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Title: The Sword of the King

Author: Ronald Macdonald

Release Date: July 7, 2019 [EBook #59873]

Language: English

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  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.

Now here, as once or twice before, I must tell of things that I did
not know till after they were done.  For even though it seem somewhat
to break the thread of narrative to leave me running Roan Charley in
the park to use him to my handling and my knees to my father's
saddle, while I tell of events, some far, and others close at hand
but beyond my knowledge, yet I hold it ever more easy for the reader
to take his history, public or private, in order of occurrence, and
so to hold in his hand all the threads that must knot together at
that point for whose sake the story is told.  For in life all is so
large and complicate as to seem, in the little eye of man, confused
and purposeless; and great part, I think, of our joy and interest in
living it is found in the unexpected nature of its events.  But in
those pictures of life furnished us by drama, history, painting, or
romance our pleasure is altogether of another kind.  Here the
artificer, choosing out of the multitudinous mesh threads such only
as lead to his particular nodule of the mighty tangle, concerns
himself and us with the convergence and final meeting of these; so
that, if he but tell and we read aright, we see step by step the
working of his little providence.  And here our pleasure is not in
astonishment, but in truth and sequence reasonably set forth.  "This
thing is coming," we say; or "That could have fallen no otherwise";
and we read on, and sometimes, perhaps, perceive some glimmer of the
order lying in the greater skein.  But all this Mr. Telgrove would
call plagiarizing; and it comes, indeed, in the first instance, from
his head.  If he read it ever, he will confess me a better listener
than he is wont to think.




CHAPTER IX

Captain Royston's troop was of that portion of the army which, after
the pomp of entry into Exeter, had been quartered at Honiton.  There,
waiting at an equal distance from his own home and the city of
Exeter, and unable to get so much as an hour's leave of absence, he
fretted not a little at his situation, seeing that the further
advance might be undertaken at any moment, and he be carried on the
martial tide past both those havens his soul was longing after (but
it was one in especial, if what he now saith must be believed).  Upon
the afternoon of that same Sunday whereon Dr. Burnet preached in the
cathedral Captain Royston was surprised by a summons to report
himself without delay before His Highness at headquarters.  The order
was brought by M. de Rondiniacque, a young Huguenot gentleman who had
been transferred from a lieutenancy in Ginkel's Regiment to the
personal staff of the Prince, on account not only of the charm of his
manners and the quickness of his parts, but also, it seems, for the
esteem in which his family was held by the veteran Count Schomberg,
who, with hundreds of other French gentlemen of high birth and the
proscribed religion, had left his country and attached himself to His
Highness of Orange.  M. de Rondiniacque and Captain Royston had long
been fast friends, and both were glad of the ride together, and of
such conversation as could be had in fifteen miles of wet and mud,
travelled with the hard riding M. de Rondiniacque's orders enjoined.
Arrived at the Deanery about seven o'clock of the evening, they were
summoned at once to His Highness's presence, where they found beside
the Prince none but Mr. William Bentinck.

In regard to the conversation that here took place, I am the better
able to give some account of it that I have two narrations to draw
upon--Captain Royston's, namely, and M. de Rondiniacque's.

As they entered the room, His Highness, seated at the table, was
uttering the last words of a conversation, apparently of some
earnestness, with Mr. Bentinck, of which, however, the only words
that reached their ears were these: "No, William, no!  Where I must
trust so much I will trust all.  The lad is true, and my interests
are his."

These words, spoken in the French language, which the Prince used
always with greater fluency and a nearer approach to exactness than
the English, showed to Captain Royston with some clearness not only
that the talk had been of him, but also that Mr. Bentinck's words,
which he had not heard, had been in the nature of a warning.  Knowing
well that this faithful friend and servant of His Highness had never
looked on him with the same favor shown him by the Prince, Captain
Royston was as little surprised by the slight he guessed as troubled
by the antipathy he knew.  And he, being too proud of nature to seek
its reason, I was moved one day many months after, and in happier
times, to enquire it myself of Mr. Bentinck, who very freely and
kindly told me that they had been in Holland no little troubled with
an inroad of gallows-birds and broken men seeking asylum under the
cloak of persecution suffered for opinions political or religious.
Hearing some talk of a man slain in anger, he had rashly (as he said
to me he now perceived) classed Mr. Royston with these, and had on
two occasions declared himself opposed to his advancement; all which,
I can well see, had in it the makings of a very pretty quarrel but
for the haughty indifference of Captain Royston, leading him, as it
would often do, to contemn and eschew explanation in his own behalf.

The Prince now turned sharply to Captain Royston, and at once
informed him that he was chosen for a service of great secrecy.  "And
I believe, sir," said His Highness, "that I have chosen well.  For I
know you, Captain Royston, to be a brave man, a bold horseman, and
acquainted with this countryside, and believe you a gentleman of
honor."

His Highness here pausing as one that asks a question, Captain
Royston said very simply that the last head of His Highness's opinion
was as true as the two former, as he would know if he saw fit to use
him in a matter of delicacy.

On which the Prince continued: "I do not doubt, Captain Royston, that
something at least of the difficulty of my position in this disturbed
country has been long clear to you.  Victory in a pitched field over
a proud and unconquered people, to whom I come as a friend invited,
will hurt my cause no less than defeat.  It is not every man that
will act as this old Sir Michael Drayton, who, his mind once
determined, is eager to take risk among the first."  And here,
perceiving the pleasure in Captain Royston's countenance to hear his
old friend thus singled out for praise, His Highness enquired did he
know that gentleman, and, being answered eagerly that he did, cast
upon Mr. Bentinck a little glance of triumph, as a man looks who
says, "I told you so."  Then, "You have friends of the best,
Captain," he continued.  "And as it is not given to all to act with
the courage of your friend, while there is scarce one but wishes me
success in some measure, 't is a plain duty laid upon me to use all
means to draw them to me, and so secure a peaceful issue.  I have
this night received a letter from one high in King James's favor,
ennobled by his master, and holding in his army high rank, while he
also exercises through his wife much influence upon our sister, the
Princess Anne; and so, indirectly, upon her uncles, my Lords
Clarendon and Rochester, her cousin-german, Viscount
Cornbury--and--and--is it possible," he added, with an odd smile,
"that I forget her husband, Prince George of Denmark?  Now, in this
letter," said His Highness, tapping upon the table with a paper he
held folded in his hand, "in which there is much of his attachment to
the Protestant religion, but more between the lines, as I read it, of
the high price he would have for a firm continuance in that faith,
this noble officer proposes coming to terms with us.  We shall
doubtless have him sooner or later, but sooner is my purpose, for the
sake of his following.  He has left the royal army, now stationed at
Salisbury, and while his escort in two divisions, each of which
supposes my Lord C---- to be with the other, is on the way to the
capital, he himself with one companion has by this," said the Prince,
glancing at the clock, "with forced riding, reached the town of
Sherborne, where, under the style of 'Captain Jennings,' he will lie
this night at 'The King's Head.'  How far, Captain Royston, is this
town of Sherborne from our present position?"

For a little time Captain Royston pondered, and then replied that the
distance was something over fifty miles.

"And how long," asked His Highness, "would it take you to ride to
Sherborne by night, Captain Royston?"

"The roads are very bad, and heavy with the rain, Your Highness,"
said Captain Royston; "but with a fresh horse from here, a remount
from the stables of my troop at Honiton, and a third that I shall
doubtless find at my own house of Royston, I will do it in ten hours.
If the clouds should break, the moon might help me to better it by an
hour."

"And how far is this house of yours, Captain?" asked the Prince.

"Royston Chase and the hamlet of Royston, Your Highness," he
answered, "lie midway between Chard and Crewkerne: as the crow flies,
some three and thirty miles from Exeter, and half as much, or
thereabout, from Sherborne."

"Is it at present inhabited?" says His Highness.

"By my mother and a few old servants," said Royston.

"Is the lady of your mind in politics?" continued His Highness; and
being answered that she was, he then asked Captain Royston to do him
the honor to be his host on the following day.  "I shall go to Chard
with Count Schomberg and a troop of cavalry," he said, "to inspect
the outposts that lie there, and ostensibly to take notice of the
country for purpose of strategy.  About two hours after noon we shall
arrive and ask hospitality of madam your mother--it may be for the
night.  Meantime you, Captain Royston, will have conducted Colonel my
Lord C----, with all secrecy and discretion, and by hidden paths and
byways when possible, to your house, where we can privily accomplish
that personal meeting he so much desires, and contrive, I doubt not,
to fix the price of his treachery.  Mr. Bentinck, sir, considers that
I err to trust you so far with my secret purposes.  But I intend
employing an English gentleman in a service as much to the advantage
of his country as of myself, and I would not have him think it is my
habit to deal with traitors.  While, like yourself, Captain, I vastly
prefer the open field to the dark ways of intrigue, yet, in this
case, though I am, as the world knows, no Jesuit, I hold the great
end in view to justify the means we are to employ.  And, when all is
said, the private motives of his lordship are no more concern of ours
than--than--" he said, pausing with a smile, "than his Protestantism.
He is a good soldier, and, if I am any judge, bids fair to be a great
one; so I would have him an instrument on the right side."

His Highness then gave to Captain Royston a pass under his own seal,
very comprehensive in its terms, laying also before him a like paper
sent by Lord C----, bearing the signature, "James R."  M. de
Rondiniacque has since told me of the lofty manner in which dear Ned
would have declined this last.  But His Highness insisted with some
sharpness, saying: "You will take no escort, Captain, and these
scruples are petty.  And," he added more kindly, "let us hope that
its use, if needed, will prove, after all, in the interest of His
Majesty, my uncle.  It shall not be our fault, sir, if it do not."

Now since the attempt of one Gerrard and others upon the life of the
Prince, Mr. Bentinck had endeavored with a subtlety of precaution
truly wonderful to protect his friend and master from such vile and
hidden enemies.  For, however strongly the instigator might be
suspected, the instigation was never proved, and the instruments had
control of agencies to the full as cunning and secret as any that Mr.
Bentinck, with all his servants and correspondents, could bring to
bear.  Before Captain Royston, therefore, had gotten himself to
horse, this gentleman took occasion to draw him apart, and, laying
aside for the moment his wonted ungraciousness of demeanor, warned
him privately and kindly that, many bad men being about, and the
neighborhood of so large a force offering much opportunity of
disguise and concealment to the evilly disposed, it was before all to
be desired that no word of His Highness's purposed visit to Royston
Chase should go abroad.  Captain Royston very civilly thanked him,
saying that he was of a like opinion; that not even to that
distinguished gentleman to whom his mission was would he impart the
name of his destination; but only to madam his mother, should he have
the fortune to speak with her that night while changing his horse,
would he tell so much as should ensure His Highness a fitting
reception.

I am not to give a particular narrative of that tedious, rapid, and
cautious ride, for the most part in the dark, from Exeter to
Sherborne, but only to touch upon such incidents therein as may serve
to throw a little light upon the events that ensued,--events of which
the result came so near the tragical that even now a shuddering will
accompany their memory.

At the door of the Deanery a fresh and powerful horse awaited him.
He was as far as Honiton accompanied upon his road by M. de
Rondiniacque, who was entrusted with an order to the colonel of the
Swedish Cavalry.  As they rode from the Close, his companion pointed
out to Captain Royston a fellow that stood at the corner with his
back to the wall.

"'T is the same we saw at the ale-house, half-way from Honiton," said
M. de Rondiniacque.  He then turned his horse and enquired of the
sentry that paced the Close a little higher up, did he know that
short, stout, and red-haired fellow, or anything of his business; to
which the soldier answered that he was something in the way of a
sutler, or perhaps a dealer on commission in supplies, to the various
messes.  And, while M. de Rondiniacque was thus out of ear-shot
conferring with the musketeer, the man at the corner betrayed to the
eyes of Captain Royston some perturbation of countenance.  As the
friends continued their road to the left from the mouth of the Close,
Captain Royston, turning in the saddle, perceived this loiterer, whom
he suspected for a spy, to be already making off swiftly in a
contrary direction.

The tedium of the first ten miles was well beguiled by the gaiety of
M. de Rondiniacque, and marked by no incident but the sudden passing
at full speed of a fine horse mounted by a bold but, as appeared in
the brief glance, an ill-seated and inexperienced horseman.  A sudden
gleam of the moon shining upon this figure as it disappeared round a
corner of the road a little in advance of the two officers, M. de
Rondiniacque observed that he believed 't was the same fellow with
the red head they had already twice that evening encountered.  A
little later Captain Royston took note that, whoever the reckless
rider was, he had either checked his pace or much increased the
distance between them, since the sound of his flight was no longer
heard.  And so for the time the matter passed out of their heads.

The last five miles of the road to Honiton, being in fair condition,
were accomplished at a good pace, checked only by an accident of a
very trifling sort.  Captain Royston, ever a man of great knowledge
and consideration in horseflesh, his beast having stumbled and partly
fallen among some loose stones in a dark part of the way, dismounted
to examine what injury the animal had taken.  Waiting beside him, M.
de Rondiniacque continued, in tones audible enough, their
conversation, which had reference to the Prince's intended visit to
Royston, the words he used chancing to indicate both time and place.
Before remounting, Captain Royston observed that the disposition of
the stones of considerable size which had caused the mishap appeared
rather of design than accident, and as he bade his friend hold his
peace the ears of both could clearly distinguish a rustling among the
bushes that here divided the sunken road from the adjoining fields.

I have been thus particular over the early portion of Captain
Royston's midnight ride because it afterwards appeared they had been
spied upon to some purpose.

Arrived at Honiton, and learning that the badness of the road that
leads through the hamlet of Royston was through the long wetness of
the weather grown extreme, he resolved upon taking another, with the
chance of a remount at the house of a gentleman well known to him,
who lived at a point fitly dividing the remnant of his journey.  So
he sat him down while his best charger was a-saddling to write a
brief letter to my Lady Mary, in which he did but cautiously inform
her that his "honored master" would visit her on the morrow with a
good company in attendance, and signed himself her "obedient E.R."
This letter entrusted for conveyance to Royston Chase by the first
light to a trooper of great fidelity, Captain Royston set out on his
way to Sherborne by a road somewhat longer, indeed, than he had
purposed using, but promising greater expedition and security at this
hour and season.  Reaching "The King's Head" at Sherborne about six
of the morning (it being that same Monday upon which the exercising
of Sir Michael's little squadron of horse did begin), he was at once
introduced to "Captain Jennings" in his chamber, who, having dressed
and eaten, was soon mounted, so that, riding with the light, and
freshly horsed, but with some expense of time for caution and the
using of byways, they were safely housed at Royston Manor an hour
before noon.  Nor is it wonderful that poor Ned, having ridden at
least eighty miles upon five horses, with no sleep in thirty hours,
and scarce a mouthful of food for fourteen, after noting with regret
that there was not one among the servants whose face he knew, did
fall asleep upon his bed in all his travel-fouled clothes.  Awaking,
like a true soldier, an hour before His Highness and the escort
should arrive, and asking of the servants why he had not seen his
mother, he received from a very civil fellow, who seemed above the
rest, a letter written by my Lady Mary in characters much shaken with
some emotion, wherein it was set forth that, rather than compromise
her loyalty in receiving His Highness, she had left the house free to
her son, but herself, with the two old servants that were left of
those he knew, had fled to the King's camp at Salisbury.  Although
vastly put about by this ill news, and, as he thought, great
discourtesy of his mother, he put the best face upon the matter, that
he might in no manner seem to belittle her in her dependents' eyes,
and set about preparation of hospitality.  Lady Mary was ever a
notable housekeeper, and it was no long matter to load tables and
dress beds, the less that it seemed much had been already begun
before her unkind departure.




CHAPTER X

With all this we have yet come no further than the noontime of the
Monday; but I have yet one more thread to gather up before I come
again to my proper part in this tale.

That stranger, the sight of whose back so frighted me, foolishly clad
in boy's garments, that I dared not risk encounter with the gaze of
his eyes, was, though, alas! I knew it not, my brother Philip.  When
I did pass through the great hall on my way to the stables, he had
just come to an end of some talk with Simon Emmet, who was then gone
to fetch Sir Michael.

From his errand Simon hoped little good, fearing of the ills that
might arise from Philip's return at this conjuncture, most of all the
perturbation of spirit into which it was like to cast his master.  So
much, indeed, he said, with such plainness as his old and unbroken
affection for my brother would allow.  There is no little reason to
suppose that, even more than the lad's father, Simon Emmet had been
grieved by Philip's adoption of his mother's religion.  For Philip,
upon his arrival and encounter with the old man, was no sooner
recognized than he was asked if it were indeed true that he was
become a priest: and when Simon was assured that so it was, he
counselled a speedy departure, since no good would come, Sir Michael
being minded as he was, of their meeting.  Being told, with that
gentle severity which did use to sit very nobly upon my brother, that
he must inform his master with no more ado, he yet in going must turn
at the door to deliver a parting bolt through the man he loved at the
creed he abhorred.

"Now, I bethink me, Master Philip," says Simon, "there is, when all
is said, some good come of your heresy."  And when Philip said gently
that he hoped indeed it was so, but saw not how he meant it, Simon
gave answer that, old man and sick though he was, Sir Michael upon
that dire news had gotten a mind to live, and had lived ever since,
in the firm intent that, as long as he might prevent, a Papist should
never rule at Drayton.

"But, Simon," says Philip, with a sadness political rather than
religious, "there was surely a time when my dear father had preferred
a Papist in his house to a Dutch Calvinist on the throne."

"Ay, Master Phil," says Simon, with an old man's chuckle of much
cunning, "but that was before the throne had tried a Papist," and so
left him.

And I do suppose it was while I listened unseen to little Prue's
willing news from her lover on the flags of the stable-yard that my
two nearest kin were threshing out, in the great hall behind me, a
question that can never be settled.  There was no quarrel between
them, but little that was common to their two minds.  And that day
the little seemed altogether naught.  Yet in temper the two men were
as like as unlike in thought.

Now Philip's change of faith had but strengthened, and in a manner
embittered, the old Cavalier devotion to the house of Stuart.  Being
commissioned by that great religious society of which he was a
member, and whose power is as far-reaching as its means are often
hidden and subtile, to travel from London through the southern and
western parts of England, exhorting, persuading, and commanding the
Catholic gentry to remain constant in the royal cause, he had, at the
end of two months so spent, at last arrived among us.  He now told
his father that he held it within the spirit of his commission, if
not of its letter, to use upon him, did he waver in that political
faith of which his life hitherto was so noble an exhibition, the same
arguments and modes of appeal he was daily employing upon those of
the true faith.

"You lack, however, in dealing with me, my son, one weapon--and that
your strongest," said his father.

"And that, sir?" said Philip.

