"I see how bitterly thou art changed."

"Ay, I am changed," answered Sir Mortimer. "Your thought was kindly, and
I thank you for it. Once these doors opened wide to all who knocked, but
it is not so now. Ride on to the town below the hill, and take your rest
in the inn! Your bedfellow may be Iscariot, but if you know him not, and
as yet he knows himself but slenderly, you may sleep without
dreaming. Ride on!"

"The inn is full," answered Arden, bluntly. "This week the Queen rests
in her progress with your neighbor, the Earl, and the town will be
crowded with mummers and players, grooms, cutpurses, quacksalvers, and
cockatrices, travellers and courtiers whom the north wind hath nipped!
'Sblood, Mortimer, I had rather sleep in this grave old place!"

"With Judas who knows himself at last?" asked Ferne, coldly, without
moving from his place. The door opened, and old Humphrey, shuffling
across the floor to the table, placed thereon a dish of cakes and a
great tankard of sack, then as he turned away cast a backward glance
upon his master's face. Arden noted the look, that there was in it fear,
overmastering ancient kindness, and withal a curiosity as ignoble as it
was keen. Suddenly, as though the fire of that knowledge had leaped to
his own heart from that of his host, he knew in every fibre how
intolerable was the case of the master of the house, sitting alone in
this gloomy chamber, served by this frightened boy, by that old man
whose gaze was ever greedy for the quiver of an eyelid, the pressing
together of white lips, whose coarse and prying hand ever strayed
towards the unhealed sore. He strode to the table and laid hands upon
the tankard. "The dust of the road is in my throat," he explained, and
drank deep of the wine, then put the tankard down and turned to the