‘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.