THE SWORD OF
THE KING

BY

RONALD MACDONALD

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1900

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
THE CENTURY CO.

THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, NEW YORK

INTRODUCTION

It is matter of no small difficulty and hesitation for a woman to tell a story—in especial, her own story—from the beginning of it even to the end, and to hold, as it were, a straight course throughout. The perplexities, I say, are many, and among them not the least is found in these same words, beginning and end. For where truly his story has its inception, and what will be its ultimate word, might well puzzle the wisest man of this age, or any other. It has been well said, indeed, that the history of a man is the history of his troubles—but that fashion of considering will bring us, by no devious road, to the latter days of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Now either I have somewhere read, or my own heart has privily told me, that the story of a woman is the story of her love. And this I take to be truth, and do therefore resolve that the first chapter of my story shall be the first of my heart.

But, lest my book itself should lack apology, I will first tell how it comes that I, the mere wife and daughter of country gentlemen, and of learning, as will be seen, wholly insufficient to the undertaking, should write a book at all.

I write, it is true, but for my own people—for the family that I pray may be long in the land. But in these days, fortunate indeed, yet full of swift and dubious change—these days when every second man, it would seem, must print a book—these days when all the presses in London are not enough to set before us the tithe of what is committed by ink to paper—in these days, I say, none can be assured that what he now pens shall not by some chance hit of fortune attain the resurrection of print. And if this thing befall my work of love, and if the book then prove, not the cere-cloth of the embalmer, but a second and perpetual life to the thoughts of a most happy daughter, wife, and mother long departed and forgotten, I would stand well with my reader.

If any stranger, then, do read, let him believe that I have no taint in me of that scabies scribendi, mentioned by Horace, and mightily inveighed against last Sunday in the pulpit of Royston Church by our good vicar. This itch must be spreading fast, I thought, if there be danger of it here, where scarce a full score of the good man's hearers can spell in a hornbook. And now, lo! I am in dread lest I be thought infected—I, a woman, with all good things that come to women, and one to whom the holding of the pen is soon a weariness.

There hangs yet (and long may it so hang!) in our great hall at Drayton a sword—not in its sheath, but naked, and broken some two parts of its length from the hilt, but shining bright as on the day it was first drawn by the great prince that once used it. Beneath it, also against the wall above the hearth, is the scabbard.

It was on a fine morning of the fall of last year, as I was tending Ned's new Dutch garden, that I heard loud and childish altercation proceeding through the open windows of the great hall above me. And there in a window arose the fair gilded head of my seven-year Mary, my first and best gift to Ned, and his best to me.

"Pray, madam, come up to the hall," she cried, "for Will is ever doing things of naught, and he will not be gainsaid by me."

"Nay, child," I replied, loath to lose the sweet air of the morning and my labor below. "Nay, child, but you must take means and learn cunning to control him."

"I cannot do so, madam," says poor Mary, well-nigh in tears; "and he is even now about dismounting the broken sword from the wall. But if you will come, madam, I will hold his legs while I may."

And with that I ascended in great haste, yet but just in time to save the relic from desecration and the heir of Royston and Drayton a backward fall of great peril. For the noise of my entrance caused his most unserene Highness to turn quick on his heel and to miss in part the footing, already precarious, that he had attained upon the mantel. In short, he fell into my arms and into tears with one and the same movement; tears shed for no danger run—such is not his habit—but of grief for the plaything that was but now within his grasp; for, though but rising five, Master William Maurice Royston would have the broken sword to fight battles with—against King Lewis, forsooth, and the wicked Frenchmen, in the garden.

"It is but a bwoken old sing, madam-muvver," he cried between his sobs, "and of a fit length for me, lacking the pointed end, which I did purpose leaving upon the wall." And so I must needs tell him how dearly I do prize that shattered weapon, thinking the while of the shame that was averted, in part by its means, from our houses—and of the honor, too, that came thereby.

Then Mistress Mary would have the tale of the sword, and Will, his grief forgot, and joyously bent on touzing my hair to the image of his own, made instant demand for the fullest narration—"Every word, madam-muvver—from onceuponatime to happyeverafter." Yet the attempt to bring my tale to the measure of childish apprehension did lead me into quagmires of question and answer so vexing to our diverse ignorance, that dinner and Colonel Royston found us scarce advanced beyond Will's onceuponatime. At meat the children demanded and obtained permission to lay the matter before their father—the promised history, and the obscurity of word and idea found necessary by the historian at the very commencement. At last Ned made as if he would speak, when "Madam," cries Mary, as one big with a great thought, "madam, will you not write it all down, that we may read when we have learned the long words?"

"Wise maid!" said her father. "And indeed, Philippa, it is worth the doing. But, Mistress Wisehead," he continued to the child, "when the long words are spelt from thy mother's head upon the paper, they will cry aloud to be spelt back into thine, if you will have the tale."

Now these words did make my poor maid to blush hotly, who had little love to her book. Yet she answered well, saying: "I know, sir, that I have been a poor scholar, but, if madam will write the tale, I purpose to be diligent to the end that I may read well and fitly against the time it is written."

"'T is plain, Phil," says Ned merrily, "that here is your one hope to make a scholar of your daughter. And, indeed, sweetheart," he went on, with more of gravity, "'t is a book I should like well to read myself."

"And that, sir," said I, "is a compliment you pay to few. For, beyond M. Vauban's work on fortification, I vow I have not seen a book in your hand since we were wed."

So, what with a reluctant daughter to be tempted into the path of letters, and a husband to please,—as I knew by his face his heart was much set on this enterprise of little Mary's suggestion,—I found myself committed to the task. Yet, though I have thought much and uneasily of my promise, I know not indeed when I had begun the fulfilling it had not Mary this very afternoon brought ink and paper, while Will followed close with a new pen.

"Write now, madam," quoth the maid.

"Write now, madam-muvver," says Will in faithful echo.

"If I begin now," said I, hard driven for yet a new plea to postpone the first plunge, "William Maurice Royston will not be able to read the book when it is done."

"William Maurice Royston," said he, "does not purpose reading. Sis says reading is irksome. But, when the tale is wrote, madam-muvver is going to read it to him."

And so it is that I begin.

THE SWORD OF THE KING

CHAPTER I

I was a child of five years when I first saw my lover, and a gallant sight I thought he made, the more that he found me in sore trouble, and drew me out of it, as is ever his way. Colonel Royston, indeed, in these latter days, holds that what I call my memory in this matter is but the light of his after instruction thrown backward on the dark screen of childish oblivion. Whether or no (though I take much pride in the memory, and still will so call it), between him and me the reader shall not lose, but shall know that on that day my nurse, weary and petulant with the great heat and our long ramble afield, was leading me, Philippa Drayton, no less petulant and even more weary, by the hand, or, rather, was hoisting me by the elbow, up the great avenue of elms that leads to Drayton Hall. And, fain as I was for home, her rough speed was too great for my little legs, and her grip pained my arm, so that I cried out. And then I heard the thud of hoofs upon the turf by the roadside, and I looked up to see the little horse pulled well-nigh on his haunches by his rider, whom, from his own mouth, I soon knew to be Master Edward Royston, of Royston Chase. As he pulled up, Betty let go my arm, whereupon, for the greater ease of my legs and the freer exercise of my voice in weeping, I incontinently sat me down in the road.

"For shame!" says Master Ned, looking down from his galloway upon Betty, with a frown that had sat well on thrice his years.

"Ay, shame indeed," says Betty, yet blushing to the color of a well-boiled beet; for she well knew it was at herself his words were aimed; "ay, 't is shame indeed for a great maid like little mistress here to sit in the road and weep."

Now Betty spoke in the broad fashion of our parts—the Doric, as Mr. Telgrove calls it, that I have heard is well-nigh a foreign language to many. For the not giving this outlandish speech to my readers there are two reasons: the one, that, though I do well understand it myself, as is but natural, and do love the sound of it at times, and can even, at a pinch, shape my own mouth to it as well as my ear, I yet have by no means the skill to set it down, knowing, indeed, no combination of letters able to convey its sounds; and the second reason is, that could I make shift so to write, none could read what I had written—which perhaps, by the well-disposed at least, might be held a blemish in my book.

But Master Ned, brushing aside her endeavor to hand on her shame to me, at once declared himself my champion.

"You do not take me," he said, the dark cleft of his frown growing deeper between his brows, so that it was a marvel to see so much austerity on so smooth and young a face. "When little maids weep, my lass, 't is most times the blame of the great ones."

I know not indeed if Colonel Royston yet hold in this belief; but from that point did I love Master Ned, if, indeed, I had not begun to do so some seconds before. And I was glad that he sat upon his horse, that raised his head some few inches above Betty's cap, for she was indeed a great lass, and twice his age, and his reproof had in great measure lost its force had he stood dwarfed beside her great body.

From Betty he turned to me, as I sat in the road, and—"Thou art tired, little one," he cried, with a great tenderness in his young countenance, that to me seemed so old. "If you will ride before me, sweetheart," he said, patting the pommel of his saddle, which was new and fine, as all about his person, "I and Noll will take most gentle care of thee."

At which kind words I rose to my sore feet, stretching out my arms, and crying to him that I would go with him. And, while Betty stood aghast, yet with never a thought her timid and sickly nursling would venture such a deed, I had reached his down-reached hands, had scrambled or was pulled into the saddle before my knight-errant, the little horse had plunged beneath his double burden, and we were away. As I swayed and bounced on the pommel in the first strides of that gallop along the sward that lies between the elm trees and the road, where the air rushed by so cool and green in the shade, he seized me with his right arm, fetching me round against his body so that my chin lay on the arm above the elbow. As my eyes, close shut in the first shock of our flight, came wide in the great comfort of this security, I was gazing back over the way we had sped, and I laughed aloud to see the vain pursuit of Betty. For all but her great self seemed streaming behind her in the wind of her going—cap, hair, and petticoat, while the fatness of her trembled as she ran.

For all this, long as it has been in the telling, happened, as it were, in a single stroke of time, and we were yet little parted from the pursuer. And, as I laughed, Master Royston, between his chidings of his nag for so serving us, would know the reason of my mirth—so "Do but see," I cried, "how Betty runs, and you will laugh too." But he could not, till he had tamed and admonished little Noll to a better pace for my ease. And when it was time for him to laugh at the quaint figure Betty did cut, I had already begun to pity her. But Master Royston would none of it.

"She is very well served," he said, "for her rude manners to thee, little one. I have a mind to give her some more of it. She is weary, is she not?"

"Ay, indeed, poor Bet!" I answered, "else had she not so handled me."

Upon that he drew rein, saying we should wait till she drew near. After a while, as Noll did crop the grass at his feet, Master Royston asked me if I could sit astride. "It is no shame," he said, "thou art so small a maid." And when I was so set, grasping a double handful of the pony's mane, he said: "When she is close I shall run to the house. Hold thou fast, little love, for Betty must run as never before if she would catch us." And as I would have pleaded she drew near, all spent and blowing, and I felt his knee move, and little Noll did also feel it, and was gone.

Oh, that I had a pen to tell of that ride! This time I was not afraid. This time there was no starting aside, no uneasy casting of my poor small person from side to side in grievous oscillation. And, oh! I say again, for the pen of some poet (yet I cannot tell whose to wish) in order to describe this my first taste of the joy there is in a horse when he is between us and turf good and plenty! Many a mile and many a beast have I ridden since that summer afternoon, and I hope so to ride, by the goodness of God, many a year hence; and yet that long, clean, resilient flight through an air that seemed of liquid green, flecked with the gold of the sun dropping here and there through the elms; the soft, fresh thud of hoof meeting turf but to part anew with the impact—that meeting with the soil that gave so lively assurance that Mother Earth was yet kindly and strong beneath; the strong rushing of the wind cooling my face and lifting the tangled curls back over the close cap; the new-born trust, moreover, in the arm that held me—all these things are with me now, distilled into one golden drop of life's very elixir, being, indeed, one of those gems of memory whereof the sweetness can as little be set fast by words as the stamp of them can be erased from the mind so sweetly and strangely impressed.

So much for my memory rather of a frame of being than of an ordered consecution of events. The curtain of childish oblivion here descends, as it is wont to fall, swift and dark, on these pregnant spoils of recollection. I think my dear and honored father's arms were those that lifted me from the saddle. I have since heard that Betty was saved by my new friend from the rating Sir Michael had ready for her, receiving privily from that youthful master of craft a mint-new crown in earnest of future subsidies, did she prove thenceforth tender to the little maid. And, indeed, I think she did deserve whatever wage of kindness the future may have brought her. For I have of her no further memory of harsh entreatment.

For Philippa Drayton there now began a new life of the happiest. I had found what all, at one time or another of life, will look for, yet find most often, I truly believe, when they seek him not—I mean a true friend. And there is none but his children and mine that can tell what a friendship it was my friend did give me. He was my playmate, yet of age and wit to control. He was at whiles my tutor, for I would learn of him when none else had the art to keep my eyes five minutes fast on the book. He was my master of equitation, and did teach me in such manner not only to sit upon a horse's back, but also to understand what the animal would be at, that I learned in time to back many a beast that some could not mount with impunity. Before the five years of our early comradeship were past I would ride the colts round the paddock, often without bridle or saddle, and seated astride, as in my first ride with Ned, which I have described above. And he would blame me for a madcap, and yet, if none else were by to see, would laugh at the frolic, and praise my sitting of the nag, and my tricks of control. With his coming into my story, which before was none at all, my old dread of animals, along with the ill-health of my earlier days, had vanished, to be replaced by a pure confidence in all that breathed, which in itself, maybe, was to the full as childish, but, without controversy, far safer for the child. Anon, Ned was himself my steed, to be guided by tuggings of the hair and ears often, I doubt me, little merciful. And, if not the swiftest, he was surely of all I have ridden the most willing. It could not fail that, thus together, we should quarrel often. I mean, it could not fail where such a child as I made one of the pair. But Ned would bear my poutings, my bickerings, and every wayward mood with a smile when he might, and without it when he must. But did some act of mine wrong some other than himself, as when I would cuff Betty, or strike dog or horse for the easing of my own passion rather than the fit correction of the animal, then would he show the sterner mettle that was in him. Then he would not forgive till confession of wrong or pardon was asked. And, was I stubborn, he would stay away, even days together, but I must submit. Once it was a week—seven days, most long and dark for erring Mistress Philippa. For he said: "You are my friend, little Phil, and some day I shall wed thee, and it is not for my honor that you do thus, or so."

Thus Master Edward Royston, aged some fourteen years. Yet was my Ned no untimely saint, fitted but for the fatal love of the gods. Passion and frolic were in him, laughter, and—no, not tears—only twice have I seen them in his eyes, heard them mar the government of his speech. Boyish escapades were plentiful enough with him to give his mother and my father some knowledge of the unbending nicety in the point of honor which was yet seen in his most boyish prank or his strongest passion of anger. For the power also of anger was in him, growing, indeed, in its outburst less frequent as he grew in stature, but gaining rather than losing force with its rarer manifestation. I touch on this note of his character designedly, inasmuch as it was the cause of the great change that was soon, I mean at the end of twelve years from our first meeting, to come into my life. But of that in its place.

Sir Michael Drayton, of Drayton Manor, in the southward part of the county of Somerset, was already well on in years when I, the second child of his second wife, was born. And that was in the eighth year of the second Charles. For he, my father, first saw the light in the year of grace 1609, and thus, at the time of my meeting with Ned, which was in the summer of the year 1673, and in the sixth year of my little life, he had fulfilled sixty-four years, of which number some five and forty had brought him trouble sufficient, on moderate computation, to furnish out a fair portion of strife and affliction to six ordinary men. For, ardent and devoted Cavalier though he was, 't was not the outburst of the great war of the Rebellion that marked the worst point of his troubles. Often in his old age have I heard my dear father tell how, after the tedious and ever embittering doubts and hesitations of that civil strife that had endured in England since the coming of the first Stuart, to him as to many another the resort to arms came as a clearing of the vexed mind and settlement of conscience perturbed. Of the momentous action of the Long Parliament, in the year 1642, I have heard him say: "Then at length our duty was plain. I, for one, slept better o' nights thereafter than I had done since the meeting of the Short Parliament." For Sir Michael had been elected of the shire for that hapless assembly, as subsequently for its successor, the Long Parliament; of his seat in the latter he was illegally deprived when he withdrew from Westminster to join the King at Oxford, which he did in the late spring of that same year (I mean 1642), in the excellent company of my Lord Falkland and the late Lord Chancellor Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde. And thenceforth his life was war, and raising of money in order to its prosecution; in both which perilous and comfortless means of assisting his sovereign and of hurting his foes Sir Michael Drayton was ever forward, to the most lamentable detriment of his own person and estate. He raised on his own land, and maintained at his own expense, a troop of horse that were ever with him throughout the first period of that long and evil war, I mean until the fight at Naseby in Yorkshire. There he lost great part of his following upon the field, and was himself grievously hurt. Yet with that scent, as I may say, which led him in all those years ever where the work was hottest, he was found again in the Welsh rising three years later, whence, escaping after the fall of Pembroke Castle, he joined himself with his little remnant of troopers to the Scots, in bare time to share their overthrow at Warrington by the late Protector (although he had not then that title).

