PATRICIA
at the
INN

by
J. C. Snaith

Author of
Broke of Covenden

Illustrated by
H·B·Matthews

Copyright, 1906
BY
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
New York

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Charles Stuart, of song and legend, subsequently the “Merry Monarch,” King Charles Second, is perhaps the most romantic figure in English history. Much has been said of him; little good, much evil; but at all events whatever his shortcomings and capitulations to the flesh, it cannot but be conceded that he is the focussing point for all the speculation and cogitation of the romanticist. He gave to history a chapter of sovereignty replete with debauchery and misrule. But there was occasional worthy reading between the lines; reading that conveyed friendship, faith, and loyalty.

The incidents of the following narrative, “Patricia at the Inn,” purport to deal with Charles Stuart’s adventures immediately subsequent to the historical battle of Worcester. It will be remembered that following the execution of the ill-fated Charles the First, the Prince of Wales was crowned by the Scottish people at Scone, January 1, 1651. Oliver Cromwell was not to be declared Lord Protector of the Commonwealth until almost two years later, but already he had stamped his inexorable will upon the nation. Prince Charlie backed by twenty thousand men marched upon Stirling, determined to enforce the sovereignty of the Stuart dynasty and by right of blood and sword to teach this upstart man of the people that sovereigns were born, not made, and that the memory of the “martyred king” should be vindicated in the person of the surviving Stuart. However, the redoubtable Cromwell wasted no time on vow-making, but with his usual energy placed himself in the rear of the Royalist army and cut it off from communication with Scotland. Prince Charlie was thus compelled to continue his march on England. He got as far as Worcester, where the mayor and certain unclassibles crowned him King Charles the Second. But on the same day Cromwell appeared for the coronation festivities and a memorable battle ensued, lasting five hours. The Scots were decisively routed. Prince Charlie escaped, and after experiencing many vicissitudes and amazing adventures, extending over a period of some six weeks, finally succeeded in being smuggled aboard a waiting vessel and so won safely away to Normandy.

It was this period of outlawry, during which a price was set on the royal head of Charles Stuart and he was being hunted like a dangerous criminal, that Mr. Snaith has employed as the basic theme on which to graft a romance. In the main the narrative offers a striking instance of the predominant trait of the Stuart character—the sovereignty of the flesh to the exclusion of all else, even personal safety.

W. B. M. Ferguson.

CONTENTS

PATRICIA at the INN

CHAPTER I
The Man out of the Night

IT had been remarked that the weather was extreme for the time of year. The little inn, huddling on the desolate bridle-path that ran in front of the open sea, was wrapped in a cloud of fog; the night was as hollow as a crypt; of a temper to warp the spirit; and so silent, that when a wild fowl cried as it shivered by the tide, a hundred echoes woke in the high rocks rising behind the tavern.

The house was on a wild and lonely coast. It stood on the road to nowhere, high hills and seas about it; and as not one traveller a month came to it from the landward, it was frankly for the service of that strange, furtive company of adventurers who came in the night from France and Holland when the winds were friendly.

All the bitter evening had the landlord kept the chimney-side. Flanked on the one hand by a fire of red faggots, hissing with blue flame; on the other by a stiff glass of hot rum-and-water, the old man sat, the image of bodily contentment.

He was not a prepossessing fellow. His face had all the cunning of his years. He had a pair of hard, colourless, averted eyes, divided by a hill of flesh, whose blue-veined prominence said where his profits went to; a close-kept mouth; and over and above it all a fixed expression of calculated greed, of sustained, unwavering rapacity. It was not a good countenance to look upon. But to-night it was as near benignity as it could ever be. For while he sat with the warm fire and the generous waters inflaming his ruddy jowl, his mind and person were never so composed. It made him purr internally, like the cat nestling in the cinders, to compare his own fortunate condition with that of those frozen men upon the sea. While he reproduced, and even enhanced, in his imagination the discomforts and the perils they endured, he thanked the god of his physical well-being for the happy chance that had saved him from being a mariner. He called upon the serving-maid to brew a stronger posset for her master’s constitution.

“Cold as the bowels o’ the ground,” he groaned in his fleshly happiness. “And b’aint it sing’lar how the frost crawls round me. Ugh, it’s in my toes now, and now it’s in my blood; and, Lord, I feels a little iceberg a-creepin’ down my spine! Zakes! if it were not for a drop o’ stingo I might be very poorly.”

He hugged his toasting limbs, and drew his stool yet closer to the blaze.

“Keep them dogs hot,” said the landlord, when the girl came with the fresh concoction. “Keep the faggots crackling. The night’s a stinger, isn’t she? Lord! I wouldn’t like to be upon the sea.”

He fell to tracing weird shapes in the fire, and presently to dreams of pleasant things. Suddenly he started from his doze, and called out to his son:

“Joseph, d’ye hear me? Put them shutters up, and drop the bolt across. There’ll be no comp’ny, so ye and Cicely can both get bed’ards. ’Tis a night to freeze a dog.”

But even as the landlord spoke, his judgment was shown to be for once at fault. For as his son opened the door and let in a few gusts of frost and sea-fog, a man was found upon the threshold. He was the first of all the unexpected visitors who came to the “Sea Rover” that wintry evening; he made the first among those strange incidents that were so soon to invade the peace of the landlord’s life.

The man from the night pushed Joseph aside, and lumbered into the shadows of the room. He proved to be a seafaring man, in a dogskin cap, with a pair of large earrings in his ears. Like the landlord, his visage bore no superficial graces. The rime glistened on every inch of him; and his tawny face, tanned by the winds and the seas, showed fiercely from out of it. There was only one eye to his countenance, but that shone on the landlord like a beacon; there was an oath on his lips; and he came to the fire and put his hands to the blaze, with an air of mastery that startled the drowsy host even more than his appearance. This was hardly a friendly smuggler here in the ordinary course of trade.

While the mariner melted the rime on his jerkin and thawed his frozen limbs, Master Gamaliel Hooker shook up his wits and asked what his pleasure was.

“A go o’ rum,” said the mariner, gruffly.

He drew up a settle opposite the landlord’s stool and flung himself on to it. Then it was, in the full light of the candles, that the weather-beaten ugliness of the man was revealed. Violence had closed his right eye forever; a scar ran from his temple to his under-jaw; and in contradistinction to the greed, the subtlety, and the cunning of the host, there was a brutal insolence about the fellow that had a whimsicality in it too, as is sometimes to be observed in those indomitable characters who, conscious of their qualities, presume upon them. Master Hooker, distrustful by nature as he was, had already discovered this sinister audacity, and while that in itself was enough to unsettle the peace of his mind, it was the fact that a naked knife was gleaming under his visitor’s jerkin that most contributed to his discomposure.

For a time the landlord and the mariner sat watching one another. On the one side was a contemptuous carelessness; on the other a measure of suspicion amounting to hatred. But the landlord deemed it wiser to conceal his emotions under an appearance of friendliness. He proffered a pipe of tobacco to the mariner.

“You’re almighty kind, mate,” said the sailor, accepting a clay pipe from the mantelpiece and pressing in the contents of Gamaliel’s box.

It was the beginning of conversation. The landlord was eager to discover the particular business that had carried his visitor to the “Sea Rover,” of all the places in the world, at that hour and on such a night. Had he a cargo for disposal; was he waiting for his ship; was he running from the law; or had he come to cut the throats of himself, his son, and Cicely, and afterwards to despoil the inn? Certainly a more ill-favoured pirate he never saw.

The sailor, rather silent at first and ill-disposed to communicate his designs, gradually thawed into talk under the benign influences of hospitality. He even went to the length of revealing the business that had carried him so strangely there.

“You don’t happen, mate,” says he, with a leer,—“you don’t happen to ’a’ seen a young man wandering about this here coast, do you?”

“What kind of a young man might he be like?” says the landlord.

He had seen no young man whatever. He would certainly have remarked the smallest detail of his appearance, had he done so; for the first of all Gamaliel Hooker’s characteristics was his inveterate curiosity. It was this which led him to push a topic that otherwise would have had no interest for him.

“Well, mate,” says the mariner, “he ain’t very easy to describe, d’ye see. I’ve got to set eyes on him myself yet.”

“A seafaring man?” said the landlord.

“Not he,” said the mariner.

“Gentle or simple?” said the landlord.

The sailor hesitated an instant, while he gazed keenly at the host. He seemed to be calculating how far he could safely take Gamaliel Hooker into his affairs.

“Gentle enough,” he said, reluctantly. “But he’d come unattended, I daresay; and he mought be drest like the commonalty.”

“A soldier?” asked the landlord, with a flash of inspiration.

“Never you mind,” said the other, roughly.

“But how can I tell you whether I’ve seen him or not,” said the cunning Gamaliel, “unless I know the kind o’ young man he is?”

“Well, a soldier then,” said the unwilling mariner.

“No, I’ve not seen no proscribed Cavalier,” said the landlord.

The mariner sprang up with an oath.

“Who said ye had!” he cried. “Did I say ye had, you rum-peddling lubber?”

“No; but you asked me,” said the cunning old rogue of a landlord.

“I am damned if I did!” said the angry mariner.

“Well, you didn’t then,” said the landlord, with a soft smile, “but I thought you did.”

The sailor turned his ugly face full on the landlord’s. He looked him over steadily and fiercely. He then put down his pipe, spread out the palm of one hand, and tapped upon it with two fingers of the other to lend an emphasis to what he was about to say. And he chose his words with a most particular and deliberate care.