"The appeal to religious authority, my boy.  And yet I scarce see by
what means you do bring it in use; for I hear that His Holiness is
ever at war of one kind or another with King Lewis, and favors rather
the cause of that alliance of the Empire with the Protestant Princes,
of which His young Highness of Orange is the soul and spirit.  I
warrant, lad," said the old man, with some grimness of humor, "you
find the Pope but an unhandy weapon in your schemes and plots."

"I obey orders, sir, but do not deal in plots," the son replied, with
a pride that matched the father's.

"Art not a Jesuit?" asked Sir Michael.

And Philip answering, proudly and yet with much humility, that he
was, Sir Michael would have known of him what he did when the bidding
of the Society of Jesus ran counter to His Holiness's policy, or
enjoined action inconvenient with the honor of a gentleman.  But
Philip, avoiding the former question, was yet stung into reply on the
second, saying boldly that the spiritual descendants of Loyola were
much belied, and had no traffic in the plotting of underhand schemes.

To this his father, with much warmth, but with a greater kindness
than had yet appeared in his address, replied: "Truly, I think they
do not--through such as thou, my son.  Believe your old father, lad;
your superiors are men of a boundless statecraft and a subtile, and
well know their tools.  Who that has knowledge uses an axe to do the
office of a file?  But files they have, and augers even down to the
finest gimlet; and these also work among us."

"Be that as it may, sir," answered Philip, "my mission is honest and
open.  I come to conjure you to hold faith with the cause in which
you have so nobly spent your blood, your sons, your land, and your
gold."

"There is nothing left me but my daughter and the ragged edge of
life, Philip," said the old man, with a great sadness.  "And these,
too, would I spend, as I thought, God knows, to spend all that is
gone,--for the good, I mean, of England.  But not as you would lay
them out, Philip; not on James, his harlots, priests, and bastards.
The King is the slave of priests as his brother was of women; and,
Gad 's my life! the late King was more English in 's tastes.  Women
may harm the king, but your priest in power is death to the kingdom.
I have learned one thing, son Philip, in my nine and seventy years:
that a man's king is much, but his country more.  But it is enough.
Let us leave the matter, or, God forgive me, I shall end by lauding
the man I have most hated--the one Englishman since I drew breath
that was feared and honored by Pope, Emperor, and Kings.  And since?
We have been laughed to scorn of the Spaniard, spat upon by the
Hollander, and paid--God's blood! ay, paid by a filthy Frenchman!"

"You have called a man traitor for less words than these, sir," said
his son, mightily amazed.

"Traitor!" quoth Sir Michael, with a great bitterness.  "We are all
traitors now.  It is the curse of God upon a wicked and adulterous
generation.  There is no man among us but some will say of him,
'There goeth a traitor,' whether to his king, his country, or his
God."

Then Philip: "If I must choose, it shall be to all before my God."

"Ay," said Sir Michael; "but in my plain English way of thought, Sir
Priest, no man betrays his country but is traitor to his God."

And so they made an end, and Philip mounted his horse and rode away.
And all that day I knew not that my brother had stood in reach of my
arms.  These things and the little more I have here to tell of Philip
I learned after from his own lips.  Riding sad and thoughtful from
the house he did meet, at the turn of the avenue where it opens upon
the road, a short, fat man, with red hair that matched ill with his
dark and oily skin.  His horse, though good, seemed but now painfully
to recover from hard running.  The fellow's countenance being not
unknown to him, Philip was the less surprised to be addressed by name
as brother, and asked had he forgotten the speaker.  And when he was
at length remembered for one Francis, that was in the time of
Philip's novitiate a lay brother in no good odor of repute, he told
with some boastfulness how he had received priest's orders and the
conduct of a great mission, concerning which he was loftily
mysterious, saying only it was a great work for the subduing the
heathen; to compel a blind and unquestioning assistance in which he
had powers granted him, he said, over any member of the Society he
should encounter.  At present, he added, he was to be known and
addressed only as Mr. James Marston of the city of Oxford.  He then
commanded Philip's attendance upon him, and, on his demurring, showed
him such writings as convinced my dear brother, rightly or wrongly,
that he had no choice but to obey.  Which he did, riding with him
sadly enough, and wondering, as he has told me, whether he were not
soon about to give the lie to that proud speech wherein he told his
father that he, no more than the Society of Jesus, did deal in plots.
I will here say that grave doubt has since been cast upon the
authenticity of the alleged commission of Brother Francis.  Philip
has ever held that he was deceived by the man; that the papers were
either forged, or used to ends far other than their purpose.

Mr. William Bentinck, whose great knowledge of hidden affairs as well
as his lack of bias in favor of that Society entitles his opinion to
a greater value, thought it to be a case in which one had been
employed that might, in event of failure, throw the fault upon a body
of men as accustomed to be blamed as to do good.  However it may be,
we shall never certainly know the truth of the matter, since the
destruction of the papers and other accidents have put it quite
beyond the power of any man to enquire further with hope of success.
One thing at least is certain: that Philip was as ignorant as
innocent of the purpose to which he was led.

And so I find myself in the saddle, taming Roan Charley in the park,
where I have, in a manner of speaking, patiently awaited my reader
through the tedious course of two chapters.




CHAPTER XI

With my horse reduced to some show of order, but yet champing
fretfully at his bit and throwing back his head in such manner as but
for my quick avoidance had endangered the soundness of my own, I
cantered gaily to that part where the exercising was, with head erect
and a firm hold upon the great war-saddle that seemed no longer too
vast to grip between the knees.  There I perceived that Simon Emmet
was at great pains to get the words of command and their significance
not only into the heads of his troopers but also into that of
Christopher Kidd, who there was sweating visibly in attempt at once
to control a fresh horse he had gotten, and to repeat after Simon
words of whose meaning he had less knowledge than the men that, for
lack of a better, he was to command.  At once and without a word I
fell into line, and, after a few mistakes, very successfully put
myself and Roan Charley through the simple evolution in progress.  At
first Simon did not mark me, being the more busied that the dulness
of Kidd was much increased by his amazement at the sight of me.  But
when at length Simon saw the direction of his awkward pupil's regard,
he as quickly perceived his new recruit.

Giving the command to halt in his great voice of an old sergeant of
horse, he walked up to me, saying, with a rough petulance: "How now,
young gentleman?  What have you to do among these?"  Then, at the
laugh with which I answered him, he drew near and understood.  And
mightily put about he was, and would have me at once return to the
house.

But, "Tush, Simon!" I said, smiling on him in the fashion I had used
from a child when I would have my way rather than his, "do I not do
it all fit and properly?  You are not to know who I am, but a young
gentleman that would exercise with you."

"You must leave the ranks," said Simon, gruff but wavering.

"So I will indeed," I answered, "if Mr. Kidd will but take my place."

And this Christopher, ever ready for Prue's sake to pleasure me, very
readily did, without more said; whereupon I took his place, and,
before Simon had well lowered his brows of amazement, I was giving
out in the greatest voice I could compass all the words of command I
had spent my morning in learning from my window.  The troop, falling
in with the jest, acquitted themselves so well that Simon did not
interfere; and I had halted them at length with intent to coax old
Emmet to fetch my father, that he might see how good a man I was,
when from round the corner where lay the front of the house there
came a great and growing confusion of sound: the wheels of a coach,
the hoofs of many horses, and a mixed murmur of voices.  And then the
great voice of my father rang out, at the sound of which all was
hushed; wheels stopped, horses stood, and men held their breath.
Bidding Simon keep his men as they were, I cantered round the
southeast corner of the house, and, checking my horse, stood for some
minutes unmarked in the confusion, to observe a scene not a little
curious.

The coach was my Lady Mary's, easily recognized in our parts for the
newness of its fashion.  By its side stood our friend and neighbor,
Sir Giles Blundell, that instant dismounted, and opening the door
that my lady might descend.  Behind him were two young gentlemen, one
of whom held Sir Giles's horse by the bridle.  My lady, of a pallor
very death-like, and stumbling as she stepped down from the coach so
that she was like to have fallen but for the ready support of his
hands, said a few words to Sir Giles, but all in a voice so low from
weakness of fatigue and the faintness of terror as no word of it to
reach my ears.  His answer, however, was given clearly enough.  And
as he spoke my father, till now delayed in his descent of the steps
by the lameness of his leg, drew near and stood beside my lady,
leaning upon his stick.

"Indeed, dear madam," said Sir Giles, "I will do no such thing.  I
and my friends here are vastly pleased we were in the way to rescue
you from such evil hands; 't was a small service we are proud to have
rendered to so good a friend and neighbor.  But to ride further to
Royston Chase on the mere chance of some danger to His Highness of
Orange, that has an army to protect him, is but to mix ourselves with
a game we are well resolved to watch at a safe distance."

"Ah, Giles," says Sir Michael, who had known him from a boy, "your
father had been of one part or the other.  What, in God's name, is
coming to England, when Englishmen are found that cannot even take a
side?"  Whereupon more words to little purpose ensued, Sir Giles and
the two other gentlemen at length departing as they had come, after
replying with much forbearance to some heated and scornful
animadversions of my father upon the lukewarmness of their conduct.

Gratitude for what these gentlemen had done in her behalf and the
need of recovering her spirits from the great perturbation into which
they had been thrown by the events of the morning kept my lady silent
until their departure was accomplished, when she turned to Sir
Michael with a great beseeching in her countenance, saying: "Surely
you will help me, my old friend."  On which he gave her assurance he
would do all he might, but told her he was yet ignorant what was her
trouble and need.  And it is great wonder to me that all the time she
was telling and he hearing her story neither did observe me sitting
there on my horse, and but partly hidden from their eyes by the
branches of a tree.  But her eagerness was well equalled by his
interest; and there was a great bustling of our hostlers and her two
servants about the coach.  For one of the horses had fallen when
brought to a stand, and lay, it seemed, at the point of death, two
more being in a very bad case.

In brief, the tale she told him, of which I heard near every word,
was this: that one had come at six o'clock of that morning with a
letter from her son, announcing a visit, as she interpreted its
terms, from His Highness of Orange; that by nine she was well
advanced with her preparation for his fit reception, when all was
thrown into confusion by the sudden arrival and enforced entry of a
strange and ill-assorted body of men, acting, with a silent obedience
truly wonderful to see in so unlikely a comradeship, under the orders
of a little fat man with a dark face and red hair.  This fellow,
after he had compelled her with the threat of death and a pistol at
her head to write that letter to her son which I have already
mentioned, did force her, with her maid and one man-servant, into the
coach which the other was to drive, a ruffian of decent mien being
seated beside him with a loaded pistol to quicken his obedience and
despatch.  One other, in like manner persuasive, was in the coach,
while Red-head and a fourth with a led horse rode beside.  This
party, in the endeavor to reach Salisbury, but much delayed by the
devices of my lady's coachman, after escaping the pursuit of Farmer
Kidd, had fallen the more easily before the gallant assault of Sir
Giles Blundell and his friends that they were weakened by the absence
of their leader; he having, as I believe (though this came not in
Lady Mary's narrative), lost his way in drawing off Christopher's
attack, and, being minded from the first to return before the end to
Royston Chase, and falling in with my brother Philip, was glad enough
to enforce his attendance as a guide, if not also to vent an old
spleen by making of him an unwilling accomplice in his wicked purpose.

Of the three villains left with the coach, one was slain in the
rescue and the other two escaped on their horses.

My lady ended her tale by telling her fear that the life of His
Highness was aimed at, and imploring Sir Michael with tears that he
should at once send his men (for Simon had by this brought his troops
in very fair order round into the drive) for the warning and defence
of His Highness; adding most piteously that her fear was no less for
the honor of her son and his father's house than for the life of the
Prince.

"Ay, madam," says my father; "but since there is none to lead them,
and they are like a flock of sheep lacking a shepherd, they must wait
the time of writing a letter."

"Write!  write!" cried her ladyship, wringing her hands, "write!
while even now it is perhaps too late!"

"I would I had one left of them all," said Sir Michael, with a groan;
"or anybody with a head-piece on a sound body.  You see what I am,
and Simon is well-nigh a cripple these three years."

And with that I cantered up to them; and, bringing suddenly my horse
to a stand, and saluting very finely, _more militari_--"I will go,
sir," I cried.

"Who 's here?" cries my father, and "Mercy on us!" says my lady, like
any milkmaid, in one breath with him.

"Who but your son Philip?" I answered, laughing gaily, and, I think,
blushing a little, as well indeed I might.  "And your son Philip is
the best horseman in the country; your son Philip bestrides the best
nag in three; and your son Philip knows the crow's-road to Royston,
while it is of common knowledge that he has a very pretty head-piece
on his shoulders."

My father being past speaking for amazement, my lady breaks in with:
"Thou 'rt a brave girl, but why this masquerade, dear child?"

"To convince Sir Michael Drayton," I pertly replied, "that there is
some use even in daughters, when they can hold a sword and sit in a
war-saddle of Prince Rupert's time."

Sir Michael here made to seize my bridle, but Roan Charley had caught
excitement from my voice, and a little slacking of his rein with a
pressure of the knee at once put him at the distance of three great
bounds from any detaining hand.

"Come back, Philippa!" cries my father.

"Not so, dear sir," said I, turning in the saddle, "for I shall go,
an you will allow it."

"The roads and fields are not safe for thee, child," said he, "with
so many bad men about, and an army close to hand, else were I willing
enough."

"Then let these men follow me," I cried.  "Simon will tell you, dear
sir, that I can give and take the word of command.  Christopher has
no wit to handle them.  Send the six best mounted, and let them come
up with me if they can, and I will give Roan Charley to him that
reaches Royston neck and neck with me."

And if they answered me again I heard it not, for Charley was away,
taking in his stride the fence of the paddock that lies behind the
stable; and although that way did mean a leap-out at a point where
the fence was high, with the ground falling sharply on the other
side, we did the second jump as well as we had done the first, and so
gained three hundred yards on the pursuing troop, whom I already
heard pounding after me with many a hearty cry and much rattling of
harness.




CHAPTER XII

Two years after it happened my husband and I did ride over the same
course of my crow's flight from Drayton Manor to Royston Chase.  And
it was matter of some surprise to me, and of more to Ned, ambling in
cold blood over the fields and viewing the leaps that I and Roan
Charley did that day take in company, that I had not only the courage
for such feats but also the fortune to come through it all without
misadventure.

I must indeed suppose that I did myself choose my path and guide in
it the gallant little horse; but, were I to trust merely to the
memory of feeling, I should believe that I sat in the saddle like one
in a dream, while Charley, with the inward knowledge of some homing
pigeon, galloped straight for the place where lay all my hopes and
fears.  'T was but twice that I had any sight of my escort--first,
turning in my seat as Charley reached the level of the meadow-land
below the hill that falls away from the home paddock, I beheld them,
close massed in a body, rounding the bend of the fence away to the
right above me, and just about commencing the descent; and once
again, after the roan had leaped into, and well-nigh miraculously
scrambled out of, an ugly and broken gully that lies near half-way
between Royston and my father's house.  For as Charley heaved his
body with a tearing, scratching, and clinging most wondrous cat-like
upon the safe ground of the further bank, I looked back once more and
spied them bearing off to the left for lower ground and easier
passage; but by this they were a straggling rout covering much
ground, so hardly already had the pace and distance with the
differing weight of riders told upon the various mettle of the
horses.  Indeed, the next two miles did tell not a little even upon
Charley, being a rising stretch of ploughed land in condition very
grievous for his smallness of hoof; but coming thereafter to grass,
he was mightily refreshed, and cleared two fences and a little bank
of earth with bushes atop in his old gay and light-hearted manner.

And after this we were not long in coming to the road, which being in
good condition for the season and weather that it was we made the
remaining miles at a very pretty pace.

Now the front of the house at Royston Chase stands but a little back
from the road, behind great gates of wrought iron, hung upon mighty
pillars of carved stone.  These stood wide as I galloped up, but the
way was barred by two soldiers, of mien immovable as the brazen gates
of Gaza.  By their black cloaks of fur I knew them to be of that
Swedish Regiment of Horse in which Captain Royston held His
Highness's commission.  They were, however, dismounted for sentry
duty--an office for which I could but think them ill chosen when I
perceived that not one word of the English language did they
understand, and would neither let me pass through the archway into
the inner court of the house, nor, when I had come to the purpose of
moving further down the road and leaping both hedge and ditch into
the orchard, would they let me depart.  For one of them did lay a
great hand on Charley's bridle, saying something to his fellow in a
manner easy of comprehension, though the words were to me without
meaning.  And I truly believe that I was in that moment very near to
discovery of my sex.  For answer to his jest I struck the fellow
across the face with my loose gauntlet, at the same time with great
quickness using both spur and rein, so that Roan Charley in a single
movement reared himself almost upright and swerved aside.  This,
coming right upon the blow he had received, caused the trooper to
loose my rein; which before the other could seize we were away at the
best pace we could make.

Now, some three hundred yards down the road seemed the lowest part of
the bank and hedge enclosing the little field that here divides the
beautiful orchard of Royston Chase from the highroad.  But even at
this point, I thought, the leap was hard for a horse that had already
done so much; wherefore I had determined to pass on to that little
cross lane that leads from the road to the gate at the lower end of
the orchard.  But even as I was so resolving I heard behind me the
cries and hoofs of mounted pursuers, and in front, coming from the
very lane I had purposed using, a patrol of three men of this same
Swedish regiment.  And so jump we must, or altogether fail, it
seemed, in that for which we had ridden so far and so fast.  Charley,
too, seemed to understand, and for a few strides we both steadied
ourselves, taking deep breaths of air and watching the hedge for a
thin spot.  And I have always thought 't was Charley that found it--a
spot where the growth of bramble on the bank's top was so scarce as
to let the narrow edge of the earth mound be clearly seen.  But
whether the will were mine or his, the doing of the matter was
Charley's alone, and very well, for a tired horse, was it done.
Knowing he could not with sureness clear both ditch and bank in a
single spring, and feeling that his mistress did leave the manner of
this last and most difficult passage of his hard run wholly to his
clever legs and wiser head, my little horse, as if he had been twice
the age he was, most soberly took his leap from the roadside, and
landed with his four hoofs bunched cat-like in a cluster on the
summit of the bank in that place where I have said the growth of
brush and bramble was thin.  Here, for the space of two heart-beats,
he poised himself, in which time he judged so well both his own
flagging powers and the wider and unexpected ditch on the further
side, that he was able with a second leap to land us safely and
gently beyond it on the rain-softened earth of the ploughed field.

Now, even in the brief moment when Charley swayed on the top of the
bank and gathered himself for that second spring, I had time (so
swiftly works the mind in the tension of danger to be forestalled) to
note two things: that my pursuers on their heavy chargers had balked
the leap; and that in the orchard, across the little ploughed field
and beyond the low fence, were many people, walking to and fro among
the fruit trees; and I knew from their carriage, from the sheen of
armor, and the gay colors of the various habits, that they were no
common soldiers; and as Charley foundered wearily but with great
courage through the heavy plough my heart was high with the thought
that fortune had brought me the straight road to my end.  And then we
reached the fence, which proved higher than I had thought; yet did my
brave nag pass that too, very cleverly bursting with his knees the
highest rail, which he was too tired to overtop, and though he took
the grass among the trees beyond with a little stumble, it was his
first and last mistake, from which quickly recovering, and, as it
seemed, well aware that his work was done, he stood like an image of
stone, with forelegs stretched in front and nose near down to his
knees.

