"How is it you sent no word back to me as you promised to do?"
"That is a long story. They would not even let me enter Treves, for there was nothing of all this afoot when I was there. On finding service at last, having journeyed to a hill-top within a league of this place, I tried to send tidings to you by the young man who has just left us, but he was baffled and turned back by the forces of the Archbishop, and could no more get to Treves than I could enter it once I was at its gates. We are all prisoners here, and until your arrow tapped my steel cap I knew not where you were."
"Hearing nothing I went to Treves in search of you, regretting I had not accompanied you, but you know there were important poems that I wished to complete when you left me—they are all finished now, and it would have done you good to hear them, in fact, it was that which made me follow you to Treves, for the consummation of a poem is the listening to it. There is one set of verses on 'Sleep' that luckily I remember, and can recite, if you will but harken."
"What happened when you reached Treves?"
"I made enquiry concerning you from all with whom I could gain speech, but there was nothing save talk of war in the place, and nowhere could I hear aught of you. One army had already left Treves, marching eastward, and another was then filling its ranks. The officer I spoke with, who was inducing all he could to join, offering great chances of plunder when the castle was taken, said he remembered you well, and that you had gone with the first army, leaving word that I was to join and follow you."
"The liar. I wonder the Archbishop retains the service of such, although perhaps he does not know his officers hold the truth in contempt."
"It is strange you should refer so warmly to truth, for I esteem it the choicest of all virtues, and have written a poem on 'Whiterobed Truth,' which I hope remains in my memory, seeing it is so dark that no reading may be done. It begins——"
"You believed him, of course, and enlisted with him?"
"Yes. He said we should find you here, and so indeed have I, but in the opposite camp. I marched with them down the river, and when we arrived I heard such wonderful stories of an infallible archer in the castle that I knew he must be you."