"Yes," cried John, rubbing his hands together in glee, "it was the most heavenly opportunity ever bestowed upon a mortal man. I wish you had been there to see. I was in the tower above the enemy, and I shot them in the neck, stringing them one after another on the shafts, like running skewers in a round of beef. Not one did I miss."
"Oh, 'tis easily done," commented Roger, carelessly. "'Tis instinct, largely; you glance at your mark, and next instant your arrow is there."
"Roger Kent," replied the other, in a despondent tone, "I have on various occasions passed favourable judgment on your poems; I think you might, in return, admit that I am at least proficient in the rudiments of archery."
"John Surrey, I have more than once expressed the opinion, which I still hold, that you will in time, with careful practice, become a creditable archer. You would not have me say more and thus forswear myself."
"No," admitted John; "I am well content when you say as much, and now if it pleases you I will listen to as many of your verses as you can conveniently remember."
Surrey leaned back against the wall with a deep sigh, and the other, his voice vibrant with enthusiasm said:
"I will recite you first the poem on 'Friendship,' in honour of our meeting, and then you shall hear the verses on 'Sleep,' which come the more timely on an occasion when we both deprive ourselves of it, in order to hear verse which you will be the first to admit is well worth the sacrifice."
The poet then delivered his lines in smooth and measured tones, to which the other listened without comment. From poem to poem Roger Kent glided, sometimes interlarding the pauses between with a few sentences describing how the following effort came to maturity, thus cementing the poems together with their history, as a skilful mason lays his mortar between the stones. No literary enthusiast could have had a more patient listener, and the night wore on to the tuneful cadence of the poet's voice. At last he ceased. The steps of the patient Conrad on the battlements echoed in the still night air.
"Those are all the poems I can remember," he said, "and you see that I have not misspent the time while you were journeying down the Moselle. I do not know when I have had a more fruitful season. If I could but deliver these verses to some monk who would inscribe them on lasting parchment, for future ages to discuss and con over, I would be a happy man. Alas, the monks care not to write of aught save the sayings of the Fathers of the Church, and look askance at poems dealing with human instincts and passions that are beyond the precincts of the cloister, even though such poems tend to the future enrichment of literature, had the holy men but the mind to appreciate them. Thus I fear my verse will be lost to the world and that, in this deplorably contentious existence which we lead, my span may be suddenly at an end, with none to put in permanent form the work to which my life has been devoted. What poem, think you, of all you have heard, is the most likely to live after we are gone?"