And then I thought the whole world did heave and turn and swim before
my eyes, and all that I saw through the mist of its convulsion was
two long, shadowy arms reaching from opposite quarters for Roan
Charley's bridle; all I thought, that little was the need to hold a
horse that had turned to stone; all I heard, the sound of a voice far
off, that said: "The Prince of Orange; there is a plot; look to his
safety; search the house, the grounds, or they will slay him."  And
then slowly the earth settled again to its place, the mist began to
clear, and I knew the voice for my own.  And I saw, as one that wakes
from a dream, that he who held my bridle on the near side was Captain
Edward Royston, and straightway I was within a little of so
addressing him, but bethought me in time, and, looking round, asked
where was the master of the house.

Upon which he replied: "I am Captain Royston; what is to do?"

"Sir," I said, very solemnly (yet, for all the gravity of the case, I
was at pains to keep back a smile when I so addressed him, and saw
that he knew me not), "Sir, His Highness is in danger.  Madam your
mother has been by force taken from home, but is now in safety; the
servants that you find in your house are evil men, and of the plot."

Then he that held my horse on the off side, whom I afterwards knew
for that great person that for discretion I shall still call "Captain
Jennings," took his hand from the bridle.

"The lad speaks truth," he said; "a word with you, Captain."  With
that he drew Ned aside, and while they spoke together ("Captain
Jennings" telling, I think, how he feared unjust suspicion of his own
connivance if aught befell His Highness) I marked that six Swedish
troopers did approach, threading their way through the trees from the
gate in the lane that I have above mentioned.  Also, between them and
me, but nearer by no little distance to where I still sat upon
Charley's back, I saw a man stand leaning against the wall of the
granary that stands in the orchard, and thus hidden from the
advancing soldiers that were still, as I supposed, in pursuit of poor
me.  And this man, whether from description or from something high
and noble in the aquiline countenance of him, I knew at once for
William, Prince of Orange.  Now, even as I gazed in idleness of
wonder on the man I held greatest in the world (for did not Edward
Royston serve him with reverence and ardor?), I saw that a little
door in the granary, on His Highness's left, was slowly, slowly
moving back upon its hinges, and a moment later I had one glimpse of
a fat face and a red head peering from the narrow slit of that
opening.  I thought of Farmer Kidd's tale, and again of Madam
Royston's, and straightway drew my sword and clapped heels to my
horse.  Roan Charley, for all his fatigue, responded very gallantly,
and in three of his long bounds we had been beside the Prince, but
for a fellow, long, lean, and black-coated, that drew a pistol from
under his breast, which he fired in my face in the same moment as he
leapt at Charley's head, whereby he undid himself, for, as the horse
reared in terror, I, in as much, struck spurs in his sides, and
Charley leaping forward, we rode clean over our assailant, whom I
struck at wildly with my sword as he fell.  Charley must have found
foothold upon some part of his body, for I remember still with a
thrill of sickness the softness under foot.

Hereafter my recollection of the _mêlée_ that ensued has little
clearness; all was noise and confusion, the band of conspirators
having burst out from their hiding in the granary in desperate effort
to achieve their wicked end even in that eleventh hour and very
moment of discovery.  And even then they might have found success but
for Roan Charley and his rider, which is to me ever a joy to
remember; for, though I recall little and confusedly what befell
around me, I know that after the fall beneath Charley's hoofs of that
rascal (the same that Ned had supposed a very civil servant of his
mother), we reached at once the door in the wall of the granary; but
not in time to prevent the sortie of three men with sword and pistol
in hand (the rest, I believe, came forth by a door on the other
side).  With two of these His Highness was very speedily and coolly
engaged, while the third was aiming a clean downward cut at his head
with a great sword whose gleam seems yet burned in upon my eyes as I
write and remember.  And then, in some manner, Charley and I were
upon him, and my blade received the stroke meant for His Highness's
unprotected head.  And after that I thought something did break (as
indeed it did, being the blade of my brother Rupert's sword).  I
heard the shouts and the running feet of friends closing round, and
then all was darkness and nothing.

The next I knew was a burning in mouth and throat, and awoke to find
myself swallowing some liquid, very foul and ill-savored, held to my
lips by a gentleman I did not know.  I afterwards learned the liquor
was Dutch, and called _schnapps_, the man none other than the great
Count Schomberg, late Marshal of France, and once high in favor of
His Majesty King Lewis; but now chief in command under His Highness
of Orange, having abandoned the highest of military honors and the
favor of the greatest King upon earth for the cause of religion.

So, opening my eyes and looking round, when I had done with coughing
over that vile liquor, I saw not only that a numerous company stood
around, but also that here and there upon the grass among the trees
lay several men, in strange and twisted attitudes such as I had never
before seen; and something told me that these were dead; and I knew
that I was upon a little field of battle, and straightway was like
again to have swooned, when one behind me said in the French language
and kindly tones, but in manner of speech more guttural than men of
that nation do mostly use: "Poor lad!  'T is like enough this is his
first sight of blood."

Which words, calling to my mind how I was habited, and the whole
memory therewith of the part I played, did somehow stiffen my courage
and arouse my spirit, so that I said, with what of hardihood I could
bring into the words: "Indeed, I ask your pardon, gentlemen all.  'T
was the fatigue, I do suppose, of riding fifteen miles at such a
pace, and to the back of that my great fear for the life and welfare
of His Highness of Orange.  I pray you, tell me," I continued,
looking round among the company, "whether His Highness be unhurt?"

And then one came from behind me, and spoke to me in that same voice
that had but now pitied me in the French idiom for my first sight of
blood-shedding.  And when I saw him I knew him for the great Prince I
had ridden to defend.  This time, however, he spoke in English, using
that language certainly with little ease and frequent errors, which
yet I shall make no essay to reproduce in this my narrative, lest I
should thereby bring something of ridicule into an address ever
princely and dignified, and, on this occasion at least, full of grace
and courtesy.  Much, I know, has been said and written of the
harshness of his manner, the bitterness of his tongue, and even of a
certain Dutch boorishness in behavior, of all which I saw nothing at
our first meeting.

Three months later, when our troubles were well past, Mr. William
Bentinck did tell me one afternoon that we walked in St. James's
Park, how to this great but somewhat phlegmatic nature the excitement
of danger was a kind of stimulant necessary to the bringing forward
the lighter and most pleasing qualities of his character; that he had
never seen him gayer, more kindly, nor lighter of heart and
countenance than in the press of a losing fight, himself dismounted
and fighting hand to hand with an advancing enemy, merrily jesting
the while his left hand wielded with deadly effect the sword that his
right arm was too sore hurt to hold.  And I do suppose it was to this
quality in him that I owed the sweet and noble charm of his first
reception of me.

"Young gentleman," said His Highness, stretching out to me his hand,
"it seems that I owe my health and perhaps my life to your timely
presence and your sword."  And I, here falling upon one knee to
receive and kiss his hand, perceived that in my right I still held
the hilt of Rupert's toledo, with the three inches of blade that
remained to it.  "And I hope," continued His Highness, as I let it
fall upon the grass, "that the sword has taken all the hurt to
itself."

"I thank Your Highness," I answered, as I rose, "I have taken indeed
no hurt at all, and should ask your pardon for so unsoldierly
swooning in your presence.  But indeed 't is the first time I have
seen sword drawn in anger, and I had ridden near fifteen miles at
extreme speed to warn Your Highness of the plot that was toward."

"And from this good fellow I hear not only of that great and rapid
riding, but that you come from my friend, Sir Michael Drayton," said
the Prince, indicating with his glance Christopher Kidd, who stood
by, loosing the girths of his steaming horse--the only one of my
company that had yet overtaken his leader.  "Are you then Sir
Michael's son?--or, perhaps, his grandson?"

"Neither the one nor the other, sir," I said, glad that he did so
form his question; "but I do use to live at Drayton Manor, and Sir
Michael is my nearest of kin that lives."  And I was glad that
Captain Royston was beyond ear-shot, being busy among the prisoners
taken, whom very shortly he left in the hands of their guards, and
approached the Prince, saluting as he came.

"There are five slain upon the ground, Your Highness," he said, "and
seven taken in the act, of whom six bore arms; one of these is even
now, I suppose, at the point of death, and one other, I think, has
made good his escape, he being the thirteenth, which makes, as far as
we are informed, the full tale."

"See that no more slip through your fingers, Captain Royston,"
replied His Highness, with something of severity; adding more freely
that he was indebted to them all for prompt and vigorous defence of
his person; then, perceiving that Captain Royston lingered with
further matter in his mind, he asked him what it was.

"With Your Highness's permission I would speak briefly as Edward
Royston of Royston, rather than as one holding Your Highness's
commission," he said; and, the Prince nodding assent, he went on to
express in words very simple and well chosen, the dismay he had felt,
and the extreme regret and shame he had suffered, that so wicked an
attempt on His Highness's life had been made on his land and under
the very walls of his father's house.

Now when the Prince had noted the honesty of his handsome and open
countenance, and perceived the simple candor of his address, his
heart--by no means the easiest, as I was soon to know, of such
access--was a little touched; for, with much benignity, laying a hand
on Ned's shoulder, he said very kindly that his satisfaction with the
officer was only equalled by his obligation to the host; in proof
whereof he then expressed his purpose to entrust to Captain Royston's
keeping for the coming night the persons of himself and the seven
prisoners.  His conference with "Captain Jennings" being but
commenced, he purposed after dinner to continue in conversation with
that gentleman until a conclusion should be reached; to send him on
his way with two troopers as far as Sherborne that same evening; and
to return himself to Exeter the following morning, going somewhat out
of his way, did nothing intervene to forbid, in order to paying a
visit to the venerable Sir Michael Drayton, to whom, said His
Highness, he felt himself in much obligation.

At this point he was interrupted by a very dreadful groan from the
wounded prisoner, and--"I fear, Captain," he said, "there is one of
our prisoners will soon be in stronger keeping than even your fine
house and great loyalty can give him.  Let us see if anything may be
done to lighten his pain."  Whereupon His Highness drew near the
dying man, who had been moved a little apart from his fellows.

Captain Royston and Mr. William Bentinck, who, with displeasure
clearly marked upon his countenance, had followed the Prince's words
to his host, joined him by the side of the dying man, of whom my
view, as I stood modestly behind, was plainer than I could wish.
Indeed it was a dreadful sight that I take no pleasure to recall.
His Highness, bending down very tenderly, wiped the bloody foam from
the tortured lips; the wandering eyes fixed themselves upon the face
of the man they had watched to slay, and then: "The priest--the
priest!" said the dying man.

"Poor fool!" muttered Count Schomberg in French; "he fondly hopes a
priest might yet bring him to heaven."

"The priest--the priest!" repeated the sufferer, but more faintly.

"A priest may at least smooth his passage from earth," said the
Prince, very pitifully, when one stepped out from among the
prisoners, saying: "I am a priest.  If he needs the comfort of the
Church----"

But the dying man interrupted his words.  With a last effort he
raised himself a little, and said in a stronger voice, but broken
with gasping sobs: "It was the priest--it was he that brought me
here--brought me to this.  God's curse upon him!"  And so he died.

But I marked that his eye had not fallen upon him that offered the
comforts of religion.  This man was tall and dark, of a countenance
marked by great nobility, and expressive of a great sorrow, of which
I could not readily determine whether the cause were constant or
occasional, so suitable did it appear to the lines of a face at once
ascetic and severe.  There was that in his eyes, dark and deep set,
moreover, that drew my gaze in a manner I could by no means account
for--which is indeed little wonderful, seeing the man was my mother's
son and my father's, and I knew it not.  To myself I had just said
that the man was not wicked, and but suffered for his evil company,
when the Prince addressed him in tones very different from those I
had hitherto heard him use: "You keep ill company, Sir Priest," he
said.

There was a little pause ere the priest replied, while the two men
gazed, each unyielding, in the other's eyes.  Then: "That I am not of
the company you find me in," said the priest, "is less strange than
to find a Prince of Your Highness's descent and marriage alliance
consorting with rebels and traitors.  In good sooth, I took less
pleasure in these misguided and hapless wretches," he went on,
speaking with a scornful kind of pity, "than it appears Your Highness
does make shift to find in his uncle's rebel subjects.  But I will
tell Your Highness, more for the satisfaction of my carnal sense of
honor than in hope or wish to obtain credence of him, that I had no
part or lot in this attempt at wicked murder.  Your friends," he
added, waving his hand in indication of the officers standing by,
"will doubtless tell you that I neither struck blow nor carried
weapon.  For myself I will add that I knew not the purpose of their
gathering."

"I do not believe you," said the Prince.

"I do not expect belief," said the priest, unruffled in his calm.

His Highness turned from him in a disgust I thought very
discourteous, and at once directed Captain Royston to see them all
under lock and key.  And so the prisoners were hurried off to the
house, and I stood wondering had I ever before set eyes on this
naughty priest, when the Prince approached me, saying, as if nothing
had interrupted our conversation: "I am sorry you have broke your
sword, my pretty lad."  And as he spoke there gathered around us some
half-dozen of the officers and gentlemen that were there--Count
Schomberg, to wit, and Mr. Bentinck, with him that we addressed as
"Captain Jennings," and one that I was soon to know as M. de
Rondiniacque, and some others.  "But that loss," His Highness
continued, "is easier repaired than the cleaving asunder of my poor
brain-pan had been, which was like enough to come about, gentlemen, I
take it, but for the lad here and his horse and sword."

"It is very true, Your Highness," said M. de Rondiniacque; then
addressing me, he observed, courteously enough, but with something of
raillery in his tone, that, if the guard I had used was not
altogether of the schools, it had yet saved His Highness's life as
surely as could the interference of a _maître d'escrime_.

"You are a good Protestant, M. de Rondiniacque," said the Prince,
"and therefore, I make sure, read your Bible well and often."  And at
this the little company laughed as at an excellent jest.  "You will
no doubt have observed in the course of that reading that the pebble
and the sling of the son of Jesse were sufficient to the overthrow of
a most mighty man of war, even as this youth's sword came between my
person and death, while the _maître d'escrime_ was not in the way."

His Highness here turned again to me, detaching at the same time his
own sword from his side.  He then drew it from its sheath, and,
laying that upon the grass, wiped the blade very carefully with his
handkerchief.  And I do think the significance of that action would
have made me well-nigh faint with sickness, with that poor fellow
that had died in cursing some priest lying so near and so still, had
not His Highness straightway handed me the hilt of the weapon that
slew him.

"I prithee, good lad, take this in place of that which is broken," he
said.

And then I forgot the dead man, and grew first hot and then cold for
the great kindness shown to me.  I dropped upon my knee, and--"I
humbly thank you, sire," I said, "for so great an honor."

He reached out his hand to raise me.

"Kneel not to me, boy," he said; "nor call me sire.  I am no king.
But I hope you will keep the sword.  'T is a good blade."

"'T is the same," said Mr. Bentinck, "that His Highness did use at
the siege of Maestricht, the day he received the musket-ball in his
arm."

"You speak truth, friend William," replied the Prince.  "That was an
unlucky siege.  I hope the sword will not bring you my ill-fortune,
young gentleman; for I am at times an unlucky soldier.  But, indeed,
it is Count Schomberg here must bear the blame of Maestricht."

"Did he run, sir?" I asked with simple curiosity, as I gazed in
wonder at the famous veteran.

"Ay, that he did," said the Prince, with a smile of much amusement,
and also with something, I thought, of bitterness in the little lines
about his lips; "for he was on the other side and ran after me.  King
Lewis has done me one good turn.  His breach of faith with the
Huguenots has made us friends.  Is it not so, Count?"  With which
words he stretched a hand to the late Marshal of France; and then,
turning again to me, he raised and gave me the scabbard of the sword,
saying as he did so: "If you ever need good office of me, lad, bring
me that sword as pledge of the boon you would have, even as we read
in the romances was the custom of the princes of olden time.  I have
said it is a good blade, and I will buy it back with anything that
lies in my power."

"Your Highness makes too much of my poor service," I said, as I
thrust the sword in its sheath.  "I did but what lay on me as a duty."

"I could wish all men did so much," he answered.  "Will you have a
commission in my army?"

"Commission!" said Mr. William Bentinck, with a kind of grunting
laughter.  "Commission!  Why, 't is only a boy!

"I am no boy, sir," I replied.  "But, indeed I doubt I am not man
enough."

"Ah, well," said His Highness, "there is time enough.  Princes, my
good lad, are of all men the most exacting.  Where we have
encountered one act of good service we have ever an eye to receive
more."

But here an orderly officer approaching from the house cut short this
interview, no little to my satisfaction, although standing apart I
could not but hear his report, which he said he had been bidden by
Captain Royston to deliver to His Highness.  It seems that, upon the
noise of the fighting in the orchard coming to the ears of the
troopers that were off duty and dining in the great kitchen of the
house, they had turned out helter-skelter and run to our assistance,
thus leaving for some minutes house and stable unprotected.  When all
was over, and the men settled again to duty and leisure, it was found
that one horse was gone from the stable, another man's cloak, and the
helmet of a third; the conclusion being, in short, that the escaped
conspirator had passed that way, and was the thief.  Which matters
did afterwards prove not only true, but of much import to the
fortunes of Drayton and Royston.

And thereafter came Captain Royston himself from the house to bid His
Highness and following to dinner.  To which His Highness bidding me
with the rest, we left the orchard, and through the gardens drew near
to the house.




CHAPTER XIII

I was now soon to find that it may be easier to assume a part than to
throw it off.  At His Highness's invitation I was no little dismayed,
having at the moment but one desire--to get me home, I mean, without
delay.  At thought of the feminine armor of a petticoat I was filled
with a courage greater than any I had yet appeared to show.  So
armed, I felt I could even, without overmuch blushing, confess the
sex of Sir Michael Drayton's messenger.  But this greatness of heart
did at once forsake me, falling away into my great boots, as it
seemed, at first thought of standing up in them and their kindred
garments to say, before all these soldiers, or any one of them, "I am
a woman!"

Seeking, then, for some means of evasion, I laid my hand, on our
being come near to the house, upon the arm of M. de Rondiniacque,
thinking his frank and laughing countenance to offer sure promise of
a kindly nature.  On his then pausing to observe me, I did draw him a
little to one side, asking if it were possible and convenient to him
to make my excuse to His Highness, seeing I was much set on returning
immediately home.

