother, I am sorry to have disturbed you:  but here is a business in which I may need your counsel.  Will it please you to step this way?  These guests of ours, I should first explain, have arrived from over seas.”

My uncle came forward, still like a man in a dream, mounted the dais on my father’s left, and, turning, surveyed the visitors in front.

“Eh?  To be sure, to be sure,” he murmured.  “Broomsticks!”

“Their spokesman here, who gives his name as the Brother Basilio, bears a message for me; and since he presents it in form with a whole legation at his back, I think it due to treat him with equal ceremony.  Do you agree?”

“If you ask me,” my uncle answered, after a pause full of thought, “they would prefer to start, maybe, with a wash and a breakfast.  By good luck, Billy tells me, the trammel has made a good haul.  As for basins, brother, our stock will not serve all these gentlemen; but if the rest will take the will for the deed and use the pump, I’ll go round meanwhile and see how the hens have been laying.”

“You are the most practical of men, brother:  but my offer of breakfast has already been declined.  Shall we hear what Dom Basilio has to say?”

“I have nothing to say, Sir John,” put in Brother Basilio, advancing, “but to give you this letter and await your answer.”

He drew a folded paper from his tunic and handed it to my father, who rose to receive it, turned it over, and glanced at the superscription.  I saw a red flush creep slowly up to his temples and fade, leaving his face extraordinarily pale.  A moment later, in face of his audience, he lifted the paper to his lips, kissed it reverently, and broke the seal.

Again I saw the flush mount to his temples as he read the letter through slowly and in silence.  Then after a long pause he handed it to me; and I took it wondering, for his eyes were dim and yet bright with a noble joy.

The letter (turned into English) ran thus—­

     “To Sir John Constantine, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the
      Star, at his house of Constantine in Cornwall, England.

     “MY FRIEND,