“Now look you here, mate,” said he, “I know the sort you are. I’ve not followed the sea and run cargoes on this coast for twenty year without getting a wind as to the repitation of Gamaliel Hooker. I know the kind o’ man you are, my hearty. But I’m just going to sing a word in your ear. I’m a plain-dealing man, I am: rough, you’ll say, almighty rough; but I’m a man o’ my word, and you can lay to that. Now, if a young man comes to your lousy, rat-ridden old hulk of a tavern, and asks for Diggory Fargus, you just have the goodness to tell him he’ll find me showing a light from the boat, at twelve o’clock at midnight, a short sea-mile up the shore at Pyler’s Cove. You just tell him that. And if he should come, you are to keep him snug, d’ye see, here in this house till nightfall. He must not be seen by a living soul. Do this, my hearty, and you may have such a reward one day as will go beyond your dreams. But you just play me false, mate; you just send the young man to the wrong place, or set it abroad that he’s at your tavern, and as surely as Diggory Fargus hath followed the sea for twenty years, he will twist your head off your body with these two hands.”

To the deliberation of the seaman’s words was added a fierceness of countenance that made the landlord quail. Gamaliel grew terrified. He was fascinated by that unpleasant face. When Diggory Fargus pointed his threat by expanding his great gnarled brown paws, sweat sprang out of the landlord’s hair. When his eyes fell on the knife that gleamed at the seaman’s waist, he was held in the paralysis of fear. And, in the height of his sufferings, the mariner bestowed a kind of dramatic poignance upon them, by laughing aloud at poor Gamaliel’s fat, pale face; by striding to the door, flinging it wide, and disappearing into the wintry darkness.

CHAPTER II
The quest of the King

IT was not easy for the landlord to recover of his terror. Your rogue is a nervous creature. How often does he anticipate his doom! When the wind sighs through the branches, he hears the creakings of the gallows tree. Long after his visitor’s departure, Gamaliel felt two strong hands upon his throat. Why he should have been so conscious of them it is not easy to know. He had certainly done nothing as yet to provoke the wrath of Diggory Fargus. He had not so much as encountered the mysterious youth, let alone betray him. Perchance the innkeeper had no command of his own integrity. He may have distrusted himself. Perchance he had that grim insight into his own character that could foresee his instincts leading him into a course of action that he knew to be fraught with peril. A man who all his life long had first sought his own pecuniary advantage in any circumstance that might arise, did well to fear that his rapacity in any given case might get the better of his judgment.

As Gamaliel Hooker sat cossetting himself beside the fire, this mysterious young man of the mariner’s dwelt much in his mind. A proscribed cavalier, he would stake his leg. Diggory Fargus lay with his boat in the Cove, waiting to take him out of England over the sea. As likely as not this fugitive was a person of consideration and great place, such was the mariner’s solicitude for his well-being. If that were the case, Parliament would know how to reward him who stayed his flight. Doubtless a specific reward was already upon his head. If Fortune directed him to the “Sea Rover,” Master Hooker shrewdly foresaw that he might have to choose between his greed and his personal safety. But there was a phrase also of the sailor’s that he would do well not to forget. He had hinted at a recompense that might exceed the dreams of his avarice. Plainly this fugitive was a person to be welcomed.

With one hand clasping the liquor-cup, the landlord presently fell into a doze. Even in this state of semi-consciousness, the unknown young man still ran much in his mind. Once the sleeper started up and thought he heard his knock upon the door. It was but a coal that had fallen on the hearth. He looked into the fire and saw his picture there. A very handsome, proud young man, with curls on his shoulders and great diamonds glistening on his hands. But farther back in the bright embers was the face of the ugly sailor glowering behind it, with his earrings, his knife, and his strong two hands.

Suddenly the landlord jumped up from his stool with a little cry. He ran to the window and pressed his ear against the drawn shutters. The silence of the wintry night had been invaded by strange sounds. At first they were so remote that their nature was hardly to be distinguished. But presently they grew plain. Horses!

Hoofs were on the frosty road. The music of iron upon adamant rang nearer at every clock-tick. They were coming to the inn. What could it mean? Gamaliel was not expecting visitors to-night. Yet stay, he was! Was there not this young man of the sailor’s? Again Gamaliel put his ear to the shutter, to withdraw it suddenly, however, with a spasm of fear.

It was not one horse alone on the road; rather a company. He had heard the rattle of sword and breast-piece; besides, the regulated manner of approach told the nervous landlord that the law had come to his inn at last. For years he had expected it. But now it was at his threshold, God knew he was in no case to greet it. Could it be that his misdemeanours, stealthy and hidden as they were, had been uncovered, and that now he was to be called on to pay the penalty!

For a minute the landlord faltered. He surrendered his mind to fear. Again the sweat burst out of him; it glistened on his white cheeks; he could not restrain the convulsive twitch of his old, irresolute hands. It was for only a minute, however. Gamaliel’s mind recurred to the fugitive of the mariner’s, and once more he became himself. Of course, these on-coming soldiers were seeking that mysterious youth. What a fool he was to be frightened so easily!

In the comfort of this thought Master Gamaliel wiped the sweat from his face, drained his glass, and made ready to receive his unwelcome visitors grandly. He opened his portals, even before they knocked upon them; and, standing in the full light of the fire and the candles as it met the darkness and the sea-fog, he inquired their pleasure with a bow and his hand on his heart.

Through the driving mists of the night, steaming horses, and cold, rime-coated men clad in morions and corselets of steel, were visible. The foremost of these soldiers sprang from his steed briskly and strode past the landlord into the warm kitchen of the inn. He was a nimble, ruddy little fellow, with a human look to his countenance, and, for all the cold night, a cheerful way with him.

“Landlord,” said he, clapping his wet form to the face of the fire, “you see us highly in need of your kindness. Brew us your hottest posset in your biggest bowl, and waste no time upon it. We have come far, but we have further to go by many a weary mile, unless our fortune is kinder than it promises.”

“Yes, yes, Captain, to be sure,” said the landlord; “you shall drink of the best of my poor hostelry, and that right speedily.”

Master Hooker, his fears allayed by the frank good humour of the soldier’s demeanour, became the pattern of a host. He called his son and his serving-maid to procure the liquor and boil the pot; and he himself fussed so much about the details of the brew, that in a surprisingly few minutes the soldier and his nine cold men were entertained. The little man, under the benignant influences of the warmth and liquor, became disposed for intercourse. With his back to the fire, he communicated things that the landlord wanted mightily to hear.

A battle had been fought by Worcester City between the arms of Oliver, Protector, and Charles Stuart, King of Scots. The Lord, it seemed, had vouchsafed “a crowning mercy” unto the former ones, to such a degree, forsooth, that those of the latter had been beaten incontinently from the field. And Charles Stuart was even now being hunted mile by mile over the West Country; that almost every hour he was likely to be ta’en; and that whosoever had that good fortune would have a goodly recompense, so considerable a price there was upon his head.

“A considerable price is on his head!” cried the landlord, scalding his mouth in his excitement, “and he is in these parts even now!”

“True i’ faith,” said the soldier, “or I’d be snug in Hounslow Camp. We hold an information that he lies in hiding on this shore, and on some night such as this he will try to make the coast of France. But it will be a darkish evening when he goes, I fancy, there being so many of us prick-ears along this beach, d’ye see.”

“Well, I reckon, friend,” Gamaliel said with deep emotion, “that if Charles Stuart, king or no king, comes to the ‘Sea Rover,’ you can lay to it he will not go off again so freely as he came. A considerable reward, I think ye said, sir?”

“And while your mind’s upon it,” said the soldier, “look to the proscribed. There’ll be lords and cavaliers, as well as kings, awaiting a wind for France. We shall tarry on this shore until we hold the Stuart; so if lace shirts and velvet breeches come your way, just you keep them, Master, and send us word along the coast. I’ll answer for it that you shan’t be a loser by it.”

Gamaliel Hooker might be said to drink these phrases, so agreeable were they to his receptive ears. He had a particular talent for the devious and the underhand. And the prospect of turning an unexpected penny, and at the same time winning the approbation of the law, tickled his mind so tenderly, that he could not repress a beam of pleasure that crept out of his crafty eyes.

“Drain the bowl, good soldier; I will brew again!” he cried.

The soldier drained the bowl. Cheek by jowl, they sat together beside the blaze. Outside the awaiting troopers stamped their feet, beat their arms, and damned the cold with a Scriptural directness. But the host was thoughtful to the last degree. He caused his son to bear hot meal and water to the rime-clad horses, while the servant-maid took mulled sack and spiced October to their riders. And when at last they went forth again to scour the bitter night for a hunted solitary, mine host stood bareheaded by his door waving a candle to them until they passed from sight into the blackness of the rocks. Thereon the good Gamaliel, mirror of hospitality, soul of ancient cheer, closed his portals with a crash, slipped bolt and chain across, and returned to his wassail. For a whole minute he puckered his wits with some tough arithmetic, and then said to his son:

“I reckon, Joseph, I’m nineteen shillings and fivepence out on this visit up to now. But I’m not complaining; for I rather think, my son, since things are as they are, we shall have that money back before the week’s spent, with maybe a few groats emolument over and above.”

The landlord chuckled at the thought, and began to build his castles. Soon his son and the servant-maid went to their repose; but Gamaliel sat for long enough about the fire, staring into its ever-changing caverns and abysses—now sipping his liquor, now lost in meditation, now revolving choice schemes in his mind. Indeed, so happy was he in these circumstances, that it seemed better far to pass the night before the cheerful hearth in the society of his cups than with ice-cold sheets about him, and rats scuttling behind the wainscot of his chamber.