He clapped a hand upon my shoulder, and looking down upon me very
kindly, with yet a comical glitter of mirth in his eye,--"Why, my
brave boy," said he, "I would very willingly do you a service,
whether for your brave deed or your pretty manners.  But, if you will
take an old soldier's counsel," and at this word he twirled his small
and very black mustachios mighty fiercely, "you will not risk
offending so great a man as William, Prince of Orange-Nassau, in so
strongly rising a tide of your fortune.  _Mon Dieu!_" he cried,
laughing and looking in my face too close and keenly for my comfort,
"if the lad is not shy and timorous as any girl!"  And with that he
thrust his arm through mine, and, "If you will ever bear that
commission His Highness named," he said, "you must learn to sit at
meat with soldiers without blushing.  Come, let us go in and contrive
that we sit together.  I doubt not that and a bumper or two will give
you courage!"

After which I dared say no more, but, as he would have haled me by
force into the dining-hall, I begged him stay a moment while I spoke
with Christopher Kidd, to whom calling as he hung forlorn and
hesitating on our rear, I begged him to ride out and pick up as many
as might be of our straggling troop, and to send them one and all
back to Drayton with news that all was well.  Some signs of mirth
appearing upon Christopher's face, which in that predicament of mine
I found very foolish and inconvenient, I continued in harder tones
and with words of command in place of forms of request: "Though you
are but a soldier of a day, Kidd, I believe you know very well under
whose command Sir Michael Drayton's small body of horse left home.
Find of them such as you may within the space of two hours, and see
that they carry out my orders.  At the end of that time you will
report here to the officer of the guard, and await my further
pleasure to escort me on my return.  I dine with His Highness."

Though little used to command, I was not unaccustomed to be obeyed,
and Christopher, closing his mouth on his foolish grin with a jerk,
saluted and marched off to the orchard and his horse with promptitude
worthy of a veteran.

"Well spoken, little soldier!" cried M. de Rondiniacque.  "These raw
levies are the devil, and thrive on a diet of brimstone.  'T is true
they need curses for the most part, but, _mort de ma vie!_ we have
not all such eyes as you to flash lightning on our recruits."

"He did begin his drill no earlier than this morning," said I, with
assumption of much carelessness; for the anger that had, I believe,
stayed Kidd from calling me madam, had left me so trembling that I
feared M. de Rondiniacque holding me by the arm should perceive it.
He but said, however, I should make an officer one day, whatever
became of Kidd, and hurried me into the dining-hall.  As we entered,
the Prince was about taking his seat, and in the slight bustle of the
rest following his example, M. de Rondiniacque and I slipped into two
vacant seats at the lower end of the table.

On His Highness's right was seated "Captain Jennings," on his left
Count Schomberg.  Captain Royston also and Mr. Bentinck were at that
end of the table, while I found myself, to my great discomfort,
surrounded by junior officers of various nations, and, for the most
part, younger even than my friend, M. de Rondiniacque.  With at first
great intent of courtesy, they hurried me from one embarrassment to
another.  Now they would have me drink deep; then, by way, I do
suppose, of enlivening my spirits, they plied me with polyglottic
histories of amorous adventure, growing by steady degrees ever less
pleasing; till at length, finding me grow shorter in reply and
shrinking closer, as it were, into my shell, they abandoned the
attempt to include me in their talk, and chattered among themselves
as I wish, rather than believe, was not their custom.  Much, I thank
Heaven, from the babel of the many tongues, I missed; yet did I
perforce hear more than enough.

After sitting no great while at meat, His Highness, to my great
satisfaction, retired, requesting the attendance of "Captain
Jennings" alone, and making Captain Royston, as their host, occupy at
the head of the table the seat he was leaving.

More than once before the Prince's withdrawing, I had found Ned's
eyes fixed upon me, with the gaze of one that in vain pursues a
memory intangible.  Now, although it had mightily pleased me to
bewilder the man in baffling his pursuit had we been alone together,
I yet, in that company I was in, found his enquiring regard not a
little disconcerting; and, soon perceiving that his changed position
at the table increased the frequency of the attack, I made shift to
summon sufficient courage to ask his permission, on some plea of
fatigue and indisposition, to retire.  Which request he very
courteously granted, begging, however, that I would not leave Royston
before he should find time and opportunity to speak with me.

And so I found my way to the one chamber in the house that I knew;
madam's withdrawing-room, to wit, which I had twice entered when Ned
had taken me, a little maid, to see his mother; a large room, whose
casement, broad, low, and heavily mullioned, looked out with a very
noble aspect across copse and meadow, where the land fell away to the
southward beyond the stream whose rocky channel had been one of the
defences of the house in former days.  And, as I stood idly gazing
from the window, and drumming upon the panes with idle fingers, and
wondering when Farmer Kidd would return, I remembered how in the old
days Ned had told me of some wondrous means of escape that there was
from that old house, which he would one day, if I should grow wise
enough, reveal to me.  And I wished that I had learned it then, that
I might use it now, and so be quit at once of Prince, breeches, and a
false position.

The landscape fading into the early darkness of late autumn, I
stretched myself, half sitting and half lying, on the settle near the
fire that burned fitfully on the great hearth of the chamber; and
here soon forgot the passing of time in a doze induced, as I suppose,
by the warmth of the fire, and the fatigue of my ride and the
subsequent excitements.  From this slumber I was aroused, how long
after my falling into it I know not, by the entrance of a trooper,
doing duty as servant, and bearing two heavy and branched silver
candlesticks, filled with lighted candles.  I was yet rubbing my eyes
to clear my head of sleep and dreams, and striving to sit upright,
when I caught my right spur on my left boot, and straightway
remembered who I was, and how little like it I appeared.  And then,
close on the heels of the soldier with the candles, comes to me M. de
Rondiniacque.

"Aha, my toy soldier!" he cried, as his eye lighted on me, "so 't is
here you have been hiding.  And sleeping, I see.  Well, you may sleep
on, if you will, for His Highness bids me bring you his most urgent
request that you will here stay the night, in order to accompany him
in the morning on his intended visit to your kinsman, Sir
Michael--something----"

"Sir Michael Drayton," I replied.  "I do suppose, sir," I went on,
"that the Prince's urgent request differs little from a command?"

"Faith, you suppose well, young gentleman," said M. de Rondiniacque.
"And therefore I made bold to send your man, when he returned from
fulfilling your order, back to the place you named.  Captain Royston
has already much ado to feed and bed us all."

"And did Kidd obey your orders against mine?" I asked, rather that,
saying something, I might cover my dismay than in any anxiety of
discipline.

"Having seen us together, I think he made little distinction, my
little bashaw," said M. de Rondiniacque, laughing.  "I threatened
him, moreover, with your displeasure, if he delayed.  And now I must
to His Highness."

And with that he left me, thinking very sadly I had enough of being a
man.  Had there been a woman in the house, I had gone to her, and
told her my story.  But to none of all these men did I dare to
breathe my true name and state; unless, indeed, it had been to
Captain Royston.  And I murmured over to myself that title, which did
ring so strange, and yet so proudly, in my ear.  It went stiffly,
too, upon the tongue that was once used to say: "Hither, Ned; not so,
Ned; nay, Ned; but I _will_ have it so."  Well, Ned, I thought, was
ever tender with me, and I might, indeed, at a pinch, make shift to
tell him my name and troubles; but--and then in my mind there lifted
up his head a little devil of mischief, and I vowed I would not so
tell him till I should be enforced; but, having taken a vagary to be
a man, I would hold fast to my purpose, that I might from behind this
mask see more of the man and to what he was grown from the boy that
had been my playmate and childhood's lover.  I was fain not a little,
moreover, certainly, to discover with what complexion of memory he
retained the thought of little Philippa Drayton.  And I thought it
was mightily in favor of my plan that, although on that great night
of his escape from Kirke's men, we had spoken together and our hands
had met, yet since I was a little maid he had never looked upon my
countenance.

At last I heard his step in the gallery without, and, for all its
weight and its jingle of sabre and spur, I had known that footfall
among many, even had I not known him in the house.

Captain Royston came into the chamber, followed by him that had but
now fetched candles, but bearing this time an armful of wood and a
blazing pine-knot.  To draw my old friend's gaze, I heaved a great
sigh, and gazed sadly in the fire, and knew, though I scarce saw, his
eyes to turn on me.  He crossed the room to the further corner, where
I could well mark him without any show of particular regard, and
threw wide a small door disclosing the foot of a narrow and winding
stair.

"Go up," said he to the soldier, "to the room above; kindle a good
fire upon the hearth; light the candles, and when the fire is well
burning, return hither and stand sentry over this door till His
Highness come."

And as the man ascended the stair, Captain Royston closed the door
behind him, and turned to me, who kept my gaze fast on the fire.

"'T was a heavy sigh you heaved as I entered, young friend," he said,
in a most gentle voice.

"Yes, faith," I answered, "it was heavy."  And again I sighed.

He then asked me what it was did make me sad, and I replied I did not
use to be from home, and was mighty lonesome.

"Nay, lad," he cried cheerily, laying a hand of comfort on my
shoulder, "'t is but till the morrow.  You have to-day borne yourself
like a man; be not now homesick like a very maid.  There is company
enough.  Why didst leave the table?"

"I was near falling with fatigue, sir," I answered; "and--and--and,
in truth, I liked not the talk at the table where I sat."

"Poor lad!" said he, gently patting the shoulder where his hand did
lie, and thereafter drawing the hand away; "poor lad!  Would you grow
to be a man?  Harden your ears--your ears, mark me, not your heart."
And I said nothing to him, but to myself that I feared both would
need it ere long.

And then there came to us M. de Rondiniacque in search of Captain
Royston, crying jovially: "Aha! have I found you, truant Master Host?
His Highness did but now ask for you, and wonders somewhat, I think,
at your long absence."

To which Royston replied: "I warrant His Highness knows that a host
without hostess or servants is no little put to it to house, feed,
and bed so many guests.  I will go to him, and make my excuse."  He
then turned to me, saying: "Prithee, gentle friend, be of better
comfort.  It is not to His Highness alone that your great service has
been rendered, and I would not have you cheerless.  Godemar, hold the
lad in talk a while.  All this is strange to him, and he is overborne
with fatigue."  He then took some steps toward the door, but again
turned to my side, and--"Speak your best English, Godemar," said he,
"and your modest jests, if you have them.  None of your ribald
tales,--'t is a home-bred youth."  Upon which, with a kindly nod to
me, and a slap on the shoulder of a weight more suited to my garments
than my sex, Captain Royston left the room.

M. de Rondiniacque looked upon me with a merry twinkle in his eye.

"_Ma foi!_" he said, "M. le Capitaine lays heavy commands upon me.
Must I even do as he says?"

"It were best," I answered, with some severity, and never turning my
eyes from the fire.

"I see not wherefore," said he; "I would gladly cheer you, lad, and
he would take all the merriment from our jesting."

"Indeed," I replied, "I had rather never laugh again than hear more
such talk as did pass for wit around us at dinner."

He flung himself with a movement of much petulance into a chair on
the other side of the hearth, and--"My faith!" he cried, "'t is even
as they did tell me: a sorry land and a sad!  A country, _mort de ma
vie!_ where one must shift with beer for wine, mists for sunshine,
and hags and hoydens for women."

"Alack!" I cried, being vastly amused; "have the women also
displeased your lordship?"

"Gadso!" answered M. de Rondiniacque, "they have, and mightily.  _Mon
Dieu!_ in all the days since we set foot ashore I have not seen one I
would stand to observe a second time.  I begin to see it is easy to
be a Puritan in such a land."

And when I did not answer him, he peered curiously across the
flickering twilight into my face.  Anon he rose and came to me, with
one hand seizing me by the arm, and raising my chin, not over gently,
with the other--"_Ma foi_" he said, laughing, "with laces and
furbelows, and those great eyes, wouldst make a better thyself than
any lass of them all."

So I began to tremble for my secret, and saw no way out but in anger;
knowing, indeed, so little of the ways of men, that I was ignorant of
running a greater danger in that attempt to avoid the less.

I straightway sprang to my feet, flinging off his hands, crying to
him to let me be, or ill would follow, and laying hand upon and half
drawing my sword.

"What, pepper-box!" cried M. de Rondiniacque, "what, will you quarrel
for nothing?  Nay," he went on, with a great laugh, "do but see it
ruffle!  Come, boy, take your hand from your sword, or I will take
the sword from you."

By this, between his tone of contempt and my own fear that I made but
a sorry figure, I was trembling with anger no longer simulated; when,
on my making wholly to disengage my sword, the Frenchman did pounce
upon me with the swiftness of a hawk, catching my wrists, one in each
of his hands, in a grasp that seemed of iron.  I would have wrenched
them free, but found each struggle to that end did bruise and pinch
my poor flesh worse than the last.  Being very near the point of
tears, while yet in my heart raging with anger, I called aloud on
Captain Royston, who, to my good fortune, did enter the room even as
I called.

"Heyday!" he cried, "what 's the matter?  Do not hurt the boy,
Godemar," he went on, when drawing near he saw how I struggled to
free my hands.

M. de Rondiniacque laughed again as he let me go.  "The little fool
hurts himself with striving," he said.  "Had I not held him, he had
run me through with the pretty sword the Prince did give him.  _Mon
Dieu!_ he is anxious to flesh it."

"How is this, Master----?" says Captain Royston, mighty sternly, till
checked for lack of a name to give me,--"on my life, I know not how
you are called."

Now this was a question I had no wish to answer without some previous
consideration; so, knowing I could scarce keep out of my voice the
sound of tears, the pain of whose coming was now some minutes
clutching at my throat, I resolved to use them as cover to my
disregarding his enquiry.

"He has hurt my hands," I said, with a little sob, rubbing my wrists
the while in the manner of a spoiled and petulant child.

"What, baby!" he cried; "I give you a friend to cheer you with his
good heart and ready wit, and you must needs fall a-wrangling with
him; and then, because he would curb your childish passion, must you
weep like a very boy unbreeched?"

"I do not weep," I said; yet could I not check the next sob and some
few tears that fell for the pain I had had.

"No more, lad, no more, for shame!" he answered.  "There was a bold
spirit in you not many hours ago.  Be a man now, for the love of
Heaven."

"With all my heart I would," said I, "if I did know the way of it; to
the end that I might make him smart," I added, wagging my head in the
direction of M. de Rondiniacque.

"Learn to take a jest as 't is meant," said Captain Royston, "and you
may some day grow to it."

"I am as God did make me," I replied pettishly.

"It is rank heresy to cast the blame in that quarter," said M. de
Rondiniacque.

At which Captain Royston laughed a little, but gently bade him hold
his peace, saying: "The boy is in my care, and we cannot make a man
of him before the morrow."

And now the entry of the Prince most happily put an end to the
discussion of my shortcoming as a man.  His Highness was attended by
"Captain Jennings," Count Schomberg, and Mr. Bentinck, with a few
other gentlemen.  And as the doors were flung wide for them the
trooper that had been about preparing the chamber above descended the
little stair, closed the door behind him, and stood on guard
immovable before it, with drawn sword.

The Prince appeared in the best of humors; of which the reason was
very soon made plain.

"Captain Royston," said His Highness, coming over to the fire, "we
are come to a happy end of our conferring, and 'Captain Jennings,'
being pressed for time, must at once take himself again to the road.
His escort is provided, and he would bid you farewell.  It should
indeed be to us all a melancholy parting, for 't is little to be
hoped any man here will again encounter _Captain Jennings_."

When the laugh due to the jest of a prince had risen and died away,
"Captain Jennings" held out his hand to his host, and said:
"'Jennings' owes you much, Captain Royston, though you are like, as
His Highness well says, never to meet him again, yet in your ear will
I tell you that he has a kinsman that is his very double and his best
friend.  I have reason for saying that this gentleman will in the
happier days to come pass by no occasion of furthering the interest
of so stanch a companion, and so generous a host, as Captain Edward
Royston."

To which courteous speech honest Ned replied with some words of his
duty to His Highness of Orange; and I knew well by a certain
stiffness of his manner, which was still clearly marked as he wished
him a safe and pleasant journey, that the favor of "Captain Jennings"
was not such as he wished to earn.

That gentleman, after some other farewells of much grace and
kindness, passed on to me where I stood apart, and with a very
gracious smile on his noble countenance thanked me for the service I
had done him.  On my asking what that might be, he was at some pains
to explain, in a voice meant for me alone, that but for my timely
warning and protection to His Highness, that plot might well have had
a very different and terrible ending; in the blame of which fatal
conclusion he himself, from the peculiarity of his position, would
almost certainly have become implicated.  "I hope, therefore," he
said, "that we shall meet again when I have thrown aside this _nom de
guerre_ to which I have only a sort of left-handed right by marriage
and necessity."  And then first I guessed who he was.  "But," he went
on, "if I do seem to need a fresh introduction, young gentleman, when
that day comes, I beg you will attribute my lack of memory to politic
reasons."

By which, thinking him little likely to encounter and less to
recognize me, I was vastly amused.

"I am ready to wager, my lord," I said, laughing a little, "that the
fault will be neither yours nor the nation's, should you pass me by."

He looked at me for a moment with a glance so keen that I found it
hard to support; then, bidding me farewell, very shortly took leave
of the Prince and departed on his journey to Salisbury.

As the door closed upon him, His Highness crossed the chamber and
tapped Captain Royston on the shoulder.

"You act with little wisdom, Captain," he said, with a merry laugh,
"in the moment when the Protestant religion has triumphed over all
else, to receive with coldness an offer of favor from him that is one
day to be the first soldier in Europe."

"I trust, Your Highness," said Royston, with something of pride in
his tone, "that I have not yet lost the favor of him that is."

"I see we shall have a courtier in you yet, Captain," said His
Highness.  "The day has been long, and I must needs ask my good host
the way to my chamber.  Sleep is a fickle mistress to me, and she
must be wooed in season, or she will have none of me."

"Since the terrible danger Your Highness has this day escaped in my
house but by the goodness of God and this young gentleman's courage,"
said Captain Royston, "I am resolved to beg Your Highness's
acceptance rather of its most secure than its most luxurious chamber.
At the head of this stair," he went on, making the sentry stand aside
as he threw open the door, "is a room neither very large nor finely
furnished.  If Your Highness will, however, deign to make use of it,
he will find the bed good and the chamber warm.  It has no other
approach, and with Your Highness's consent I will myself watch here
during the night, while Lieutenant de Rondiniacque takes my place as
officer of the watch, which has been doubled, and commands every
approach."

"I thank you for your care of my safety, Captain Royston," said the
Prince.  "If the bed be as good as the supper, we will ask none
better between this and London.  But I believe you are over-cautious."

On Captain Royston's explaining that the honor of his house was
involved in His Highness's safety within it, all his dispositions
were very kindly and freely accepted.  Not long after which His
Highness, with some kind words to me on the service I had done him,
and of his purposed visit on the morrow to Drayton, retired to the
chamber already mentioned, being lighted by Captain Royston, and
attended by Mr. Bentinck for some discussion of matters of state.