Sore in mind, sick in body,—for he was never wholly healed of his great wound in the right thigh which he took at Naseby,—he reached home only to hear of his King's terrible end. 'T is perhaps strange to tell that this awful deed of murder and sacrilege put a new heart in that much-buffeted and enduring gentleman, my father. That Martyrdom, I think, went far to atone, in Sir Michael's mind and heart, for certain wrongs and fickle veerings of purpose, proceeding as much from the complexion as the misfortunes of that pious Martyr and unhappy King. No word did he ever utter to asperse the royal memory; yet once in the passage of these more recent transactions of state, which have brought into my life, as into that of the nation at large, so much of betterment, did I hear him murmur (though but as for his own ear alone), "Ay, ay—he served us best, when they served him worst." Be that as it may, from that hour until the happy restoration of King Charles the Second, all that he had—the remnant of health, much of his land, the lives of his sons, the thoughts of his mind, and the prayer of his heart, were given to forward that happy end, which was achieved, as all men know and many remember, in the year 1660—but, for the house of Drayton, at what a cost!

But my father's story I must not make overlong, lest I never come at my own. In brief, then, all his money and much of the Drayton timber, with here and there a fair slice of his land, were gone while the head of the royal Martyr was yet where God had set it. From that fatal day, however, he set himself to the husbanding what God and the rebels had left to him. Here again was disaster in wait for him; for when, by dint of living as a peasant, and by help of his breeding of horses (for which he was already famous in the west, and, in the early years of the war, well known to the farriers of Prince Rupert's Horse), he had begun to lay by the means of one day aiding the cause to which his life was given, he was, through the lust and malice of a certain Puritan neighbor, denounced as a Malignant, and most heavily fined by the despotic rule of the late Lord Protector Cromwell. Through Mr. Nathaniel Royston (of whom more in good time), he was warned of this instant spoliation, and was so enabled privily to convey his store of gold into France, and to lay it in the hands of his exiled sovereign, to be spent, no doubt, in far other fashion than the earning of it. And though he proved to the commissioners sent down upon that proditorious information to be less worth the plucking than had been supposed, yet his acts in the late troubles being known, and somewhat, perhaps, of that sending of money into France leaking out, the blow fell upon him even as his psalm-singing but ungodly neighbor had designed. So, the gold in France, land must be sold. And sold it was, but not as that godly brewer of Yeovil did intend—to wit, into his own hand; for here again Mr. N. Royston did us great service, buying of the land which adjoined his own a small portion at so high a price that the great fine was paid with the loss of a few fields.

Yet none the less was the work all to begin again. So begun again it was, and that most stubbornly. And it was well the land was fat, and the breed of horses unmatched in the west country, for, when our western discontent grew to a head in the year 1655, Rupert, his youngest son by his first lady, was with Penruddock at Salisbury, whither he carried and left, on his own undertaking, most of that painful saving. Some few of his following drifted back to Drayton, but Rupert had spent the gold and himself for his King, even as Sir Michael had now spent all his family. For Henry and Maurice, the elder sons, had fallen, the one at Worcester fight, the other in duel with a Frenchman at The Hague, whither he had followed his sovereign, his opponent, it was said, being a spy of Cardinal Mazarin, and suspected by my brother of some ill intent to his exiled prince. Over and above all these troubles, that same affair of Penruddock's, so foolish and ill-devised, cost Sir Michael within the year the life of his wife, after a union with her of six and twenty years of that nature as to soften much the sting of his many afflictions, though it could not keep her own heart from bursting with the loss of the last child of their love.

His thereafter speedy marriage with my own dear mother, whom I do but faintly remember, had in it no token, whatever the show may have been, of disrespect to the former Lady Drayton. But here again is a story to excel, perhaps, in the right telling of it, the length of my own. Yet I do not purpose a full relation of so much sorrow, holding that the strong hand only of a master in letters should essay the portraiture of such tragedy as was in those days often enacted in the houses of many an old Royalist family.

Mr. Denzil Holroyd's only surviving child, the lady who afterwards became my mother, had passed a jejune childhood in a house impoverished by her father's loyalty to the Stuart cause, and persecuted in the latter days, even to bitterness, for its stanch adherence to the faith of Rome. She had been the close and tender friend of the first Lady Drayton. Following hard upon the death of that lady came fresh ill-fortune upon the Holroyd family, of which the death of Denzil, its head, was a part; and Mistress Alicia Holroyd, left without a natural protector, and stripped by cruel laws and wicked informers of her last acres, flung herself late of a bitter winter's night against my father's door, begging shelter from the inclemency of Nature, and protection from the baseness of her Puritan cousin, who, not content with the filching her inheritance, would have added her person to his plunder as the price of food and lodging, hoping thus to make sure his title against future turns of fate. Silas Holroyd pursuing, found her clinging as some frightened child to my father. Silas soon returned the way he came, but after what words with my father was never known, since he dared tell no man what passed between them, and none dared question Sir Michael. Yet Alicia could not dwell in the house where now was no mistress, so out of this difficulty, as of so many another, my father must needs find a way; which indeed he did, as the words he used in telling me of the matter shall now inform any that has read so far in my narrative. "I told your good mother, little daughter Phil," he said, "that I had little power or credit in the land to help my friend. 'But,' said I, that bitter night that she came to me, 'if you will wed an old man and a broken, there is yet left in Drayton the strength to make some show of cover for the mistress of his board and the partner of his bed. 'T is a poor thing to offer, but it will serve to make a fool of that knave Silas, when he shall try, as well I know he will, to recover the custody of your person by a process of law, charging me with your abduction. I will cherish you well, if you will have me for husband.'" And if the poor lady let gratitude usurp the place of love who shall blame her, being in such straits? Not I, her most happy daughter. Were it but for the father she gave me, I will thank her next in order only to her God and mine till I die, and after, I do firmly trust.

And so out of hand they were married, nor do I think either found cause of regret. For the lady found peace, and license to practise, as far as might be, the duties of her faith, with now and again the comfort of its holiest offices at the hands of some wandering or hunted priest. For my father's old and loud-spoken hatred of Rome, now indeed much softened by the mellowing of his own temper and the fellow-feeling of a common persecution, was yet so well fixed in the memory of that countryside, that Mistress Alicia Holroyd was generally held to have abjured the errors of Rome in committing the error of becoming Lady Drayton. Certain it is, that none ever discovered the secret chapel so cunningly hid among the wine vaults, devised by Sir Michael, and painted and floored, dressed and furnished by no hands save his and those of Simon Emmet. I have heard that Simon would grumble as he worked, predicting ill to come of this idolatry. For his own soul, he would say, he cared not so greatly, in the pleasing of so sweet a lady—but, for Sir Michael's, his same sweet lady's, and their children's to come, he would the cursed job were not to do. But, if bidden then to lay down his tools, "Nay," he would say, "you cannot do alone in the business. And if it be sin, as I verily think it, I will not hand it on to another."

From the few and petty memories of my infancy, antecedent to my first encounter with Ned, there stands out the vision of my mother's face, as she would ascend the stair that led, as I understood then, and for many a year thereafter, but from the cellars; the vision of a face shedding upon all a shining calm, so tender, and withal so glorious, as no cunning of the greatest painter's brush, I think, has ever coaxed into the nimbus of his saint. It is how I recall her face in my dreams, sleeping or waking. And when I learned at length the secret of the chapel I understood many things that each must find for himself.

Her first child was my brother Philip, born in the year 1658. Ten years later she gave my father his only girl and last child,—me, Philippa, to wit,—and died herself in the first days of the year 1673, some five months before my rescue from Betty at the hands of Master Royston, to which, in this opening chapter, as in my life, I will yet be referring all things, as it were an Hegira.

And all this time, though I am ever dinning this Master Royston, this Ned, this time-worn but, I hope, sempiternal lover, in your ears, as yet introduction of him into these pages does as much lack formal ceremony as did the beginning of our friendship.

Mr. Nathaniel Royston, of Cheapside, in the City of London, was of a well-known and highly respected west-country parentage. Apprenticed in London at an early age to a merchant of repute, he had soon displayed considerable sagacity, not only in the intricacies of the Turkey trade, but also in the more perilous and no less subtile labyrinth of matters political. As in the first, after winning his way to a large share in the undertakings of him who had been his master, he had devoted himself to the patient amassing of a large fortune, so in the second he had used his judgment and foresight to the one end of retaining intact what he had so laboriously gathered. I would not be understood to throw anything of blame on his conduct of his life. Ned hath often told me that to his father all governments were alike, for all, he would say, were equally at fault, and that it became a man of his temper and estate to make in each case the best of a bad business. The Turkey trade thriving, Mr. Royston continued to increase by this means of regarding affairs of state, in despite of King and Parliament, Army and Protector, Presbyterian and Independent. And this in so great measure that, in the year 1653, he acquired by honest purchase those lands of the family whose scion he was, which lay in the county of Somerset. So he came to live among us, but it was not until two years after the Restoration that his son Edward was born, that being six years after his marriage to the Lady Mary Harlowe. He was wont to say that it was indeed strange that the sole precarious venture in the life of a solid and cautious merchant should prove his most profitable, referring in this to his marriage with a lady whose family had been proscribed for its affection to the royal cause. In this circumstance, indeed, there would appear to be some resemblance between the fates of my mother and Ned's; with this difference, however, that in Mr. Royston's case love impelled to the single hazardous act of a lifetime, while in my dear father's, duty and the very danger itself brought about a union ultimately rewarded with affection.

This Mr. Nathaniel Royston, after some twenty years spent mostly at his estate of Royston Chase in our neighborhood, during which time he had much endeared himself to my father by many acts of a thoughtful and temperate goodness, which his wealth and general esteem well enabled him to perform, died quietly in his bed in the same winter as my dear mother.

Of my own brother Philip, my early recollection is most slender. His was, I believe, ever a studious and contemplative complexion of mind, which had led him at an early age to adopt, against the earnest wish of his father, the erroneous opinions in the matter of religion pressed on him, I am sure, far more earnestly by his mother's spiritual advisers than by herself. I have neither wish nor ability to expatiate on this subject, and will only say, in justice to both sides, that it was more on account of the sorrow I had seen deeply graved upon my father's face when Philip's adhesion to the Church of Rome was mentioned, than from any ecclesiastical predilection of my own, that I found means to resist certain assaults by Philip and others on my own acquiescence in the position and authority of the Church of England as by law established.

It fell shortly after the Restoration that the death of the childless Silas Holroyd much simplified the process at law whereby the attempt was making to recover my mother's property. The matter being brought to a successful issue, the revenues of our family became so vastly improved that in the year 1676, when I was eight years of age, and Philip eighteen, he was sent travelling on the continent of Europe with a governor. I heard my father murmur, as he returned to the house after bidding his son farewell: "Pray God it drive some of the folly out of him!"

This, in my father's view of it, was far from the result of that foreign tour. After a while he ceased to tell me of Philip and his letters, reading them ever in a clouded silence; till at length I was bidden not to speak of my brother, and I knew some bad thing had befallen, but what, for many years, I did not learn. Nor did I see him after that departure for a space of twelve years. And when at length I did see him—but that I will tell in its place.

I had thought clearly to lay, as it were, the groundwork of my narrative in far fewer words than these that stretch already behind me like a dusty and winding road at the traveller's back.

Now, when as a child I would read a tale or history (after that Ned had coaxed and driven both desire and skill of reading into my little head), I did use to pass over the early pages in scorn, and "to come to the part," I would tell the chiding Ned, "where things fall to happening." Since many in graver years do keep lively this desire of action and movement in what they read, I am now resolved to reach, as quickly as may be, the place "where things begin happening."

CHAPTER II

I have said above of this early friendship between a lad of eleven and a maid not half that age, that it endured five years. For at the end of that period the comradeship indeed was broken, and a term was set to the habit of community in all things that was to me at least so comfortable. The day that took my companion to reside in the town of Sherborne, there to attend the King's School, brought on my small mind its first remembered sorrow; wherefore I wept greatly, and would not for many days be comforted. At the time I did not understand (as how should I, being but ten years of age?) the reasons of this so sudden change in his mother's intention. But I have since learned that two causes, of which I myself, poor maid, was one, determined the Lady Mary Royston to take her son from the hands of the learned and pious governor who should have led him in the path of learning and conduct even up to the gates of the University of Oxford. Thus her late husband had intended, but, the tutor growing lazy and overeasy perhaps, while Ned would ever more frequently take the bit of control fast between the teeth of stubbornness, she was minded to subject him to sterner authority. She was moved, moreover, like many another parent of an only son, by some measure of jealousy, directed, in her case, toward "the wild little maid of Drayton," as she would call me; for, with all his duty to his mother, no words or wishes of hers could shake that notable and constant affection that Ned did then, as ever, spend upon me. Knowing, too, by her late husband, of the papistical bias (as she would say) of the Drayton family more than others of those parts had learned, she was ever in dread (pursuing Mr. Nathaniel Royston's policy of caution) lest our acquaintance should lead her or her son into some seeming of complicity with traitors. For we were then in the year 1678 and the full tide of the Popish Plot. But I have always believed that I was far more in this matter of sending Ned to Sherborne than Dr. Titus Gates or the whole College of Cardinals.

By this and by that, certain it is that go to Sherborne he did, and that my days had been from that hour very cheerless but for a notable addition to our family, bringing some measure of solace to a mighty sore little heart.

When he heard that Ned was gone, and that the tutor knew not where to turn himself for a living after his dismission by the Lady Mary, my good father mounted his horse and rode over to Royston, leaving me marvelling greatly at the courage and hardihood of a man that dared encounter a woman so formidable as I then held Ned's mother to be. For only twice had I been with him to Royston Chase, and the second time even happier to be gone than the first. So it was that I deemed my father a very St. George that could face cheerfully this dragon.

He had along with him a mounted servant, leading a quiet pad-nag, which returned after sundown sorely burdened with the great person of the Rev. Joshua Telgrove. I stood on the steps for my father's embrace (always my privilege on his return), and when the little party was dismounted with no small difficulty to Mr. Telgrove and the assistant groom, "Mistress Philippa," says Sir Michael, with something of ceremony in his manner of speech, "this is Mr. Telgrove, who hath taught your friend, Master Royston, these many years."

"That I know well, sir," I replied, trembling; for I feared the old man greatly, having seen him but thrice, and ascribing great austerity to him that had ruled a being so great as my friend and idol.

"And now," he continued, with a little grim smile that was yet not unkind, "Mr. Telgrove has a mind to teach my little half-broke filly" (for so the dear and tender gentleman was wont to pun upon my name), "and I have a mind he should at least make the endeavor."

At this I trembled yet more, and was abashed to a stubborn silence, resolving with a mighty vow in my heart that from none but Ned would I learn. And I finding in the days that followed that my tutor was the mildest of men, and in face of childish wilfulness the most indolent, it was like to have gone mighty hard with my advancement in learning had he not discovered a rod to rule me as by some charm of magic. For coming very soon, with the keen insight of childhood, to fear him not at all, I would in no manner give him rest nor ease, neither by learning my task nor by sitting mumchance, which at first, mayhap, had pleased him near as well, unless he would be talking of Ned. Now Mr. Telgrove had a great and tender affection to his late pupil, and perceiving that I even surpassed him in this, he came, I think, to some measure of love for his new one. With that rose in him the wish that I should do him credit, even as Ned had done; and he made an ordinance that the name, so dear alike to master and scholar, should not be breathed until the task of the day was not only conned but fairly committed and recited. To this rule he did so constantly, for a nature of his softness, adhere, that before six months were past I was much advanced in wisdom, and grown to love my lessons only next in order to their reward—those long colloquies, to wit, in which he would tell me every adventure, escapade, and other act, good or bad, of Ned's childhood. These stories, indeed, soon grew old, but to me and my tutor never trite nor stale. Then from time to time he would read aloud to me, in part or at length, the letters received from Sherborne. But to me Ned did not write.

Thus the months went by, and grew into years less heavily than I had thought. Mr. Telgrove was well content, having found, as he would say, a refuge for his old age. For the Act of Uniformity and the Oath of Non-resistance being against his conscience, had deprived him of his living, while the Five-Mile Act had well-nigh forbidden him to find another. Mr. N. Royston, in the performance of one of his politic acts of charity, his house of Royston Chase being neither near Mr. Telgrove's former incumbency, nor within the proscribed distance of a corporate town, had obtained a good teacher for his son; but I think the good man's power of struggling with a persecuting world was exhausted in his one act of renunciation, and he was left with little desire for aught but a peaceful abode and the leisure to study the great writers of antiquity in a cloud of smoke from his tobacco pipe. His opinions in matters theological and ecclesiastical had, with the passage of time, so softened, that Sir Michael would playfully attack him for a Latitudinarian, an Arminian, or what not, while I on winter evenings would search among my tutor's books that I might plague him with accusation of strange heresies.

But this was after Mr. Telgrove had resided with us some four years, and young Mr. Royston had proceeded from Sherborne to Corpus Christi College, in the University of Oxford, having in the meantime but once visited Royston—one happy summer for me, in my fourteenth year, during two months of which he would ride over to us, not indeed with the frequency of the past, but often twice, and sometimes even three times, in the seven days. Yet, though I say I was happy, it was not as it had been. Something of the distance that had grown between him and me would force itself upon the mind, now of one, now of the other. Pondering the matter from the watch-tower of my present content, I hold that the child in Mistress Phil was ever crying out for the older terms of alliance, with their reckless mirth and unchecked license of jollity, while the woman, unheeded, but waxing ever stronger within, would as often clap stern hand upon the clamorous lips of youth, and so produce that outward show of petulance which is as baffling to the youth in his twentieth as it is alluring to the man in his thirtieth year. Then, too, it was that I first gave thought to the manner of my appearance in the eyes of others, and would ask my glass, I knew not why, for evidence of grace and beauty in person and countenance. And the mirror was a stern arbiter, showing only gaunt length of limb and sunbrowned uncouthness of feature, overhung by heavy brows, and supported, when mirth would display them, by a regiment of very white teeth.

