Page:Tudor Jenks--The defense of the castle.djvu/168

142 along together as if we had been friends from boyhood. This smoothed my way, and I had no difficulty in being brought before the Count, where he was at dinner in a sort of shed built just within the edge of the wood. He showed me scant ceremony, and in fact refused to listen to my music.

"‘I care not for your screeching,' he said, 'and I will not have lazy vagabonds about me. Here, Luke, send this fellow packing whence he came!' Then Luke the Lurdane, who was standing near by, talking to one of the men-at-arms, turned and saw me. At first he gave but a careless glance, but then I saw him bend his brows together, and he beckoned me to him. I went unwillingly enough, but began to talk at once. 'Let me sing you a ballad of the Battle of Hastings,' said I. But Luke made no answer to this, looking at me sharply, as if trying to remember where he had seen me before. So keen was his look that I was silenced. Then Luke, speaking to one of the sentinels, said, 'Knock me off this fellow's cap.' The sentinel had better manners than his master, and merely lifted my cap from my head. Of course that showed my shaven pate, but since many minstrels adopt the same tonsure as friars, I thought little of this. But Luke, as soon as he saw me without the hat, knew me in spite of my