Whereafter I very soon found myself again alone, the rest departing
in charge of M. de Rondiniacque, commissioned by our host to show
each gentleman where he should lie.  I say I was alone; for the
sentry at the door of the stair to the Prince's chamber counted
little as company, which I was fain to seek in the dancing of the
flames upon the hearth and in my own thoughts.  These were not
uneasy, for I knew that Ned must return as he had gone, and that a
word to him would be my protection if aught inconvenient should
arise; nor were they long, for he soon returned.




CHAPTER XIV

The high back of the settle where I sat being between us, Captain
Royston upon his return did not perceive me until, having dismissed
the sentry and set his candlestick upon a table, he drew near the
fire to warm himself; then, his eyes falling upon me--"Heyday, lad!"
he cried, "I did think you abed and asleep by this.  I scarce know
how I came to forget you.  Let me see--where should you lie to-night?
The house is mighty full, and I would not put you with----"

"Let me share your watch here an hour, Captain," I said.  "I am very
wakeful, and it will be company for us both."

"Will you do so?" he asked with some eagerness, and once more
glancing at me with that same look, at once curious and shy, that I
had before noted.  "Indeed I shall be glad of your company, were it
only to help me keep open eyes."  And with that he flung himself
wearily into a seat over against me, hitching round his belt so that
his sword lay between the long legs that, to rest them the better, he
stretched full before him.  "I was in the saddle all last night," he
went on, "and indeed it seems a week since I was in a bed.  So here
let us sit, you and I, with the fate of England in our hands,"--at
which he pointed to the door of the Prince's stairway.  "Hast
recovered of the spleen?"

I answered him that I was recovered.

"How came he to anger you?" he then asked me.

"Why, sir," I replied, "he did give bad names to all things in
England; and then he fell foul of the women--and--and I do not like
him."

"De Rondiniacque," said Captain Royston, "is a good comrade and a
brave soldier; and, faith, I did think all women were fair to him.
He will fall in love and again fall out thrice in a day.  But no
woman is long fair in his eyes when his fortune has been ill.  There
was a lass in Flanders--" and here he broke into a laugh, and I into
a yawn of subterfuge, in hope to put him off his tale.  For I feared,
unjustly enough, more talk of that kind that I had comprehended but
sufficiently to dislike.  Whereat he asked if he wearied me, and I
answered that he did not so, but that I would know if he were of a
like complexion with M. de Rondiniacque in matters of women and love.

"Nay, indeed, lad," he answered, laughing again; "De Rondiniacque and
I are little akin in such matters.  I have, as he would say, the
slower temper--perhaps the more constant."

"Constant!" said I; and as I said the word I could feel the little
tremor in my laughter which I hoped his ear would not detect.
"Constant to what--to whom?  Ah, there is doubtless some lady that
looks out over the endless canals and ugly windmills of flat Holland
for your return, Captain Royston."

"Nay, nay," he answered, "there is no broad Dutch face wet with tears
of my causing."  And then the mirth died out of his voice, as with a
very tender hesitancy he continued: "But there is, or there was, a
little maid--a child--but, plague on me! what do I babble of?  And
what does so young a lad as you know of these things?"

"H'm-m-m!" said I, as one that could, if he would but speak, lay
claim to knowledge enough and to spare.

"What, what!" he cried, mocking me.  "Is your heart even as tender as
your years?  Does the baby think he knows what love is?"

"On my conscience, yes," I answered; "but I may know and never feel
it, I do suppose."

"What an outlandish boy it is!" said Ned, laughing; and, more
gravely, "when you love, lad, and would have your lady look upon you,
be as when you served us so well this day, and not the child that is
disordered by the chance word of a jolly soldier.  I have heard tell
that women do love one that is a man, be his vows, even as De
Rondiniacque's, never so brittle."

"Perhaps they do," I answered; and wondered, sickly a little in my
heart, how it would fare with me if his were so.  "But," I continued,
"if men's vows are so light, what of that little maid?"

And my gallant Captain seemed to retire, as it were, again into his
shell, saying he would speak of her no more, and that indeed he knew
not wherefore he had called her to mind.  Whereto I said that maybe I
could tell him.

"'T is little likely," said he, smiling as one that suffers the
gambols of a merry child, even to the peril of a wound but half
healed.

"But tell you I can," I persisted; "you spoke of her, not because she
did come to your mind, but because she is never out of it.  Is it not
so?"

Again he looked at me with that glance of enquiry.

"Indeed, I think it is so," he replied; "but how you should know it,
Master----, by my life, here have I had all manner of converse with
you, even to the telling things that have not passed my lips this
three years, and yet I know not your name.  Prithee, tell it me."

"My name is Drayton," I said.

"Is it even so?" cried Ned.  "It is strange.  Where do you live?"

"From here some five leagues on the great road, Salisbury way," I
answered.

"At Drayton Manor, is it?" he asked with great eagerness.

"At Drayton Manor," I replied.

"But old Sir Michael," says Ned, "had no son of your youth."

"Nay," said I, "I am no son of Sir Michael.  But he is my nearest of
kin, and in his house do I live this many a day."

"Ah, so!  I have heard," said Royston musingly, "of other branches of
the family.  But, if Drayton be your home, you can tell me of--of the
child, your cousin; of Mistress Philippa Drayton, I mean, Sir
Michael's daughter."

"Aha! the little maid!  At last we come at his little maid!" I cried,
clapping my hands together in a manner that suited but ill, as I
suppose, with my boots and spurs.

But he, like the man he was, being much occupied in attempt to
conceal the secret he was about revealing, did not mark me, but
sternly stiffened his face and made straight his back, and replied:
"I said not it was she.  But I would have her news.  Is she well, and
is she now at Drayton?"

"Gad 's my life!" I answered, feeling very blusterous and naughty as
I used my father's favorite oath, "it is so.  She is well, and she is
at Drayton.  I would she were not.  She does keep her heart safe for
me, the baggage!  Troth, I have little mind to her--a bouncing,
overgrown country wench, of ill manners, loud tongue, and shrewish
speech.  Pah!"  Whereat I twisted my mouth into a grimace very
disgustful, and I saw the light of anger come into his eye.

"You shall not so speak of that lady," he said, in a tone that was
not loud, yet had in it that which made one part of me shake with
fear, while the rest of the woman was singing a little inward song of
thanksgiving.  Whereof it is like enough he saw in my face some sign,
for he went on more gently to say he knew it was not so; that I but
railed at her in mischief; that I mocked at him because, with
something womanish that is in a half-grown boy, I had divined the
secret of his love.  "My heart," he said, rising from his seat with
eyes that looked afar, as if none was by him, "has never left her
keeping since she did ride upon my shoulder, but her little hands
ever hold me fast, even as they did use to cling and grip me by the
hair."  With that he passed his hand over his head, as if he still
did feel the clutching baby fingers.  Then he came back to me.  "You
see, sir, I let you know at what it is you mock.  Yet if you own the
words were but spoken in jest, I will pass the matter by."

And then I knew that I had been playing with fire, and made all haste
to quench it, owning with averted face that I had indeed but spoken
out of mischief to anger him, and saying that the girl was well
enough.  It was, I suppose, from pride that he took no note of this
grudging opinion, yet it did not control his curiosity.

"And does she keep me in mind?" he asked, as he sank again into his
seat.

"'T is like enough," I answered, as if I cared little for the matter.
"I have heard her name you."

"In what terms?" said he; "I pray you, tell me what she said."

"Indeed, I do forget," I replied, mischief rising once more in my
heart.  "And I will wager there have been times when you have forgot
the minx as readily as I would, if you would but let me, Captain."

"A fig for your wager!" said Royston lightly.  "Why, I have never,
since I was out of England, entered a new town but I have bought some
toy or jewel for her."  And I saw his hand steal to the breast of his
coat, and, guessing that there was a pocket beneath, I began at once
to be mighty curious to know what was in it, and to think my
masquerade had lasted near long enough when it kept me from my rights.

"Do you carry them?" I asked, striving to keep all eagerness out of
my manner.

"Nay, nay," he answered; and, had he been another man, I had thought
his smile and the short and hesitating laugh that followed it
well-nigh foolish: "Nay, 't is but a pair of the new kid-leather
gloves that they do use in France."  And here he drew a small packet
from the pocket I had divined, and added, with much tenderness: "They
did make me think of her pretty hands, and I could no more put them
away from me."

And, as he regarded the packet and gently smoothed the wrapper, I
snatched it from his hand, and--"Let me see," I said, and proceeded
to unfold it.

"Gently, gently!" cried Ned; "they must not be so handled."

"Ay, they would fit me well," said I, measuring one against my left
hand.  "And our hands are near of a size.  Will you give them to me
in her stead, sir?"

"That will I not, young Avarice," he answered, recovering the gloves
with a snatch that took me by surprise.  "My lady's gloves, indeed!
what next, monkey?  Do you think, because you have a small fist and
handle a glove like a great girl, that you will get all you ask?"

"Well," said I, pouting and growing reckless in my delight of the
game I played, "well, I shall have them of her in the end."

"No more, jackanapes," he answered angrily, and I scarce know how I
should have fared had not the door at the foot of the Prince's stair
at that moment opened to admit Mr. William Bentinck.

"His Highness is retired, Captain Royston," he said.  "He renews his
thanks to you."

To which Captain Royston replied that he wished the fare deserved
them better, and enquired whether Mr. Bentinck knew the way to his
chamber.

"I do," he replied.  "I wish you a good-night, Captain Royston.  It
were well," he added, with a dark and significant glance, "that no
further alarm befell--in your house, Captain."

"I am so much of your mind, sir," said Royston, "that I have asked
and obtained His Highness's consent here to watch the night through
myself.  I wish you good rest."  Mr. Bentinck turned again as he
reached the door, saying that His Highness had enquired of him where
the prisoners had been lodged that were taken after the affair in the
orchard.

"They lie under lock and guard in the strong-room above," said
Royston; "all but the priest, who is in the chamber that adjoins it
on the left, for greater safety.  I did not think it well to leave
his clever head to work among them."  And here M. de Rondiniacque,
looking into the room as he went his rounds, very readily undertook,
at Captain Royston's desire, to conduct Mr. Bentinck, that he might
with his own eyes, as Captain Royston said, see how these prisoners
were disposed.  They being departed on this business, Captain Royston
stood gazing moodily into the fire.  It seemed he had quite forgotten
me; and, since it did not fall with my wishes to be left out of his
thoughts, I plucked him timidly by the sleeve, and asked if I had
angered him with my freakishness.

"No, lad, no," he answered, still gazing into the fire.  "I know not
indeed why I told you as much, unless it be that the Drayton face of
you did bring to mind old days, and made me think my thoughts aloud.
I know my poor secret is safe with a Drayton."  And then he turned
and looked hard in my face.

And under his gaze I trembled, and had much ado not to throw my arms
about his neck and cry "Ned" to him.  And yet I dared not, for shame
of my clothes, and so, to change the color of his thought, I said:
"That man does eye you with mistrust, Captain."

"He is no friend to me," said Ned, "nor ever has been.  But His
Highness has no more faithful servant and friend than William
Bentinck.  He had of late warning from France that the Prince's life
was sought after, and that a certain priest should lead the
assassins.  To-day the attack is made, a priest is taken, and all in
my house, and I one of the few that knew His Highness should come to
this place.  I can scarce wonder if he look on me with suspicion, and
would see himself how we guard the dogs above there in the
strong-room."

And then Mr. Bentinck and M. de Rondiniacque returned.  The first was
pleased to approve all he had seen, but pointed out that the prison
of the priest was the chamber to the right of the strong-room, and
not on its left, as Captain Royston had said.  M. de Rondiniacque
here explained that the prisoner had at his order been transferred
from the room to the other, on the report of the sentry that two bars
in the window of the priest's first lodging were rotten and might
easily be burst.

"It will serve as well, nay, better," said Captain Royston, still
dreamily gazing into the fire.  And Mr. Bentinck, expressing himself
satisfied that all was well, departed to his chamber in company of M.
de Rondiniacque.

Now as these matters had for me little of interest, and as my fatigue
was great, I had been growing very weary and full of sleep; so it
came that when these gentlemen left us I signified my pleasure
thereat with a great yawn of weariness and a long sigh of
satisfaction.

"Poor lad!" cried Ned, with such tenderness as he was wont to use to
the child that had so loved and hectored him, "poor lad, you are
faint for sleep.  I will see where we may put you."

"It is not sleep, Captain," I said, stifling a second yawn.  "But I
take little interest in prisoners, and I am, oh! so thirsty."

"'T is the long ride, and your dinner was naught," he answered.
"Keep your eyes open, and watch a while here in my place, and I will
bring you food and wine.  I pray you, do not close your eyes."

And as he neared the door, I saw him start as hit by a thought
forgotten, and--"The chamber on the right," he murmured.  "How came I
to forget?  But he will never find the panel, even though he were a
Jesuit."  And so, with yet another warning that I should watch well
and not sleep, he went out into the gallery.  And I sat by the fire,
wondering what those strange words should mean.  Open indeed I did
keep my eyes, but I believe my mind was not very far from dreams at
the moment when a thing happened so like to a trick of sleeping fancy
that it awoke me quite.  I thought that I saw, in that dim light (for
one great candlestick was above with His Highness of Orange, the
other below in the hand of Captain Royston), a great piece of the
stone wall that made the far side of the wide and lofty hearth slowly
to draw back and recede from my eyes, as a door that is opened
stealthily from behind.  I sat erect and rubbed my eyes, and still
did it draw away from me, and made a noise of rusted grinding as it
went.  And a nameless horror crept over my body till it reached and
seemed to stiffen the roots of my hair.  I would have cried aloud as
I sat and expected something to come whence the door of stone had
gone; but before I could find voice there came from the gap in the
wall the darkly clad figure of a man, who stepped from the hearth,
and stood looking down upon me.  His face I could not clearly
perceive, for the fire was behind him, but the sound of his voice I
thought I had once already heard.




CHAPTER XV

"Hush!" he said gently, thinking me, I suppose, as indeed I was, at
the point of calling aloud on the guard.  "I am unarmed, and would
not hurt you if I could.  What is your name?"  And his voice, for all
that it was young and sweet, sounded like my father's, for which
there was reason enough, as I was soon to know.

"My name is Drayton," I answered simply.

"And the other?" he asked.

"Phil--Philip," I answered; and then I leapt to my feet as one waking
from a dream, saying, as I did so, "though, sooth, I know not why I
tell you."  With my moving he so changed his position that the glow
of the fire fell upon his face, and I knew him for the priest that
had been taken in the orchard.

"Nor I," he said sternly, "for it is false.  I am Philip Drayton."

"What, what!" I cried, in much amazement.  "And is Sir Michael your
father?"

"Sir Michael is my father," he replied.

"And mine also," said I, very joyfully, with yet no thought of the
terrible meaning of his presence.  "I took but little from my name.
Lay the falsehood on my clothes.  Brother Philip, I am Philippa."

He seemed less pleased with the encounter than dismayed by my attire.

"My sister!" he said; "my sister in this guise!"

"Nay, trust me," I said merrily, "none knows me for a maid."

And then he seemed to remember something, and, laying both hands on
my shoulders, he held me off from him so that the light of the fire
fell upon my face.

"My little sister!" said he. "I saw you, then, in the orchard.  And
was it you that saved the life of the Stadtholder of Holland?"

"So they say," I replied, doubtfully, wondering at the joy I saw upon
his countenance.

"I am glad of it," he said, "right glad of it, indeed."  And with
that he heaved a great sigh of relief.

"Glad!" I cried.  "Glad, you say!  How can that be, when you yourself
were one of those that would have slain him?"

"With them indeed I was," he said; "but I had no part in the planning
that foul plot, and took none in its attempted execution.  Had I even
known the wickedness that was toward, I would not have obeyed what I
deemed of all earthly commands the most terrible.  By the happiest
stroke of chance they did move my lodging to the chamber where is the
sliding panel that gives upon the stair by which I have now reached
you.  Old Mr. Nathaniel Royston did show it me when I was but a
little lad and you unborn.  But he brought me no further than this
chamber.  I do remember," my brother continued, with a note in his
voice that seemed to mark the man's sadness to recall a merry
childhood, "I do remember that he said, with his kindly chuckle, he
must not show the rest of the secret to one that like enough would
some day prove a Jesuit in disguise.  Though he spoke in jest, he was
a good prophet.  And now, child," he said, with rapid change to a
manner more urgent, "you must show me what he would not."

"If you mean the secret way from the house," said I, "I do not know
it; nor I would not show it if I did.  I am here on guard duty till
Captain Royston return."

"Sister," said Philip, speaking with voice and words so solemn that
heart and ear were enchained till he came to an end,--"Sister, King
James and his cause are dear to me.  Holy Mother Church and her cause
are yet more dear.  But dearest of all (God forgive me!), dearest of
all to me now, little sister Phil, is our dear father's honor and the
honor of his house.  It is no shame to him or to the Drayton name
that I should work or fight for King James; none if I should spend my
life to bring the dear land back to the true faith.  But what one of
us will hold up his head again if the name must be made foul, and
stink in the nostrils of men, for a base plot of treachery and
assassination?  Therefore, child of my father, for the name's sake,
let me go."

With that he made to pass me and reach the door into the gallery, but
I stepped between and took him by the arms.

"Do not move," I said; "not one step, lest I call on the guard."  And
he stood like a statue of stone, while for a few moments, stretched
by the gravity and tension of my thought into the seeming of hours, I
was silent, and then: "Philip," I said, "if you are innocent of this
wicked thing, why are you in England?"  And in a few words he told me
of the mission on which he was come.  Then said I: "Will you now give
it up--this mission--and return at once into France, if I let you
go?"  And, seeing that he shook his head, "Come," I said; "be quick.
It is that or naught.  Swear it, and you may go for me.  The Captain
will be upon us soon, and then it will be too late."

"Yes," he answered.

"It is an oath--a Drayton's oath?" I asked.  "It is," said Philip.

"Then go, in God's name!" I cried.  "Though, faith, I know not the
secret passage, and I do not see how otherwise you should pass all
the guards."

"I can but try," he answered; and again would have moved to the door,
but in that moment I heard a footfall; and, being more sure from whom
it came than whence, I bade Philip keep still, and ran as light as my
heavy boots would allow to the door, drew it a little back, and
peered into the passage.  Mightily eased in mind by what I saw, which
was little enough, being but the back of the sentry disappearing
round the corner of the gallery, I softly pushed-to the door,
whispering ere I turned: "Quick! quick!  Go now.  'T is your one
chance.  Thank God it was not Captain Royston; and the sentry is for
the moment out of hearing."

And uttering the last words I turned to find myself face to face with
the man for whose absence I had just given thanks to God.  He was
looking at me over the table where he had just set down his
candlestick beside the meat and wine he had fetched for me.  And of
all the terrible things of that night, none, I think, did send to my
heart a pang so sharp as the sight of that flagon of wine and wooden
platter of cold venison; verily, for a moment I felt, with his
reproachful eye upon me, that I was indeed that base thing he could
not choose but think me.

