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He left his sentence uncompleted, and with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders proceeded on his journey round the room, still carrying the Italian rapier in his hand. Under his tan Halfman's face blazed and his eyes glittered, but he spoke with a forced calm and a feigned civility: "Say you so much? Why, I believe your honor, surely.
He dropped in his chair again as if exhausted by the vehemence of his words and the emotion which prompted them. Thoroughgood contemplated him sourly. "You prate like a play-actor," he snarled. Halfman's whole being flashed into activity again. He was no more a sentimentalist but now a roaring ranter. "Because I was a play-actor once," he shouted, "when I was a sweet-and-twenty youngling."
"Why the red devil should I not," Halfman asked, hoarsely, "if a bumpkin squire like you may do as much?" Blaise tried to domineer, but the effort was feeble before the fierceness in Halfman's glare. "Are you speaking to me, your superior?" he stammered. Halfman answered him mockingly, with a voice that swelled in menace as the taunting speech ran on.
A snare was set for Captain Cloud " he paused. "By whom?" cried Brilliana, the woman eager for her lover. Something like a smile came to Halfman's face. "That I may not say. I was privy to the plot. But I walked into the trap myself. I fear, sir, you will find a hole in your mantle." "You wore my cloak?" Evander asked, in wonder. "You died for me?" "Ah, why did you not warn?" Brilliana cried.
As Halfman made him no answer but continued to stare gloomily into the garden, Blaise concluded that the interest lay there which made him thus distracted. So he came down to the table and looked over Halfman's shoulder. In the distance he saw a man and woman walking among the trees. The man was patently the Puritan prisoner, the woman was the chatelaine of Harby.
His fantastical manner, his fluent speech, his assurance, and that note of something foreign, odd, as characteristic, as conclusive, as the scorch of foreign suns upon his face, appealed to the curiosity in Evander which ever made men books for him. Halfman's manner grew more expansive at Evander's ready acceptance of his offer.
"Now, Clupp," he cried, "will you never learn the difference between port and comport?" Clupp, the fellow addressed, bashful at finding himself the object of attention, swayed backward and forward with his pikestaff for a pivot, laughing vacantly. "No, sir," he gaped, stupidly. Master Halfman's lip wrinkled menacingly, and he reached his hand to his staff that lay upon the table.
He seemed so affected by the reflection that he let his hand close, as if unconsciously, upon Master Vallance's tankard, which Master Vallance had set upon the table untasted, and before the innkeeper could interfere its contents had disappeared down Halfman's throat and a second empty vessel rattled upon the board.
"There was breakfast, dinner, supper in your stroke. I must to the house to find vinegar and brown paper to patch my poll." "Can I aid you?" Evander offered. "I have some slight skill in surgery." "Leave him to me," Halfman interposed. "I have botched as many heads as I have broken." Sir Blaise, leaning heavily on Halfman's arm, replied to Evander's offer in his own way.
Brilliana's bright face took a swift look of gravity and she gave a little sigh. "The King's cause," she said, soberly, "might turn a child into a champion." The steady loyalty that made her words at once a psalm and a battle-cry bade Halfman's pulses tingle. Who could be found unfaithful where this fair maid was so faithful? Yet he remembered their isolation and the memory made him speak.
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