Thus he sat for many an hour, thinking and dozing and dreaming. He was wonderfully at peace to-night with the world and his own soul. True, he occasionally saw the sinister eye of the mariner gleaming out of the bars; once, too, he saw his knife flash through the shadows when the candles had waned into gloom. But even these chimeras had not the power to quell the ineffable satisfaction that was gradually invading the old man’s heart. A vista of delightful possibilities had been revealed by recent history; there was money to be made. Should good fortune preside over his affairs, he had a chance to earn more in a week by dabbling in political matters than he would in a lifetime by regular, straightforward trade.

“Not so straightforward neither,” he confided to his cup. “Oh, ye’re a cunning one, Gamaliel, my son! Now, Master Charles Stuart, King o’ Scotland, please to knock upon my door. I am sure your Highness will be more than welcome. There’s a cheerful hearth awaiting for you—ay, and a tun o’ liquor for your royal lips. I am sure, my liege, the good Gamaliel will entertain you as befits a prince. And, oh, Lord! to think the price o’ your blessed Majesty would buy that poor old man an annuity for the remainder of his days. And, prithee, bring your followers also, my liege—all in their nice new velvet breeches and point-lace frilly-dillies. Gamaliel shall find a lodgment for them too, good your Majesty, an he beds his own humble carcase with the cows.”

And so he dozed again. He dreamt that the King had come at last, and was knocking at his door. He dreamt that the King was entering—a most courtly, handsome gentleman, all graciousness and dignity; a wonderful white feather in his hat, secured by a clasp of solid silver; his sword-hilt wrought in gold and precious stones. It was all most singularly real. How, although only a simple country innkeeper, he had some little breeding, and strove to show it to the King; how he received him on one knee, and did not speak a word until his Majesty had spoken, as he heard they did at courts; and how the King said, “Rise, my honest fellow—’tis not your congees that I need, but your hospitality,” with just that smiling dignity that comes by nature to a prince. What a gracious gentleman he was! Had he not the modest self-effacement of good breeding, but withal the air and habit of command? Did it not make his old blood thrill to hear his gentle, noble tones? It was a dream; he knew it was indeed a dream, yet it was all very real and dazzling and grand.

And then the good Gamaliel dreamt that a heavy bag of gold was jingling in his hands. It was the fee the soldiers had paid him for the just delivery of the person of this splendid prince. Ugh! and then there was the sailor. He saw again the visage of that grim mariner, with the fierce eye, the earrings, the knife, the scar—the whole concentrated ugliness. And then there came the most vivid dream of all. The sailor’s lips parted in a hiss of malevolence, the knife flashed from his belt, and the old man felt it buried in his flesh. The knife seemed to burn him like a fire, so that he awoke with half a curse and half a scream.

Master Gamaliel did not marvel that his vision had such a terrible reality. A live faggot had fallen from the fire and lay smouldering on his foot. He shook it off with an oath of pain. But even in the act, a diversion came to startle him out of his sufferings.

There came a sound in the night. He lifted his ears like a startled fox. His nerves were in a plague of a twitter. For a man so old, he was in a ridiculous taking. Once more he clapt his head to the shutter. Yes; no; yes—horses again!

Could it be that the King was coming? Could he actually be coming in his own person, in the dead of the night, to the “Sea Rover”? Was the landlord awake, or was it a figment of his dreams?

Yes, horses undoubtedly, and the dead of night indeed. Was it not the season at which the King was most likely to arrive? Ay, and the place. After all, why should not the King, in his present circumstances, come to his inn? Nothing could be more natural, more expected. A presentiment, every second growing into a conviction, possessed the landlord. It seemed to send his heart beating against his brain.

CHAPTER III
The strange Visitors that came to the Sea Rover

HE continued keenly to listen. The horses appeared to be approaching but slowly. They seemed to be two. The King and one of his many faithful followers, perchance, wearied to death and very cold. It was a pity the fire had fallen so low on the hearth. It was unfortunate, too, that the landlord should have so short an intimation of the royal coming. But he must contrive to give Charles Stuart some sort of a reception, because all the world over a king is still a king; and whatever one’s politics, should royalty honour one’s roof-tree, it is impossible to assert them. Therefore he called up the stairs in his greatest voice:

“Joseph, come down at once. Cicely, my wench, do you come too. The King is arriving!”

Soon the travellers were heard hard by the window, under the sign. The landlord, excited as he was, yet hung back a little from opening the door. He would let them knock, just as though they were common persons; he would pretend that he did not know one was the King.

It seemed an intolerable time ere a demand was made for their admittance. At last came the expected knock, but, strangely enough, a very gentle one. There was nothing regal in it. It had no authority, no command; it was modest to the point of timidity. If it were not the King after all! Had he not better make sure!

“Who be ye?” Gamaliel demanded, with his mouth to the door. “Who be ye? What d’ye want?”

If it really was the King, he was not supposed to be aware of the fact; and much as his pulse might leap at addressing a prince in this audacious manner, he loved to do it none the less.

The door was tried and shaken ever so lightly.

“Who be ye? What d’ye want?” the landlord repeated.

“Oh, open the door, I pray you,” a soft voice implored him from the night.

The landlord recoiled with an oath. It was the voice of a woman. His disappointment was bitter; a woman when he had looked for a prince!

Again he put his questions, this time angrily. What could a woman want at his inn on that inaccessible, inhospitable shore at that hour of the night? He met with the same reply, but this time there seemed a deeper fervour in it.

Gamaliel was so angry at his disillusion, that his first thought was to refuse admittance to these travellers. But then in a flash there came a second thought. They were refugees, of course. How foolish of him not to have surmised that. They might not be royal personages, yet might they not have their value too?

The next moment he had unbarred the door. Sure enough, a woman was on the threshold. She was masked and cloaked like one who had journeyed far: the white rime was heavy on her garments and her hair; and she looked more dead than alive with the piercing cold. Her hands shook visibly as one held her horse’s rein, and the other gathered up her riding-coat.

“I give you welcome, madam,” said the landlord, making his best leg.

He smirked and bowed as humbly as he could. He was not ill pleased by the appearance of the woman. It was sad indeed, but there was that in her bearing that plainly said she was a person of condition.

“I beseech you to succour us,” she said, with great entreaty. “My husband is stricken sore, and so spent with traveling that he must die to-night out in the cold if you do not help us.”

“God forbid!” said the landlord, piously. He liked the sweetness and the candour of her bearing. His curiosity was stimulated by it too. She thanked him with a grave simplicity, and went forth to her companion. The landlord followed with his assistance. He could dimly discern by the candle-light coming through the open door a second horse, sorely distressed by an infinite journeying. There was little to be seen of its rider beyond a shrunk, cloaked figure, huddling low to the saddle.

“My poor lad,” said the woman, staggering to his side, “there is a roof and a fire for you at last.”

She gave him her shoulder. The rider swayed towards it, and leaned so heavily upon her that Gamaliel, bustling forward with his aid, marvelled that he did not bear her to the ground.

“Don’t let ’em touch me,” the rider said in a whisper of querulous anguish. “Tell ’em to keep off.”

Amid a few groans and a few curses, the unhappy traveller was half led, half borne within on the shoulder of his wife.

“Oh, the poor gentleman!” exclaimed the servant-maid, setting the best chair near the fire and placing a soft pillow upon it. She then ran to procure an armful of fresh logs, while Joseph took the horses to the stable. The stricken man was put by the hearth, and his wife, distressed and fatigued as she was, tended him with an unremitting diligence. She took off his hat, wet cloak and gloves, and then knelt down before him to chafe his cold hands with her own even colder, and talked to him as she did so in little soothing affectionate phrases, as a mother might to a child.

Meantime the landlord was busy indeed. He hobbled about the kitchen with his gout as though the hour was three at noon instead of three of the night—now for a cup, now for a spoon, now for a stoup of the hissing liquor, steaming and vapouring in the bowl. Mine host had brewed a posset, strong, hot, searching, fit for a prince! Ha! and who knew that royal lips were not about to imbibe it. The thought was ever present in Master Hooker’s heart. Be very sure his eye was never an instant from his guests.

The lady, it is true, still wore her vizard, thereby balking his curiosity in the main particular; in her tender solicitude for her lord, she had forgot to doff her dripping cloak; she was bedraggled, weary, unkempt, chilled to the blood; but were she presently to be revealed a princess, the shrewd Gamaliel would be able to say without impropriety that from the first he had guessed so much. He knew high breeding when he saw it; he flattered himself that naught could conceal it from him. He had not seen a feature, a jewel; she had hardly given him three words; his knowledge of her attire was confined to a hood, a riding-cloak, and a mask; but there it was, the hallmark, the indescribable strange grace that misfortune could not tarnish, nor distresses hide.

As for the man, her husband with the querulous eyes and the countenance twisted with pain, there was not a button of his coat that the landlord had not already by heart. A most handsome fellow, in the very heyday of his youth. Yet he looked so pale and worn, that it seemed as if the first puff of wind might extinguish the life of him, as it would a candle-flame. He had a singular delicacy of feature, designed for sweetness and urbanity. But his face was robbed of something of its peculiar beauty by an expression of peevish arrogance, aggravated perhaps by his imminent condition, but probably sufficient at any time to mar a countenance wonderfully fair. A high spirit seemed to preside behind it, a chafing, impatient, overleaping spirit, that hated being harnessed to a maimed body. And below the resentful anguish of the young man’s face was a permanent look of weariness and disillusion that one might expect to see in that of a person who had drunk the cup of life to the very dregs until his lips revolted from its bitterness. Yet the landlord, whose scrutiny missed not a detail, could see that he was of the quality of his veiled companion. He was one accustomed to the service and the homage of his fellows; one who would not be slow to exact it, either. Still his exquisite fair curls clustering round his neck, and his blue eyes, if their insolence, their anger, and their pain could be forgotten, lent him the appearance of an angel—a soiled, ruffled, complaining angel, who, finding itself on earth, wished to be elsewhere.