"Thank Him not too soon, thou devil's whelp!" he said.

Philip yet stood where I had left him.  To him I went quickly and
whispered: "Go, while you may.  I will engage him.  He will not hurt
me, for, if needs must, I will tell him who I am."  Then, going over
to Captain Royston with strut and swagger much belying the trembling
that was within me: "Sir," I said, laying hand to my sword, "you give
me an ill name."

"Less ill than your deeds," he answered with great bitterness.  "I
went but to get you meat and drink, and, returning, thought of that
secret way from the room above.  I stepped over the sleeping sentry,
unbolted the door and closed it softly behind me, only to find the
bird flown.  As I drew back the panel he had closed behind him and
followed him down the stair, greatly fearing some mischance from his
evasion, naught I imagined was so bad as the finding you together
planning his escape.  Was it for this I did cherish you, little
viper?"

To all which, though his words did cut me to the heart, I but replied
that I was no reptile, and that therefore he lied, hoping by such
naughty words to provoke him to quarrel with me, while Philip was
about escaping, purposing thereafter to tell him the truth, when that
was accomplished for which I would not have him even in his own
conscience held responsible.  Me they could not very heavily punish,
since from His Highness of Orange I took no pay, nor had sworn to him
any oath.  Nor was I altogether hopeless of persuading Ned to conceal
his knowledge of what it would then be too late to prevent.

"Let me pass, boy," he cried, "or I will whip you soundly with my
belt."  But when he would have put me aside, as I stood between them,
I held him fast to the utmost of my strength.  Finding I would still
cling to him, he put his hand to the buckle of his belt.

"Whip, then," I said, "for the man shall go free."  And, though my
flesh did most prophetically shudder beneath the imminent stripes, I
thought that here was no bad way of gaining time for Philip, when I
should come to weep, in Philippa's proper person, for the pain of
that whipping.  But he flung me off, muttering a plague on the
Drayton countenance of me, and that the priest would make off if he
did not seize him.

"He shall!" I cried, half drawing my sword.  "What!  Art afraid to
draw on a lesser than thy hulking self?"

"False and ingrate though you are, I would not hurt you," he said;
"and I will not call upon the guard; but I will have him again secure
in his chamber, and so shield you, little devil, from all punishment
but what I will myself administer when all is done."

And as he advanced upon me and would have seized me, I lifted my
cloak that was on the back of the settle and flung it over his head,
where, for a brief space, despite his struggles, I held it.  And
while his eyes were thus blinded for a moment, Philip, swift and
silent, slipped past us and through the door of the stair to the
Prince's chamber.  Royston, however, soon flung me off and tore the
cloak from his head.  And I saw at length great anger in his face,
and with a last essay at strategy did leap to the door that gives
upon the gallery, as if indeed I defended Philip's retreat; and
there, with drawn sword and taunting words, I defied him.  And then
he came, and our swords met.  And finding, as well I had known I
should find, that he was too strong for me, I was, after a pass or
two, at the point of calling him by the old name and of telling mine,
when he did something that had formed no part of the teaching he had
given me with the foils, so that I found myself speedily at his
mercy, and felt the sharp, cold prick of steel low down upon my neck.
And then I thought my end was indeed come, and I tried to murmur:
"Spare me, dear Ned," but could not.

Now all these things--from Ned's return to my foolish fainting at the
first blood--that have in the telling taken so long did happen so
quickly that perhaps seconds rather than minutes were their proper
measure.  And my enemy has since told me that what I have called my
swooning seemed but the closing for a few moments of my eyes.  But,
however that may be, I do think it endured sufficiently for his great
concern.  For when I opened them I knew not at all where I should be
until the white solicitude of his face bending close over brought me
very soon to the consciousness of the strong and tender arms that
held me.  So, seeing I was come to myself, he led me towards the
hearth, and set me in a chair.  And then I began to feel a little
smarting and a warmth of trickling blood.  Taking my handkerchief, I
thrust it beneath waistcoat and shirt, and pressed it upon the spot
that did so smart, whence withdrawing it and seeing the blood upon
it, I shuddered.

"Nay, nay," said Ned, while the lines of anxiety upon his face belied
the little laugh he forced from his lips, "fret not for a little
blood.  I thrust not hard.  Wherefore did you anger me, monkey?
Come," he added, laying his hand to the breast of my shirt and
fingering the buttons with that awkwardness that a man has ever for
garments that are not his, "I will heal it."

"No," I said, pulling away his hands, "you must not."

"But I would see the hurt, lad," he said.  "I know not why, but I am
sorry I have hurt you.  God knows, I have killed men and thought
little of it, but this scratch to a child does mightily vex me."  And
again he would have loosed the buttons.  "Come, open your shirt," he
said.

"I say I will not.  I am not the lad you think me, sir."

But even then he did not understand, but took my two hands in one of
his, so great and strong that mine might scarce writhe themselves
about within it, while he set himself to do what I would not for all
his asking.  And so it was that I came to the last line of my
defences.  "Let be, dear Ned," I murmured, in that tone of pleading I
had ever in the old days used when his will did offer to prove the
stronger.  "Let be, dear; 't is--'t is thy little maid, Phil," I
said, and dropped my eyes before him, and let my prisoned hands lie
still.

He stared upon me in an astonishment of wonder that discovered the
white all round his eyes, and at first he would not believe.

"Nay, nay," he said, "it is not so!"  And I lifted my eyes and so
looked into his that he could no longer doubt.

"Verily, Ned, it is I.  And I had told the sooner," I said, "but
that--but that--" and, my words then failing, I again dropped my gaze
before his.

"Phil!" he cried.  "Is it even my little friend Phil?  'But,' you
say--but what?"

"But that I would not tell you--and could not--was ashamed, Ned, and
did mightily desire to know had you forgot me."  And here, laying my
folded handkerchief to my wound inside my shirt, and fastening all
close above it, I did see his face so lose color at thought of the
hurt he had given me, that I laid my hand upon his, saying: "Be not
vexed, sweet Ned, 't is but a scratch."

"I am right glad of it, Phil," he answered, "if it be so.  But indeed
you should not run about in this guise.  How came you to be so
dressed?"

"That story must wait," I replied merrily.  "But 't is the first
time, Ned, and shall be the last."

"And if you must needs be a man," he went on, "but for a day, you
should cleave like a man to one side, and not be so greedy of strife
as to draw sword on both.  There will be trouble over this priest
when he is taken, as he will be, by the guard without."

"Listen, Ned," said I.  "That priest is my brother."

"What!" he cried.  "Surely it is not Philip!"

"Philip it is," said I, "and no other, though I did not know him
until he told me even now in this room.  And also he did tell me,
Ned, that he had no part in the assault upon His Highness."

"So much," said Ned, "is true.  I marked him."

"He told me, moreover," I continued, "that the business that brought
him to England was fair and honest, though it was for King James.
There was another priest did force or trick him into companying with
the murderers.  Ned, dear Ned, I did mean letting him go for our
father's sake and our name."  And here I found no power, and perhaps
little will, to restrain the catch of a sob in my throat.  "Men must
not say 'spy,' 'plotmonger,' 'assassin,' when they say Drayton, Ned.
You do forgive me?"

"Right gladly," he answered, and seemed to muse for a little.  And
then, "'T is well," he said, "that I did not wake the sentry that lay
sleeping at his door."

"Why did you not?" I asked.

"Because," he replied, "though I thought all was safe, I would not
have it known that I had left my post."  With that he went softly to
the door of the gallery and listened.  "It is strange," he said, when
he was come again to my side, "that I hear no sound of his capture.
Yet he could not pass the sentry at the stair-head."

"He did not go that way," said I.

"But it was to defend that door," he retorted, "that you drew on me."

"Ay, dear Ned," I answered, "but that was to deceive you."

"But why, cunning one," he said, "did you not at once tell me all?"

"I feared you would be mighty stern," I answered; "also, I was loath
to tell you who I was.  Moreover, Ned, I did think it best for you to
have neither knowledge nor share in his escape, if I might procure it
without your aid.  I was afraid for you."

"And yet not afraid of your life?" he asked.

"Nay, that too.  But I thought," I replied ruefully, "that I had
enough cunning of fence to keep you off for a while; for I did often
use to hold my own with the foils against you.  In extremity I was to
cry: ''T is I, Ned! kill me not!'  But you were so fierce and
strong."  Whereat he laughed a little, sheathing his own sword and
handing me mine.

"These are not foils," he said.  "But, if your brother went not by
the gallery, where then?  Is he returned to the chamber above?"  And
he pointed to the gaping mouth of the secret stair.

And right upon his words Philip entered the chamber from the Prince's
stairway, and, closing the door behind him: "I am here, Royston," he
said.

Royston heard, and, turning, grasped him by the hand.  "Ah! so it was
there you did hide, old friend," he said.  "Faith, they did spoil a
good man of his hands when they made you priest."  And then I saw
Ned's eyes travel to the door just closed; and he dropped Philip's
hand, and his face blanched.  "In the name of God!" he cried, "what
did you up there?  Say that you were not in the Prince's chamber!"
And for the first time and the last I saw Edward Royston shaken by a
passion of fear.

"It is from his chamber that I come," said Philip, speaking and
bearing himself with great serenity.

Poor Ned caught his breath with a sound sharp and hissing.  "Then, as
there is a God above us," he whispered, "if any harm has happened, I
will slay you and the maid your sister, though I do love her, only
before I kill myself."

"Go," said the priest, pointing to the stair, "look on your Prince as
he sleeps."

"Yes, I will go," replied Ned, flushing a little with hope born of
Philip's calm.  "But I will not leave you free."

I caught his great horseman's pistol from the table where Ned had
laid it after escorting His Highness to his chamber.

"Go up, Ned," said I; and to Philip, as I pointed to a chair, "Sit
there, brother."  And to Ned again: "If he but rise from his chair
before you return, I will shoot him, as surely as you shall kill me
after him.  Is it primed?" I asked, for the pistol was of the pattern
then coming into use, discharged by means of a falling flint.  And
he, taking it from my hand, and raising the dog, and peering into the
pan for the priming, I added: "But he will not move, for he has done
no wrong."

He put the weapon in my hand.  "You will not fail me?" he asked, with
a countenance very awful to see.  For answer I looked once in his
face.  He turned and went swiftly through the little door and up the
stair.

Philip, as I think, knew it was no vain threat that I had made.  But
I, believing his conscience clean, had little doubt of a willing
captive.

The time passed unbroken with a word; hours it could not be, but
whether minutes or seconds I do not know.  And somewhere in the heart
of my confidence there throbbed a little pricking pain of doubt.
For, brother as he was, to me the man was yet a stranger.  What if he
were of those with whom all means are held lawful to the cherished
end?  Had not I, but an ignorant girl, done for one end what I had
held base indeed for another?  And for answer I clung to the stock of
my weapon, and swore he should die if His Highness had suffered.  For
not only Drayton, but Royston honor also lay in the hollow of my
hand.  But I swore, too, that I would not long survive him; and, if
Ned would do it, even death would not be wholly without sweetness.

At last a step was on the stair, and my eyes went again to the little
door.  And, when I saw his returning face, I laughed aloud.

"You may well laugh, Mistress Philippa," he said, sheathing the sword
that had not, I suppose, left his hand since it had leapt from the
scabbard on his first doubt of Philip, "for I was indeed a fool to
doubt him."  Then, turning to Philip: "I did you wrong, Drayton," he
said; "the blame must lie on the evil company we did find you in."

"I should myself, I fear, doubt any man in such case," answered
Philip.

With that they fell to considering what should be done.  Philip was
at first for returning to his chamber above.  But Ned had already
taken his resolution.  Sir Michael, he said, should not, in the sweet
evening of a life of honor, see his house come to shame.  "You
cannot, I do suppose," he continued, "bring proof or witness of your
innocence in the matter?"

"He that alone could clear me," replied my brother, "is escaped.
Moreover, I do not think he bears me any good-will."

"Then you must go," declared Royston, in accents very positive.

And I could not find it in me, for all the risk to him, to say him
nay.  So without more ado Ned went to the hearth, where, by means I
did not till long after understand, he very quickly closed the
opening in the wall whence Philip had entered.  He next caused to
appear, on the opposite side of the fire, a passage that was the
counterpart of the first.  He then returned to the table, and,
pouring out wine from the flagon he had brought for me: "Drink," he
said to Philip, "and listen.  There is little time to spare, for the
officer of the watch will soon go again upon his round.  You found
but half the secret.  There," he said, pointing to the grim aperture
in the wall of the hearth, of which the dancing light of the flames
served but to mark the deeper gloom, "there is the other half.
Descend these stairs and follow the gallery.  You cannot miss the
way.  It will take you out among the rocks below the bridge.  Thence
follow the stream until you are come to the old mill, whence you may
with ease reach the highroad."

"From the mill," answered Philip, "I shall know my way.  God bless
you, Royston!  It is for the old man's sake."

He grasped Ned's hand, laid his own upon my head as if in
benediction, and would have left us.

"There is one word more to say," said Royston; and Philip turned on
the edge of the hearth to hear it.  "I cannot let you go," continued
the man who would not take the smallest risk of harming his master
even in the moment when he was going open-eyed into the danger of
branding as a traitor, "I cannot let you go to do further hurt, how
honest and open soever, to the cause I serve."

"As I gave it to my sister but now," answered Philip, "you have my
promise to do nothing for the King, nor against him of Orange, until
I have set foot in France."

"It will serve," replied Ned.  "But--" he added, and then paused, as
if with a hesitation of delicacy.

"What?  Another doubt?" cried Philip, with a laugh.

"They say--with what truth I do not know," continued Ned,--"but said
it is, that those of your order have strange quirks and quibbles to
ease the conscience of oaths and other matters."

"Ah!" said Philip.  "On what, then, or by what, shall I swear to you?"

"Swear me no oath," answered Royston.  "Give me your hand and your
word as a gentleman of England to abide by the spirit of your
promise."

So Philip gave him his hand and a straight look in the eyes.

"You have it, lad," he said, in convincing accents of simple truth,
and so left us, disappearing into the dark chasm of the wall.

Now Ned had but just closed behind his retreat the door of stone (by
that means which I now know, but will not here set down; for who can
tell if political trouble be even yet forever at an end in England?)
when there came a hand upon the door.  Ned dropped into a seat,
muttering: "But just in time!" while I, feigning sleep, stretched
myself in my corner of the settle.

"Is all well, Captain?" asked the cheery voice of M. de Rondiniacque,
as he entered from the gallery.

"All is well, Lieutenant," replied Royston, with a very fine
assumption of carelessness.  And then the officer of the watch drew
near, looking down upon me, as I suppose (for my eyes were fast
closed), with curiosity.

"_Ma foi!_" he cried, "the peevish youth leaves you not, Captain.  He
is mighty pale in the face for one that sleeps."

"He is little used, I think, to fatigue," replied Ned.  "Is all well
without, Lieutenant?"

"_Mon capitaine_," said De Rondiniacque, "not a mouse stirs."  And so
saluted and retired as he had come.

When the sound of his feet had died away,

"Thank Heaven!" I whispered, "the danger is past!"

"For your brother, yes," Ned answered softly.  "For us it is to come."

"Nay, indeed, I hope not so," said I.  "And for him, how shall I
thank you, Captain Royston?"

"Dear child," he said, with a flash of eagerness lighting his eyes,
"do not call me captain.  Were I not like ere long to be a man
disgraced, I could ask you for thanks, but----"

And I, who had ever wholly trusted him and desired nothing so much as
that he should ask in payment what had long been his, made no parley
with modesty, but at once replied: "Nay, but ask, dear Ned; do but
ask.  You will never in my eyes be disgraced."

But when he began to reply that it was a great thing he would ask, of
which the granting would bear the balance well down on the other
side, Dame Fate played the careful _dueña_ to the poor maid that
thought herself in hands safe enough without any such protection.

I mean that before Ned was well launched in that tale of what he
would have of me, the door at the winding stair's foot did again
open; and, of all the many times these divers doors had in the last
few hours moved upon their hinges, this was the worst opening; for,
wrapped in a great black cloak thrown hurriedly around him, there
came His Highness of Orange.  And, but that I knew none other could
then come that road, I do not think I should have known him for the
man that had of late bid me so kindly good-night.  For over his face
was a cloud of anger very awful to see.

We sprang to our feet, and Captain Royston saluted.  Passing this
military courtesy unacknowledged, the Prince at once addressed him in
a voice so harsh and with a manner so cruel (as it seemed to me) that
I fell into a great fear and assurance that he had by some means
discovered both too much and too little; and my heart seemed to melt
to water within me, so that I despaired of ever setting my lover
right in the eyes of his Prince.

"You watch well over my slumbers, Captain," was indeed all he said;
but voice and countenance were more than words, and I felt as I have
said.

"It has been my endeavor, Your Highness," answered Royston, with much
dignity, and a face the color of ashes.

"A good watch: a mighty careful and anxious watch, Captain!" the
Prince continued.  "I do not always sleep, Captain Royston, when my
eyes seem closed, and I truly believe your care lacked little of
prolonging my rest to the awful Day of Judgment."

"I do not understand Your Highness's words," said Royston.

The Prince crossed the room to the outer door, and, with his hand
upon it: "I shall presently explain them," he said, and so went out
into the gallery.

"Ned," I cried, so soon as he was gone, "I will tell him all!"

"That you shall not," he replied.

"How much does he know?" I asked, trembling as I spoke.

"I cannot tell," answered Ned.  "But to tell him all in this mood
will but harm you and yours; perhaps lead to Philip's capture, and
yet do me no service.  He will never pass over this one thing,--that
I did let your brother go.  And he will know that soon enough,
telling or none."

And here the door opening again, we were perforce silent.  I could
hear His Highness's last few words to the sentry, spoken in a tongue
I took to be Dutch, because I did not understand it, but, among them
occurring the names Schomberg, Bentinck, De Rondiniacque, I guessed
he had summoned those gentlemen to attend him.  Then His Highness
returned into the chamber, and for a while we stood silent, regarding
one another as the footsteps of the sentry died away down the gallery.

At last Royston would have spoken.  "Your Highness--" he began.

But the Prince interrupted him.  "Be silent," he said, "and wait."

So in silence we waited, but how long I do not know.  At length came
M. de Rondiniacque, to be soon followed by Count Schomberg and Mr.
Bentinck.  These two had, it appeared, resumed their clothes in
haste, and concealed the disorder of their attire each in long
horse-cloaks, even as His Highness had done.  And in these three
stern figures of Prince, soldier, and statesman, close wrapped to the
chin in dark and twisted folds of cloth, there was, I thought, an
awful likeness to the bench of judges that sat in Hades.

When the last had entered, the Prince thus addressed the three: "It
seems, gentlemen, that in the master of this house I have an enemy."

At which point Mr. Bentinck, without at all staying the flow of the
Prince's words, ejaculated a deep and guttural "Ah!" as one finding
but what he had looked for.

