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"Any enemy of the King is an enemy to me, but not he, as I think, more than another." Halfman tapped the table impressively. "There you are mistaken, lady," he said. "The man is very especially and particularly your enemy.
'You had better bring the wood in here, continued Halfman, 'and I will split it up small, so that there may be no delay in cooking me. So the ogress gave Halfman a pile of wood and an axe, and then set out with her husband, leaving Halfman and her daughter busy in the house.
"Bravely done, rebel," Brilliana cried, aloud, as if in spite of herself, as she beheld the reckless deed, and "Bravely done, rebel," Halfman echoed, in his reluctant turn, as he heard his lady's words and saw the light of praise on his lady's face.
Then Halfman began: 'After we were twelve days' journey from home, we met an ogress, who gave us greeting and said, "Why have you been so long coming? The daughters of your uncle have waited for you in vain," and she bade us follow her to the house, saying, "Now there need be no more delay; you can marry your cousins as soon as you please, and take them with you to your own home."
"Very willingly," Evander called back. "Have I overslept?" Halfman made a gesture of protestation. "Nay, nay," he answered. "Your time is your own nag here, to amble, pad, or gallop as you choose. Have I your permission to wait upon you in your apartment?"
Thoroughgood answered both in a breath. "Badly wounded. They bring him here." As he spoke, Garlinge and Clupp entered from the garden, bearing Halfman between them, wrapped in Evander's mantle. The man of gallant carriage, of swaggering alacrity, seemed to lie horribly limp in the men's arms.
While he tried to engage the blade of Halfman, a swinging blow from the pike of Garlinge knocked his weapon out of his hand, and in another moment he was gripped in the grasp of the two young country giants, while Thoroughgood covered him with his musketoon. "This is treachery," he gasped; but no one paid any attention to his protest.
Rufus, lifting his head, faced him with a finger on his lips while with the other he pointed to the door of the inner chamber. "Hush!" he whispered; "the King sleeps. But all is well. He has as good as promised the Puritan shall die." "All is not so well as you think," said Halfman, sardonically. "Here comes one more pleased to see you than you to see him."
A fantastic possibility danced into Brilliana's brain. She glanced to where Halfman stood moodily ruminating on the method he would employ to loosen Master Hungerford's purse-strings if he had him at his mercy in a taken town.
But Halfman, never a one to follow tamely, with an easy stretch of his long limbs, swung himself lightly beside his uncivil companion, and without breathing himself in the least kept steadily a foot-space ahead of him. "I was ever counted a good walker," he observed, cheerfully. "I have taken the world's ways at the trot; you will never outpace me."
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