"Dear Ned," I would say, "I would I were fair!"

"Some day you will be so," he would answer.

"But you have grown to the stature of a man, while I——"

"Be content, sweetheart," he would answer. "You are like a yearling colt—nay, 't is filly I mean. How dost spell that same word filly now, Mistress Scholar? With the 'P' and the 'h' it should be, in the Grecian manner. But indeed you will overtake my growth soon enough. When I did first know you, my age to yours was as two to one and more. When I have done with Oxford, it will be but as four to three, and thou older for a woman than I for a man."

"Tell me, then," I said to him one day, after some such talk, "when, last summer, you were at the Court with madam your mother, and I saw you not at all, did you not see many fine ladies and women of great beauty?"

"Ay, many," quoth he, "but none such as you will be. Do but give the colt time."

And when he was gone I would marvel why I cared for the beauty I had not. And since I found no clear answer to the question in my own mind, and ventured to seek it from no other, it was well, maybe, that Ned's long absence at Oxford and in London with the Lady Mary, extending as it did over the better part of four years, put the matter in time clean out of my head. Indeed, even in our quiet corner, we had other matter to consider in those days than the vanity of a half-grown maid.

Now it is only in later times that I have come even to the most partial understanding of the many twists and turns in the fate of our perturbed island, that were then succeeding each other with so bewildering rapidity. This is no public history, or my ignorance would make of it a worse book yet than it promises, and I shall but recall the memory of those unquiet events that affected at this time our quiet life.

That same year of Ned's coming again to Royston, between his leaving Sherborne and going to Oxford, was the time of the late Duke of Monmouth's progress through England, wherein he did take upon himself so much of the state of his royal ancestry as to encourage greatly the fond belief of the common people, particularly in the west country, in that vain story of a certain Black Box, where should be found (did one credit these mystery-mongers) proof indisputable of the marriage of the Duke's mother, Mistress Lucy Walters, with his acknowledged father, King Charles II., then upon the throne. Of the merits of the matter I know nothing, but remember well how Sir Michael would say the wish was father to the thought in the minds of such as dreaded most the coming to the throne of the Papist Duke of York. He had no patience, he said, with those that went after these idle tales; yet he showed much in exhorting, threatening, and persuading those of his own people that seemed most in peril of misleading by these errors. In especial, I do recall something of a disputation between him and Simon Emmet, our steward. This good man was in a measure privileged in his intercourse with Sir Michael, being an old trooper of the first force my father had raised and led for King Charles the Martyr. He was, though Cavalier and Royalist to the marrow, a Protestant of an earnestness well-nigh fanatical.

Simon stood beneath the open window of my bedchamber, on the sward that there sweeps up right to the walls of the house from the park, so that I have often dropped bread to the deer grown bold in their feeding. My father leaned from the window beneath me, smoking a pipe of Virginia tobacco, while I sat gazing over the trees and busied, till my ear was caught by their words, with thought of Oxford and the Court at London. And this is what I heard:

Said Sir Michael Drayton: "Ill will come of this madness, Simon. To uphold the claim of a bastard to the throne you and I have fought for is not the work of a wise man nor a good."

"'T is not so sure the Duke is that," answered Emmet. "I, for one, hold him as well born as the other Duke" (meaning the Duke of York), "and, at any rate, my lord of Monmouth is no Papist."

"I had not voted for the Exclusion Bill had I been at Westminster," said my father, yet as if he had a doubt in the matter; "for I do think a Catholic may be no bad king—if he will but uphold the law."

"If—ay, if! I do not say a Papist must needs be a bad man nor a bad king. Not but what they all are so—for the most part," said Simon as in fear of overmuch concession. "But this is a Papist for sure, and as surely a bad man. 'T is pretty work he has had the doing of in Scotland, sir; and that not for his own superstition, but for a faith he doth not hold. Give him power and the time to use it, and what will he not attempt for the Scarlet Woman? Moreover, if the Duke of Monmouth be the King's son, born in lawful wedlock, as this same story of the Black Box would show——"

"No more, Simon," interrupted my father angrily. "Say not another word of that. It is rank blasphemy and treason, and I, being a faithful subject of His Majesty, and on his commission of the peace, and holding command in the train-bands, may not hear repeated what His Majesty has denied. And most of all, Simon," he continued more kindly, "I do fear this sort of wild talk will get thee into trouble. Leave it to Republicans and Fifth Monarchy Men, old friend. I fear you have been running after sectaries in your old age, Simon." He knew it well, for the old steward, like the poor land that had asked and taken many years and much blood of his youth, had passed through many contrarious fits of thought and sentiment. In religion his politic fear of Rome had well-nigh driven him out of the back door of the Church into the arms of the Puritans. As he hovered between respect of his ancient captain and present master, and the enticements of controversy, "Go, Simon!" cried Sir Michael; "bid Parson Greenlow pray with you, and read you a lecture on Passive Obedience and the Duty of Non-resistance."

"Humph!" muttered the old malcontent, as he walked toward the stable; "the parsons will be mighty ready to eat their sermons when the Duke's Scottish boot is on their leg. They 'll resist then, Sir Michael, even as we resisted Old Noll."

And so three further years went by, and Ned came not, but did spend such time as he was not in Oxford with Madam Royston in his father's noble house in Basinghall Street in the City of London. Twice did he send me a letter in those days, with no word, indeed, of love in them, but so breathing the constancy of our old terms of alliance, and bringing me so much joy, that I cannot endure they should run the risk of the cold monument of print, and so will not here set down their words.

And I grew in length and thickness, and, I hope, in other things beside, and had almost forgot my mirror but for the kinder and more pleasing glance it would now and again, toward the latter part of my seventeenth year, begin to throw back upon me, as I would pin a collar, or struggle to twist into some show of order the stubborn and difficult blackness of my hair.

CHAPTER III

And then, one Sunday morning of late winter, we heard from the pulpit of Drayton Parish Church how the King was dead, when was read to the congregation there assembled the speech to his Council of the new King, James, in which he did fairly promise to uphold the laws, and in especial to respect the rights of the Church of which he was the head, though no member. And my father was cheered, and Emmet was sombrely downcast, and the country people murmured of King Monmouth under the breath. Later came the news of the late King's apostasy in the very article of death. If these things were true of Charles, whom in some sort they had contrived to love, what should be looked for, said Emmet and those of his kidney, from him who, as Duke of York, was but lately the most hated and hateful of all in the three kingdoms?

And then came the rumors of the late King's doing to death by his brother now on the throne. The truth, grave as it was, would not content our more turbulent and hot-headed spirits of the west, but they must even mix falsehood, none being too scandalous, to overseason a dish already too heavy for stomachs unused to high fare. And so there followed an indigestion—I mean the mad and wicked insurrection of the Duke of Monmouth. To this day I cannot think, and much less write, of the summer and autumn that followed the death of King Charles II. without some return upon my spirits of the horror and gloom that the doings of those days engendered. So I will pass over our share in these things as quickly as may be.

When we heard of the Duke's landing at Lyme Regis, in the county of Dorset, and not more than twenty good miles from our little village of Drayton, it was already late on the eleventh day of June; yet that very night did my father set himself to the task of getting at once under arms his small company of the yellow-coated Somerset train-bands. Receiving the next morning instructions from Sir William Portman, the colonel of that force and a near friend of his own, he was enabled to despatch them out of hand on their road to join with the red-coated militia of Dorset at Bridport, saying that thus the poor hinds might at least die cleanly, if die they must; while staying at home they had, like enough, taken the rebel infection and ended on a gallows. His old wound and other infirmities, to my great joy, kept him with me at Drayton. But, not content with what was already done, he made during the week that followed a visitation of the neighborhood, exhorting all and sundry to loyalty, and with so good result that our Drayton folk suffered less in the cruel days so near at hand than any other village for forty miles round.

And these cruel days came upon us but too quickly. In the latter end of June Simon Emmet did one day make off, and we had great fear that he was gone to join the rebel mob that of its friends was flattered with the name of army. On the seventh day of July came the news of the battle fought at Sedgemoor, near the town of Bridgewater; and then of the great slaughter on that field, to be followed day by day with yet more grisly tales of the cruelty of the royal troops, in especial those of wicked Colonel Kirke and his regiment of soldiers from Tangier, as wicked and ruthless as himself. This bad man, whose later service in a nobler cause I can never hold as atoning for his acts at this time among us, began, after some days of butchery in the town of Taunton, to send out small bodies of soldiers to spread his horrid work in the smaller towns and villages in the southern parts of the county. And then there came in a party of the militiamen on their way home, having passed through Taunton, with word that some of Kirke's Lambs would next day visit Drayton, having with them a batch of prisoners belonging to our part, in order to hanging them, with all customary foulness of detail, on their own village-green, the better to encourage the loyalty of those on whom no faintest breath of suspicion could be raised.

It is said that when Will Blundell, the young gentleman that had in my father's stead taken our company of the militia to Bridport, had begged Colonel Kirke to give our village at least, as untainted in its loyalty, the go-by, that coarse and evil-minded man had replied, with many foul words and blasphemous oaths: "Are we then so loyal in Drayton? God's blood! I will keep them so, if a few bleeding heads and mouldering quarters may in Somerset do so hard a thing. And if my lads hang a few beyond the number they take with them, why," he said, "'t will but physic the land to a better habit."

Now Simon Emmet had in the village a son, Peter, who was by trade a blacksmith, and by custom a prudent fellow that kept to his anvil and never vexed his head in these ill times to fever heat by opening too wide his mouth. And this Peter had a daughter, Prudence, the prettiest maid of the village, and afterward, as you are to hear, my handmaid, and, indeed, my very dear friend. These two (for her mother was dead) had all that day a sore time of it, fearing that Simon was one of those who should be brought and put to death. Well, the party of soldiers came in that night with their three prisoners, but too late of a clouded evening, as the ensign in command did say, with a most vile levity, "for the good and loyal folk of Drayton fitly to enjoy the sight of six traitor legs performing a saraband upon nothing."

And so they quartered themselves upon the village, and their victims in a barn, "until," said this same worthy follower of Kirke, "on the morrow they should be quartered for good and all." Moreover, with a more exquisite touch of that cruelty in which they were so skilled, they had concealed the faces of these three poor fellows from the public gaze, in the hope that anxiety for the morrow should be the more widely spread over the sleepless pillows of the village.

Now during that night, when few slept, but terror reigned more silent than sleep, a strange thing happened. For many a year after, the matter was known in full to few but myself, and to me not till little Prudence Emmet had come to trust and confide in her new mistress. So much narrative I have of my own to unwind, that I will waste little space upon hers, telling but in brief that the third of these men, taken in arms and condemned without judge or jury, was indeed her grandfather; that she and her father had come to know it; that in the dead of night she had contrived with liquor and flattery, and mayhap by implicit proffer of kindness she purposed never to grant, to keep the sentry busy, and even a little to draw him off, while her father, after forced and secret entry at the hinder part of the barn, had privily withdrawn that old hothead Simon (now like to pay so dear for his besotted enthusiasm) from his prison, and had carried him upon his great shoulders, an inglorious Anchises concealed in a sack, five miles across country, and there fairly buried him alive in a secret cave or hole in the hillside by well-nigh walling up the mouth thereof, and bodily transplanting a young tree to conceal all signs of his labors. Yet was he back in his cottage before the ensign and his men had slept off the fumes of their wine.

Thus it was not till near upon noon that they discovered their loss, whereat the greatness of the ensign's fury passes any power of description that is in my pen. He said the two remaining should hang twice or thrice ere they died, to make of the spectacle as good entertainment as he had promised to the folk of that most loyal village of Drayton; but, proceeding to the execution of this cruelty, and having, to the enhancement of his wrath, but a small band of spectators, the most part keeping their houses in fear and sorrow, before he had ordered the hapless men, already in the agony of death, to be cut down the first time, his evil work was interrupted by the coming of that soldier who had on the previous evening been so cunningly cajoled by Mistress Prue and her cozening flatteries. This man had been threatened with the anger of Colonel Kirke and the most terrible military punishments unless he succeeded in discovering his escaped prisoner. Failing in this, he had, on encountering Prudence in a back passage leading to her father's forge, thought at least to display his zeal in hauling her by the hair before his officer, there to denounce her as his seducer from duty. In so doing he gave those two poor rebels a quick and easy death of their first hanging, while Prue shortly found, to the great altering of my after-life, a champion with a strong hand—no other, indeed, than him of whom is my book and my thought while I live.

Two days before this time Mr. Edward Royston was about leaving Oxford to visit Lady Mary at her house in London, when he was apprised of the sufferings of our western folk subsequent to the battle of Sedgemoor. Being now of a man's estate (for his entrance at the College of Corpus Christi was at an age much beyond the common) and of a nature graver than his years, he was impelled by his love for his people of Royston, and his pity of the dangers their misleading might bring upon them, without delay to set out for his home in Somerset, resolved to do what he might to order things fitly. Warning his mother by letter of his purpose, he took the road by Reading and Salisbury, in which city, arrived late at night, he heard what did but increase his desire to be at Royston, so that with moonrise he was again in the saddle, riding all that night alone; for his servant's horse had reached Salisbury clean foundered, and, nags being mighty scarce from the needs of two armies lately in the field at no great distance, he was forced to leave the man behind until he could be mounted. Thus it was that he came riding through Drayton village just in the last struggles of those two poor rebels, and amid the lamentable cries of Prudence in the rough grasp of her outwitted redcoat.

Of what here immediately followed I have received no account of that fulness which would enable me to give a narrative in detail. For Prudence was so mortally in fear, she says, that she remembers little but a quarrel and the noise of a great blow, from the moment of her seizure until she found herself coming again to her wits from a fit of fainting, in her father's arms and cottage. And Ned, when at length the occasion for talking of the matter could be had, did show a reluctance so great to speak of that which he has called the most painful spot in his memory, that even for the purpose of this book I forbear to question him with any particularity. But this much is sure, that in the winking of an eye Mr. Royston was off his horse, the frightened and brutal musketeer was stretched in the dust, and Prudence freed from his clutch only to be seized, with a coarse jest, into a lewd embrace by the officer of the party. There is little reason to doubt that he would shortly, in his anger and with his power at the moment so unbridled, have brought my life's joy to an end by the shooting or hanging of the gallant lad for his resistance to the military authority. But poor Ned's passion, so terrible, as I have said, in certain moments of just anger, was in a moment out of the cage where it had slumbered, and, before the vile words were well cooled upon the wicked lips, the handle of a heavy riding-whip had cut short the sentence with the life of the speaker. It must indeed have been a blow of fearful force (for in those days Ned's strength was growing great even beyond his own knowledge of it), and, falling as it did on the right temple, no other was needed. It was more than an hour before they had sure knowledge that the man was dead, and in the meantime all was confusion; for Ned, seeing Prudence borne off in the arms of her father, leapt upon his horse, and clattered down the village street. Three harmless musket-shots were discharged after him, of which indeed we heard the report up at the house, and then followed a babel of questions and oaths. Some demanded horses, others the name of the miscreant and rebel that had stricken their officer. Now "young master of Royston," as they did use to call him, was as well loved as known in Drayton village; yet on this day there was found, of those that saw his deed, no man, woman, or child that could put a name to him. Nay, I am wrong, for two indeed there were did name him, but so diversely both from each other and from the truth that little was gained, even when, for the better convincing the sergeant, they came to blows over the difference. And on this matter of the death of that poor young ensign, hot, as it were, from his sins, I will say at once that you should have searched our west country for ten years and never found a man to blame his slayer. I am no Papist, nor do I know if this be sound in any theology, but certain it is that in our eyes to this day the blood of one of Kirke's Lambs upon his hands was held fit to wash many a sin from a man's soul.

Now, knowing his life not worth a hoof's paring if he fell into their hands, and unwilling to lead those men of blood to Royston, Ned did lie all that day in some deep woodland near Crewkerne, trusting his knowledge of the roads should give him by night the greater advantage over his pursuers, and hoping to obtain privily a fresh horse, when the sun was well set, for his journey to the coast.

CHAPTER IV

Now all this day I had been keeping the house, at my father's strict command, he being most solicitous that for their safety none of his household should meet with the gang of cutthroats he knew to be then in the village. Being thus cut off from news, we had no knowledge of what was toward, conjecturing, however, some wickedness from the sound of those three musket-shots that I have mentioned.