His condition was certainly dire. He could hardly speak; and as he lay back on his pillow, sobbing for breath after each effort to do so, his impatient rage would have been ludicrous had it not been a thing to pity. The woman continued to chafe his hands till a little warmth crept in them, then rose from her knees to procure and arrange more cushions for him. Presently, the landlord came with the steaming tankard. The lady took one sip of it carefully, to assure herself that it was not too hot for the lips of her companion. She held it for him while he applied his mouth. He withdrew it instantly, with a splutter.

“God scald you, landlord!” he said, in a hoarse, weak voice, “you have burnt my mouth.”

“There—there, mine own,” said the lady, caressing his curls. “Drink freely. It will not hurt you, indeed; nay, it will give you ease.”

Having settled the sufferer in some degree of comfort, she asked the landlord to lead her to the stable.

“No, no, Patsy woman,” said the stricken man, “you must not leave me. You will not leave me, will you, Patsy?”

He entreated her like a child.

“I will not be five minutes away,” she answered, soothingly. “But I cannot neglect the poor, good horses, can I, mine own? You would have them lie in comfort and warmth, even as you do.”

“Prithee, stay you here, madam,” said the honest serving-girl. “And take off your wet cloak, and come about the fire. I will look to the horses.”

“No, child,” said the lady; “I must look to them myself. They have played a noble part this night.”

Despite the entreaties of the sufferer, whose demands for his wife not to leave him rose almost to a wail, she insisted on going out to see that Joseph had succoured the distressed creatures according to their deserts.

When she returned, Cicely, the serving-maid, grew truly imperative.

“I’m a-going to take them wet clothes off you, madam, by your leave,” she said. “You will surely get your death. Why, even now you look fit almost for the grave.”

The lady regarded the honest girl with a wan smile.

“Child, you are very good,” she said.

With her aid she discarded all her travelling attire except the mask.

“May I untie it for you, madam?” said the girl.

The lady hesitated.

“N-no,” she said. “Not to-night, I think.”

The landlord pricked his ears up. Gazing at her, he observed that at last the blood had come to her pale cheeks. His own pulse quickened, too. And he smiled to note how her attempt at secrecy galled her. Even with a strip of black velvet across her eyes, her face was as easy to read as a printed page. She was a simple creature, whose instincts betrayed her.

Very soon the stricken man was conveyed to the chamber that had been set for his reception. It had little to recommend it, to be sure, yet it was the best and most spacious the “Sea Rover” could boast. It had not been used for years; and when a fire was kindled in the unwilling chimney, a colony of sheltering birds were grievously perturbed.

However, Cicely the serving-maid was a bustling soul with a warm and capacious heart, into which the poor guests had been already admitted. She had aired the sheets by the kitchen fire, dusted the apartment, and adjusted the bed and its furniture, all by the time the unhappy gentleman was got up the stairs.

The landlord came at the tail of the procession. He wore a sagacious gravity. He said:

“If I can give ye a finger of assistance, madam, I shall be more than happy.”

“My husband can only suffer me about him,” said the lady. “But you are very kind.”

“And what might be his malady, if I may be so bold, ma’am?” the landlord asked.

“’Tis an incurable disease,” the lady said.

“And what might they call it, ma’am,” said the soft Gamaliel. His voice had the most persuasive humility.

Again the telltale blush showed beneath the mask.

“I—I do not know,” the woman faltered.

The landlord was much too astute to pursue the theme. He apologised for the poverty of the chamber, but it was the best he could place at their disposal. It was a lonesome inn, they must know, not in the least designed for the honour of gentry. But he would not have them conclude for the world—Master Gamaliel coughed in a most deprecatory manner—that, country person as he might be, he was ignorant of what was the due of people of quality. Assuring them of his humble duty and of his desire to promote their comfort in every way, he hoped they had blankets enough, and if they had not, would they kindly inform Cicely the serving-maid? Thereon he gave them “Good-night,” and hobbled downstairs, so deep in his thoughts that he collided with a warming-pan filled with hot brands that was being carried upstairs by the assiduous Cicely. The landlord gave a howl of pain as it shrivelled the back of his hand.

“Should mind where ye be goin’ then,” said the servant-maid, with grim satisfaction.

“You clumsy jade!” roared her master; “you insolent baggage!”

Cicely tossed her head, and passed up the stairs well satisfied.

“Wish it had been his eyes, the slimy old twöad,” she muttered under her breath piously.

CHAPTER IV
Will Jackson

THE landlord sat long over his matutinal collops and ale. No philosopher could have desired nicer food for meditation than the incidents of the night. The thoughts they induced were subtle, yet peculiar. Could it be that the young man with “the incurable disease” was the King! He himself did not know his Majesty other than by repute. He was said to be young and handsome. He was said to be on the coast of Dorset; and last night he was expected at the “Sea Rover” by persons of knowledge and experience. Could this querulous young gentleman be the King, after all? He was building that theory up piece by piece in his mind. He could see no argument against it other than the fact that he had a woman for a travelling companion. True, she might be a fugitive, even as he. That she was a person of a rare condition he did not doubt. It would not surprise him to discover that she was a princess of the royal house.

Still, whatever the nature of his suspicions, he must hasten to confirm them. The bird might slip through his fingers else. The simplest and the surest way was to send for the soldiers. Thereby he would guard against risk. But Gamaliel never was a friend of simplicity. Besides, his guests might prove not to be royalty at all. They might be merely a pair of proscribed aristocrats. In that case, he would lose two wealthy patrons on the first day of their sojourn; a thing not in the least consonant with his ideas. In the case of the King, that would be all well and good. There would be a fine reward for his pains. But in the matter of a cavalier, there was no such great solatium. They were not rated so high; indeed, they might be said to be as common as dirt. No; in a bald phrase, as between a man and his conscience, he proposed in the case of a mere cavalier seeking refuge under his roof, to bleed him, to wring him dry, and then to propitiate the law at the eleventh hour by depositing the fellow, and the few rags left to cover him, into the hands of the Lord Protector.

Was there not an intelligent discretion in a scheme of this kind? But he must be wary indeed. It might prove a dangerous game. Once more that menacing sailor put a thrill of fear in his heart; he was sure that the young man upstairs was he whom Diggory Fargus sought. But, be that as it may, there was one piece of information he must acquire at all costs: Was this young man Charles Stuart?

He had yet to view his visitors by the light of day. He conceived the idea of bearing food to them with his own hands, particularly as now it was nine o’clock of the morning, and they had evinced no disposition to procure it for themselves. When the meat was ready, he took it upstairs and tapped upon the chamber door. But if Master Hooker had hoped to gain admission there, his disappointment must have proved extreme; for at his knock the door was opened, and the lady met him on the threshold. She stood unmasked at last, her eyes now shining in the morning light. There was a finger on her lip.

“Hush, sir!” she whispered. “I prithee do not speak, and do not enter. My husband sleeps, and he is in such case that I fear he may never wake again.”

Her voice was wild and low with sorrow.

Speaking thus, she took the tray of meat from the landlord’s hand, and she acted with such a quickness that the door was shut upon him ere he could reply. He heard the key turn in the lock. So far he was foiled. Plainly they had something to conceal, and just as plainly they did not trust Gamaliel. Yet the old man went downstairs with positive knowledge on a point that was not the least important. He had seen the lady’s face. Her mask was off, and he had fed his cunning eyes on her every feature. He was not by any means a young man, and he whimsically thanked his stars that his blood was cool and sober.

What a creature! A woman formed for tenderness and passion. He had seen them younger and more lyrical, handsomer, more brilliant, more prodigal of smiles; for there was the matron in her shape, and he should take her age for thirty-five. But she had the sort of face that Correggio painted: large, steadfast eyes, gazing on the world and occasionally mocking at it gently, as one who has sipped the cup of the poison of experience, and who has had the native strength to accept the bitter draught without being defiled—nay, rather fortified. A fair and gracious lady, then, with a face sensitive and pure, grave with the loveliness of knowledge; no milk-hearted nymph nor dimpled Hebe, but a Helen at the zenith of her womanhood, who “moves a goddess and looks a queen”; true child of her sex withal, one who could be an angel to her friends and a devil to her enemies.

“Ha, I’ve seen her!” said Master Hooker to his son. “She’s a picter, she is, Joseph, and belongs to the nobility. On that I’ll take my Biblical! Wonderful fair hands she ’ave, white as surf; and harkee, Joseph, diamonds a-shining on ’em.”

The landlord communicated this final phrase with his mouth close to Joseph’s ear.

“And I’m thinking,” he continued, “that even if they don’t happen to be royalty, they may requite us. Ye can lay to it, they’ve got some blunt about ’em, somewhere. Now, Joseph, I’m going to find out who they are.”

“And if they are proscribed?” said Joseph, breathlessly.

The landlord put his hand against his mouth and said, with an eager secrecy:

“If they are proscribed, I shall first suck ’em dry like an egg, d’ye see, and then I shall break ’em like the empty shell.”

The son shuddered. He had no opinion in these things one way or another, but his was not the rapacity that could grind its heel into the face of a dying man.

All that day the landlord’s doubts were unresolved. He was not once allowed within the chamber. Despite his frequent approaches with food and questions as pretexts for the satisfaction of his curiosity, the entrance was ever sedulously kept. True, he would be greeted at once by the lady’s courteous appearance, but every time her form would intervene between him and the interior of the room; and there would always be her chin and mouth shot out in a long-drawn “Hush!” and worlds of entreaty in her eyes.

