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Alen was examined about his science and it was discovered that he was "a very unlearned asse, and a sorcerer, for the wiche he was worthye hangynge, sayde Mr. Recorde." He was however kept in the Tower "about the space off a yere, and then by frendshipe delyvered. So scapithe alwayes the weked." But the wicked were not long to escape.
"He must have been a little man," she said; "none of my sons could sleep in it. Their feet would hang over." Van Alen eyed the big bed curiously. All his life he had heard of it, and now he had traveled far to see it. It was a lumbering structure of great width and of strangely disproportionate length. And the coverlet and the canopy were of rose-colored chintz.
In the old parlor, where the ancient furniture showed ghostlike shapes in the dimness, and the dead air was like a tomb, Van Alen found a picture of his great-grandfather. The little man had been painted without flattery. There he sat Lilliputian on the great charger!
They stared at her three of the brothers with their knives and forks uplifted, the fourth, a blond Titanic youngster, with his elbows on the table, his face turned up to her, as to the sun. "I don't believe he meant something done with your brains, but something fine, heroic " There was a hint of scorn in her voice. Van Alen flushed. He was fresh from the adulation of his bookish world.
With a backward flashing glance, she went into the kitchen, and Van Alen, lighting a cigarette, started to explore the old house. Except for the wing, occupied by the caretaker, nothing had been disturbed since the family, seeking new fortunes in the city, had left the old homestead to decay among the desolate fields that yielded now a meagre living for Mrs. Brand and her four strapping sons.
Already in 1537, Alen, the Master of the Rolls, had called the attention of the royal commissioners to the fact that many of the Irish regarded the Pope as the temporal sovereign of Ireland and the King of England only as Lord of Ireland by virtue of the Papal authority, and advised them that Henry should be proclaimed King of Ireland by an Act of Parliament.
"Of course," Otto agreed, and his next remark was called forth by Van Alen's pale blue pajamas. "Well, those are new on me." Van Alen explained that in the city they were worn, and that silk was cool, but while he talked he was possessed by a kind of fury. For the first time the delicate garments, the luxurious toilet articles packed in his bag, seemed foppish, unnecessary, things for a woman.
He went away, and Van Alen stared long into the fire, until the flames left a heart of opal among the ashes. He had not been unsuccessful with women himself. Many of them had liked him, and might have loved him if he had cared to make them. But until he met Mazie Wetherell he had not cared. Desperately he wished for some trial of courage where he might be matched against Otto Brand.
"I think I shall fit it," he said slowly. Mrs. Brand's critical glance weighed his smallness, his immaculateness, his difference from her own great sons. "Yes," she said, with the open rudeness of the country-bred; "yes, you ain't very big." Van Alen winced. Even from the lips of this uncouth woman the truth struck hard. But he carried the topic forward with the light ease of a man of the world.
To what he had to say the men listened eagerly, and the girl who waited on the table listened. She was a vivid personality, with burnished hair, flaming cheeks, eyes like the sea. Her hands, as she passed the biscuits, were white, and the fingers went down delicately to little points. Van Alen, noting these things keenly, knew that she was out of her place, and wondered how she came there.
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