About nine o'clock of the evening, then, I went to my chamber, sad, indeed, and anxious for the fate of the Drayton folk, and with many a shudder of horror as the things I had heard tell of that regiment, called at one time of Tangier, at another, Queen Catharine's, came unwelcome to my mind. And I remember that, as I put off my clothes, I marvelled how a woman high and gently born as that lady of Portugal could take pleasure to have such men bear her name. But, with all my perturbation, my mood was mild and peaceful to what it had been had I known at whom those same shots had been fired. Yet was there on my spirit a sense of unrest, and (as it seems to me now, perhaps in the light of after knowledge) of foreboded evil that would in no manner let me sleep. So it was that, about half an hour after I had bidden good-night to my father and Mr. Telgrove, I extinguished my one candle, and, it being a warm but clouded night, sat at the open window in my night-robe, trying idly to bring my eyes to pierce the darkness, and as idly considering when I was like again to see Ned. Here I sat, but for how long a period of time I know not. Yet I do remember that I heard all those sounds that indicate the closing in of night and sleep over a great house. And last came the drawing of bolts and setting of bars below, and the slow and halting step of my father's ascent of the stairs, and, with the closing of his chamber door, a stillness as of the grave was over all things. I thought it was such a stillness as I had never known; and then there grew upon my spirit (or, at least, it now seems to me that it was so) a foreknowledge that something, I knew not what, but something—something—something was coming out from this silence to break it. And with a slowly growing horror I did then fall to speculating upon the nature of this so certain interruption; would it be some ghastly vision of another world, or a cry of wrath, or some more horrible scream of terror? As one grown suddenly cold I arose from my seat by the window, with a shudder at the creatures of my imagination, gently drew to the casement, and got into my bed, as I should have done an hour, perhaps, before. But I found there no refuge from the silence that should be broke, but was not. And this sense of loneliness brought me in mind of the forgotten duty of prayer, so that I was quickly again out of my bed and on my knees by its side, hoping, childlike, great solace to my oppression of spirit. And then it came,—not the solace, but the breaking of the silence. And, though it was not such as I had looked for, being but the slight click of a pebble upon the glass of my window, yet did it send, as they say, my heart into my throat, and my whole body was a-tremble, as it had been a harpstring overstrained. It is a thing for which I can never to the day of my death sufficiently thank the goodness of God, that my terror took from me the voice in which I would have cried aloud upon the house. And so I gasped for breath, and clutched the clothes of the bed in a fear quite out of reason; and had I been upon my feet instead of my knees, 't is sure I could not have kept them. And then I heard the jingle of a bridle and the thud of an impatient hoof falling soft upon the sod, so that even in my passion of fear I knew it was under my window, or I had not heard it, for the grass was soft with the rain that fell at sunset. Upon that strange thoughts of our bugbear Kirke and of those devils that he ruled crept in my mind; but surely, I thought, my father's good affections to the throne should protect us; and, some movement of curiosity stirring in my breast to combat its army of terrors, I made shift to creep with knees and hands to the window, whence, with caution raising myself and peering through the lower panes, I espied dimly the shape of a man standing beside his horse. Thereupon, perchance having seen the whiteness of face, hand, or sleeve at the window, though the light was almost none, the man below uttered that whimsical little whistle of three notes that was a signal and warning of childhood to me, and I knew it was Ned. And my joy was so great that I forgot the hour, the place, the strangeness in him to come to my chamber window, and the unseemliness of my attire. Indeed I thought but of him as I gently flung back the casement, and cried, but softly: "Ned, dear Ned, is it indeed thou?"

Whereupon he replied, in a voice, as I thought, strangely altered from that I had known (but indeed it was but the day's anxiety and alarms that had so changed its sound): "I indeed it is, dear Mistress Phil. But, I pray you, speak low and secretly, for I do think they will be even now upon me."

"And who are 'they'?" I asked, lightly enough, having as yet no fear that any would harm such as he.

"Kirke's mercenaries, that, because they bear upon their flag the Lamb that doth signify our blessed Redeemer, and because they do never use to show mercy," he said bitterly, "they do call Lambs. 'T is not likely they will show me the mercy of sword-thrust or musket-ball if there be a rope handy where we meet. And hanging is a death I have little love to, Phil."

"But, Ned, O Ned!" I cried, leaning from the window the better to speak low, "what hast done, dear, to be out with these men? Surely you did not fight with the Duke."

"Nay, mistress," says he, "but I have this day struck down, and maybe worse, one that did fight against that same poor foolish man. He was their officer, and I doubt he is not yet risen, for I struck him as I never struck man before. All this day have I lain hid, and should now be on my way to Bridport if my life be worth the saving. But I thought, even now as I was starting on my way, sink or swim, live or swing, I would see Phil once again—I would say, Mistress Philippa. So I rode hither five miles from Crewkerne woods to bid you good-by. And now I am sorry that I did so, for, as I leapt the hedge down there from the lane into the hollow, I saw one on a horse that made for the village, and I doubt he was some picket set to watch after me. 'T is certain they have gotten horses enough by this, and I do fear my rashness may bring them hot foot about this house."

He now mounted his horse, pushed him close to the wall, and went on speaking; "I wish I could come at you," he said. "Would you give a kiss to take over the sea with me, Mistress Phil, an I could reach your lips? I have not felt their touch of velvet since I was a lad."

Now we were indeed very foolish there, with danger so instant upon us, to pause for such a matter. But I, remembering how I had wept because he had not taken, when last we met, what I was ashamed to offer unasked, and being filled with joy at his words, did answer, bold as brass: "That indeed would I, dear Ned, if you were three feet taller than your six." And with that he must again urge his nag close in to the wall, steady him with voice and rein, and then climb to his feet upon the cantel of his saddle; and there, resting one hand upon the ledge of the window, he did take what he had asked and I was not minded to refuse. And whether there were more kisses than one, or whether one did last much longer than the wonted time of such, concerns but two persons in the world.

But, on a sudden, passing athwart my new joy, a newer fear entered my heart; for I heard the sound of many hoofs coming breakneck up the avenue to the house. For the passing of one brief heart-beat that yet seemed the time of an age I felt cold and sick of an awful dread, when there sprang a picture on my brain of import so appalling, that I was flung by recoil from that depth of despair into as excellent a degree of courage. For as in a flash of light I saw a gallows, and thought of a rope clinging yet closer where my arms now clung. And as the courage thus sprang to life in me, and I whispered, "They shall not have thee, Ned," the beat of hoofs drew near with that pulse in the stroke of them that tells of the sharpness of the rider's spur and the wrath in his heart. And that which next followed was a plain effect of Ned's rashness, and of the folly of us both at such a conjuncture to play with the moments that should have been used to his escape. For the horse, on which he precariously stood to reach me, hearing the quick and stirring approach of his kind, did incontinently fling his heels in the air, and, with a shrill nickering, started away across the park at a good round pace, leaving his master hanging by his hands, and partly to a great stem of the ivy that on this side covers the most part of the stonework of the house. After a little struggle he did contrive some sort of footing among the lower branching knots of the ivy, and with a whispered adieu would have made his descent, very hazardous for a man of weight, had I not clutched him hard. For I heard the voices of some that were coming round the house, drawn, doubtless, by the neighing of the faithless nag.

"Come in, Ned, an you love me," I said. "If they see thee here all is done." Now I can give no good account of how it was achieved, remembering but confusedly that I did get my hands beneath his arms, and thereby pulled at him with a strength raised, I do think, for some few moments of time, by the mercy of God and my great fear, much above what by nature was in me; and he, as he was able, helping me, I did, in spite of the greatness of his shoulders, and the narrowness of the casement, with great silence and speed haul his long person head foremost into my chamber; and that was done but just as three of his pursuers, mounted on the horses they had pressed for the service, did gallop round the corner upon the grass. And I thanked God that I was burning no light within, else had they spied the soles of his great riding-boots, which yet rested upon the sill, while his head was on the floor, and I crouched beside him to hide the whiteness of my bedgown. To this day there is the mark of his spur upon the sill of that casement—a sort of dotted line, made as he did twist himself over on the floor the better to drag the long legs of him to the same level. Of the three that rode by beneath, it was afterwards supposed that they did further scatter the deer that Ned's horse had roused from sleep, each pursuing in the darkness a quarry of his own, which he took for the nag that was now well on his riderless way to Royston.

Now my first motion was to laugh loud and long, which with some wisdom I did check. Then I would have wept, but that desire too was speedily overcome, as for the first time since the pebble struck my window I remembered how I was clad, and again thanked God there was not even a rushlight in the chamber to show me so unmaidenly. But we were not quit of Kirke's men for the three that were so vainly and unseasonably chasing our deer; for, as I turned to a closet to take down a long cloak to throw over me, there arose a clamor of knocking and shouting at the great door below. For all that has been told since first we heard their horses was the happening of seconds fewer than the minutes spent in reading it.

"Where are you, mistress?" said Ned, now risen to his feet, and so standing between me and the window that I could make out the blackness of his shape against the thinner darkness without.

"You must not speak, dear Ned," I answered, laying my hand on his arm to show him where I stood.

"I cannot see you even yet," said he, as he felt my hand. "But now you were all white."

With which I was speedily all red with shame, and whispered: "Hush, Ned, hush! Even now you are in great peril."

"'T is no matter for that," he said. "The peril is for you, mistress. I did wrong to enter here, and must go, one way or the other."

And with that he looked warily from the window, but speedily drew back, having seen in that brief moment, by a faint gleaming of the moon through a thinness of the clouds, a sentry that moved to and fro beneath, musket on shoulder. And when he had told me in the lowest whisper what he had seen, he said: "So it must needs be by the door." And as he spoke we heard the clatter of bar and chain below, telling that the enemy was admitted among us. So he would have leapt from the window to take his chance with the sentry, rather than he should be so found closeted with me. But I would not, and ran between him and the window, saying low and quick that I would call aloud if he persisted. And since he knew me and the manner of voice I used to threat the thing I would surely do (for my crying out in such case had made things no worse for him, but only full of shame for me that called), he yielded, asking me, What, then, should we do? Which before I could answer, I heard them striking upon a door in the same gallery where stood the room we were in, and the slumberous expostulation of Mr. Telgrove, who there inhabited. There was but one room between, and I felt our turn was near and that the bitterness of death must soon take hold on me unless I could think of a thing. And truly I think that never before, and but once since, did my mind think so many thoughts in so short a space and to so much purpose.

Press, closet, and chimney—nay, even the space beneath the bed—were swiftly tried in my mind, and discarded as harborage too little secure to shelter what in all the world I did best love. But at last the thought came, and with it I was no longer a maid shaking at approach of danger, but a general with a device of strategy that should repel the invader.

"Ned," I said, low and sharp, "will you do what I bid?"

"Ay, sweetheart—mistress, I would say," he replied, and in all my passion of fear and purpose of action I marvelled, as I had done since he came under my window, why he would ever style me mistress.

Now, while we spoke beneath our breath, I had tied my handkerchief over his head, and knotted it under his chin. Then I pushed him to the side of the bed that was farther from the door, guiding him with my hands, and bidding him lie down while I should pull the covers over him. But, "Nay, that will I not," he said, with a perilous raising of the voice. "Had rather swing than save my neck by these means." And I, in despair, did clap my hand over his mouth, and said with great fury of passion I scarce knew what, and beat him with my fists, till he was sorry to see me so moved, and suffered me, of his old gentle kindness, to force him down, and, trembling, to drag blanket and quilt over him, which in the dark did so fall foul of sword-hilt and spur, that I had laughed had I not been heart-sick with the fear of his life. When he was covered I sat me upon his chest, and, as best I might in the dark, twisted his long curls, which, in the fashion of his father's youth, he would still wear in place of peruke (and I think there is not a beau in London that has a wig from Paris so fair as what grew on his dear head), into some sort of womanish knot to thrust up beneath the handkerchief that must serve for night-cap. The sitting on him was to keep him there till they began to knock at the door, when I knew the desire to shield my fame would keep him quiet to the end.

Heavy steps now drawing near, I spoke my last word to him: "When they come lie thus, with thy face from the door, and, prithee, Ned, breathe hard and heavily, as you were Betty after a great supper."

"Nay," said he, "I will not stay to play the fool like a mummer in a play-house."

"If you but so much as stir a finger," said I, "you will put me to open shame before the servants of the house and those wicked soldiers. I think you will not so use your old playmate, Ned."

And then, to set my heart beating yet more horribly, so that it seemed I should never be able to speak when the need came, the searchers reached our door and knocked upon it, yet, from something more of gentleness that was in this knocking than was used upon the door of my tutor, I gathered a little hope. At once I threw off my cloak and held my breath in eagerness of hearing all that passed without.

"I say my daughter lies in that chamber," said my father's voice, growing more clear as he limped painfully up the gallery after his unwelcome visitors. "She is sleeping, and it will serve no purpose to arouse her."

"That's my business," said a harsh voice in surly reply. "I will rouse whom I please, since I am master here."

Sir Michael's voice rose somewhat higher, while his utterance became slower and more severe, as he answered this fellow.

"You mistake," said he, "for none is master here save I alone. And I will tell you, Master Sergeant, that, though I have admitted you to my house in the hope to do His Majesty the King a service, I do not purpose to endure in this house any show of ill manners such as your regiment is commonly noised to show toward helpless yokels and misguided rebels."

The sergeant's voice was still surly, but had in it a degree more of respect, as he replied that Sir Michael talked a deal of doing His Majesty a service, but when they came hot on the track of a rebel who had slain one that held His Majesty's commission, and was not yet well cold, he fell at once to putting obstacles in the way; that he was informed by his scouts that the man was seen not half an hour back making for this house; that he did but wish to make thorough search for the young murderer, with all fit observance of respect for His Majesty's loyal subjects, and search every room in that house he would before he left it. And inside the chamber, when he heard that the man was indeed dead, poor Ned shuddered beneath the bedclothes, and I, sitting on the other side, did lay my hand upon him for comfort. At that time, when I knew nothing but the man was dead, I thought no ill of my friend for the killing. If Ned Royston should slay a man, why, to me, the man was better dead. Later, hearing the whole tale, I was like to have been jealous of little Prudence Emmet, for whom the man was killed. Yet I wondered not that he shuddered, for I had heard my father say that it does take an old soldier long years to forget the first shedding of blood.

I heard one tearless and hard kind of sob from the dear lad, while my heart was sore that I could not speak in consolation, and then gave ear to my father's answer to the sergeant, which was very calmly delivered: "That we shall see, Master Sergeant. I have held no mean rank in the armies of his late Majesty, King Charles I., from wounds received in whose cause I shall not be recovered this side the grave, from which you are to understand what manner of bearing I am wont to receive from inferiors in rank. Moreover, I am greatly at fault if I have not still some credit at Whitehall—enough, at least, Master Sergeant, to make me a safer friend than enemy. I shall thank you for a sight of your search-warrant."

To which the sergeant: "Indeed, Sir Michael, I have none. In these ill times, with so much treason abroad, we do not think much of a warrant. But I am under a great necessity in what I do. Our colonel is no man to take soft words as atonement for the death of an officer after his own heart. I must report in the town of Taunton at noon to-morrow, and I dare not take thither this story of murder without the murderer. You talk well of warrants, sir, but there is none of us but fears Colonel Kirke worse than the law."

And on the other side of the door I did most heartily agree with this sergeant of Queen Catharine's Regiment of Foot. But my father continued: "I perceive, sergeant, that you are a man of some parts and education. Let us meet each other thus—I to summon my daughter, and, after a space, you and I alone of all these to enter the chamber." At which words my heart did sink to the place where the shoes had been but for my resolve, at any cost to nicer feeling, of showing unprepared.

And, the sergeant heartily consenting, Sir Michael himself rapped upon the door, and I still keeping silence (knowing I must open, yet not thinking it to be wise too soon to hear him, when I had been deaf to the sergeant), he next tried the latch, and, finding the door fast, knocked louder, and very gently called my name. Whereat I groaned, sighed, and cried, as one waking from sleep, "What is to do? Who is it, and what is wanted?"

And my father answered, "It is I, your father. Cloak yourself, Philippa, and open to me."

Whereupon I made my first mistake; for, to the end they might think I had heard nothing but my father's summons, I left my cloak lying upon the bed, and ran in my white gown, and barefoot, to the door, and suddenly flung it wide, when the glare of the lights that several did carry gave me the appearance of blinking with sleep the most naturally in the world. Then, putting a hand before my eyes to keep off the suddenness of the light, I said, with a little sharpness: "Well, sir, why am I roused? Does the house burn, or are Kirke and his Lambs at the door?"

And my father replied, with the first note of trepidation in his voice that I had ever heard, "Hush, child! All is well. There is no fire."

But I, resolved to show no dread, and now well launched in my comedy of deceit (for which, indeed, I was little fit, being reared in the utmost strictness of truth-telling), made answer I had rather the fire than Kirke, who would be the harder to sate. Then, taking my hand from my t eyes, and feigning now first to perceive the soldiers and other company, cried out as one mightily abashed to be so looked upon, and swiftly part-closed the door, and, in a voice whose shaking was easy to compass, asked who were all these with him. And he told me that I need not fear; that they were but some of the King's soldiers in search of a murderer, and that none should enter my chamber but himself and the sergeant of the party. So I left the door, seeing that they must enter, and ran to the bed and lifted my cloak, flung it over my shoulders, and turned again to face them; when I perceived that the sergeant, on my leaving the door, had thrust it wide to watch my movements. So I bade him and my father come in, begging at the same time that they would have a care not to arouse Betty, who was that night sharing my bed.

"And why," asked Sir Michael, "is Betty here? You do use to lie alone."