The evening found the landlord no nearer to the truth. He was growing desperate. It was imperative that he should know something of his guests.

Three times that day had he asked the lady for her name and that of her companion, and three times had he been put off by the tender tact that only a woman has. Again he sat before the fire with the hot liquor, and the candles, and the hissing logs about him, with the door and shutters fast against the wintry night. He sat coiled in thought. There were little knots of it upon his brow; it crouched and ruminated in his eyes; it crept round his wizened lips; his very hands were clenched upon it.

He had weighed every pro and con in his cunning heart. If it were the King who lay upstairs, it would be to his advantage to deliver him up to his enemies at once. He could afford to do so, for there was a great reward. Besides, as was known to all the world, delays were dangerous, especially in the case of kings. Assuming that they honoured your abode, were they not here to-day and gone to-morrow? And should their coming be by night, in stealth, was not their going likely to be also of that manner? Assuming this mysterious young man to be the King, this “incurable disease” of his was doubtless a blind, intended to mask his real intentions. Any morning might find him flown. Yes; if this young man really was the King, he must deliver him up immediately.

If he were not the King, however? If, as was very likely, instead of Charles Stuart, he proved to be only some fugitive cavalier from Worcester fight, he could not afford to denounce him at present. There was no such great solatium in regard to a cavalier. He must first bleed him to his very last fourpenny ere he allowed him out of his custody. The whole scheme was finely matured in his mind; would that he could be at peace in regard to the stranger’s identity! He would then know which course to follow.

He was still excogitating the hard matter, and forever twisting and turning it over, when, even as the night before, a stranger knocked on the door, and obtruded himself within the inn kitchen.

This time the visitor was humble enough. He was a tall, loose, shambling fellow, so discoloured by dirt and an outdoor life that he was as brown as a berry. His hat was low over his eyes; he wore a stained and torn pair of breeches, made of leather, and a jerkin of the same character. He had the appearance of a hedger and ditcher, or a woodman beset by adversity. The first words he uttered confirmed this impression.

“Are you wanting a serving-man or a drawer, good master?” he said, seating himself on a stool opposite the landlord.

The worthy Gamaliel regarded him keenly and suspiciously. The fellow looked an idle vagabond enough. Yet his swarthy countenance was not altogether destitute of a certain intelligence. He had a pair of keen, observing, humorous eyes to his face; there was a certain impudence and audacity about them which was sufficient to redeem their owner from the commonplace. The landlord, himself no mean observer, and a penetrating judge of his fellows, was rather interested by him. It was not usual to find a man of this type who merited looking at twice.

“And even if I do, sirrah?” asked Gamaliel, taking up his visitor’s question, after scrutinising him from head to heel.

“Well, master, if you do,” said the fellow, readily, “you would be acting a charity by giving a poor man a chance to serve you.”

“I do not doubt it,” said the landlord. “But if your looks be a true credential, I may live to rue the day. Upon my life, I never saw a countenance I like so little. If my eyes do not deceive me, I take ye to be a rogue of the first magnitude; a villain that I should fear to turn my back upon.”

The fellow laughed. Perchance it was well he did so. For in his laugh there was something frank and human. His lowering face grew vastly more engaging; and the landlord set the candour of it to his favour.

“Ah! master,” he said, “you are very hard upon a poor wight who knows not where to turn for a meal in these troublous times. I pray you, have a little pity for one who hath been accustomed to fill his belly, and to sleep in comfort and security.”

“In a bridewell, I do not doubt,” said the grim Gamaliel.

“Nay, master, there you wrong me,” said the vagrant. “Few have followed a more reputable course than I.”

The landlord looked at him piercingly. After all, his mind might be a little better than his appearance. His speech was hardly so rustic as one would expect.

“What hath been your station in life?” asked Gamaliel. “And what hath brought you to this pass?”

“It is but a few weeks since I was serving-man to my Lord Wilmot,” said the other, hesitatingly.

“Why did you quit his service?” the landlord demanded.

“’Twas a stroke of evil fortune, master. My lord was too good a friend to poor King Charles Stuart. He is now fleeing o’er hill and dale for his life, with devil a serving-man to attend him.”

The landlord listened greedily. In a flash a very bright idea illuminated his mind.

“Have you ever seen this Charles Stuart?” he demanded, almost breathlessly.

“Have I!” laughed Lord Wilmot’s servitor. “Why, master, I am more familiar with King Charles than I am with my own mother. He and my lord were hand in glove together. Many’s the time I have filled the King’s cup, and listened to his voice. There never was so jovial and kind a gentleman. Why, master, he hath even spoken to me by my name.”

The landlord could hardly conceal his great excitement.

“Then, of course, sirrah,” said he, “you would recognise this Charles Stuart at once if you saw him?”

“Why, master,” said the fellow, “I know him as well as I know the nose on my face.”

That was enough for the landlord. He engaged him at once in the dual capacity of drawer and ostler. And so excited was the good Gamaliel, that he forgot or overrode the accumulated instincts of a lifetime. He did not even attempt to beat him down a farthing in the matter of wages. For was it not a truly providential thing, that on that of all nights, in that of all seasons, a man should walk into his kitchen who would be able so readily to resolve his difficulties? He might have searched the breadth of Dorset, and yet have not discovered a person capable of giving an opinion on the identity of Charles Stuart. Fortune was on his side indeed.

No sooner had the details of his employment been agreed upon, and this somewhat uncouth-looking serving-man had passed into the hands of a new master, than the landlord in a moment of unwonted generosity bade his son fetch the fellow half a pint of small ale.

“Now sit ye here, my lad,” said Gamaliel, “and let me hear about this Charles Stuart. But I think we might get on better if first I had your name.”

“My name is William Jackson,” said the serving-man, “but they call me Will for short.”

“Will Jackson, is it?” said the landlord. “Humph! I think as little of the name as I do of the bearer. But for the present we will let that pass. Now tell me of this Charles Stuart. What kind of a person might you call him?”

“Oh, master, a grand man indeed!” said Will Jackson, with a fine air of enthusiasm. “A rare noble gentleman.”

“Humph!” said Gamaliel, “I have my doubts about it—the Popish dog! But what doth he look like?”

“A wonderful handsome fellow, master,” the earnest William said. “Every woman that he looks upon just languishes for love of him, they say.”

“Can you recall his features at all?” the landlord asked. “Is he a black man or a light man? A tall man or a small man? Come, trim your memory.”

“Well, do you know, master,” said Will Jackson, with a sly laugh,—“do you know, master, they do say that his gracious Majesty is most remarkable like me. I’ve heard say that we’re as like as two peas, master, and that we might be brothers, as it were.”

“Confound the rogue!” cried the landlord, laughing, in spite of himself, at the fellow’s impudence. “A pretty sort of likeness you’d be, I reckon, to discover a king by! I suppose, you ragged, dirty scoundrel, that some wench hath caressed your self-esteem with this fair parallel to coax an extra groat or two. A mighty fine king you’d make, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, master, if you please, more than one wench hath told me so,” said Will Jackson.

His master shook his fist at him, and threatened to cuff his ear. But the fellow in his own mind seemed so certain that he bore a striking resemblance to the King, that he appeared quite unable to divine the source of Gamaliel’s mirth. For the landlord fell to laughing until he nearly wept over the perplexed gravity of his drawer. Whatever the intolerable impudence of the assumption, Will Jackson certainly appeared not to regard it in the light of a jest. To him it seemed rather a circumstance from which he extracted a highly legitimate pride.

Even as the landlord talked with his servitor he made up his mind that he would lose no time in making the utmost possible use of Will Jackson’s special knowledge. He must see the young man with the incurable disease at once. But how could it be contrived? That matter was not so easy. It seemed hopeless to gain access to a domain guarded by so fair a Cerberus. After much hard thinking, Master Gamaliel had recourse to a stratagem—an extreme one, it is true, but highly necessary in this present pass.

Rising from his comfortable posture by the fire with a reluctance that made the act heroic, the landlord went forth to the stable, and bade Will Jackson follow him. He procured a ladder there. He had it borne without, and, under cover of the darkness, reared it with caution against the sill of the window of his guests. Drawn shutters guarded the window; but, as Gamaliel was well aware, they lacked some two inches of the top of the casement. A thread of candle-light shone through the chink. The work of a spy was therefore not likely to be difficult.

Ordering Will Jackson to hold his peace and also at the same time to hold the ladder, the eager old landlord, infirm as he was, first climbed to the top himself to discover how the land lay. No night-thief could have been more astutely skilful. It is true he scaled the ladder in a gingerly manner, but never a sound did he make. Planting his feet firmly on the highest rung but one, he cocked his cunning eyes over the top of the shutter, and was rewarded by a clear view of the chamber, and the unhappy persons there immured.

It was a piece of good fortune that the bed was facing the window. The landlord was the better able to regard its occupant. He was half prepared to discover that the young man was the victim of no malady whatsoever. He would not be surprised to find him quite hale and hearty. Nay, so little faith had he in this young man’s condition, that should he prove to have left the chamber secretly already, and gone away in stealth, he was not likely to be astounded. It so befell, however, that the landlord had no grounds for his suspicions. For there confronting him the sufferer lay. By the mellow light of the candles he saw him prone in the bed, as ghastly as death. He was wide awake, but lay with glazed eyes and a face convulsed with agony. The woman was binding a cloth steeped in water about his forehead.

In spite of the night’s bitterness, the landlord had so intense an interest in that which was passing before his eyes, that he betrayed no desire to leave his perch for the present. Looking down upon these unconscious persons from his high situation, he felt fairly secure from discovery. And was it not exhilarating to see without being seen! He must contrive to hear too. A chance phrase might reveal their identity.

