her, passed from her lover's sight towards the darkening orchard.

He stayed an hour in the garden, then went back to his great, old,
dimly lighted hall. Here, half the night, chin in one hand, the other
hanging below his booted knee, he brooded over the now glowing, now
ashen chimney logs; yet Robin-a-dale, who believed in Master Arden, and
very mightily in visions as beautiful as that which had been vouchsafed
to him going through the orchard that eventide, felt as light a heart as
if no shadowy ship awaited in the little port down by the little town,
whose people either cursed or looked askance. Waking in the middle of
the night, he thought he saw a knight at prayer--one of the old stone
Templars from Ferne church, where they lay with palm to palm, awaiting
with frozen patience the last trumpet-call that ever they should hear.
This knight, however, was kneeling with bowed head and hidden face, a
thing against all rule with those other stark and sternly waiting forms.
So Robin, being too drowsy to reason, let the matter alone and went to
sleep again.



X

The _Sea Wraith_, an ancient ship, gray and patched of sail, battered
and worn with a name for all disaster, sailed the Spanish seas as though
she bore a charmed life--and her crew that was the refuse of land and
sea, used to license, to whom mutiny was no uglier a word than another,
kept the terms of an iron discipline--and her Captain waked and slept as
one aware of when to wake and when to sleep.

There was fever between the decks; there was fever in black hearts; of