Towards the gloaming I had come down from the roof of the tower, and was standing, gloomy, and little like a bridegroom, at the little window whence I had so often looked down upon the playing children of Thorn. Suddenly a great hand was reached up from the pavement, a folded paper was thrust in at the lattice, and I saw the face of the Lubber Fiend looking up at me from the street below.
"Come up hither, good Jan," I cried to him. "I will run and open the gate!"
But the Lubber Fiend only shook his head till his ears flapped like burdocks in the wind by the wood edges.
"Jan will come none within that gate to tell where he has been," he said.
"Jan may be a fool, but he knows better than that."
"And where have you been?" I asked, eagerly.
Jan the Lubber Fiend stood on his tiptoes and whispered up to me with his elbows on the sill.
"You are sure the Duke is not behind you?"
"There is none here—except my wife," I said, smiling. And I liked speaking the word.
"I have seen the great Prince," said Jan, nodding backward, and smiling mysteriously, "and he is coming, but not by himself. There are such a peck of mad fellows out there. There will not be much to eat in Thorn when they all come in. Better make a good dinner to-day, that is my advice to you. And I was bid to tell you that when all was ready for their coming a fire is to be lighted on a high place, and then the Prince will come to the gates."
I longed much to hear more of his adventures, but neither love nor money would induce the thrice cautious Jan to set a foot within the precincts of the Red Tower.