The Lady glanced aside too quickly. 'I can't,' she admitted after a difficult pause. 'My father has been imprisoned. The fine to secure his freedom is more than my brother or I have in our powers to pay.'

     But politics and the feuding of the highborn lay outside this stranger's concern. His silence grew prolonged. When the Lady at last sought to prompt him, she discovered the chamber left empty. Her elusive visitor had departed. Only the pouch on the table remained as proof of his presence.

     The coins inside were heavy gold, and the full count of them, a miracle. When the Silverdown's ancient steward checked on his mistress hours later, he found the Lady silently weeping. A shining spill of coins lay in her lap, and in sparkling piles around her feet.

    Months later, Silverdown's Lady did the stranger's bidding for more reason than to ease her curiosity. She did not inquire of her father, for the Duke became irritable at reminder that Silverdown's gold had bought his reprieve from the King. The tale was recounted by the butcher, of a man-killing stallion that had been stolen on the same night as a scullion, mistakenly called dumb, and a half-wit, had disappeared without trace from the estate.

    'He was a shirker, a sneak, and a liar, too,' the butcher vehemently summed up.

The Lady frowned. 'I thought you said he could not speak?' 'Well, not entirely,' the butcher allowed. He stroked his unshaven chin. 'Trionn never talked to anybody, a queer enough habit to have. He wasn't the sort to care about repayment of a debt. He stole my best blade, you know, the same day he took off with the stallion.'

    The Lady tucked a fallen strand of hair underneath the edge of her hood. 'You got the knife back?' she asked outright.

    The butcher shrugged, then nodded. 'One of the servants caught him crossing the open yard. He never said what he'd intended to do with it,' this last, on a note of self-defense.

    Silverdown's Lady gave back no reproach beyond a sigh. 'From the look on your face, l'd expect that nobody ever asked him.' She reflected a moment on the gold, the value of which added up to a surprising fortune. The man who had repaid the coin, and then gone his way after scarcely a dozen words, had left wealth enough

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