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.’

‘Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?’

’Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year’s apprenticeship: 

“I learnt to watch the rats and mice
At play, with never a candle-end. 
They play’d so well; they sang so nice;
They dubb’d me comrade; called me friend!”

So says the ballad of our red-beard king’s captivity.  All evil has a good: 

“When our toes and chins are up,
Poison plants make sweetest cup”

as the old wives mumble to us when we’re sick.  Heigho! would I were in the little island well home again, though that were just their song of welcome to me, as I am a Christian.’

‘Tell me your name, friend,’ said Farina.

’Guy’s my name, young man:  Goshawk’s my title.  Guy the Goshawk! so they called me in my merry land.  The cap sticks when it no longer fits.  Then I drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a feather.  Now, what would be my nickname?

“A change so sad, and a change so bad,
Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing: 
Change is a curse, for it’s all for the worse: 
Age creeps up, and youth is flying!”

and so on, with the old song.  But here am I, and yonder’s a game that wants harrying; so we’ll just begin to nose about them a bit.’

He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out of the moonlight.  The two figures and the taller one were evidently observing them; for they also changed their position and passed behind an angle of the Cathedral.