CHAPTER XXXVI. THE FIVE BILLETLESS ARROWS.
The bowman, with characteristic caution, stole down the hill until he neared the line, wound so tightly round the castle. Here his circumspection redoubled, and, trailing his bow after him, he crawled on hands and knees towards his friend, Roger Kent, who, with bowed head, marched to and fro along his accustomed beat. The poet seemed in a state of blank despondency, but whether on account of the slanders of an unsympathetic world, or for the reason that he had parted in discordant terms from his comrade, John Surrey could not tell. A warble from the forest caused the sentinel to raise his head and peer into the denseness of the thicket. The moon showed his face to be alert and expectant, expressions which changed into a look of joy when the warble was repeated and he saw emerge from the plantation the rotund figure of his friend and critic. The latter motioned him to come out of the moonlight into the shadow, and the unsuspicious Roger, casting a glance round him, seeing the coast clear, approached until the gloom of the wood fell over him, then stood, realising that, after all, the insult had not been of his bestowal, and that etiquette at least demanded from John some verbal amends for his former verbal buffets, if there was to be peace between them.
"Roger," said John, "I could not sleep until I had told you how sorry I am that my roughness of speech gave you good cause for offence, and I beg you to think no more of my words."
"What you said," replied Roger, dolefully, "was no doubt true enough. I have been thinking over your estimate of my poems, and I fear I have, in my enthusiasm, at various times given you the idea that I held them in high esteem myself; but alas, no one knows better than I what poor trash they are, and I recited them to you that I might profit by your criticism. I cannot find fault with an honest opinion."
"It was not an honest opinion," cried John, fervently. "I was disappointed that you refused to pleasure my master by allowing him to get free of the castle, but he has said that you were quite right to stand by your oath and showed me that, in your place, I would have done the same. Ah, he has a high opinion of poets, my master."
"Has he so? Then am I the more unfortunate that I cannot aid him to escape. I would I had taken the oath with him instead of under the Archbishop, whom I have never seen, but such are the fortunes of war, and one of the many blessings of peace is that then a man is at liberty to do what he will for a friend, as I think I have well set forth in a verse conned over in my mind since you left me, which I shall entitle, 'Peace boweth to Friendship.'"
"Let me hear it, Roger, in token of your forgiveness, for what I said to you a while since was but the reflex of my disappointment, and in no wise an indication of my true mind."
"The verse is but a trivial one at best," said Roger, in a tone of great complacency that rather belied his words, "and is, you must remember, not yet polished as it will be when I indite it on papyrus; still I have to admit that even in its present unfinished shape it contains the germ of what may be an epic. It runs thus——"
And here he repeated the lines sonorously, while his comrade listened with rapt attention beaming on his upturned countenance.
After this felicitous introduction the two sat down together, the sentinel rising now and then to cast a look about him, resolved that even the delights of a discussion upon poesy should not make him neglect the business he had in hand, but the night was still, with the castle and camp wrapped in equal silence. At last John's quick ear caught the low signal that told him Rodolph and Conrad were waiting to make good their way through the line, broken at this point by a literary conference. John looked sharply at his friend, wondering whether or no he also had heard the sound, but the other babbled serenely on.