Thus, notwithstanding that poor Will Jackson was shivering in the cold below, the landlord took his jackknife from his pocket and began to whittle away a piece of the wooden window frame. Already rotten with decay, it yielded readily to the silent deftness that was brought to bear upon it.

There was soon a hole big enough for Gamaliel’s ear. At once he could detect the gasps and low groans of the man in the bed. And he heard the woman say, in her soft low tones that thrilled to the heart like music:

“We can delay no longer, mine own; it must be done. Canst thou not trust me?”

The man clung to her outstretched hand, and drew his head away from her, like a child that is shy, farther back into the pillows. His pale lips were seen to move, but any words they framed the landlord could not hear. Thereafter for a time he lay with closed eyes, pallid and helpless, whilst the woman knelt down by his side and buried her beautiful head in the coverlet of the bed.

Presently she rose as one quickened by a sudden resolution. Tears she had not, but her eyes were filled with an anguish deeper even than the man’s. She crossed the room to where a broad settle stood with a tumbled heap of clothing upon it. The landlord observed, with a desperate dismay, that two cocked pistols lay there, whilst beside them was a case of embroidered leather. The lady opened this, and drew therefrom a dagger with a delicate point.

Concealing this in her hand, perchance that the man might not see it, she approached the bed again. The landlord felt his limbs totter and begin to fail him, whilst his straining eyes seemed inclined to start from his head. What, in the name of the fiend, was the woman about to do?

The man in the bed turned his eyes up to her; they had the look of a wounded animal.

“Can it not stay?” he said, and his hoarse tone penetrated to the listener’s ears. “It can make no difference now; the game is played.”

A sudden rush of tears appeared in the eyes of the woman; but the masterful quivering of her lips said clearly that she refused to admit them to be there.

“Another day of this,” she said, “and all is over. Our only chance is to take it out before another hour goes by.”

“Ay, and if you cut it out,” the sufferer gasped, “I am done with if ever man was.”

“Nay, child; I will not have you say that,” she said, caressing his face with her unoccupied hand. The sweet imperious sorrow of her tone touched even the listener at the window, who, after all, was not a man of stone.

Again the sufferer turned his face up to the woman and regarded her with the same dumb, dog-like look. She averted her gaze suddenly, as though she had not the fortitude to look at him.

“Canst thou not trust me?” she said again. “I will be, oh! so gentle. And we dare not have a surgeon—dare we, child? Indeed, we dare not tarry. Thou art in a fever even now, and every hour it rises. It must be done now, mine own, or thou wilt not see to-morrow.”

She spoke so wistfully that she might be beseeching her obdurate lord to gratify some feminine whim. He continued to regard her sickly and faintly, till at last a wan laugh crept upon his lips. It was the herald to the last desperate flicker of his courage—the courage that enables a man to look the mob in the eyes as he lays his neck on the block deliberately, delicately, and proudly. A fuller tone came into his hoarse, querulous voice. There was no longer complaint and petulance. The pettiness had gone out of it; it was almost a companion for the woman’s own.

“As you will,” he said, and he came as near to achieving a careless laugh as a man in his extreme condition ever could. “In with the knife, then, butcher. Thou art aching to carve me up, I can see. Well, well; it were better that you had your way, for I suppose you’ll give me no peace till you’ve done it. But plague take you! You’re tenacious devils, you women. Your damnable iteration would wear away stone. You know the place, and it’s embedded in the thick of my back, I think. Now, mind you cut deep enough. Oh, but I say, good Mistress Surgeon, prithee, where be thy basin?”

By the time the victim had mentioned these among other details of the torture he was about to undergo, the eavesdropper on the ladder had seen and heard rather more than enough for his personal comfort. Therefore, he quitted his station on the top rung but one, and descended to the ground as speedily as he could, lest he should involuntarily become the horrified witness of the knife at its work. When he came down to Will Jackson, he was shaking as one with the ague.

“I shall not want ye to go up to-night, my lad,” he stuttered; “to-morrow will do. Now, take away the ladder. You careless varlet, did I not tell you to make no sound?”

The clumsy fellow had had the misfortune to hit the top of the ladder against the nose of “The Sea Rover,” scowling in crude colours from the signboard of the inn. He appeared, not inappropriately it must be confessed, the most ill-favoured pirate that ever twirled a sword.

CHAPTER V
Shows the inconveniences that may sometimes attend an active mind

THE landlord went indoors to his accustomed fireside chair. He was chilled to the blood; every infirmity that lurked in the gross bulk of him was up in arms against his late impudence; and worse, his nerves seemed all tattered and torn in his brain. He had been privileged to see and hear a little too much. Ha! they were already at it, curse them! The moans of the poor wretch upstairs were penetrating to his ears. Or were they the moans of the sea, sounds he had heard every night these forty years? Now and then he thought he heard a muffled, desperate cry. After all, it might be only the wild fowl on the rocks. How he wished he could rid his imagination of the scene that was being enacted. Would that he had not struggled up the ladder at all! Lord! were they never going to have done? It was enough to make a man revolt against his clay.

At this acute moment, however, Cicely appeared with her master’s nightly potation. It soothed his qualms somewhat. Pah! he had got the nerves of a girl. It was merely a little blood-letting; quite an everyday matter.

Curse the fellow, there were his cries again! What must it be like to have a bullet dug, inch by inch, by a dagger out of one’s own back! Ugh! what a morbid old fool he was; why must he forever keep thinking of it, and receiving the steel in his own pampered flesh? Might it not be there in earnest if he ever went up a ladder again!

After all, however, when he came to think of the thing in its true relation, he was by no means sorry he had been there. He had acquired knowledge of some value. The “incurable disease” was neither more nor less than a bullet wound in the body. Now, why should the woman lie about it and conceal it from the world if the man, her husband, had come by it honestly? Had he been on the side of the just, in other words on that of the party in power, more explicitly, my Lord Cromwell and his Parliament, that wound would have been an honourable scar. They were plainly Royalists; persons of mark, no doubt, for were there not a thousand and one subtle but unmistakable evidences of their condition? And, just as plainly, were they not fleeing the country? Otherwise they would not come at dead of night to the “Sea Rover.”

He was afraid he must dismiss the theory of this young man being the King from his mind. It was almost certain that had Charles Stuart been wounded to death, the fact would have been known over the length and breadth of the land. For him to have escaped so far in that dire condition would have been impossible.

Again, there was evidence in their familiar talk, despite something of a disparity in years, the woman being clearly older than her companion, that they were man and wife. In any case, the woman’s mode of address, tender and solicitous as it was, was hardly the one she would employ, even if she were a princess of the blood, to the King’s majesty. No; he was afraid he must look elsewhere for the King. Yet he had no need to be cast down upon the matter. These two persons were not to be despised. Their appearance suggested money and jewels. And they seemed to be delivered, bound hand and foot as it were, into his hands. Gamaliel hugged himself at that thought. They should be made to pay a price for that cold in his head. They should not aggravate his gout and his rheumatism, and set his nerves in a twitter, for nothing. He smiled malevolently as he sipped his hot cup, and spread his hands out to the fire.

Perchance the poor devil was dying, though. Certainly no human spirit could ever be tottering nearer to the brink than that of the man upstairs. The idea awoke never a spark of pity in the landlord. He simply regarded the near prospect of his death as another factor in the case. If he were not the King, he was not sure that he did prefer him to die. There would be only a woman to deal with them. In the phrase of that malignant sailor, Diggory Fargus, he would trust himself to tear the heart out of a woman with his own two hands. But why at every twist and turn did that uncomfortable mariner obtrude himself? He cursed himself for having called him to mind. If, however, the young man was the King—in spite of everything the landlord still clung tenaciously to that hope,—it would not be to his interest for his Majesty to perish. He must be delivered up alive, if possible.

During the rest of that evening, Gamaliel was too shaken to spy again on his guests, or to connive at others doing so. For he was still determined that his new drawer, whom he had engaged for that particular purpose, should go up the ladder also, and finally settle this hard problem as to whether Charles Stuart was actually at his inn or not.

It was not until the following evening that he summoned the courage to make a fresh attempt to set his mind at rest. During the day he could not venture to do so, for the publicity of light was too great. In the meantime he had not an idea of what had happened upstairs. He was still denied the chamber as sedulously as ever. He had tapped on the chamber door during the morning; the pale-eyed lady had appeared, more beautiful and more beset with anguish than before. She had taken a bowl of milk and a loaf of bread from the landlord’s hands, but beyond a word of thanks and a prayer that he should not again disturb the sleeper, he had nothing of her conversation. It was on his lips to inquire of the young man’s condition; but ere he could frame the question the door was swiftly yet silently closed upon him, and for that day his chance had passed. As time wore on, a conviction grew up in his mind that the man was dead. The silence upstairs was so extreme; besides, an intangible sense of foreboding seemed to invade and presently possess, not only the atmosphere of the dismal old inn, but the minds of those dwelling in it.

Cicely went about in tears. The tender-hearted wench was sure something terrible had happened to the poor young gentleman. Her master swore at her, but he could not relieve his own mind of her fears. Joseph, his son, was also afraid: it was true that he and the serving-maid were singularly often in sympathy, more often than Gamaliel cared about. He would have got rid of her long ago, were she not such an industrious, capable girl. Then, again, a shadow seemed to hang over the mind, or what there was of it, of his new drawer. He had hardly spoken a word, and every task he was set to, whether it was cutting faggots or washing the floor, he performed in a perfunctory and absent manner. Indeed, the first day he spent in the service of his new master was not to the satisfaction of the landlord. A more idle, more incapable fellow, he vowed he had never beheld. He would take the first chance of getting rid of him when he had served his turn. Twice during the day he had had to kick him up from the straw in the stable, where he had discovered him fast asleep.

