Make them set him free!" She caught his arm and he felt her fingers shake. "Are you a coward, that you will listen to his cries when a word of yours could release him? I had not thought it of you--oh, I had not thought it of you!"

"Suppose a word of mine should set me in his place?" said Nicanor harshly. "Maybe I am coward; but calling me one will not make me one.

Suppose I were in his place; suppose that in my fall I carried others with me,--others who at all costs must be shielded,--is it not better that one should suffer than that our world should crash about our ears?

He is old and worthless--"

"And you are young and worthy to have his blood spilled for you!" she taunted in a shaking voice. "I do not understand, it may be, but it seems that this frail old man must suffer that you, so brave, so powerful, whose life is of so great worth, may go unharmed. Why should you be set in his place? Is the fault yours? If it be, and you seek shelter behind his helplessness, you are lower than the cringing curs.

Are you afraid, O great and worthy one, to stand forth and confess your wrong as any man would do?"

She stopped breathless. He looked at her with eyes hot and sullen.

"Now I should like to wring your neck for that!" he said. At the swift ruthless savagery in his tone the girl shrank back. Nicanor saw and laughed. "Since I may not, I'll take payment otherhow. As for the old man, let him squeal as best likes him. If they break him on the wheel, I shall go and tell them how to do it; if they boil him in oil, I shall go and stir the gravy. Your opinion of the cringing cur should not go unjustified."

The screaming died suddenly into moaning. Eldris covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, but that is worse, if worse can be! Why does he not tell them he knows nothing, has done nothing? Surely they would let him go! Is he trying, perhaps, to shield you?" Her voice, under all its fear and pity, was mocking.

"Not he! He would be glad to see me in his place," Nicanor retorted. He laughed a little. "Strange, is it not, that he doth not tell?--since thumb-screws and argolins soon find a man's limit."

She faced him, gathering all her courage.

"Now do I believe you know more of this than you will say!" she cried.

"Perhaps!" he said boldly. "It is not well to tell all one knows."

"Not even to save a fellow-creature's life! Oh, what are you--brute or man? Man with the speech of angels--brute with the heart of h.e.l.l!"

"Perhaps!" said Nicanor again. "Why should I tell you what I am?"

"Do you know, yourself?" she questioned.

His eyes hardened.

"Who can know himself?" he parried, with a shrug of his heavy shoulders.

"This much I know--that I am brute and man, slave and king. At times I am lower than man, who can be lower than any crawling beast; at times I am more than G.o.d, with all the world beneath me. Why? How should I tell?"

"You, who sing of birds and b.u.t.terflies, of flowers in Summer, of sunshine and sweet love and the brightness of life!" she said bitterly and with reproach. "Indeed, you are two men, and I know not either.

One, all men must hate and fear; the other--ah, the other is of the silver tongue. Why should this be? I can tell no more than you--I can but pray that that black beast may be tamed and stilled."

"I say I do not know!" Nicanor said sullenly. "And speak we of something else. I am _one_ man, Nicanor, slave and teller of tales. That is all with which you have concern. And I do not need praying over."

"Have you no G.o.ds?" she asked him, shocked. He looked rather blank at her attack.

"Why, no," he said, and his voice held a faint tinge of surprise. "There are no G.o.ds in the bogs and fens and on the hills where I tended sheep.

What G.o.ds with any sense would live in such parts as these? And I knew no need of them. Why should I have learned? When my mother would tell me of one G.o.d whom she worshipped, I would go and play. Is this your G.o.d?"

"Ay," she answered, without hesitation. "I think your mother, too, was Christian."

"Maybe," Nicanor answered with indifference. "But he is not the G.o.d of the mighty--of none but slaves and bondsmen and the humble, from all that hath been told to me."

"Of those who are oppressed," she said softly. "Wilt let me tell thee of Him? Of how He was born in a stable, with wise men journeying from the East, bearing gifts of homage?"

Nicanor looked at her with a gleam of quickening interest.

"Why, that is a tale," he said. "Now I have never heard of this before.

Why was he born in a stable, and what gifts did those wise men bring?"

Within the room the sounds had died, leaving a heavy silence, and neither noticed. For of old Death young Life is ever heedless; ever the brazen fanfare of life's trumpets drowns the thin reed-plaint of death.

In the pa.s.sage their voices whispered guiltily.

"Because His mother went to a place which was called Bethlehem, with Joseph her husband, to pay the taxes, and there was no room at the inn,"

said Eldris, explaining. "And the angel of the Lord had told Joseph that these things should be, and that he need not put away Mary as he was minded to do." She knew the facts of the story she would tell him; give it form and coherence she could not.

"Who was Mary?"

"The wife of Joseph."

"Why put her away?"

"Because the Child was to be born."

Nicanor drew his heavy eyebrows to a scowl of intense perplexity.

"Now why should he put her away for doing what all good wives should do?"

"Because her child was the Son of G.o.d, and at first Joseph did not--"

"And not the son of Joseph!" cut in Nicanor. His voice became all at once enlightened. "Now by my head, this is a quaint tale thou tellest!

So the G.o.d you Christians worship was a--"

"Oh!" cried Eldris; and the shock in her voice cut his words short.

"Never say it! You do not understand! It was a miracle!"

"A miracle--well, that is different," said Nicanor. "I have told tales of miracles, for such things may be. And so--?"

"For it had been foretold that One should be born, of a pure virgin, who should redeem the world and take upon Himself the sins and sorrows of all men. So an angel told Mary that she was blessed among women--but I think that she was frightened."

Nicanor nodded, as one in entire understanding. In place of the hard glitter of his eyes had come a certain luminosity as though from inner fires, an odd deep shining; his face was keen with a lively interest.

"And so--what happened then?" he questioned her, even as men, so many times before, had questioned him.

"Yet she was glad, for that she was chosen to bring peace into the world," recounted Eldris. "So they went into Bethlehem, and all the inns were full. But Mary could go no farther, and they went into a stable, where oxen and cattle were stalled. And there the Child was born; and men say that a great star in the sky guided shepherds who fed their flocks upon the moors to that stable where He lay. And it is told that three Kings came out of the East, laden with perfumes and gifts for him who was to be the Saviour of the world."

"Kings," Nicanor repeated, musing. "Then would they be clothed bravely, with jewels and fine linen, and this would make good contrast with the stable. Go on. What did they when they came into the stable?"

"They marvelled greatly that He whom they had journeyed to seek should be but a new-born babe, and they bowed down and worshipped."

"Paid homage," said Nicanor, following out his own train of thought.

"Ay, it is a good tale, but as I have heard it, it lacketh something--what? I must think of that. It hath no point, no pivot on which to hang the whole. For, look you, a tale is built as any other thing is built; it must have its parts balanced; it must have cause, and meaning, and effect. This hath a beginning, but it leads nowhere, without end."