Nor were the words out of his mouth before I saw that he regretted them, and that he knew, whether from my face, or from the unwonted presence of Betty in my chamber, or from another cause that I did not then understand, that all was not well. He sat him down heavily upon the little settle at the bed's foot, with a countenance full of perplexity and astonishment. But the mischief was done, and I must find a reason for the presence in my bed of her who was safely snoring in her own above our heads. So I told him that I had been loath to sleep alone this night for the fear I had of the things that were afoot in Drayton village, and had begged Betty to keep me company. And with that the sergeant, who had, while we spoke, been peering about the dark corners of the room, turned and sharply enquired of me why this Betty that lay there in the bed must not be aroused. "Because," said I, taking refuge in the unreason of a woman's anger (for indeed I knew not what to say, and all seemed to go awry from what I had intended), "because I will not have it done. Is it become a custom with officers of the King to invade by force, and at dead of night, the sleeping chambers of ladies?"

"Madam," he answered, somewhat abashed as I thought, "I am only a poor sergeant that would do his duty to his officer. If you will answer my questions, I will the sooner be gone."

In this gentle manner of taking it I saw some hope, and answered him thus: "Poor Betty was my nurse, sergeant, and I love her dearly; and she hath all day been afflicted with a most violent toothache, and 't is but a little while since I gave her a great draught of a most sovereign remedy—an electuary of poppy-seed—by which she is eased of her pain and now fallen asleep." And in the manner the most imploring I could compass I did here raise pitiful eyes to his face. "I do perceive, sir," I continued, "I had no need to be angry, but oh! I do pray you will not waken the poor woman; for a sudden waking from a slumber procured by that drug is very harmful. Search all the place—the closets, presses, and beneath the bed; though, in good sooth, I do not know how you should think to find here any murderer."

The sergeant smiled with a certain grimness, and asked was it not strange I should seek comfort for my fears in the company of one that was sick of a toothache; whereon I replied that Betty sick was better than many another whole.

"And were you sleeping, madam, when we first called upon you to open?" says the sergeant.

"'T was my father's voice aroused me," I answered, wondering whither he would lead me with his questioning.

"And had you then slept long?" asked he.

"Since ten o'clock, I do suppose," I replied.

"Yet your cloak, that you now wear, lay, until we were about entering, there upon the bed," said he, with a meaning glance of which the significance was wholly hidden from me.

"Well, what if it did?" said I.

"It lay, madam," he replied, "above the turned-down bedcover."

I now was near at an end of my strategy, but my dear father came at once to the rescue, saying that the sergeant was a clever fellow, but what in the devil's name did he argue from that?

"That young Mistress Drayton has lately risen from her bed and covered herself with that same cloak she now wears, but wore not when she did now open to you, Sir Michael," said the man, with some acuteness, indeed, but not before I had my answer ready for him, and something over and above a mere answer.

"Why, indeed, you speak truth, sergeant," I said; and I had hope so great in what was next to come that I was enabled to laugh with much naturalness as I spoke; "you are a witch for certain, sir; for though I did forget the thing for a moment, having since slept, and being with sleep yet not a little confused, it is true that I did rise once before from my bed, when I fetched this cloak from the closet there, and did look from the window——"

"To what end did you do that, madam," said the sergeant, interrupting me, "on so dark a night?"

"That I cannot say," I answered, "for I was half in sleep when I rose. But I think, sergeant, that I can tell you something of the man you seek. For as I looked forth there came a man from the way of the deer park, and in a little gleam of the moon that did then shine out for a moment I saw him, and that he was mounted on a dapple-gray horse. And as he came he stopped as if he heard a sound that he feared. And then he turned his nag in such haste, and made off the way he had come with such speed, that I had no time to mark his face; but I saw that he did lose his hat in turning, nor stayed to recover it. And not long after him came from the front of the house three men, mounted, who followed after him. But as they passed the moon was again clouded, and I can tell nothing of them nor their horses. And after this I got to bed again, and I must suppose," I said, looking doubtfully at the bed, "that I slept again, the night being so warm, without drawing over me the covers whereon I had laid the cloak."

"Truly, 't is warm," said the sergeant. "But I ask your pardon, madam, for thus discussing private matters. Your story is a plain one, and may help to the fellow's capture." And then he took some steps towards the door, and I thought the danger was over, and I had much ado to keep my countenance from showing the sudden lightening of my heart. But even as he was going some devil of raillery, or cruelty, prompted him to turn and say that in his company he was counted an excellent tooth-drawer, and that he would just have a look at poor Betty's mouth. For a moment I could not speak, but turned to the bed as if to protect my old nurse, perceiving, as I turned, a movement as of a hand beneath the quilt; and I knew that Ned was feeling for his sword-hilt, and waiting to be discovered. At that I laid my hand upon his shoulder, and, finding again my voice, "Be still, dear Betty," I cried, "there is no need of rising yet. And I do pray you, Master Sergeant, that you will go now, when I have so fully told you everything. Her poor tooth will again be raging if she be disturbed." And this I said so pleadingly that the man was quite subdued, saying, with more of kindness than he had yet used: "Indeed, madam, I spoke but in jest, for which I ask your pardon."

And so he left the room, closing the door behind him, and I turned to regard my father. But before I could reach him to tell in his ear the reason of it all, and who it was indeed that there lay in the bed, he rose from the seat he had not left since his entering, and I at once knew why he had sat so close. For he lifted from the settle, crushed out of all shape by his sitting upon it, Ned's hat, which, not finding to be on the floor, I had thought to be fallen upon the grass below.

Then did we look hard and long in each other's eyes, and my father thrust out his thumb towards the bed with a gesture of questioning, and I answered him with one word, so softly breathed that his eyes must needs take the office of his ears. Then he raised the hat.

"He must find it below," he said, and, stealing to the window, of which the casement still stood open, he leaned out, and, seeing the sentry at the far end of his beat, flung out the hat softly with a skimming motion, so that it fell upon the grass at some distance from the house, and almost without sound. And returning from the window he found Ned standing upright, freed from the kerchief I had bound on his head, bearing in his countenance the flush of a strong indignation; for he felt, as he has explained to me, that the shame of that ignominious concealment would never leave him. But the flush died speedily away on my father's holding out his hand, in silence, indeed, but with his old frank and kindly smile. They grasped each the other's with a great clasp, and then Sir Michael whispered: "We must get him out of this," and went out at the door.

And as he closed it we knew, by the voices without, that he had encountered the sergeant in the gallery.

CHAPTER V

Sir Michael carried with him the one candle he had brought into my chamber, so we stood in the dark as if turned to stone by the sound of the sergeant's voice without, most horribly dreading that he would again enter, and all our work be undone. How long this lasted I do not know, but at last we heard him and my father walk together down the gallery to the stairhead, conversing in subdued tones. Sir Michael told him, as I did afterwards learn, that I had been mightily frightened and disturbed, and was now at his desire composing myself again to sleep. And the man replied that, as far as my chamber was concerned, he was satisfied, since he had discovered complete warranty of the tale I had told in the hat he then held in his hand, having found it where I had said it should lie. He added that he well knew the stigma of cruelty lying upon his regiment, yet he, for one, was vastly sorry that matters had so fallen as to discompose a young gentlewoman that was, he believed, the most beautiful and kind-hearted in the kingdom. And I have often thought of it as a thing passing strange that the first tribute I received in my life to the charms of my person did proceed from a man to whom I had most shamelessly lied, he being one of a company famed in all the world for wickedness and cruelty. And I have prayed to God that what good there was in this man might not be utterly cast away.

So, while we two, Ned and I, sat almost silent above-stairs in the dark, striving to smother the sound of the passion of tears that had seized upon me, my father descended the stair with the sergeant, thinking soon to be rid of him and his men; but was speedily disappointed in finding that the man had no intention to abandon his search, although he showed his altered temper in putting himself at my father's orders, whether to continue at once his visitation of the house from garret to cellar, or to set strict guard upon all its approaches till morning, then to complete his survey in the better light.

"For," said he, throwing poor Ned's damaged hat upon the table of the great hall where they stood, "though we do know the rascal was without, and that your worship does not willingly harbor him, we have no testimony that he did not get in after he had lost his hat. Some soft-hearted kitchen-maid might well——"

"'T is enough said, sergeant," interrupted Sir Michael, resolving to put a good face upon his choice of the lesser evil; "I commend the acuteness of your judgment. It is indeed as much for my honor as yours that suspicion of harboring this fellow should be removed from my house as well as from myself and my daughter. Do you set at once a sufficient guard without to watch every door and window, and while you call into the hall here all that are not needed for that duty, I will rouse some of the fellows that sleep above, and see that you have good food and drink in place of the sleep you must lose. And I doubt not," he added, turning at the door, "such of you as remember Tangier will find my old Burgundy, that has been much praised by good judges, a better substitute for the wines of Spain and Portugal than our west-country ale."

Whereupon the sergeant, pleased with prospect of good cheer, went out to make disposition of his men, while my father again mounted the stairs, turning swiftly in his mind the subterfuge by which he purposed getting Ned Royston safely from the house. And indeed I think he did devise a scheme as cunning as any of those happy strokes of adroitness and dexterity for which in the old wars he was justly famous.

The soldiers being now below, and the few servants first roused sent to fetch food for the sergeant and his men, my father found the stairs and galleries deserted. Pausing at my door, he gently opened it, and hearing the sound of my half-stifled weeping he bid me not check it, saying that it fell well with his scheme.

"Do but as I bid you, my children," said he, "and in less than an hour the poor lad shall be on the road to Bridport; and with Skewbald Meg between his legs 't is pity of the horse and man that would catch him. I can give you no light, for the sentry that is below the window, but you, my little Phil, must make shift to cut away from him those unfashionable curls; and it is little matter for the dark, since the more raggedly you play the barber the better for him; also pull off his great boots, with the gay coat and the waistcoat, and when I return with the real Betty to take his place in the bed, where, I vow, I think she will sleep better than he, I will so clothe him and so raddle his face that his mother would not know him again; and if you must speak in the doing all this, let it be little and in the veriest of whispers." And at this my dear and most wise old father left us, saying aloud, as he shut the door, and with intent to be heard if any were spying upon him: "Get thee to sleep, child. There is no further cause of fear. None shall harm thee."

Silent as mice midway between cat and cheese we fell to doing all that he had bidden us. I was bitterly sorry for the curls, and for the cruel fashion in which my small shears did lop them, but said no word till all was done. And then we sat waiting in the dark, and Ned found my hand and held it, and whispered after a while that he had not yet seen my face; that he doubted it was greatly altered, even as he perceived my body was increased in stature. And he asked me had I grown beautiful as he was used to predict, and I could only answer that I did not think I was fully so foul to look upon as I had been. And he was about getting hot in reply, and even raising his voice a little to vow that I was never that, nor thought he meant I was, and he had for the moment quite forgot to mistress me, as hitherto since I had dragged him headlong through my window, when the door again opened to admit my father, dragging by the arm poor sleep-dazed, blanket-wrapped Betty, who was, I do suppose, from the brief glimpse I caught of her figure as my father did set his candle on the floor without the door, a strange and admirable spectacle. In the darkened room she was mightily amazed, and we must needs thrust her into the bed almost by force, and had well-nigh to gag her mouth before we might check the wheezy thunder that she honored with the delicate title of whispering. Indeed, all this part of our night's adventure had been vastly comical and mirth-provoking had not a life, tenderly dear alike to father and daughter, hung upon our secrecy and despatch. Now Sir Michael had brought with him along with Betty the cast-off clothes of one of the grooms that slept in the garret. And there, still in darkness, we contrived among us to habit Ned in them—foul old broken shoes, a mile too large, which I stuffed with such rags as would keep him from walking out of them; rough woollen stockings, none too clean; his own leathern breeches, which he said were much worn and covered with the dust of all his ride from Oxford, my father did let pass; but the fine long-cloth shirt he would in no manner concede, making him take in its place a filthy clout it was well we could not see as we pulled it over his shorn head. "For," said my father, "there is nothing will so play the traitor to a gentleman disguised as his own linen. The very fabric will still tell tales when the fairness of it has disappeared under the dirt of long use." And then all was done; Ned did take me for a little moment in his arms, when Sir Michael bade him to thrust a hand up the chimney to befoul it with soot, with which, he said, he would have him bedaub face and neck when they had again such light that it might be done in measure and fitness.

"Good-by, Mistress Phil," said he, and "Good-by, dear Ned," said I. My father here slipping quietly out to spy up and down the gallery, and holding the door to behind him, in that last moment I seized Ned's hand, not knowing it was the sooty one, and whispered in his ear: "Why will you be ever throwing mistress at me, dear? Am I not your old friend Phil?" And he: "I did but think, Phil, that so unceremoniously visiting your chamber at night-time, which you know is a thing I never purposed, did call for terms of address more formal than our usage of childhood." Which before I could answer, Sir Michael, satisfied that he was not observed, had him swiftly out in the gallery, my door was closed for the last time that night, and I fell weeping on the bed as if the sun should never shine again.

I slept none of that night, and much of it I wept. But, rising in the sheer idleness of fatigue, when the dawn was well advanced, and chancing to see my face in the mirror, I perceived that I had most plentifully streaked and smeared a tear-wet countenance with the blackness of the soot that had passed in our last moment together from Ned's fingers to mine. Now my eyes and cheeks presented doubtless a spectacle that had moved another to laughter. But from the eyes that alone beheld the figure of ridicule that I was, the thought of how I became so besmirched brought fresh tears, plentiful enough, in all conscience, to have washed it clean of all the grime that face ever carried. But I washed hands and face, and so back to bed, where, worn out, and by this tolerably secure of Ned's evasion, I fell asleep, nor awoke until I was roused somewhat past eight o'clock of the morning.

Meantime to the tale of that same evasion which was, as I supposed, well accomplished. To tell it briefly, my father bade him play the clown as best he could, and, after his face had been cunningly smeared with that same soot, had led him by the back stair to the kitchen; whence, after Sir Michael had joined the soldiers eating and drinking in the great hall, he was sent by the cook, who was in the secret, to bear a dish of some dainty to the company. This, as before arranged, he let fall with a great clatter, bringing Sir Michael down upon him in pretence of anger; who did there, with many a curse on his clumsiness, so cuff him about head and ears, that it set all the redcoats laughing. "Silly varlet!" quoth Sir Michael, "is the cook underhanded that such as you must be fetched from garden and stable to spoil our meat? I warrant men are hanged for less in these days."

To this the seeming yokel blubbered in reply that he did but wish a sight of the soldier gentlemen at meat, which he said in that broad and slurring speech of our country that he could ever from his childhood put on with exact faithfulness to nature. And just here one of the strangers' horses, neighing wearily without, where he was tied to a tree, "Get out," said my father, "and see to those horses. Put them in the stable, and, if there be not room for all, turn some of your own cattle to graze in the park." And as he was going out slowly dragging one loose shoe after the other, one of the soldiers flung a bone at him, and threatened to flog the coat off his back, and the skin to follow it, if he did not rub down and well feed and water each of their borrowed nags.

So to this task he went, with a hundred pounds in gold of my father's in his one pocket that was sound. And five horses he did groom and feed and lodge in that stable, turning three of Sir Michael's out of their places into the park. But one of these, that is, Skewbald Meg, a mare of great hardness of limb and lasting power of wind, though a mean and ewe-necked thing to the eye, he tied, when out of hearing of the sentry on that side of the house, to a tree that stood handy for the direction he must take. He then returned to the stable, and there contrived an appearance of business about the nags, while he concealed upon him a bridle, with which about his waist he at last, having left his lantern burning within, loitered down to Meg in the hollow, where in a trice she was bridled and mounted by as good a horseman and as ill-looking as ever bestrid her lean and mottled ribs. And how he fared in that ride of near upon twenty-five miles to Lyme, and how he was taken safely out of the country by sea, you shall hear when I am come to the letter that came to me out of Holland.

And here this episode of my life may be counted at an end. For my father, having pressed upon his guests both bottle and tankard, until each man made a pillow where his head did strike in falling, and having sent out copious flagons until the sentries lacked little of being in the same case, did in the leisure thus obtained so drill and instruct every waking soul in the house that it was a sure matter that all, in case of need, would have the same story to tell: as, that Sir Michael had no horses but what might now be seen upon the place; that any who thought he had a skewbald mare was vastly mistook; that the scullion that was so roundly cuffed and rated was a half-witted thing from the stable that had now run off in terror of the beating promised him the night before by one of the sergeant's men; and so forth. All that night, as I have said, my father came not near me, thinking there had been enough and to spare already done in that part of the house, and not wishing to arouse any suspicion that might, in the sergeant's muddled head, survive the fumes of the wine. But between eight and nine of the clock Sir Michael knocked loudly at my door, asking, so that all might hear if they would, how I did, had I slept, and so forth. Then in a little voice he bade me tell Betty to keep her bed, to remember she was yet very sick, and that I should hide Ned's boots, sword, and clothes betwixt the mattresses, where Betty's huge person should keep them safe. All this, said he, merely as safeguard against another visit to my room.

