"What is that to me, old man?"

"If you will not let us pass in to him, at least take this leaf from my
tablet to my cousin. See, I have written his name; he will come out to
us.

"For what do you take me? I carry no messages, I keep the gate."

He then bawled, in a stentorian voice, inexorably:

"No strangers enter here, but the competitors and their companies."

"Come, old man," cried a voice in the crowd, "you have gotten your
answer; make way."

Margaret turned half round imploringly:

"Good people, we are come from far, and my father is old; and my cousin
has a new servant that knows us not, and would not let us sit in our
cousin's house."

At this the crowd laughed hoarsely. Margaret shrank as if they had
struck her. At that moment a hand grasped hers--a magic grasp; it felt
like heart meeting heart, or magnet steel. She turned quickly round at
it, and it was Gerard. Such a little cry of joy and appeal came from her
bosom, and she began to whimper prettily.

They had hustled her and frightened her, for one thing; and her cousin's
thoughtlessness, in not even telling his servant they were coming,
was cruel; and the servant's caution, however wise and faithful to her