"I therefore purpose, gentlemen, to question Captain Royston in your
presence, and thereafter to take your censures in the matter of
bringing him to fitting military trial for treason."

"I am no traitor to Your Highness, nor to any man," cried Royston,
with blunt indignation.

"That we shall soon see, I believe," said His Highness.  "Did you not
appoint yourself this night, with my consent, the innermost guard of
my person?"

"I did," answered Royston.

"Then where is the prisoner; he that called himself priest?" asked
the Prince, turning on him a gaze that called to my mind tales I had
read of the Inquisitors of Spain, so piercing and ruthless was it.

"He is escaped!" replied poor Ned.

"By your aid?" asked the Inquisitor.

"By my aid," replied the accused.

"He was here in converse with you?"

"He was."

"By what means did he avoid the guard?"

"That," said Royston, "I will not tell."  And his eyes flashed, and
his head, never humbled, rose yet more erect; and I knew he was glad
he could now use boldness where he saw he was to expect no mercy.
And, of the three men that were listening to these questions and
answers, one said: "Oh!" another "Ah!" while the third drew in his
breath with a sound of hissing.

"I see, gentlemen," said William, "that you mark him."  Then, to
Royston: "To what end did you aid his flight?  Will you at least tell
me that?"

"Nor that neither," said he boldly, yet without insolence.

"The priest," said His Highness, "did enter my chamber while he
thought I slept."

"'T is like enough that he did," replied Royston.

"And afterwards you also," said the Prince, "with naked sword."

"I did," said Royston, "but to no end but to be assured of Your
Highness's safety."

Now when Captain Royston had first declared the escape of the priest,
I had marked M. de Rondiniacque step for a moment into the gallery,
whence he soon returned.  It appears that he had in that moment's
absence despatched one of the three soldiers that were on duty
without the door to the room on the floor above, whence that escape
had been effected.  This man now rapping upon the door, M. de
Rondiniacque opened to him, heard his report, and returned to his
place beside Marshal Schomberg.  His Highness observing these
movements, and enquiring what was to do, M. de Rondiniacque replied
that it was even as Captain Royston had said, the priest's door being
unfastened and his chamber empty.

His Highness acknowledged the news with a brief gesture, and
continued: "Do I then, gentlemen, greatly err to suppose that this
house has been a snare to us?  Do not the events of this night give a
dreadful significance to those of the afternoon?"

"It is plainly so," said Count Schomberg.

"Your Highness," growled Mr. Bentinck, "knows well my opinion, from
the warnings I have already given him."

As it appeared now M. de Rondiniacque's turn to add his voice to this
concert of his superiors, while yet no sound came from him, the
Prince turned upon him a keen glance of enquiry.

"I must agree, Monseigneur," he said, with a very lively distress
appearing in his countenance, "unless, indeed, there be some reason
behind it all, which Captain Royston may now disclose.  I have always
found him a gentleman of the nicest honor," he continued, gathering
courage, "and I observe that there is against him no proof but what
his own word has afforded.  None saw the unfastening of the door,
none saw the man's escape: it were more after the fashion of the
vulgar traitor to deny all, and to ascribe his appearance in Your
Highness's chamber--" and here the good Frenchman checked his speech.

"To what, sir?" demanded the Prince, the gloom of anger growing, I
thought, yet deeper upon his face.

"To the disordered fancy of an uneasy sleeper," replied De
Rondiniacque fearlessly.

"Your advocacy carries you too far, Lieutenant," said His Highness,
in tones that I feared must at once silence our only friend.

"Your Highness will pardon me if I point out that I make no defence
for Captain Royston," insisted De Rondiniacque, stepping a little
forward with a graceful ease and a frank glance in His Highness's
face that I think had taken by storm any woman's heart less strongly
garrisoned than the only one in reach.  "I but point out the
traitor's refuge, of which he has made no use.  If I err in saying as
much, I will beg Your Highness to remember that the accused gentleman
has been my friend and comrade."  With which words he saluted and
retired to his former position.  And I think that what he had said
and the way he bore himself were not wholly without effect upon the
Prince: for he turned to Captain Royston, and asked him, with some
slight approach to gentleness, had he any explanation to offer.

"I can but assure Your Highness," said Captain Royston, "that
throughout I have done nothing adverse to Your Highness's great
cause, nor to his person, nor to the honor and faith I do hold them
in."

"And is this all?" asked William.

"Before these gentlemen, sir," he replied, "it is all.  But I hold
the true fulness of the matter ever ready for your private ear."

"My private ear, sir," answered the Prince, "is like to be much
abused if I give my closet for every traitor's subtile excuses."

"I offer none," said Royston, with the rigid pride of despair.

"And none," said His Highness, "save in this company, will I hear.
Keep your tale, sir, for to-morrow's court-martial.  You are under
arrest.  Your sword, Captain Royston.  Lieutenant de Rondiniacque,
see to it that this one at least do not escape."  And then, as poor
Ned slowly drew his sword, and tendered the hilt to the Prince, His
Highness, waving it aside, signified to M. de Rondiniacque by a
gesture that he should take it.

"'T is not such," he said, "that I have need of."

Which bitter speech came near to breaking down the restraint in which
the man had held himself.  I saw the blood fly to his face, the
half-step forward, the hands clenched by his sides; I heard the one
dread word on his lips.  "God--!" he gasped, and again curbed himself.

"No words of heat, sir!" said the Prince.  "I did once take you for
my friend.  Is mine the fault that you prove an enemy?  Weigh well
what defence you will make to-morrow; let me warn you that
courts-martial in time of war are swift in procedure and deadly in
sentence.  Should such court hear from your lips no more than we have
now heard, make your peace with God."  And with that he would have
left the room; but I, beside myself with terror, caught him by the
arm, and tried to speak.

The Prince, however, shook me off, bidding me roughly not to court
his notice; saying that this was not a court of justice nor of favor,
but a camp; and that I was happy not to come within the purview of
its jurisdiction.

But I found my tongue, and said: "Your Highness must in courtesy hear
me."

On which, with little enough, he bade me speak.

"I do solemnly swear," said I, "before the God that shall judge us
all----"

"Beware, young man," interrupted His Highness, "lest you take that
awful name in vain."

"The more awful, great, and holy," I replied, "the readier my will to
take it now.  And even so I swear that Captain Royston is no traitor.
What he has done, I have done.  I will tell Your Highness all."

"Be silent," said Ned.  "I do forbid it.  You harm my case."

"Nay, then," I replied, "I will not.  But it is even as I say."

The Prince looked in my face, and I thought that his did a little
soften.  "I would I believed you, boy," he said, in gentler tones.
"But I do not believe."

And with that a great hope sprang into my mind, and--"Some day you
must believe," I cried.  "But now I will ask no more than Your
Highness has already granted."  And I drew forth from its sheath the
sword His Highness had given me.

"What is your meaning?" asked the Prince sternly, the frown coming
dark again across his face.

"They say that I came between Your Highness and great danger," I
replied, with an inward prayer for the courage and the skill of words
that I so sorely needed, "in recompense of which you have given me
this sword.  According to the word that was given with it, I now
render it again," and here I knelt before him, holding out the weapon
by the blade, the handle toward the Prince, "praying that my friend,
Edward Royston, Captain in Your Highness's Swedish Regiment of Horse,
may stand in rank, duties, and honor, as he stood before this matter
did arise.  And I ask, moreover, that, when there shall be an end of
the present troubles, Your Highness will bring him to fitting
examination and judgment, to the end that his virtue may appear to
all men."

"'T is a request of many heads and much length," said the Prince,
with a smile of much sarcasm.

"Indeed, it has but one head," I replied.  "I pray Your Highness to
suspend his case till the war be done.  Is it granted?"

"No," said the Prince; "it is not granted, and it shall not be."

"And wherefore not?" I demanded, with a boldness that does at this
present vastly astonish me to think on.

"I gave the sword, with its pledge," he replied, "to one I thought
loyal to my person and a friend to my cause, the liberties of
England.  I am not, and may never be, a king; and I have not
learned," he said, with irony very cynical, "to grant favor to
traitors."

"But you are a great Prince," I persisted; "a Prince, I have heard
tell, that never departs from his plighted word.  This pledge I hold
until it be redeemed.  Again I entreat Your Highness to return to
Captain Royston his sword."

"Give me that in your hand," he said, after a moment's thought, which
had taken him, with a few pondering paces, to some distance from the
spot where I yet knelt.  But as I rose to bring it to him, I believe
he read in my face the joy that I felt within, for, raising his hand
with a gesture that at once checked my advance--"Nay," he said, "I
will not give him back the sword he has dishonored.  But, for my
word's sake, he has his life and liberty.  Let him begone.  And if he
cross my path again, to raise his hand by never so little against me
or mine; if he be found after this night ever within my lines, he
dies--as spies die, _Master_ Royston," he added, turning upon him a
glance of keen contempt.  Then, after a little pause, he said, with
great solemnity, "May the life I give serve unto repentance."

In that moment I think poor Ned's heart was very near breaking.  In a
voice slow and measured from the restraint he used, he said that he
would not accept his life at such a price.  His Highness, replying
that the choice did not lie with him, turned sharply to me and said:
"Give me the sword."

And then the sight of the stricken man's white and ghastly
face--stricken for his faith to me and my people--inspired my heart
to the most audacious act of my life.  I took the sword by the hilt,
and, pressing hard upon it with both hands, bent down the lower part
until a portion lay upon the floor.  On this setting my foot with all
my body's weight to back it, I wrenched the hilt over toward the
point, so that the blade broke some seven inches from the end.  M. de
Rondiniacque, stepping forward to arrest my purpose, was too late.  I
waved him back with a gesture I took to be mighty full of
haughtiness, and, standing firm upon the fragment, I presented the
hilt to His Highness of Orange.  On the snapping of the blade the
Prince had started in anger; as I handed him the truncated weapon, he
drew back and--"What is this?" he cried.

"Your Highness grants no more than half my prayer," I replied.  "I
render half the pledge."

"The greater half," he said, and in despite of himself he smiled.

Being by that smile much emboldened, I answered: "Then I am more
generous than William, Prince of Orange.  For life," I said, lifting
from the floor the broken point of the sword, "is less than honor.
Yet, like His Highness, I keep the point that kills."




CHAPTER XVI

When I try to write that part of my story that should here
immediately ensue, I find the attempt at first more destructive of
the feather than the nib of my pen.  If I close my eyes and seek to
live again in memory the hour that followed upon what I have last
related, the result is always the same: I find myself awaking, as it
were, from a kind of inner dream to the outward consciousness of
heavily pouring rain, the rhythmic jingle of bridles, and the
discordant squeaking of wet saddle under wetter boots.

For Ned and I are out in the foulest night of that foul November, and
Roan Charley beneath me makes brave use of his tired limbs to come
the sooner at his own stable.  And then the sound of Ned's voice
speaking to his horse in some manner brings back to me a few
incidents of our passing from my Lady Mary's withdrawing-room to this
wet and pitiless night; things which at this time of writing I do not
clearly nor directly recall, but merely remember that I did then
recollect; how His Highness had turned his back upon us, and departed
in company of Mr. Bentinck and Count Schomberg; how Ned had sworn he
would not leave his own house, saying they should hang him in the
morning if they would; how M. de Rondiniacque and I had between us
well-nigh forced him from the house; and how, with the Frenchman's
help, I had gotten the two of us to horse; and how this good friend
had, ere we left, said many things; but not one word of his could I
recall.

So, having gathered out of my stupor the remnants of the nearer past,
I was already again in my mind busily at work with divers plots and
plannings to bring out of this dismal present a glorious and golden
future.  This change had been indeed brought to pass; nor was Dame
Fate's change of front tedious of accomplishment; but I feel it is
due to any that reads me to confess at once that the passage from
evil fortune to good was the work rather of the hand of God and the
goodness of men, than brought about by any skill or wit of the poor
maid that would gladly have foregone all merriment here and hereafter
to see once more a smile on the lips of the man she loved.

I have said that the present was dismal; to my companion, indeed, it
could be no otherwise; yet to me the awful gloom of disfavor and
disgrace was somewhat lightened by a little throb of joy, trembling
and intermittent indeed, but growing in force, and of decreasing
interval, as the horses swung, splashing through rain and mud, and
their riders spoke never a word.  I was a woman; and I was out alone
in the darkest night of our two lives with the man who to me was all
men since God gave me memory; I had him to myself, to cherish, to
comfort, and, if it might be, to serve; what else should I do, but,
woman-like, yearn over him with bowels of compassion, and rejoice
that I was the angler that should, if it pleased Heaven, fish his
soul from the dark and turbid waters of despair?

At length--"Ned!" I cried, but had no answer; and again, "Ned! dear
Ned!" with no better luck.  So I pushed my horse over against his
till our knees came together, and laid my hand on his arm.  And then
somehow I knew, dark as pitch though it was, that he turned his head
to me.

"Though you be unhappy," I said, letting of set purpose the catch of
a small sob come into my voice, "you do not need to flout your little
friend.  'T is very like you think it all my fault, but all I could,
since Philip left us, I have done,--all, I would say, that you would
let me do."

"More!" he cried in answer; "you have done far more than I would have
had you do; for I believe you did save my life.  If I thank you now,"
he added, with great bitterness, "I do fear my words will lack the
ring of truth."

"Nay," I said, as coldly as I might, in hope to engage his interest,
"there is but one owes thanks for that; and it is not you."

"Who then?" he asked, but languidly, as having little care for an
answer.

"Who but the person," I replied, "in whose sole interest it was
saved?"

"You speak in riddles, lad," he said, and then at once burst into a
very hearty laugh at his own mistake; at which my heart danced within
me to a tune very sweet; for laughter was at least a step in the way
I would have him walk.  "My wits have gone browsing like sheep," he
went on.  "Life is sweet, I do suppose, and soon I shall thank you.
Even now I feel the savor of it coming back to me.  Let us push on,"
he said, and put spurs to his horse.

When I was once again by his side--"Ah!" he cried, "one is a man
again with a horse between his knees."

"I do not know," I replied.  "Was it for that you called me lad,
Captain?"

And so for a mile or more we talked.  There was indeed but a poor
heart in what gaiety we used, but it served to lead at last to matter
more important.  And then I found his purpose was but to escort me in
safety to my father's house, and himself pass on; whither, he would
not say, and at length confessed he did not know.  And I vowed in my
heart he should go no further than Drayton, but bided my time.  There
followed, in a bad part of the way, a little silence.  And now the
rain, for some time slackening, ceased altogether, and a little pale
light from the moon struggling through the clouds, we drew together
again.  This time it was Ned did break the silence, and his words
showed me he had begun to review that night's work.

"That was bold juggling you did with His Highness and the sword,
mistress," he said.  "Wherefore did you break it?"

"Because I hold men should keep faith, even princes," I answered,
"and I will make him fulfil his word, up to the hilt--I would say
down to the point, which I keep until it is earned."  And I felt for
the fragment of His Highness's sword in the place where I had it safe
hidden.  And then I drew rein on Charley, catching at my comrade's
rein with the other hand.  "O Ned!" I cried, "how am I to do all
this, if you will leave me?  Take me and your story to my father, and
among us we shall find a way."

In the pale moonlight I could see his pale face, and on it I read the
bitterness and sorrow of a conflict that he deemed finished.

"Sweet mistress," he said, "you must not tempt me.  This thing is the
fault of no man, but the hand of fate is heavy upon me.  Since we
were children together, it is somewhere written that only in danger
and disgrace may I meet you.  I do believe that in your heart you
know much that, but for what has happened this day to part us, I
would say to you.  I will not say it, and because I will not, I must
leave you when I have brought you to your father.  Do not urge me
again."

"If all the world cried out upon Philippa," I replied, feeling in my
heart as those must feel who take their lives in their hands to carry
through some desperate enterprise, or to die in default of success,
"and would have her guilty of all the crimes a woman could guiltily
do, I would laugh them all to scorn while you held me innocent and
dear."

"Comfort you might find in my faith," he said, "even as I find much
in yours.  But you would not company with me, nor let your name go
with mine in men's mouths; and much less would you wed me before your
name was cleared.  It is perhaps the last time we shall speak
together, little Phil, and my despair shall bring me one good thing:
because I have no hope, I will tell you now very fully and frankly
what has been in my mind to say since my weight on a horse's back was
less than is now your own.  When I left Oxford to come into the west
in those days of Monmouth's trouble, my tongue was ready and my heart
hot to tell you my love, and, having told, to ask yours, and with it
the sweetest wife in all England.  Now, I must tell and not ask.  I
say, then, Philippa, that I love you, that I shall love you, and that
I have loved you, for how long it is hard to know, but truly I
believe my love began when you sat in the dust and looked to me for
comfort, stretching up your little arms, tremulous and appealing.
Ah!" he cried, "with what an urgent and tender clinging they held me
as we fled from pursuing Betty."

"I did then think, Ned," I murmured, "that the little horse had
wings, and that we fled together from Betty and all troubles forever."

"It was only Betty then," he answered, with a little laugh that hurt
me to hear.

"And it is no worse than Betty now, dear," I cried, "if you will but
keep me with you.  I have but just gotten you again.  Three years is
very long and lonesome.  Do not leave me."

Our horses were standing, and the moon showed me his face and the
great struggle that there was in him between tenderness of love and
insistence of duty.  And I saw the softness die out of his
countenance, and the features grow set in resolve.

"I forget," he said, drawing the reins short through his fingers.
"Let us press on; 't is six good miles yet to Drayton."  At which his
horse broke into a canter.

But, when Charley would have followed, I drew rein, kicked feet from
stirrups, flung my right foot over his neck, and so slipped to
ground; let slip the reins, and so sat me down forlorn by the
roadside.  So far I had acted of design, to the end that Ned should
return, and I have my way to the full as the one price of proceeding
further.  But, when Roan Charley, having twice snuffed at my
crouching figure, set off whinnying in pursuit of his fellow, I burst
into tears wholly devoid of affectation, weeping for the loneliness
that was my own making, and the stubbornness of a man's will that I
could not break.  And, the soft thud of hoofs on the wet and sandy
road now seeming to die away with growing distance, I did begin to
feel that the childish weapon I had taken in hand was indeed turned
against myself.  To set the coping on my misery, there came a great
and sudden gust of wind, and with it, across the moon, a thick
storm-cloud, from which fell a driving slant of heavy rain, shutting
out at once all sight and sound, as it were with a thick blanket of
cold and turbid wetness; so that, drenched to the skin, I soon
shivered as much from cold as from the sobs that shook my overwrought
body.  Now that he could no longer hear my voice, I found some dismal
comfort in leaping to my feet and crying aloud on Ned to come back;
and, even as I called, fell to running with weary and staggering
feet, in pursuit of him I believed far away, until I pitched
well-nigh headlong, not into his arms, for they were stretched wide,
holding a horse in either hand, but upon his broad breast, where I
soon laid my head; crying, as I clutched him by the shoulders, that
he had left me too long, and frightened me.

