Ferne smiled. "Was it so, soldier? Well, may I drink to you now who drank to me then?"
He drew the ale towards him but kept his eyes upon the other's countenance. The man reddened from brow to bared throat, but his words came at once, and there was moisture in his blue eyes. "If my old captain will do me so much honor--" he began, unsteadily. Ferne with a smile raised his jack to his lips and drank to him health and happy life and duty faithfully done.
When, after stammered thanks, the man was gone, the other waited hour after hour the appearance of Sir John Nevil. At last he came striding down the hall to the stair, but swerving suddenly when he caught sight of Ferne, crossed to the settle, and gave him quiet greeting. "Sir Francis kept me overlong," he said. "How has gone the day, Mortimer?"
"The fever lessens," answered the other. "There are not many now will die.... May I speak to you where there are fewer eyes?"
A few moments later, in Sir John's room, he took from his doublet a slip of paper. "This was brought to me some hours ago. Is it an order?"
"Ay," said Nevil, without touching the out-held paper. "An order."
Ferne walked to the window and stood there, looking out upon the passers-by in the street below. One and all seemed callow souls who had met neither angel nor devil, heard neither the thunderbolt nor the still small voice. Desperately weary, set to a task which appalled him, he felt again the sting of a lash to which he had thought himself inured. There was a longing upon him that this insistent probing of his wound should cease. Better the Indians and the fearful woods, and Death ever a-tiptoe! better the stupendous strife of the lonely soul to maintain its dominion, to say to overtoppling nature, to death, and to despair, _I am_. There was no man who could help the soul.... This earthly propping of a withered plant, this drawing of tattered arras over a blood-stained wall, what was it to the matter? For the moment all his being was for black, star-touching mountains, for the wild hurry of league-long rapids, the calling and crying of the forest;--the next he turned again to the room with some quiet remark as to the apparent brewing of a storm in the western skies. Nevil bent upon him a troubled look.