At last, when the darkness had come again, the landlord once more resolved to allay his doubts. His nausea of the night before was merged in his overmastering curiosity. Summoning Will Jackson, he again had recourse to the ladder; and being at the mercy of his passions, he again had the temerity first to ascend himself.

No sooner, however, were his feet on the ladder, than a latent sense of horror was quickened within him. The bitter winter evening biting his ears, the moans of the sea, the gloom, the insecurity of hanging by one’s icy fingers in mid-air, all came upon him as a special reminiscence, and reproduced his pangs of the night before. And no sooner had he cocked his eyes over the shutter than they were greeted by a face as pallid as the sheets in which it lay. The man was asleep. Many evidences of pain had vanished from his countenance; indeed, his slumber looked as natural as it was profound. Then it began to dawn on the landlord that this was the peace of death. The sweat broke out on the watcher’s face. Why, in the fiend’s name, had he ventured up that ladder a second time, when there was a loathsome, ugly corpse at the top to greet him!

So if this was the King, the King was dead. Poor young man! he had died under the knife, perchance. But why had he been so unthoughtful as to die at the “Sea Rover”? There would, doubtless, be no end of a business presently. Yet, more probably, it was not the King at all; in that case there would only be a woman to deal with, for fugitives must be made to pay for the privilege of perishing in that respectable house. Just, however, as Master Gamaliel’s thoughts had travelled back to their customary sphere, and were beginning to revolve in their natural orbit—namely and to wit, the personal interests of Gamaliel Hooker—a phenomenon occurred to the corpse. It raised its arms and stretched itself.

The landlord bit his lips with anger. What a zany he was, to be sure; he had come to his dotage. To think that he should have mistaken a sleeping man for a corpse! It did not occur to him, cunning as he was, that it calls for as full-blooded a creature to be an eminent scoundrel, as it does for one to be distinguished in the more civil sciences. He could not shake off that sinister incident of the night before; he was a bag of nerves; he could hear skeletons creaking in the wind. With the best will in the world, there was hardly enough blood and pulse about him for this business. He had a thought too much imagination. He made but a poor second-rate sort of rascal, after all.

All this time, though the lady was in the chamber, she had been so still that the landlord had not noticed her. Turning his attention to her now, the eavesdropper saw that she was standing hard by the bed. She was no longer regarding the sleeper, however. Her head was bent over something she held in her hand; and her tears were falling fast and thick. In the very frenzy of her companion’s sufferings she had restrained them; but now, when she had procured him some little surcease, her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and her infinite compassion extended to another.

Craning to the window and alternately pressing his ears and his eyes to the wood, Gamaliel was able to discover the object of her pity. The thing in her hand was an open locket. It was suspended by a chain of fine gold round her neck, and was worn apparently in the recesses of her bosom. The landlord was presently able to discern that it was a portrait in miniature. Yet it was far too small and delicately wrought for its outlines to be distinguished at that distance. Gamaliel had not to speculate long on its subject, however. For on a sudden impulse the lady pressed it to her lips with a passionate gesture, crying aloud in her throbbing tones:

“Oh, my King! oh, my King! our Lady be with thee forever and alway!”

She sank to her knees in an attitude of prayer.

The landlord, deeming that there was nothing further to gain by remaining longer in his precarious and grievously exposed situation, crept down from his perch, and sent up the shivering Will Jackson in his stead. It would require but a glance for the fellow to discover whether the man in the bed was or was not Charles Stuart.

Now, whether it was that Will Jackson had not the address of his master in the delicate art of seeing without being seen, or whether the fellow had had the audacity to advise wantonly those within the chamber of his presence, the landlord was in no case to tell; but certain it is Master Hooker heard a strange, wild cry arise from the room: and the next instant the serving-man came pellmell down the ladder, very much after the manner of one who has confronted a ghost.

The landlord hurriedly bore away the ladder and went indoors with his man, lest the lady above should fling back the shutters and discover in what manner she had been spied upon. For it was plain that Jackson had had the folly to let her see his face at the window. Having abused his servant in the roundest terms for his incaution, the landlord proceeded to question him as to what he had seen.

“Was it the King?” was the breathless question.

“Oh, no, master!” the fellow assured him.

So much for the slender hope the landlord had been secretly cherishing! He could not confess to any surprise, for many circumstances pointed against it. And as there was no sort of hesitation about the fellow, Gamaliel had no temptation to doubt him. Yet if it were not Charles Stuart, Jackson’s demeanour at the window clearly showed that he and the persons in the chamber were well acquainted.

“Then if it was not Charles Stuart,” the landlord demanded, “who was it, sirrah?”

“I do not know,” said Will Jackson.

“You are lying to me,” said the landlord, furiously; “and if you lie to me, you rogue, I will break your head—or no, I will not; I will send for those soldiers that were here two nights agone, and I will deliver you up to them as a malignant who was concerned in Worcester fight. Now, who are they? D’ye hear me? Who are they, I say?”

“I do not know, master,” Will Jackson repeated doggedly.

“I say ye do know, sir!” the landlord cried. “And ye shall speak the truth, d’ye hear me! Why should you come down the ladder in that plight if ye had never seen these persons before?”

The fellow stood silent. The landlord repeated the question and heightened the threat. But it was of no avail. The drawer abided by his denial, simply and tenaciously. His master fell into a violent rage. He shook him by the collar, he kicked him, he beat him with his fists; but all he could get out of him was the same unwavering, stolid answer.

And at last, Gamaliel’s anger having spent itself somewhat and his disappointment having grown a little less keen, he grew to believe the unfortunate Jackson. There was that in his humble, thick-witted rusticity that in itself killed suspicion. After all, it was not unlikely that the nervousness begotten by his strange employment, and his horror at being discovered in it, was the true cause of his wild appearance and behaviour.

As the landlord sat that evening, as usual, by his cheerful fire, examining the knowledge he had lately gained, and weighing it in his mind for what it was worth, he felt that he had no cause to be dissatisfied. The man and the woman upstairs in his best taffety chamber fronting the sea were certainly Royalists. And one of them, and he the man, was stricken and helpless; and were there not diamonds on the fair hands of them both?

CHAPTER VI
The night: the Sea: the Rocks:

IT was a rather late hour when the landlord went to bed that night. As was usual with him on the cold nights of the autumn and winter time, he found it hard to tear himself away from the cosy warmth of the fireside and his generous potations. Midnight had long gone when he rose from his chair, tried the kitchen door according to his inveterate custom, and then stumbled up the creaking stairs to the icy sheets of his chamber.

Perchance they clapped too cold about his ancient blood for sleep to visit him; or likelier, he had an indigestion of the mind from excess of things to think about, for close his eyes as often and firmly as he might, or insinuate his fat person in every fantastic posture in the cold recesses of his bed, sleep was banished from him utterly. Those nerves of his still twittered in his old head. The events that had recently come within his ken were telling upon him. He could not grapple with them with the ease and deftness of a younger man, or a man endowed with stronger fibres in his character.

Do as he would, there was no sleep for him to-night. When he shut his eyes he saw the King with rime on his fine cloak, and rings on his fingers, and a feather in his hat, and a retinue of noble-looking gentlemen bowing low before him. When he opened them, the ugly visage of Diggory Fargus, that dreadful mariner, was grinning at him from the foot of the four-poster. His image was quite as realistic as the King’s. How those earrings bobbed about in his ears! Twice when he was dozing off a convulsive twitch shot through his limbs, and he was compelled to draw his breath cautiously, for he felt a knife to be buried to the hilt in his back.

Suddenly he withdrew his ears from a coil of sheets, and twisted his nightcapped head half across the bed in a strained attitude of listening.

When the sound had first assailed him, he thought it was a rat scratching through a wainscot. But now there was the muffled grunt of a key revolving in a lock; and then a distinct, timid patter of footsteps. The chamber in which he lay was next to that of the lady; she was leaving her room at last.

She was probably only descending to the buttery to procure some necessary for her stricken companion. Or could it be that she was making her escape from the inn? Certainly her movements were cloaked in caution itself. He could hear her stealthy feet on the creaking stairs. Less than a minute afterwards he sprang from his couch with an oath; he could hear her unbarring the outer door.

The bitter darkness was a fierce enemy to the old man, but not even it could daunt his curiosity. With many groans he swiftly grappled with his breeches, dragged on his vest and doublet, and wriggled his cold toes into hose and leather. The night bit him keenly, but he was determined that this woman should not be allowed to pass out of his house, in the dead of the night, with impunity. The landlord was sure she could not be going forth thus with an innocent intention. And in any case, his curiosity apart, he was the last man in the world to neglect a chance of obtaining a weapon against her.

In the midst of these brief speculations he found himself downstairs in the kitchen, protecting an unsteady candle with his hand. A sudden rush of air extinguished it. He was left entirely in the dark, with no precise knowledge of his bearings. He struck a course, however, for the kitchen door, and found it, as he expected, open wide.

On entering the night, his face and hands were stung with the icy kisses of the falling sleet; little waves of it were running down the wind; the sea was crying with loud and many voices; and the hour seemed perishingly desolate and cold. The landlord peered up the path leading to the shore, and saw, many yards away, with the starlight playing round it, a wind-blown figure, whose bent head and flapping cloak were fighting hard against the blast. It was a woman struggling to the sands, and the thing that made her form the more conspicuous was a lantern that she bore. It picked her out in a prominence of light, and made a mark of her for the landlord’s eyes.

