goblets may be worth."
THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR

Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted
himself a grown man, and a very accomplishedcavalier into the

bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch;
and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has

killed one's man in an honourable fashion, and knows a thing or two
of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to

be pardoned. He had put up his horse with due care, and supped
with due deliberation; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind,

went out to pay a visit in the grey of the evening. It was not a
very wise proceeding on the young man's part. He would have done

better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed. For the
town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a mixed

command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his safe-
conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter.

It was September 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty
piping wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the

dead leaves ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window
was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry

over supper within, came forth in fits and was swallowed up and
carried away by the wind. The night fell swiftly; the flag of

England, fluttering on the spire-top, grew ever fainter and fainter
against the flying clouds - a black speck like a swallow in the

tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night fell the wind
rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the tree-tops

in the valley below the town.
Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's

door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while
and make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found

so much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before
he said good-bye upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in

the meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor
a glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis

was ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even
by daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in

this absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain
of one thing only - to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's

house lay at the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the
inn was up at the head, under the great church spire. With this

clue to go upon he stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more
freely in open places where there was a good slice of sky overhead,

now feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and
mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an

almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its
possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand

startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the
pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness

threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air
is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances,

as if to lead him farther from his way. For Denis, who had to
regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real danger as

well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily and boldly
at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.

He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go

sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of
his inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to

reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall,
which gave an out-look between high houses, as out of an embrasure,

into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a

single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show

the outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills.
By the uncertainglimmer, the house on his left hand should be a

place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles
and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of

flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the
door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and

overhung by two long gargoyles. The windows of the chapel gleamed
through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and

threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense
blackness against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great

family of the neighbourhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town
house of his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it

and mentally gauging the skill of the architects and the
consideration of the two families.

There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he
had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained

some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the
main thoroughfare and speedilyregain the inn. He was reckoning

without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night
memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back

above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and
heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the

lane. It was a party of men-at-arms going the night round with
torches. Denis assured himself that they had all been making free

with the wine-bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about
safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. It was as like as

not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he
fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own

torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped
that they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own

empty voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might evade
their notice altogether.

Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon
a pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his

sword rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who
went there - some in French, some in English; but Denis made no

reply, and ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he
paused to look back. They still kept calling after him, and just

then began to double the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank
of armour, and great tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the

narrow jaws of the passage.
Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might

escape observation, or - if that were too much to expect - was in a
capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he

drew his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his
surprise, it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a

moment, continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges,
until it stood wide open on a black interior. When things fall out

opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical
about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience

seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and
resolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without a

moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door
behind him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further

from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some
inexplicable reason - perhaps by a spring or a weight - the

ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked
to, with a formidablerumble and a noise like the falling of an

automatic bar.
The round, at that very moment, debauched upon the terrace and

proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them
ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled

along the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but
these gentlemen were in too high a humour to be long delayed, and

soon made off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis's
observation, and passed out of sight and hearing along the

battlements of the town.
Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear

of accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the
door and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth,

not a handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got
his finger-nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was

immovable. He shook it, it was as firm as a rock. Denis de
Beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What