The ancient took another look at me and said to himself in a loud whisper, after the manner of old and favoured serving-men, "A farmering body all but his hat, and none o' your ride-by-nights."
"Fetch him out!" said I again, not for want of fresh words to say to the candid old dodderer but to keep him to the point.
"Oh-aye," said he, and shuffled off.
He left me fuming, for his last mutteration, as he shook his lantern to stir the flame up a bit, was, "Knows a true man when he sees one. More used to a carving-knife than a sword, I'll be bound. What did he say? Wheatman o' sommat! Reg'lar farmering name!"
I kicked the door wide open and watched the lantern bobbing along the hall. The light made pale shimmerings on complete suits of mail hanging so life-like on the high, bare, stone walls, that it seemed for all the world as if the knights had been crucified there and, little by little, age after age, had dropped to dust, leaving their warrior panoplies behind--empty shells on the shore of time from which the life had dripped and rotted. The old man toiled up the grand staircase at the far end of the hall and turned to the right along a gallery. The friendly light disappeared, leaving me darkling and alone. Sultan sniffed his way to the door, pushed in his head and neck, and rubbed his nose against my breast in all friendliness. I flung my arms round his neck and caressed him, and in those anxious minutes in the doorway of Ellerton Grange he was comrade and sweetheart to me, and comforted my spirit greatly.
Footsteps and a voice within made me turn my head. A man came at a run down the stairs and along the hall. After him the old serving-man hastened, lantern in hand, as best he could.
"Sir James Blount?" said I.
"The same," said he curtly and confusedly.
"I bring you a letter from a very exalted person, Sir James," I explained.
He took it from me much as he would have taken a bowl of poison. "The light! The light! You slow old fool! The light!" he said, jerking the words out as if his soul was in distress, and the ancient, barely half-way down the hall, quickened his poor pace up to his master. He, tearing the lantern out of the feeble hands, and rattling it down on a table, ripped open the letter and devoured its contents.