Crossing the road, the innkeeper came within the shadows of the rocks. Crouching in them, he dogged her step by step to the open sea. She was not long upon her road. She strode forth through the very teeth of the gale, straightly and confidently, either as one well-broken to adventure with no mind to shrink from this, or, as the landlord more shrewdly preferred to think, as one by nature timid—himself, for example—who, being involved in a course of a highly daunting character, was compelled to act in a manner of frenzied eagerness, or not at all.

The landlord, panting after her in stealth, found his breath quite insufficient for the wicked wind, and, too, his head became the prey of neuralgic pains. He had never been so nearly a hero in his life as his curiosity, his cunning, and rapacity made him now. Presently a sheer and narrow cleft appeared between the rocks. The woman walked along, and a minute afterwards her gaze was strained upon the sea. She approached to the extreme verge of the waters, so that her feet were wetted with the tide. She held her hand across her brows to shield them against the darkness and the driving sleet; and that her eyes might cleave the boiling waste before her.

Nothing could she see, however, except the sea whining and straining from the wind and snow, and casting up its giant belly to the stars like some impotent god of emptiness and fury frothing its threats against the universe. Again her eyes embraced this chaos, but only a lightship could she see swaying many a mile away; the light upon it seemed to hang above a chasm on the very margin of the world.

The night had now pierced her to the blood, while the upthrown surf had stung her face so bitterly that she could support its devilries no more. The landlord, in his wisdom, had not advanced beyond the shelter of the rocks; but the lantern that the woman bore was much his friend, and now at last the tardy moon showed signs of bursting through the wrack that forever raced across it. To him the lady’s movements were therefore made excellently plain; their very visibility, however, did but render her motives the more obscure. After a little while the landlord saw her turn her back upon the black waste of roaring winds and waters, and retrace her steps near to where he crouched encumbered in shingle and rank grass. He crept the closer into secrecy, so that presently she walked so closely past him that in her unconsciousness the hem of her cloak nearly brushed his feet.

By the time the woman had gone some yards beyond him, the landlord got upon his legs and followed her with the same precaution as before. To his bewilderment, and untold annoyance too, instead of pressing directly back upon the path leading to the inn, as he had calculated that she would, she began swiftly to ascend one of the beetling faces of the rocks. The landlord put the stern question to himself whether he should attempt to follow her. The rocks, as he was well aware, were at this point of no particular height, nor were they very difficult or steep. But even in broad daylight they called for an effort from a man in years ambitious to ascend them. Curiosity, however, had its tentacles upon the landlord’s soul; it insensibly drew him panting, groaning, and stumbling up the cliff in the wake of the woman, even as he debated the matter in his mind. The god of circumstance was stronger than he.

The landlord tore his hands on the sharp fragments that studded the face of the rocks; he tripped over others that lay concealed. He barked his shins, tore his clothes, bruised his body; but where the woman with the lantern went, he went to. In the teeth of the gale she won her way up to the pinnacle. The uncertain flame in the lantern blinked and tottered in her hand; but, like its bearer, it somehow prevailed intrepidly against the gale. Once more her eyes were for the sea; and as they confronted it even more steadfastly than before, the moon suddenly swam forth from a black patch of storm, and painted the tense lines of her form in a weird grey ghostliness. It even fell upon her face, and betrayed it wilder and more sombre than the night itself.

Still this grim moon and the few sardonic stars that revealed the woman’s face and form so clearly, mocked the groping blind-eyed rogue who, lying in a new concealment, strove to profit by their aid. They showed him all, yet showed him nothing. He could see her precariously poised under the awful sky, confronting the more awful sea. He could see the very flesh of her quiver in the wind; he could hear her garments flapping in the blast; and as once she raised her lantern a fortunate angle to the moon, he saw the pale tears shine upon her cheeks. All this: yet how much did he know! To the sensual landlord it was symbolical of nothing; of nothing beyond the elements lurking in his own base intelligence. To him the woman was indubitably mad or drunk or criminal. He clenched his frozen hands upon the thought. Body of God! she should be made to pay a price for exposing his sacred person to the night and the tempest in this manner. He would have his two clotted hands upon her. He would tear every jewel, every rag off her mad body; he would tear out the very heart of her for this; and then she and that precious husband of hers should be delivered over to the gibbet; and they should swing in the wind o’ nights such as these, forever.

There was unction in these thoughts to the bruised and beaten landlord, now spying full-length upon his belly behind a boulder. But either these ideas or a particular phrase recalled Diggory Fargus to his mind. How he loathed the image of that mariner! Could it be possible that this woman was searching for him? Indeed, what more likely? He doubtless had some wretched smuggler lying in some little cove on the beach; lying in readiness to take fugitive cavaliers by night into France. Could it be that she was waving that lantern as a signal to Diggory Fargus?

Already the landlord’s mind was at work on that new phase of the night’s mystery; already, despite the extreme bodily discomfort in which he was, he fell to tracing its bearing on his own private interests, as was his invariable wont, under every conceivable condition. His mind did not follow that trend very long, however. For while the woman stood with the moon and the stars, the wind and the spray beating upon her, a second figure sprang silently and mysteriously out of the night.

It appeared so suddenly upon the platform of rock on which the woman stood at gaze, that the astonished landlord could not tell how it had come there. It had evidently climbed up from the other side, however, and, strangely enough, the woman seemed neither to be aware of its apparition nor to expect it; for even when the figure was less than ten yards behind her, her back was towards it, and she still looked out to the sea.

After the landlord’s first shock of excitement and surprise was over, he was quite prepared to recognise the form of Diggory Fargus in this unexpected vision. But one keen look at it, as it struggled and stumbled through the fierce wind, showed it to be too tall for that stunted mariner. The landlord heaved a sigh of vast relief.

It was not until the man, for man it clearly was, had come directly behind the absorbed woman, and plucked her by the cloak, that she withdrew her eyes from the sea and confronted him. And her manner of doing so was so wild and startled, that she could have had no cognisance of his presence. A cry escaped her lips; a cry so great that it pierced through the gale to the landlord’s ears; and it appeared to the watcher’s astonished eyes that had the man not supported her in his arms, she might have fallen headforemost down the cliff. And then a little moment afterwards occurred a thing more singular.

The woman sank on her knees on the rock before this strange appearance; and, taking his outstretched hand within her own, she bent her face convulsively against it, so that it seemed to him who watched that her eyes, her lips, her hair, her tears were imbrued upon it in a strange mad passion, the like of which he had never seen before.

She might have been a minute or an hour thus, the act was so vivid, so unforgettable, so pregnant with that which sears the memory and leaves it raw. But at last the man seemed to draw her to her feet, and thereafter they stood together, talking eagerly. There was that in the frantic gestures of the woman, in her wrought attitude, and the perfervid manner of her utterance, that the landlord was able to interpret. It seemed to him that she was pouring forth a wild appeal. But listen as tensely as he might, the noise of the sea and the wind, and the intervening distance, were too great for him to catch a word that fell between them.

The next thing of which the landlord was aware, was, that they were leaving the altitude on which they stood. As they prepared to descend to the path beneath, the woman hung heavily upon the strange man’s arm. And as they came down the incline of the rocks, they approached so near to Gamaliel’s hiding-place that the old man was able to train his eyes full upon them; and the moonlight and the light of the woman’s lantern falling on them too, they became a feast for his curiosity. He was able to discern almost every detail of the stranger’s countenance; and as he did so, he had to strangle the cry of surprise that welled up on his lips. The woman’s mysterious companion was none other than the landlord’s new serving-man, Will Jackson.

CHAPTER VII
The Woman

BY the time Gamaliel had recovered a little of his amaze, the man and the woman had gone past him; and when at last he reached his feet to follow them, they were already lost to sight in the descent. Judging them to be upon the path that led back to his inn, and that thither doubtless was their destination, the landlord stumbled down as speedily as he could towards it. As he had supposed, the woman and his serving-man had reached it too, and were steering a straight course to the inn. The landlord crouched after them as stealthily as ever. It was his desire to see without disturbing them. He must observe every detail of their behaviour, and afterwards construe it at his leisure. To his mind there never was so deep a mystery as the wild business of that night.

When they came to the inn they stayed a minute underneath the sign, and resumed their eager converse. Again was the landlord too far off to hear the purport of it, but there was still the same passion and excitement on the woman’s side as formerly; and when they parted—the lady through the open kitchen door, and the serving-man to a temporary bed of straw that had been found for him in the stable at the back—there was again that astounding incident of her lips being pressed upon the fellow’s hand.

The landlord waited until Will Jackson had retired, and then hastily came up just as the woman had entered the kitchen and was about to close the door. Without saying a word, he put his shoulder to it and forced an entry. He paid no heed to the woman until the door was bolted, so that no one might intrude, and he had got the candles lit. Then he turned upon his victim.

That the winterly cold had struck her he could see. Her pale face was mottled with blue patches where its claws had pinched her; the belated hair that had wriggled from her hood hung on her temples limp and wet; and the fingers of one starved hand were stiffened to the burnt-out lantern that they bore. She had a crying need for warmth and kindness, but those were luxuries that Master Gamaliel administered only to himself. Thus he poured some brandy forth and drank it briskly, and warmed his frozen hands at the candle-blaze. He then felt strong enough to turn his attention to the lady.

“Madam,” he said, “this is a very serious thing. I await your explanation of it, madam.”

Saying this, he craftily assumed a place between her and the stairs leading to the bedfast traveller’s chamber. Her retreat was intercepted.

She looked at him dumbly, and did not answer. But she lifted her pleading eyes up to his face of stone, as one who knew the great powers residing in them, and who was accustomed to employ them as weapons of defence. The landlord laughed a little insolently.