And very shortly thereafter arose a great cursing below, and a swearing of many horrible oaths by the sergeant, with low grumbling accompaniment of his men, as they rose from many a twisted posture of swinish slumber. When with sousing, brushing, and breakfasting they were again brought to some semblance of men, the futile search after him that was by this well out of their reach was begun. Nor did it cease till close on noon. Now, as the sergeant and his file of men passed along the gallery, when there was left no further corner into which they might thrust nose, eyes, or sword-point seeking for hidden softness of human flesh, some spirit of bravado did seize upon me, and I flung open the door of my chamber, where all morning I had kept pretence of nursing poor Betty, sick only of an ill temper to be kept a lig-a-bed against her will; and I called to the sergeant that he had not searched here by daylight, and that all was at his service, even poor Betty, being now awake; and he came to the door, and stood upon the threshold, looking in upon us while Betty sat up in the bed and glared upon him, fear and anger struggling for mastery in her broad countenance, and rendering it grotesquely terrible. Now I was clothed this time in fit manner, with gown and hair fresh and neat, and, spite of my sorrow at losing Ned and the terrors of the night just passed, I had a sense of triumph in my growing certainty of his escape that I think I scarce tried to keep from appearing in my countenance. For a moment he regarded me doubtfully, and then there sprang into his eye a light as of days when he had been other than he now seemed, and I thought he would have spoken gaily and kindly. But, my father coming to the door, the sergeant checked his words, and, his eye lighting upon Betty, a dark cloud of suspicion passed over his face. This was succeeded by a look of resignation truly humorous and comical, as he thanked me for the help I had already given him, which was indeed, he said, more than he had deserved, apologized for the disturbance he had caused, and so bowed himself out. He straightway marched his detachment into Drayton, and, having failed by violent means to avenge the death of his ensign, he now had recourse to the law, summoning to him the coroner, and insisting upon a speedy inquest, in hope to discover—the few witnesses of the deed being put upon oath—the name of whom, if taken flagrante delicto, he would have hanged before it could be told.

To a wiser head than mine I must leave to be decided the point in casuistry, whether it was to the honor or rather to the shame of our village folk that among them could not be found two to give a similar account of Ned's appearance, nor one that knew his name or had ever set eyes upon him before; and this in spite of their oaths and their long and kindly knowledge of him. It may be they did all grievously sin in thus shielding him; for me, I can only say that, having myself done much the same the night before, in intent at least, I am glad they did what they did; and that I have always held those three men and two women in a most tender regard who did esteem the danger to his dear body of more account than the risk to their own souls. While this inquest was holding, and before its verdict of manslaughter by a person unknown had been delivered, there rode into the village with a small body of dragoons no less a person than Colonel Kirke himself, to whom our sergeant had sent a messenger immediately upon the death of his officer. He came roaring and ruffling into the room at the little inn where the coroner sat, and 't is a hard thing to say what might not have happened to many innocent persons had he not there met with my father. Sir Michael's knowledge of men, and, perhaps, some secret information of Kirke's character, taught him the true manner in which this hero, more deadly with the rope than with the sword, must be handled. I need here say no more of the matter, but that Colonel Kirke did that afternoon march to Taunton, with all his Lambs and dragoons, the body of the dead ensign, and a sum of two hundred pounds of my dear father's savings as ransom for the village.

Of Colonel Percy Kirke it was truly said that only one thing did he love better than blood.

CHAPTER VI

A little sidelong eddy, it seemed, from the great tide of public events had washed up into our quiet backwater or creek of country life, setting us all agog with the tragic issues of death and dishonor. But the flutter and swirl of it had now drifted back into the main stream, leaving us, not indeed the same as we had been, but by contrast quieter than before. During some three years, for us at Drayton it might be said, with a measure of truth, that nothing happened. Yet of those things which I have recounted there were several consequences, so notable in effect upon our hearts and minds, that it were perhaps more true to say, in that same metaphor, that, after the first commotion, the tide maintained a steady though hourly imperceptible rise.

When I knew that Kirke and all his men were safely on their way for Taunton, I lost no time in riding across country in a bee-line to Royston Chase, which I found shut up in charge of three old servants. From these I learned that Ned's gray had that morning been discovered cropping a breakfast from the grass about his own stable door, and, while assuring them of their young master's safety, beyond, perhaps, what I truly felt myself, I bade them keep quiet tongues both about the horse and his master, who lay for safety, I said, in these perilous times, at the city of Oxford. Nor did I in truth lie to these good people, who from my manner of speaking did well perceive this was but the tale they must tell, I knowing what it were best they should not. Of the chief among them I had the promise that on the expected arrival of the Lady Mary my father should at once be advertised of it. And thence home, a little lighter in spirit to know that his horse was safe, and found my father musing heavily in his great chair in the hall, where the night before he had so feasted our enemies. At first it was a hard matter to bring him to talk, but at last, under stress of coaxing and such tricks of blandishment as I have practised from a child to win him from this heaviness of spirit, he broke silence.

"The times are hard when a Drayton must in his old age take to lying, little daughter Phil," he said.

"And his daughter in the days of her youth," I answered merrily. "But in truth 't is little I trouble myself for the falsehood. Whose, sir, upon the Day of Judgment, will be the blame of those untruths that were told to save from a death both cruel and contrary to law so kind and Christian a gentleman as my Ned?"

Sir Michael smiled and rallied me on that word of possession.

"Ho, ho!" said he; "'my Ned,' indeed! He is by this in Holland, little lass, and already, it is like enough, hath seen much that may put an unbroke filly out of his mind." Then, growing grave, "'There is something rotten,'" he said, quoting from Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of Hamlet (for this play, and others of that writer, were his chief reading), "'There is something rotten in the state of Denmark,' when honest youths must needs kill soldiers of their sovereign, and old men and young maids must trump up a pack of lying tales to save a good lad from rope without jury. I would I had died when the late King did come again to his own."

"And what, then, of poor Philippa?" I piteously asked.

"Why, then," said my father, smiling on me with a countenance of great benignity, "poor Philippa had not been, and poor Michael had missed his best gift of God. So let us leave it to Him, dear maid, both for what is to be and for how much thy father shall see of it." And it was long thereafter before he would again talk to me of public matters; but I knew by his face, which to me was ever print of an open character, that he thought much, and that a strife was in his soul, waged between his life-long loyalty to the house of Stuart and the new thoughts born of his pity for the land that he loved as they had never loved but themselves.

If my father had hated in his life any man, it was Oliver, the late Protector. Yet thrice within the year that followed, when some neighbor would speak of the low opinion into which we were come upon the continent of Europe, or when the news-letter would drop some covert hint of the subservience of St. James to Versailles, he said: "It had not been thus, or so, if Old Noll were alive." And once to Mr. Greenlow: "Say what you will, Parson, Cromwell was an Englishman, and a brave one. I would he had been born of a queen."

And if the circumstances of Ned's evasion brought some change to Sir Michael's way of thinking, they caused no less an alteration in the value set upon his daughter by one whose good opinion I had much desired and was now at last to obtain.

Three days after that vain inquest upon the body of the dead ensign word came from Royston that my Lady Mary was arrived, and, thinking there to have found her son, and finding neither him nor his news, was fallen into great distress of mind. Sir Michael, being now somewhat better of his indisposition, made shift to ride back with the servant, and straightway gave her, I think, full account of all that had been done by her son and for him. But, his tale ceasing with Ned's departure upon Skewbald Meg, it can scarce be imagined he brought much of comfort to that proud lady and doting mother.

He returned the same afternoon, telling me in words less of his converse with Lady Mary than his face had already betrayed ere his feet were out of the stirrups.

Now, about the hour of ten the next morning, I was idling on the south terrace, feeding our doves and playing with the dogs, when my eye was caught by a strange fellow most uncouthly dressed that led a horse up the avenue. Nor did it take long gazing to see from the large maculation of its sides that the horse was Skewbald Meg; the man proving, on closer observation and his own rough introduction, to be a petticoated seaman of Bridport. But to our enquiries after him who had lately ridden the mare he would answer nothing. He knew, he said, naught but that one who was no longer this side the water had told him the horse was owned at Drayton, in Somerset, and he would get twenty shillings for the bringing it home; that he had done his best to con the craft from the poop, but found she would ever move starn foremost when he went on deck, and so had taken her in tow; and he hoped the lady would, an the patchwork quilt of a beast were indeed hers, not forget that he had walked all the way but two miles, which two were indeed the sorest of the road; had forgot (on further question) what town he was from, had forgot how far it was, but thought he could find his road again; had forgot the gentleman's name that sent him, and even, he thought, his own. And Sir Michael laughed at the cunning of the fellow's folly, paid him well, and bade him go home and find his memory. So, having drunk his ale, he trudged off with a sea bow and a twinkle in his eye more knowing than his words, but paused to twist his face over his shoulder and his thumb significantly toward the mare, saying he thought her mane in sore need of a good combing; and so off, leaving me sick at heart for news, that, pulling through the knots of Meg's matted neck-hair, I did speedily encounter in form of a letter securely tied beneath the tangled mass. And, the string cut, seal broken, and paper unfolded, this is what we read within:

"To my very dear Friends and Saviors both, SIR MICHAEL DRAYTON and MISTRESS PHILIPPA, his most sweet Daughter.

"I write within thirty hours of leaving you, having already found a ship to set me beyond reach of harm.

"Good Meg did carry me well, and is, I hope, little worse of the twenty mile she ran in her never-changing stride, with never a false step and scarce one sweat drop; and I do truly think she hath eyes of a cat. 'T is not her fault if her back be first cousin to a handsaw, nor mine that saddles grow not in the hedgerows hereabout.

"It was two of the morning when I roused from his sleep old Jeremiah Soames, that I have known since Lady Mary did bring me, a sickly child, to Bridport for the sea-bathing. His boat is now about sailing for the fishing, and in the meantime Meg has been well hid in his curing-shed, and I in his little upper chamber. He would not, for caution, advance his hour to drop out of harbor, but once he has a fair offing will make a course for the French coast, or, if the wind serve, up Channel through the Straits for a Dutch port—Flushing perhaps, or Rotterdam. I have yet no clear purpose for the future, but already some thought to obtain a commission to serve under the great John Sobiesky against the Turk. It were some pleasure, in these days when Christians will be ever cutting each the other's throat for cause of heresy, to rise a little above the policy of dog-eating dogs, and to stand with men of all opinions for Christ against the Infidel.

"To my mother I must not now run the danger of writing, for since I know not surely where she is, whether in London or at Royston, the letter might well fall into other hands. So I will ask you, my two friends (the two best I do suppose that ever man had), by some means to advise her of all that has happened, and to convey to her my great love and duty. To her at Royston I will write so soon as I shall be landed, and in certainty of what is best to be done.

"To you, Philippa, my old comrade, the letter all for your private perusal that is in my mind must remain unwritten. 'T is not fit I should now ask more of you than the life I have received at your hands in the moment when my own were stained with blood. For, though I do piously trust it is rather the stain that a soldier must bear than the murderer's, sinking through till the soul itself is spotted, yet will I now say no word but what your kind father's eyes may read in the same moment with your own. Yet, even with a price, 't is very like, set on my head, let me be in thought your old comrade, that do in exile most bitterly regret I saw not your face of late, guessing from the mellow notes of your voice how fair it has become.

"To you, Sir Michael, I would say, knowing not what report has run of the deed I did, that I truly believe yourself had done no less, placed as I was placed. I meant not indeed to kill the man, but, when I remember, can scarce find it in my heart to be sorry that he died.

"To both of you I am grateful beyond any proof of words. If the chance come you will know I speak truth, and am indeed the true servant of you both till death and after.

"E. ROYSTON."

At another time the approach of a thing so rare among us as a coach had taken my mind off the most ingenious tale or history ever printed. But the tale is not written, nor like to be, that could for me vie in interest with this simple letter. Being then in my second reading of it, while Sir Michael, content with one perusal over my shoulder, had in kindness walked away along the terrace to the steps of the great door, leaving me to squeeze a second cup of sweetness, as it were, for my sole drinking, out of that letter, I neither knew that a coach had come, nor that my father was leading from it in my direction the Lady Mary Royston. And I, looking up in great joy of the letter, encountered with my eyes, in which I doubt not the light of my happiness was plain, her noble and austere countenance frowning upon me in manifest displeasure. But I was not dashed in my spirits, as perhaps she intended, by the gloom of her regard, partly because in serious things my father had long ceased to use me as a child, and partly because I guessed that, with his habit of kindness that was ever mindful of the small matters that do please women, he had left to me the pleasant task to tell of the letter. So I dropped my lady the finest courtesy I was mistress of, very freely thereafter smiling in her face, the letter whipt behind my back.

"Mistress Drayton seems but little cast down with all these terrible doings, Sir Michael," said her ladyship.

My father smiled grimly, but left reply to me, who answered: "Nay, dear madam, for we have but now received this news of Mr. Royston, which I believe as much intended for your ladyship as for my father and me." And, seeing by his face my father was willing, I handed her the letter.

With little courtesy she seized, and with great greediness perused, the letter, and her face was the face of a woman that tears at food after a great fasting; yet midway, at that passage, as I suppose, wherein I was peculiarly addressed, she looked from the letter to me in a manner to call to my mind those words which, in my eagerness to give ease to the mother's anxiety, I had forgotten the son to have used. With that memory, and under her gaze, the blood came hotly to my face, and I was glad when her eyes speedily fell again to the letter, which when she had finished, the heart of the woman within broke down the iron gates of pride and jealousy that had shut in the mother, even as they had so long shut out the friends of her son; for she now opened her arms to me, taking me to her bosom, and weeping over me tears of joy, while she blessed us, father and daughter, for the saving of her boy's life, declaring herself to be a jealous and wicked old woman, but, now she knew him safe, a very happy one, if her friends and Ned's would but forgive her.

When after a while she was soothed to a calmer temper of mind, Lady Mary turned her regard to my person and countenance, saying to Sir Michael that I had grown out of all knowledge, which I thought little wonderful, since it was some eight years since she had set eyes upon me.

"So this young madam," she said, patting me on the shoulder kindly enough, yet still with the grand air of the Court dame to a rustic damsel, "this is the child I have all these years envied and feared! I do trust, my dear, we shall be fast friends." Then after a little pause she added, as if in fear she had said too much: "But I would not have you think too gravely, Mistress Philippa, of what is said in that letter."

"That, madam, I could not do," I replied, leaving her in some doubt, it seemed, of my meaning. For, after a moment's musing:

"I will be plain with you, my child," she said. "I mean, although I am much your debtor, and do desire your love, I would not have you look to marry my son. He is yet but a lad, and I have a different purpose for him."

"Indeed, madam," I said with a little courtesy, "that must be, I think, as he wills."

"But you, my dear, who risked your good name of late to save his life, must be, I believe, of the mettle to deny your own happiness, were such denial plainly for his good," said her ladyship; and I was glad that the last week had taught me in some measure to conceal my thought.

"Nay, dear madam," I answered, holding my anger close within my heart, "I cannot believe that you think any woman will deny your son."

Whereat my dear father laughed softly, and my lady looked upon me searchingly, as wondering what animal this might be that looked so tender, and yet was not wholly innocent of claws. Her good humor, however, was speedily recovered, although it was long before she spoke again on that delicate subject.

But she kept her purpose of friendship, giving me constant and kindly welcome when I would ride over to Royston, and coming herself once or more in a month to us at Drayton. And in the two or three years that followed her son's departure it was to her kind instruction and wholesome advice that I owed what advance I made in manner, bearing, and knowledge of a greater world than I had seen; she was, in short, just such a friend as my father's daughter had need of; for there be many things women learn only from each other; and, knowing by some intuition of nature the need I was in, I was glad indeed, for all her intermittent asperities, that it was Ned's mother that did take up the task of leading me from the way of the hoyden into something of the grace of womanhood.

As a pupil, indeed, she found in me little food of complaint, but would be out with me for weeks at a time if Sir Michael received a letter from Ned out of his turn, as she counted, or one that covered more paper than her last. But I fearing her not at all, and she being a lady of high courage and loving fearlessness in another, by degrees she came to love me, and to forego much of her privilege of unreasoning displeasure.

The manners in which she was bred were more akin to the severer model of the reign of the first Charles than proper to this lighter age; but she had never been wholly cut off from the great world, and, knowing well what was doing and what changes making, she professed inculcating a judicious modification of old and new, that should leave a young woman open neither to the ridiculous charge of aping her grandmother nor to the censure of shaping herself upon the frail and beautiful women of a dissolute Court. My wardrobe, too, at my father's desire, she took in hand. And I confess that this was my favorite branch of study with my new teacher; and when I remember the gowns that were made in Taunton and the two that were fetched all the way from London, and the changing, turning, fitting, shaping, and trying done at Royston by my lady, her woman, and myself, I am free to admit that this matter of gowns was perhaps for more in bringing about our lasting friendship than any other thing that passed between us. For here my lady was not, as in the more serious domain of manners, under a desire of reverting to the days of her own upbringing, displaying rather the perennial youth that, behind the deepening wrinkles of age, lurks ever fresh in the feminine heart. She was in the choice of my attire all for the newest mode, holding, she would say, each fashion as it arose right and seemly, if set out upon the person of one that had the wit and discretion to fit new forms to her own needs and the counsels of modesty. I wish I may have done a little to lighten for Lady Mary the tedium of those days while Ned was from home, since I am deeply her debtor, as a maid must be to her who takes up, in how slight soever a manner, the office of the mother she has lost.

