"
Michael nodded.
"Well, look you, Michael--get you both there, and order me as good a meal
of fish and chops and baked pudding as can be bought for money. Aye, and
I'll have a bottle of red French wine, and you two will have what you
like best. Mark me, we'll sit together there, for we're one of a kind.
I've got to take to a life that fits me, an ex-jailbird, a man that's
been in prison for killing!"
"There's the king's army," said Michael. "They make good officers in
it."
A strange, half-sore smile came to Dyck's thin lips.
"Michael," said he, "give up these vain illusions. I was condemned for
killing a man not in fair fight.
"I can't enter the army as an officer, and you should know it. The king
himself could set me up again; but the distance between him and me is ten
times round the world and back again!" But then Dyck nodded kindly. It
was as if suddenly the martyr spirit had lifted him out of rigid, painful
isolation, and he was speaking from a hilltop. "No, my friends, what is
in my mind now is that I'm hungry. For four years I've eaten the bread
of prison, and it's soured my mouth and galled my belly. Go you to that
inn and make ready a good meal."
The two men started to leave, but old Christopher turned and stretched a
hand up and out.
"Son of Ireland, bright and black and black and bright may be the picture
of your life, but I see for you brightness and sweet faces, and music and
song.
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