"Philip!" exclaimed Diane with spirit. "The man is ill."
"I'm not denying it," averred Philip stubbornly. "Nor is there any denying the existence of the inn."
"He'll stay here of course if he wishes. The inn is a mile back."
"Is he the first?" flashed Diane impetuously.
Philip reddened but his eyes were sombre. The knife and the bullet had engendered a certain cynicism.
"As you will!" said he. And consigning to Johnny the care of the invalid, who watched him depart with furtive relief, Philip strode off through the woods. Hospitality, reflected Philip unquietly, was all right in its place, but Diane was an extremist. After supper, however--for Philip was inherently kind hearted and sympathetic--he dispatched Ras to unhitch the minstrel's snorting steed and remove the eccentric music machine from the highway. Johnny had already accomplished both.
Smoking, Philip stared at the firelit hollow where his lady's fire-tinted tents glimmered spectrally through the trees. He was relieved to see that the camp's unbidden guest lay comfortably upon his own blankets by the fire.
Somehow the minstrel's face, clean-shaven, strikingly brown of skin and unmistakably foreign beneath the thatch of dark hair sparsely veined in grey, lingered hauntingly in his memory.
"Where in thunder have I seen him before?" wondered Philip restlessly. "There's something about his eyes and forehead--on the road probably, for of course I've passed him a number of times. Still--Lord!" added Philip with a burst of impatience, "what a salamander I am, to be sure! Whittington, old top, ever since I've known our gypsy lady, I've done nothing but fuss."
But, nevertheless, when Diane's camp finally settled into quiet for the night, there was a watchful sentry in the forest who did not retire to his bed of hay until Johnny was astir at daybreak. And Philip was to find his bearings in a staggering flash of memory and know no peace for many a day to come.
"I am glad to see that you are better," said Diane pleasantly.
The minstrel, who had bathed his hands and face in the river until they were darkly ruddy, bowed with singular grace and ease. That he was grave and courtly of manner and strikingly handsome to boot, Diane had already noticed with a flash of wonder.