During the months of September and October of that same year we lived in great horror and dread of my Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, whose terrible circuit, I thank God, it does not fall to me even in part to describe. For this storm passed us in Drayton and Royston safely by, though we both saw and heard, as it were, the flash of its lightning and roll of its thunder. The doings, however, of that wicked and shameless man, so terribly disgracing his high office and that of him from whom he derived it, seemed to hold a ghastly and irresistible attraction for my father. Every report, printed, written, or spoken, that he could come at he devoured. The concern he showed in all this cruel travesty of justice began with the report that reached him in September of the trial and execution in Winchester of the Lady Alice Lisle—a case too well known to need my telling, except in so far as it affected Sir Michael.

John Lisle, a man high in the military service of the Protector Cromwell, had once done great kindness to my father, who had come to know both him and his wife, and to regard them with an affection saddened only by the part the husband had adopted in the affairs of the nation. The news of what he called her murder moved him profoundly, and he pursued the Chief Justice in his mind, as it were, throughout his Bloody Assize, as one who waits to see a bolt fall from Heaven on a malefactor beyond the reach of justice merely human. Of that martyred lady I heard him one day speak in accents of deep sorrow to Madam Royston, who, though going with him heartily in abhorrence of the crime done in the name of justice, took quick exception to the title commonly bestowed on Mistress Lisle.

"For I do marvel, dear Sir Michael," she said, "that you, being of such principles as you are, should make use of a title bestowed by Cromwell in blasphemous parody of that ennobling power which on earth is granted to the Lord's Anointed alone."

"If God ever sent a lady on this sinful earth," said the old man, with a kind of holy exaltation in his countenance, "Alice Lisle was she. And by this, Lady Mary, she bears higher title and brighter crown than the highest of her murderers. And I pray that the fate of Gomorrah may not fall on the land where such things are done." And Lady Mary, perceiving well who was intended by that word murderer, dared not reply, but marvelled much afterwards, as I knew by words she would from time to time let fall, whither my father's musings were leading him. Which was, indeed, but to the same goal to which the tide of events was leading us all.

Now ever since the hanging of those two men in Drayton village, although Peter Emmet had continued to heat and hammer iron in the usual way, nothing had been heard of Simon, his father, nor of Prudence, his daughter. But one fine morning in mid-October, when my Lord Chief Justice was well back in London, receiving much honor and reward for the evil he had wrought and the grief he had left among us, but no thanks from any man for the only good thing he ever did by us in the west (I mean the leaving us), as I was going to the kitchen, my father being not yet out of his chamber, I passed by that little dark room we did use to call the steward's. But whether it were butler's pantry, museum of weapons out of all date and fashion, or the place where a steward should hold his audits, pay his wages, and keep his books, a stranger had been hard put to it to tell. I marked that the door stood partly open, a thing unusual since we had none to use it, and, peering within, perceived old Simon poring over a book of accounts the most naturally in the world. Indeed, had it not been for some trembling of the hand that held the pen, and the great emaciation of his countenance, I might almost have forgotten he had been absent at all, so fit and proper was his presence there. And the thought of this put in my head, I think, the best and kindest manner of welcoming his return; for I just nodded my head to him, and said: "Ah, Simon, 't is a fair morning, is it not? I trust the old Naseby wound and the rheumatism are better." And the old man turned to me a face full of gratitude, that showed a fresh-healed scar upon the forehead and a shaking smile about the lips.

"I am well recovered, pretty mistress," he said; then perceiving, perhaps, that in both dress and manner I was grown deserving of a more formal address, he added, "Madam Philippa, I would say."

And so I left him in haste to persuade my father to accept this aged prodigal's return even as I had done. And thus it came about that Simon Emmet slipped back into his old place among us without question asked; and I at least should never certainly have known he had been with Monmouth, nor that he was the man that did escape that night from the barn, if I had not, no long time after his return, taken his granddaughter Prudence into the house to be my handmaid, and in some sort, as it proved, my companion. For she came to me, having returned to her father's house on the same day as Simon to us, and begged me, in pretty rustic manner, and with tears in her pretty eyes, that I would take her into my service, being determined, she said, to serve, if she might, her who had saved the brave gentleman that had so nearly given his life for her protection. And she proved indeed a good servant, a merry companion, and afterwards, upon a great occasion, as will be seen, a friend not to be despised.

In the month of November there came to Sir Michael a long letter from Mr. Edward Royston. It was dated from The Hague, and contained matter of much interest to us all. I see that I have here written his name in style more formal than I have hitherto generally used. And I let it so stand, to serve as a sign of the reserve to which I had by degrees found myself obliged, at least in speaking of him. For to Lady Mary, as was but natural after those words of hers which I have already given, I never mentioned him if it could in any way be avoided, while of Prue I was too proud to seek sympathy, although I loved best her prattle when it was of Ned.

And I knew that Sir Michael had been hurt more than a little in his pride by that same speech of Lady Mary, and sought to make me forego all thought of her son by speaking of him only in the rare and painful manner that some use of the dead. Yet when he saw my face, eager, I doubt not, against my will, as he looked up from the last words of this letter, he rose and left the room, the letter lying there before me on the table, muttering reluctantly some words to the effect that I should read it if I pleased, an the subject had interest for me. So read it I very speedily and hungrily did, learning that after his safe arrival in Holland (of which we had a month before been advised through a letter to his mother) he had made his way to The Hague; that there he had sought out a good old merchant that had been a correspondent in business of the late Mr. Nathaniel Royston, and remembered him, as did many another, with much kindness, on account as much of his great sobriety of judgment and honesty of dealing as of the many successful ventures they had together undertaken.

Now this Mynheer van Bierstenhagen belonged, in that country where party spirit runs so high, to the faction that was the more patriotically opposed to the influence and aggressions of His Majesty King Lewis of France—to that party, I mean, which followed after the Stadtholder, who was that Prince of Orange that had married, when I was child of nine years, the Princess Mary, the eldest child of our reigning King James. "And when it is remembered," wrote Mr. Royston, "that the Prince is himself the grandson of King Charles I., 't is little wonder that all the talk here among the exiled and malcontent English and Scotch is of the Princess Mary and her husband, she being next in succession to the throne and he so nearly allied." And the letter went on to tell how he had secured, through the influence of Mynheer van Bierstenhagen, a favorable introduction to the Prince, had told him his story, and received from him a commission in one of his regiments of horse. For this fat old Dutch merchant was held at the Court of The Hague in high esteem for his wealth, his zeal for the public good, and chiefly, no doubt, added Mr. Royston, for the reason that a wealthy burgher on the Prince's side in politics was not to be slighted, when most of his class were of French leanings, the Stadtholder's chief support being among the common people.

But in all this not one word, beyond a civil message of regard, for poor Philippa, who spent some tears and much thought to come at an answer to the question, whether her old comrade began to forget what she must ever remember, or was but obstinately adhering to his resolve to say no word of those feelings which he held forbidden by the cause of his flight out of England. No answer could I get to this for all my vexing of my mind with questions, till one day Prue did find me in tears, and contrived, my pride being a little weakened with a consciousness of swollen and blubbered cheeks, to get some part of my woes from me. Whereupon she nodded sagely her little head, and asked if he was one wont to change.

"For sure, Mistress Phil," she said, "you have by all accounts known him long enough to tell."

In some indignation I answered he was not.

"I thought he was not, indeed," says Prue; "and you may take my word for it, madam, he but waits to become a great captain in this army of the Dutch to come riding home and claim you, as great as a lord."

At this I was at first much pleased, perceiving how likely a thing it was that Ned should so act; and next I was angry with Prudence for her wisdom. But when I petulantly would know how she came to read him more justly than I, she said a little sadly that it was not her own case she was judging, and saw the clearer for being but an onlooker. For which I kissed her, and so an end.

There is no need for me to tell ill what others have told well; the history, I mean, of the three years before the coming of His Highness of Orange. I suppose I had taken little note of the affairs of the country had I not heard much talk of them between my dear father and Mr. Telgrove. And as time went on it was curious to note how both would make me a party to their discussion of public matters, the reason being at first, I think, that their differences required an arbiter, and an ignorant girl was better than none, having indeed this advantage when fulfilling the office of judge, that there was no need to abide by her decision; and later, when they had begun to approach, if not an agreement, at least a temporary alliance, they would still be drawing me in because it had become a thing of custom. I learned then in this manner more of the state of the nation than if I had read every word of the London Gazette as it appeared in the capital; and when, in the spring of the year 1687, the country was deeply perturbed by the publication of the Declaration of Indulgence, which my father and Mr. Telgrove abhorred in common, I was able to bring the two old men at last to a position of sympathy—representing to my tutor that my father could never wish him to forego such liberties as the Indulgence offered; to my father that, in his heart, Mr. Telgrove scarce grudged the same to those of my dear mother's faith; and to both, that they were united to refuse a boon thus illegally offered, lest a door should so be opened to greater evils than the Indulgence pretended to cure. They said I was a little stateswoman, kissed the one my face, and the other my hand, and joined their own in the closest grip of friendship. Yet all this time my father neither let drop nor allowed one word of changing the head that wore the crown, while Mr. Telgrove was, I think, too wise to press him in that direction.

And so, from London and all parts of the country, we heard week after week that things went from bad to worse; while at home I was riding new horses, prinking myself out in new dresses, and reading new books when I could get them, and the old when I must; till I began at last to fancy, I suppose, that I was grown a woman, and a person of no little importance and consideration.

CHAPTER VII

Christopher Kidd was a tenant farmer upon the Drayton land. Moreover, he was a suitor, earnest as bashful, for the hand of my little abigail, Prudence Emmet. While, therefore, matter of business might bring him four times in the year to the Manor House to speak with Sir Michael, love was used to fetch him thrice in a week dangling about the place for the chance of being well snubbed, mightily put upon, and most truculently railed at by little Prue. And she, for all her cruelty, was not to be thought altogether indifferent to this stalwart yeoman (for he was of that stock, though himself but a tenant). I at least could never think her intention to him unkindly after being witness of her distress when Mr. Kidd rode southwards on my father's behalf to seek news of the Prince of Orange more certain than the bare rumor that had reached us of his landing at Brixham. For no sooner was he departed than Prudence, although saucy with him even in her last words, became much cast down in spirit, fearing he would not return, and I know not what beside.

Now all the world knows that it was upon the fifth day of November, in the year 1688, that His Highness set foot on shore. And I remember well that the fifth fell that year upon a Monday. For ever since he had received by an unknown hand a printed copy of the Prince's Declaration, in which was set forth not only His Highness's purpose to come to the rescue of the liberties of England, but also at great length the reasons of this design, my father had resolved to throw in his lot with him; and, this resolve once made, he greatly desired to be among the very first to offer support, saying a Drayton should never be in the number of those that must wait to see how the cat would jump. And so he was, through the last days of October and the first week of November, in a great excitement of waiting ever for news that did not come. And, the first rumor of His Highness's coming reaching us on the morning after that landing in Torbay, Sir Michael came to the still-room, hobbling with his stick (for his wound was again troubling him) to find me, being in great hope that the news would prove true that the Prince had made choice of our coast, and not, as had been expected, that of Yorkshire. Now I was busied with the brewing of our gooseberry wine, while Prudence and two of the maids were mending the house-linen under my eyes for the greater despatch and fineness of their work. And it was of a Tuesday that this mending was always done, for Sir Michael had instilled much of the old soldier's order and system into my manner of housekeeping. But this day I do think the gooseberry wine had little thought or care, for to me the coming of the Prince meant the coming of Mr. Royston, that I had not encountered since I was a woman grown; it being indeed three years and over since he went out of the country, and near upon twice that space of time since we had so met that we might fairly perceive, the one what manner of man, the other what manner of woman, we were. And I laughed softly in myself to think at what advantage I held him. For him I should surely know among a thousand, while he—well, it would be as it should fall. For, knowing as I knew him, I was sure that if at all he remembered me, he had doubtless all those years been holding still in his inner eye the picture of a little, ugly, and ill-kempt hoyden. And I laughed again, and wondered why I laughed, finding my mind something of a puzzle to itself. For, while I knew I was no longer ill to look upon, I found my face grow hot at the thought of Ned's eyes on me, which before I had never done.

It was then upon the Tuesday that we heard the great news; upon the Wednesday that Mr. Kidd, at the instance of Sir Michael, rode off Exeter way to hear more. And so, in suspense little relieved by further and growing rumor, we waited until the Saturday, when about five in the afternoon Prudence, ever on the watch, was the first to spy her lover as he rode up the avenue. His horse was caked over with mud to the very girths, for the roads were foul with long and heavy rains. Nor had the mud spared the rider; but the soil borne by the two was as nothing to the weight of mystery and the burden of importance that I marked in Farmer Kidd's bearing as he flung himself from the saddle, and, brushing by little Prue with the briefest of nods, strode big with news to the little parlor beyond the hall, where Sir Michael did use to sit of an evening. And then, as I looked from the window of the hall where I sat, I knew from her face that Prudence would surely wed him some day, but first would make the rude fellow most bitterly repent that slight of counting her next to politics and warfare.

For my part, since I was not Prue, I soon forgave the man, in return for the great story he had to tell of the Prince's entry into the city of Exeter. For he had beheld that great pageant, with news of which all the west was soon to be ringing, and, indeed, in no great space, the whole country. And, if it gained as much in many mouths as I have since reason to suppose it gained in Farmer Kidd's, 't is little wonder it was soon believed an army of giants and magicians had crossed the sea in aid of the Protestant religion. The Earl of Macclesfield, who had come out of Holland with the Prince, leading a band of English gentlemen, two hundred strong, was with his following an object of wondrous admiration to Mr. Kidd, who would never tire, I thought, in telling of their great Flanders horses, their glittering armor, and their negro slaves, one to each man, in white and feathered turbans. And then it was the bridge of boats laid across the Exe in the twinkling of an eye to give passage to the wagons; the twenty pieces of ordnance—great brass cannon, only to be moved by teams of sixteen horses to each; the stature of the men; the new sort of muskets; the order of the discipline, so that none would so much as steal a hen from a cottage garden, but all things were as willingly paid for as supplied. Then Kidd must draw comparisons between these military manners and those of Kirke's and Trelawney's Regiments of Foot, as seen in the troubles of three years ago; and all this time poor I waiting on his words but half interested, and satisfied not at all, until I could lead him, too full of his own great importance to perceive the guidance, to some description of the Prince's Swedish Regiment of Horse. For it was to this body that Mr. Royston had, it was now some months, been transferred, receiving at the same time promotion to the rank of captain.

So as long as our messenger, between the draughts of his ale fetched him by Prudence with hands as willing as the pouting mouth would fain have shown her reluctant, would descant of the black chargers, the black armor, the great broadswords, and the furred cloaks of this same Swedish cavalry, I listened as eagerly as my father had done to it all. And as the man dwelt on the gallant show they did make I was plotting to bring him to some mention of what I doubted not was among them the gallantest figure of all, but was prevented by my father asking if Mr. Kidd would ride the same road again, and carry a letter to His Highness of Orange. "With the best meal we can make you on short notice, Mr. Kidd, to comfort you within, and the best nag in Drayton stables between your knees?" said Sir Michael, in conclusion of his request.

Christopher Kidd was ready enough not only to oblige Sir Michael, but also, I believe, to return to the great sights and doings of which his mouth was so full; so, he being despatched in care of Prudence to be fed, I was left with my father. And when I had given him his writing things he opened his mind a little to me.

"I had gathered from Kidd, before you entered," he said, "that the common people are ready to do all and risk all for the Prince, but that since he landed no man of substance and gentry has joined his army." And here for a moment he did bite the feather of his pen, and looked in my face, so that I knew that the mind that was now long made up still felt pain to tell its resolve. Then he went on thus: "You that know me so well, little daughter Phil, have guessed, I do not doubt, this many a day how my mind was going in these matters. And seeing that it was decided, contrary to the use and belief of my life, in favor of His Highness before ever he came, I cannot now in honor hang back. It cannot be recruits for rank and file, raw soldiers at the best, that he needs, with such an army at his back; but I believe it is rather the countenance and support of the solid men of the country he asks, to take from his presence the odious seeming of invasion. And I am in great fear it may all miscarry, even as Monmouth's wicked business, on account of the behavior of those who, willing to bring, yet fear to welcome His Highness. You have, I do think, partly seen what it has cost your old Cavalier father to adopt a part against his old master's son. But it would cost me more if my hand were not as good as my thought. Yet, if I so make it, I risk all that is yours who but enter upon life,—little for myself whose sands are at the last falling grains. Sedgemoor, Kirke, Jeffreys, were summer-evening ripples on a mill-pond to the storm that is coming, if His Highness meet defeat in the field or abandon his undertaking, which last I take it he is like enough to do, if forced to the appearance of a foreign enemy. I did purpose now writing a letter to His Highness. The act will be mine, but the danger, my daughter, will be yours. How shall it be?"

I pushed the inkhorn to him over the table.

"Write, dear sir," I said. "Your hand shall not fail your thought for me. And I would mine," I added, putting a hand in his, "were as strong for the cause my heart holds the better as yours has ever been."

He looked in my face as he took it, and the old gleam flashed a moment in his age-saddened eyes.

"My lass," he said, "there 's Drayton in you for two men," and began to write forthwith; but soon paused, saying: "Wilt run, child, to the stable, and choose for Mr. Kidd? We have here no better head for horseflesh, and my old piece cannot keep these new nags well distinguished." And as I reached the door he called after me that I should not give him Skewbald Meg, whose appearance would do little honor to his errand or His Highness of Orange. And I cried back that poor Meg would break her heart with the weight of the man, and so to the stable. For, since her midnight ride to Lyme, I was never pleased that any but I should mount the mare.

And when I returned to my father the letter was written, which he would have me read. As I remember, it ran in this way:

"YOUR HIGHNESS,—I have within this hour in which I write received the certain news of Your Highness's coming into England. Without delay, then, I do myself the honor to inform Your Highness that I have attached myself and my household to his party and interest. The reasons that have led me to this are for the most part set out in that noble declaration published by Your Highness before his coming among us. Yet it is not without great pain that I, an old servant and soldier of Your Highness's grandfather of blessed memory, King Charles I., find myself inditing an epistle that sets me in a manner at war with his son. It is written with a hand that now finds the pen heavier than the sword was wont to be. I am too old and too infirm to pay to Your Highness in person the respect I feel. And I am too old a soldier to embarrass Your Highness's encampment with even my small body of men; it is possible they are not needed. Yet Your Highness is to know that they are to the number of a dozen, at his command, living meantime at free quarters, and getting such drill and practice in arms and evolutions, both men and beasts, as two old-fashioned soldiers can give. May God use Your Highness as you shall use this unhappy land. Your Highness's most respectful and obedient servant,

"M. DRAYTON."

And this letter, somewhat proud in its tones, as I thought (but not one word of it would Sir Michael change), reached the hand of the Prince by that of Christopher Kidd early upon the following morning, which was Sunday. It seems, from what I afterwards heard, that being deep in affairs His Highness did not break the seal until after the great and solemn service in the cathedral that was that morning held.

Now the bishop had fled to London before the gates of Exeter were opened to the Prince. The dean had followed him, and from this service the canons of the chapter carefully abstained themselves. Even the prebendaries and the singers of the choir fled from their stalls on the first words of Dr. Burnet's reading from the pulpit the Prince's famous Declaration. So, for all the pomp and the noble sermon of that great divine, it was in no mild or pleasant humor that His Highness returned to his lodging at the Deanery. Here chancing to open my father's letter, he took great pleasure in it, remarking to Mr. Bentinck that there was, after all, hope that he had not come in vain, when so stanch and famous a Cavalier as Sir Michael Drayton, of whom he had often heard, did so address him. He sent at once for Christopher Kidd, and very graciously bade him thank Sir Michael for his promptitude, which, he said, had done much to console him in a grievous hour; adding that he would send in good time for his little band, and hoped himself to pass, within some days, so near to Drayton that he might thank him in person. And with this message Christopher returned.

I have been thus particular because I would have it known that my father was the first of that great and distinguished number of gentlemen and noblemen that soon began to flock to the Prince's standard. I know it has been said that Mr. Burrington, of Crediton, was the first that came in, bringing with him a good company of followers. Now it is well known that Mr. Burrington did not arrive in Exeter till the Monday. But Sir Michael Drayton's adhesion to the cause being conveyed by letter, and his men kept a-drilling at his cost until they should be required, has put my dear father's name out of the histories, where it should stand as that of the man who first held out a hand to comfort a great Prince oppressed to despondency of mind by a backwardness that seemed ingratitude.

CHAPTER VIII

At an early hour on Monday there were gathered on the level turf that stretched beneath my chamber window some five and twenty men, with as many horses, from whom Sir Michael, with old Emmet to help him, was now to select that twelve he had promised to hold at the service of the Prince. And I thought it a clear mark of my father's nature that he did prefer furnishing a small number, but serviceable, when, had he measured his own importance by the rule that many gentlemen at that time did use, he might have sent a hungry and unruly band three times as great.

From my window the humors of the scene were strange and various, and at first not a little laughable. Simon bustled to and fro, urging and directing stable lads sweating under load after load of armor, and weapons from the hall, the armory, and the steward's room. At last, all being in some manner armed and mounted, they were gotten into a semblance of order, and their instruction and weeding out began. At first, I say, I laughed much at one man's hopeless perplexity in handling together sword and reins, or at another, being undersized and of even less strength than skill, to see him strive in vain to control a fat and lusty charger, fresh from the plough, and grown wanton to feel so little weight upon his back and none at his tail. But, as one after another these were discarded and went their ways, some in evident dudgeon and others in as plain relief of mind, and as the dwindling number grew even more martial in mount, bearing, and accoutrement, the sight did begin to make some corresponding emotion in my heart; and I almost found myself wishing that I had been born a man, the more that my dear father had that same morning lamented there was none of Drayton blood to lead the little band. He had let drop, too, some words, as bitter as few, of my brother Philip, and had told me then, for the first time, how my mother's two children did come to bear one name.

"Your mother bore her first child, little Phil," he said, "in the early days of the horse-breeding that has brought us so much wealth. And I loved the beasts, spending once my last guineas and the price of a farm besides to bring to my stud the Barbary sire you remember. So when I knew it was a man child I called him Philip, saying he should love horses as his father, and do great things for the breed, and his name be famous in England. And as he grew 't was harder to get him inside a stable than to keep most lads without it. To this day I know not if he would distinguish your ugly Meg from the noblest charger of His Highness of Orange. When ten years were gone, and there was again hope for us, I said, if it prove a girl, we 'll e'en try the name on her. And give it you I did, with a little tag or handle to mark you woman. Poor child," he added kindly, yet sorrowfully, "'t is not thy fault thou hast the wrong sex, and, Gad 's my life! you have been a better son to me than Philip."

"And I love horses, sir," I answered, "and, indeed, many other things that my Lady Mary will ever say are not women's matters." Whereupon we laughed at Lady Mary a little, and the matter dropped, as he went to the muster. But I knew he felt in great need of a son that day, or he had never come so near throwing reproach on me that he loved so well for a fault that at another time he would not have had me change for a man's best virtue. Yet, as I gazed from the window at this threshing and winnowing of men, to make of them soldiers, the memory of that reproach rankled a little in me, and a small plot began to take form.

At the time when I commenced housewife at home I had in a disused chamber above found a closet filled with clothes once worn by my half-brothers of the elder family that I had come into the world too late to know. These were the only relics, I believe, of three good and honest gentlemen that, in the strange and ghostly manner of a child as I then was, I reverenced much, and even contrived to love a little; I had therefore rescued many of these garments from the moth, and, deciding in my mind by the varying fashions and much guess-work to which brother the different pieces had belonged, bestowed them in three ordered piles in a wide shelf of my great oak press. "So these," I would say, as I brushed and folded them once a month, "were Henry's; these Maurice used to wear." And I always held that the morion and the back- and breast-pieces, which were all the armor found with the clothes, had belonged to Rupert. For they were wondrous small for a man, and I knew he had been the least of them all in stature, and had scarce attained his full growth when he fell at Salisbury.

Now, in my excitement with the martial sounds without, and a good part, I doubt not, in mischief that meant going no further than gently avenging his slight of my sex upon my father, I suddenly thought of this wardrobe so little proper to a young maid's chamber; and at once began with trembling hands to choose from my store such garments as I thought would best become the son my father wished me, giving, I doubt not, an undue value to color and to that size which nearest approached my own, and little to coherence of fashion.

The troop were now reduced to eleven, for Christopher Kidd, making the twelfth, and having leave of absence after his services to my father in riding to Exeter, was expected to return from his farm but for the afternoon's drill; lacking whom, the rest had been dismissed for dinner at noon, which was the hour when I began so unmaidenly to dress myself out in my dead brothers' clothes. It was a business that occupied me longer than I had thought for, and when it came to the boots and the armor I wished I had Prue's nimble fingers to help me. But she, I knew, though she would never have confessed so much, was somewhere watching for the return of Christopher. At last, however, I made shift to fasten together about me the back- and breast-pieces; for the boots, I stuffed the toes of each with an handkerchief, and so made them sit passably well, the practising which device called to my mind how in the dark I had done the same for Ned to the filthy brogues he wore in leaving us. So, being dressed at all points to my satisfaction, the next thing was to contrive reaching the stables unobserved. For this my reasons were two: I knew the men would soon reassemble, and wished, in my folly, to take part in their evolutions in such manner that none could forbid without openly chiding me before the yokels; which I knew neither my father nor Emmet would do, whatever their censures might be in private. But far stronger was the other reason for privacy. Being now ready, I began to feel shame of what I was doing, and, being too petulant and obstinate to give it up, I felt that a horse beneath me and the necessity of handling him in unwonted movements would do near as much to cover my shyness as the skirt I lacked.

Whether this be clear to a masculine reader or no, confident I was of a lessened sense of bareness, and so of greater boldness in the saddle. Hearing, then, the bugle blown without, and seeing the men canter up by ones and twos from the stable, the few old soldiers among them roundly cursing the laggards, I opened my chamber door, peeped up and down the gallery, and made a bold run for the head of the great stair. That it was before I reached it my sword, catching between my legs, did fling me prone, I must ever thank Providence. Had it happened in my descent with the same force, I had broken my neck at the foot of the stair. For, though I could handle the small-sword, and even the heavier weapon of a soldier, "passably well for a maid," as Mr. Royston did use to say in the days when he taught me something of fence, yet never before, even in our games, had I worn one hung from my side. I picked myself up more shamefaced than hurt, and made my way sneakingly and gingerly, holding my sword in my left hand, down the stair and into the great hall, making for its further door which leads to the kitchens. I was already half-way toward it, walking most cat-like in that shyness so little fitted to my garb and action, when I heard the heaving of a great sigh. Turning my head, I saw, at the further end of the hall, standing with his back to me, and gazing from a window, a man dressed in sad-colored clothes. More quickly, I suppose, than the stranger could turn to observe me, I was through the door and in the flagged gallery that leads to the kitchens and pantries. Cutting across this gallery is a shorter one leading to a side door of entrance to the house, and as I drew near this I heard voices at the outer door. At once I knew the speakers for Prue and Christopher Kidd, and now more than ever did I feel that the salvation of my plan was to get me astride of a good horse; I would not, even to save changing my mind, a thing always hateful to me, be seen walking thus dressed. So, coming silently to a stand in hope that they would move away, I was for some minutes an involuntary eavesdropper. The stables were opposite this same door, with a paved yard between, and I could tell by the sound of hoof on stone that Mr. Kidd was mounted and on his way to the muster on the other side of the house. But I believe that he had learned since his first return from Exeter that it was ill policy to hide fresh news, good or bad, from little Prudence. Yet did he make some show of resistance. The first words that I clearly heard were his:

"But where is Sir Michael? I have news."

"News good or ill, Mr. Kidd?" says Prue.

"That is for him to say," replied Kidd. "Are they at the exercises, mistress?"

"Nay, but Mr. Kidd—Christopher," said the little rogue, in tones most winning and persuasive, "will you not dismount and stay a while to pleasure me? Shall I fetch you a horn of ale?" Then there was silence for a little space, and I could fancy her little red and pouting mouth turned up to the man in such wise that it could scarce be three heart-beats ere his spurs would ring on the flags. Nor was it. And then she continued: "And the news, Mr. Kidd? Perhaps it would not taint it if my lips should sip it first." And so a pause, and a little soft sound of kissing, with a small scream of formal hypocrisy.

Then Christopher: "Faith, mistress, a kiss from you would win all things from a man, even to his soul's health, let alone a trifle of news."

"I gave you no kiss," says Prue, saucily enough; "you did but take it."

"Then take my news," quoth Kidd, with a stride, I thought, towards his horse. And then, I think, she did buy his news, and pay in advance. For although I cannot say that this time I heard the ring of the coin, yet Christopher's next words showed him proceeding to delivery of the goods. "You know, mistress, that Sir Michael would have me lead these men to the Prince when he shall call on them. So I have been to the farm to settle things for a long absence. I thought my nag here well recovered of his last week's ride to Exeter and beyond, but find there is little spirit left in him, and was ambling gently down the old road by the water-mill about an hour back, and cursing both luck and horse to be late for the work a-doing here, when there comes by a great coach, with much foul speech and cracking of whips. And whose face dost think I saw looking from the window, all drawn and wan?"

"Oh, I know not," said Prue, in anger of impatience; "tell me, and quickly."

"Well, 't was Madam Royston," says Christopher.

"Lady Mary!" says Prue, with a little gasp. "What did she there?"

"'T is the very thing I would know, dear lass," replied Kidd. "The fellows round her were ill-looking, and she was about calling to me when she was dragged back within the coach."

"Well, you are a man," cried Prue, raising her voice in excitement. "What did you do?"

"Little to purpose, sweetheart," answered Kidd; and, though I was as eager now as little Prue to hear more, I could have laughed to note how the man took advantage of her emotion to edge in these lover's terms unchecked; "I spurred after them, but a fellow on a sorrel nag turned and drew a great pistol and let fly at me. Do but see the hole his ball made in my coat." And here I heard a very genuine cry of fear from Prudence. And Kidd went on, with a slight note of exultation in his voice, the result, I do not doubt, of her perturbation. "It did me no hurt, though it wanted but little, as you see, of sending me where I could never again see the prettiest maid in three counties. Well, that shot angered me, and I made at him. But he was the better mounted, and leapt his horse over the hedge, and so away over the fields, while I pounded heavily after on my tired beast. When I gave over, the coach was far and my nag well-nigh foundered. But one thing I learned of him."

"Ay," cried Prue eagerly, "and that was——"

"That he was no true man, but a devilish priest of Rome."

"O Mr. Kidd," says Prue, "how you will ever be frighting a poor girl! How knew you that?"

"As he leapt the hedge," said Kidd, "being a bad horseman, he was near losing his seat. Arrived the other side, he saved himself by clutching at the sorrel's mane, and in that had almost lost both hat and his red wig but for clutching at those in turn. But as the wig shifted I saw his own hair, dark and short, and a little round place atop, bald and shaven. A priest he is, and Sir Michael loves not such cattle on his land. So indeed, dear Mistress Prudence, I must find and tell him what is doing. Will you not grant me but one more? My news was worth it."

Whatever it were he asked, I do suppose he shortly obtained it, for very soon I heard upon the stones the hoofs of his departing horse. Hoping that Prudence would follow him round the back of the house to see him join the little troop at exercise, I thought this was the moment for pressing on to the stables. So, wisely tucking my sword again under my arm, I made a run for it, which took me round the corner and fairly into the arms of Prudence, whom I clutched firm and close in my own to save us both a fall. At first her fright to be so suddenly seized in the arms, as she thought, of some ruffling gallant was luckily too great to let a sound escape her; and when I loosed my hold and clapped my hand upon her mouth, it began slowly to dawn upon the terror-struck eyes raised to mine in mute appeal that 't was none but I; whereupon, being released, she fell to laughing most consumedly, pointing at me the while a most derisive finger, till I could not but think all was not well with my unaccustomed attire, and shrank together and cringed from her in fashion most unmanlike.

And, when she could for laughing, "Oh, dear Mistress Phil!" she cried, "whatever your plan in this pretty masquerade, none will take you for a man if you do stand so."

Which did but add anger to my desire of carrying through my plan; so that, drawing my body most martially erect, and seizing her by the shoulder with my left hand, I raised the other as if to cuff her, and threatened as much if she did not hold her peace and immediately lend me her aid. And this did mightily sober the girl, who, seeing me so terrible, ran out at my bidding to the stable, returning quickly with the news that there was not a man about the place, all being gone to see the drilling. Very bravely I then swaggered across the yard and in among the horses that were left. And there Prudence followed, panting with excitement and, as soon appeared, not without admiration of my assumption of manhood.

"Oh, but indeed I ask your pardon, dear Mistress Phil," she cried, "for so laughing at the figure you made. If you but carry it thus none who does not know you for Mistress Philippa Drayton will know you are not a man. Do but let me set your beautiful hair more in fashion of the great wigs Mr. Kidd tells me are worn by the gentlemen, even on horseback and in armor." And with a great coarse stable comb she pulled and twisted till she had my hair, which for the first time I was glad grew not so long as thick, to hang evenly round the shoulders behind, and over them in front in two heavy curling masses.

"And now for a horse," I said, when this was done. It took no long time to see that my choice lay between Meg, that I have already told of, and Roan Charley, a gelding of no great size but great beauty of proportion. He was grandson of that Barbary sire my father had purchased so dear to enrich his stock. Roan Charley had to the full the spirit and much of the fleetness of the Drayton barb, with more bone and greater power in the hinder part; whence it came, I suppose, that he was the best leaper I ever sat, while his grandsire would not, or could not, clear so much as a fallen tree-trunk. He was generally accounted difficult and contrary in handling, but he and I were seldom long in coming at an understanding.

Now for the work I had been watching all morning from my window I had certainly preferred Old Meg, as we had come to call the mare, more from her sure and trusty manners than her years. But, for the odd and elfish look of her, my vanity bade me pass her by and clap my father's best saddle on Charley. At first he gave me some trouble in this, thinking, said Prue, some strange gallant was about stealing him. When he fidgeted a little with his heels Prue screamed, and would not come near to help. The saddle was heavy and the sword mightily in my way, and each time I would have flung the first on Roan Charley's back, round would go his hindquarters, and, as I followed, the sword would again come between my legs and stop me, while he eyed me with teeth gleaming and ears laid back. At last I was fain to set down the saddle and caress him with voice and hand, making love to him till he knew me again, and, indeed, well-nigh said as much. After that, saddling and bridling were soon done, and Charley led into the yard, where, Prue being with much difficulty and in terror of her life persuaded to take him by the head, I was soon upon his back.