"Why, Phil!" he answered, "I heard your nag following, and, even when
he drew abreast, it was not at once I knew you were not in the
saddle."  And here I felt his right arm move behind his back, to pass
his horse's bridle to the left hand that already held Roan Charley's.
"But when he pushed close," he continued, "and his swinging
stirrup-iron struck my boot, I turned to find the voice and eyes I
dreaded were no longer near.  And then, sweetheart, the rain was upon
us, and in the darkness it was little speed I could make returning,
but must needs dismount and go gingerly, for fear of riding over you.
How came he to throw you, Phil?"

Perceiving that alarm had brought back all his tenderness, for here
his right arm came round my neck in an embrace most sweet and full of
protection, I cast to the winds my facile repentance for the trick I
had played him, and answered him thus, using what remnant of dignity
I could muster: "'T was not my good Charley that did cast me off,
Ned.  But when I found you would not heed my prayers; when I found
that for some fancy of what the world should say of us you would
again leave me alone, with, this time, perhaps, no hope of a return;
when I thought how bitter three years of waiting have proved for a
half-fledged maid, and perceived how much worse a thing were waiting
without hope or limit for a woman grown, I dismounted and sat me down
by the roadside.  For I said I would never return to Drayton to see
go out again into the night, alone and unhappy, the man that has
saved our honor, giving to us out of the abundance of his own."  And
I waited for him, but even yet he would not speak.  "What! will you
shame me, Ned?" I cried.  "Must I even say more?  Then I here
solemnly vow that unless you now say to me all--ask of me all that
you would were you now as famous as Marshal Schomberg, and as high in
favor as Mr. William Bentinck, I will not budge from this spot."
This, with voice and bearing no doubt vastly heroical, I said.  But,
fearing it yet insufficient, I added shudderingly, in a manner I have
since thought most humorously bathetical: "And I almost die for cold."

Now, scarce even for my children, can I set down very particularly
what followed.  But there was much rain, and now two arms about me,
and my head lay where it is not yet tired of lying, while my lover
let flow in words the passion of his love that had so long been pent
and dammed up in his heart.  And I remember that when he kissed me,
there came between his lips and mine a patch of mud, cast there
doubtless by the feet of his horse in his flight from me; and also
that we laughed together like children with no sorrow upon them, as
he did try in the dark to wipe it away with his handkerchief, and how
some of the soil did get in my mouth as I laughed.  So strong in
memory is often a little matter of this nature that when, not two
days back from the time I sit here writing, being abroad with Colonel
Royston to see some sport with Sir Giles Blundell's hounds, I
received full in the teeth a hoof-shaped clod of earth, I was, for
all the pain and discomfort of it, translated at once from the free
air and pale, sweet winter sun back to that foul and bitter night and
its dear core of love, red and glowing with the fire that shall
comfort and illumine us both to the end of our days.

Now, how long we stood there, how long we talked, and how long we
were silent I do not know.  But Dame Nature the stepmother had become
Mother Nature our friend; and wind, cold, and wet were but the veil
she cast kindly to wrap our sacred hour in holier secrecy.  And when
again a little light showed from the moon, of course it was the woman
that cried: "Why, Ned! where are the horses?"

I will not dwell on the labor to pursue and catch our nags.  The
charger, at length responding to a cry his master used, was caught,
mounted, and ridden in chase of Roan Charley.  So I was again for a
while left solitary, but in a state of mind how different!  Not now
did I sit forlorn with my feet in the ditch, but tramped cheerily
forward; for I had his promise not to leave me again, but to lay the
whole matter before Sir Michael, and to abide by his advice.  For
Ned, notwithstanding the anguish of his disgrace, did in his modesty
set so low a price on the action which had procured it, that I think
it had not yet become clear to him how wholly my very just and most
noble-minded father must be engaged to counsel all things in the
interest of Philip's savior.

It was not long before I encountered all three returning to meet me,
truant Charley grown reluctant and rebellious.  And thence into
Drayton village the way seemed short indeed.  Only twice did Ned
refer to his misfortune and the anger of His Highness of Orange;
once, in saying it was strange a single night should hold the
greatest joy and the greatest sorrow he had known; and again, when I
said many hard things of the Prince, he would not hear me, saying he
was not to blame; and then he asked me did I note the last words of
M. de Rondiniacque as he bade us farewell.  'T was that gentleman's
opinion, it appeared, that the Prince was in his heart not sorry to
find in my importunity good occasion to avoid the scandal that must
arise from a court-martial held upon an officer whose family was so
well known in the neighborhood at present occupied by his army.  M.
de Rondiniacque had added, moreover, that he believed His Highness's
anger much exacerbated by a lurking doubt as to the substantial guilt
of one he had hitherto highly esteemed.  All this I must have heard
as one in a dream, and the narration of it now furnished me with
material for the more sober thoughts that occupied the almost
unbroken silence of our passage from the village of Drayton to the
house.

It was now more than an hour past midnight, so that it was with no
little surprise we beheld, through the ill-closed hangings of the
windows, the great hall bright with candles and fire.  As he lifted
me, now well-nigh crippled with fatigue, from the saddle, I prayed
Ned to enter quickly and engage whom he should find for a moment in
talk, while I slipped quietly by to the refuge of my chamber.  In the
morning I had trifled with the fancy that it were better to be born a
man; now I knew it was best of all to be a woman; and thus I had no
mind, while I could still by some sense of lingering contact mark the
places where my lover's kisses had fallen, to be seen in the garb I
wore by any man or woman whatsoever.  And Ned, acting most
comfortably in accordance with my desire, I was soon fast in the
haven of my room, of whose door I did that night but once again draw
the bolt; and even then I do think it was rather from desire of the
food and the posset that she carried, than from any need of her
company, that I admitted Prudence; and of the torrent of questions
with which my ears were assailed as she tenderly waited on me, I
answered few and heeded none.  I would have been alone to think of
Ned, and of the change of so strange a sweetness that I now began to
discover in myself.  I was indeed in that temper of mind wherein a
maid will find even the object of her thought a hindrance to the
right management of her thinking; and so I got very quickly to bed,
feigning sleep to escape little Prue's chatter, the while I hugged to
my breast the memories of the journey homeward; cherishing the
sweetest fragments for a perpetual possession.

But feigning passed very soon into reality, and the last I recall of
that night is my dreamy watching of Prudence, as she busied herself,
with a bearing of no little pique, in hanging out poor Rupert's
clothes before the great fire, and muttering dark sayings of the folk
that had secrets, and how, if that were the way of it, she could,
nay, would, keep her own to herself.




CHAPTER XVII

In telling how we came happily through this trouble of Captain
Royston's disgrace, I perceive that there is from this point a
greater number of those incidents in which, although they are
necessary to the proper understanding of my tale, I had myself no
personal share.  While, however, my knowledge in such case is but
second-hand, it is hearsay of the best quality, drawn from divers
witnesses whose testimony I have found seldom divergent.  I therefore
purpose in my remaining chapters (now happily few), for greater ease
to the reader, to make of what I know and what I believe a narrative
as plain and straightforward as I may, without further reference to
my sources of information, which would but encumber those efforts at
despatch that must, if my story cannot, earn me a reader's
approbation.  Colonel Royston, coming fresh and crammed with law from
the justice-room (he being of late on their Majesties' Commission of
the Peace), tells me that hearsay is not evidence.  To which I can
but reply that such as I give will be nearer the truth than much that
he hears on oath.

When Ned, covering my retreat, presented himself before my father in
the dining-hall, he found Sir Michael seated in his great chair by
the hearth; on his one side at respectful distance stood Farmer Kidd,
while on the other, and close to his father, sat Philip.

Now Kidd, much delayed by the foundering of his horse, had come in
about midnight, bringing the first clear news of my safety.  He had
found Sir Michael in some disorder, between the pain in his leg, much
aggravated by his vigil, and anxiety for his daughter.  Poor
Christopher was like to have suffered in consequence; for Sir
Michael, while filling him with food and drink, rated him soundly for
leaving me behind, and would have had him return at once to Royston.
Philip, whose name and face had gotten him a good mount upon the
road, arriving about half an hour later than Christopher, found him
dulled with fatigue and feeding, and halting half-way between slumber
and tears.  My father's mind was soon at rest about his errant
daughter; for, when he learned that Ned Royston had me in charge, and
knew that I was Philippa, he merely said that I could not be in safer
hands, and thereafter addressed himself at once to the consideration
of Philip's story.

"And so, dear sir," said my brother, when his tale was done, "give me
a horse and money, and I will make my way back to France, that I may
keep faith with Royston, and set myself again to serve those that
sent me into England."

"Not so, Philip," answered his father, "for I will give you nothing
to become once more the active enemy of the Prince of Orange.  If I
do clip thy claws, thou must stay with me till these troubles are
done.  I like not your faith; Gad 's my life!  I like not your cause,
for all it was once mine.  But yourself I do love.  For the sweet
sake of your mother, son of mine, stay with me whom all have left."

"A Drayton, sir," replied Philip, "must do his part, on what side
soever it has pleased God to set him."

"You are right, lad," the old man answered; "and therefore will I
give you neither horse nor money."

Thus it was that upon his coming amongst them Captain Royston had but
to tell the dreadful sequel of Philip's escape.  But, between his
very cordial greeting of Ned and the hearing his story, my father,
with a fine discretion, begged Kidd that he would attend to the
Captain's horse, the grooms being all abed.  Which Christopher very
willingly hastened to do, preferring a stable and a bed of straw to
the dining-hall and Sir Michael's varied cheer.

His story told, and they asking where was Philippa, Ned answered,
between draughts from a great tankard of spiced ale, that he believed
I was gone to my chamber.  On this Sir Michael himself hobbled to the
room where lay my Lady Mary, whence he transferred Prudence from
attendance on her ladyship to the duty she vastly preferred, of
waiting upon me.  Alone with Ned, Philip at once declared the purpose
of making his way to Exeter, and of laying before His Highness, in
the act of surrendering himself, the true state of the whole matter.
Sir Michael returning in the midst of Royston's objections to what he
called so useless a sacrifice, the matter was debated among the three
far into the morning, my lover concluding that ill was best let
alone, for fear of worse; my brother, that he had no choice in honor
but to give himself up; my father, that they were both fools, and
that he himself was the person to set the matter in its true light
before His Highness of Orange.  And so they separated for the night,
which of them all being in most need of rest it would be hard to say.

But my good father, before he slept, paid a secret visit to the
stable, there leaving orders with Kidd, the sleepy chief of a sleepy
band of agrestic warriors (for the squadron I had led out at noon was
at length painfully gathered in and billeted in the hay-loft), and
with the chief groom of his own establishment, that no man (adding
hastily, "nor no woman neither") should take horse from their door
without his own express command.  For he feared that either Ned would
escape him, and so cut this knot of his own generous making; or that
Philip would effect an early start to throw himself, with little gain
to us all, into the hands of his enemies.  And so, after threats of
the most terrible, which served at least, as the sequel shows, to
keep his commands from mixing with their dreams, Sir Michael got him
to his bed where, if the just indeed sleep well, he slumbered very
peacefully till the unwonted hour of nine in the morning.

I do not think that poor Philip found much sleep.  The choice between
divergent duties, with harm to his family involved in one decision,
to a brave and generous friend in the other, may well keep even the
just awake.  The household being much belated, he was able between
six and seven of the morning to let himself out unobserved.  On
coming to the stable, however, he found that he could on no terms but
Sir Michael's order be furnished with a horse; not even with that
which had brought him to the house the night before.  After some
minutes of deep thought, he hastily penned a few lines on a leaf of
his tablets, which he then tore out and carefully folded, begging
Christopher, as he loved the honor of the house, to keep it unread
and undivulged until two o'clock of the afternoon, when he should
hand it to Sir Michael.  But if, as he deemed by no means likely of
occurrence, His Highness of Orange should before that hour honor Sir
Michael with a visit, the letter must at once be delivered.  With
which he left the yet sleep-ridden Christopher, willing, indeed, to
do his behest, but so mightily astonished at the mystery in which he
found himself involved, that he failed even to mark the road of
Philip's departure.

The letter, which I hold to be a notable example of my brother's
forethought, I will give here rather than in its place of coming to
light, for the better understanding of Philip's motive and action.


"TO MY DEAR AND HONORED FATHER: Being resolved to do what I may to
repair the great evil I have brought upon Edward Royston, and fearing
hindrance at your hands or his, I have taken myself off while you are
yet sleeping.  Finding, however, that you have laid a strict embargo
upon the stable, I go first afoot to the Grange, where old Simcox
will doubtless mount me with the best in his stable.

"I call to mind some words of Royston's, however, of His Highness of
Orange intending a visit to Drayton.  Now, although it is more than
likely he has foregone this purpose after what ensued upon my escape,
it is yet possible that some compunction of his own hastiness, or
return of gratitude to Philippa, may bring him to your door.  From
the Grange, therefore, I purpose taking the road to Exeter that runs
by 'The Crow's Nest,' whence one may see the roofs of Drayton.  I
shall be particular not to leave that point before the stroke of
noon.  If, therefore, the improbable occur, and the Prince be come,
or announced to come, to Drayton before that hour, I beg of you, my
dear sir, to fly the old flag from the turret mast; which, if I see,
I will make the best of my way back to you, knowing that you will not
contrive from my plan a ruse to lure me home against my conscience.

"If the Prince be gone to Exeter, and I there get audience of him,
remember that even the failure of my plea for Royston will not injure
your own subsequent representations, but will rather by corroboration
of evidence strengthen them.  Your obedient son,

"P.D."


Thus it ran.  The Grange, I should say, is the old Holroyd house, and
Simcox, my father's bailiff for the estate.

So much for two of those that sat so late in the hall.

As for Ned, neither joy (if, as I suppose, some joy was in him) nor
grief, of which he thought never through life to be rid, was to
prevail against the oppression of sleep long denied.  He slept as the
dead sleep, till long after my father was abroad.

But for a soporific commend me to a decoction of new-found love and
great fatigue of body.  It was from the pleasant action of this
sleeping-draught that I awoke to find my chamber bathed in the first
sunshine of many dreary days.  And, as I lay with eyes half opened, I
felt in my bosom a gladness answering to the sunshine without.  And
searching in my mind for the threads of memory that should join my
life with the day that was past, and tell me the reason why I was
glad, I found that the answer was Love.  But a little cloud soon
driving across the sun had also its inward response in my
half-awakened spirit, and I asked myself was there then some evil
thing in this sweet world of mine?

And so I stumbled heavily upon the memory that Ned's love had in its
fulness come to me in the very hour of disgrace.  And then I awoke
from a maid floating blissfully upon the sweet sea of conscious
repose to the woman fain to pay the price of love in deeds for her
lover.

Prudence was not far, and I was not long in dressing.  Having,
however, more food for thought than use for my tongue, I by and by
perceived that my little handmaid was very ready to make cause of a
tiff out of my silence.  This might have passed, for I thought with a
gentle word or two and a smile to turn aside the coming storm.

Nor had I much doubt of success in this, when, after watching my face
a while in the mirror, she exclaimed: "Why, madam, how beautiful you
appear this morning!  One would think some great good thing had
befallen you yesterday, rather than a great fatigue.  You are vastly
changed, madam."

"Nay, Prudence, be not so fanciful," I cried, marking, nevertheless,
in the mirror how the color rose in my face.  "Pray, child, what
difference do you find?"

"It is hard to name," she answered, "but 't is there.  Your regard is
large and tender.  Your eyes, madam--your eyes hold some secret of
joy."

Here she paused a while, turning her gaze from the mirror to my face
itself.  Then at length: "Why, madam, I have it," she cried; "you are
in one night grown to be a woman!"

To hide my cheeks, that would soon, I knew, most furiously glow, I
turned to the wardrobe to take from it the gown I proposed wearing.
But when she saw that it was the finest in stuff, and latest in
fashion of all my slender stock, her curiosity broke out afresh.
Receiving no reply to her many questions, she watched me in dumb
displeasure, while I shaped a piece of black plaister, and applied it
to the little wound that Ned's sword had made on my bosom, for the
gown, being cut somewhat more freely open than I mostly used, would
have left the scratch uncovered from the air.  All this was more than
Prue could bear.

"I do perceive," she said, with pale cheeks and tilted chin, "that in
some manner I have offended madam, since she no longer gives me her
confidence; I fear it is no time to ask her advice in a matter that
gives much distress and anxiety to one that she was wont to hold her
very faithful servant."  Whereupon she left the chamber very quickly,
giving me no space to appease her anger.

Finishing my toilet alone, I began to wonder what was this mighty
secret with which she had now twice threatened me; and, doubtless,
nothing but my great preoccupation of thought saved Mistress
Prudence, privileged person although she was become, from a mighty
smart reprimand on our next encountering for her petulant conduct.

That excellent dignity of bearing which I believed myself to have
endued, as well as my finest gown, was destined to be spent (if
indeed it were not altogether thrown away) upon old Emmet and a
single waiting-maid.  From Simon I learned that it had been thought
well not to disturb the three gentlemen, whom he supposed still
sleeping.  Lady Mary, he added, had been much shaken by her
adventures of the previous day, and found herself unable to leave her
bed.  So I sat me down alone, and made a meal of most unblushing
amplitude.  Since I was a child, I may say, I had never known myself
to lack good appetite, and I now found that so far from weakening my
desire and enjoyment of my victuals, as would seem most fitting in a
young woman of sentiment, the fatigues, emotions, and excitements of
the day before had but set a keener edge to my relish of these, as of
all other good things in what I could but think, despite all
drawbacks, was a very engaging and gladsome world.

Now it was a custom with me to have Prudence wait upon me at
breakfast, arising, I suppose, from a certain loneliness I did use to
feel when my dear father's ailments would keep him for days together
in his chamber.  She being this morning absent, and I asking where
she was, Simon soon made it plain that he was not pleased with his
granddaughter.

"Faith, madam," he said, "I cannot tell where she is.  The little
baggage grows past my holding.  She is as full of mysteries as an egg
is full of meat."

"Nay, Simon," I answered, "'t is no mystery.  She spoke very boldly
to me but now, and fled to avoid correction.  I make no doubt she is
gone for comfort to Christopher Kidd."

"There 's more in it, madam, than Farmer Kidd," answered Simon, his
old head shaking with the ominous relish of him that justifies
suspicion of evil.  "A loaf, a cheese, and a great piece of salted
beef are this morning missed from the larder, and, as I live," he
cried, peering into the great beer jack that stood upon the table,
"who but the hussy should have taken more than the half of the ale
that I drew for breakfast?  She did pass through the hall on leaving
your chamber, madam; Christopher and all his men are well fed in the
kitchen, and have but to ask for what they lack."

And here I was scarce able to hold back my laughter.  The picture of
little Prudence, so dainty and modest, for all that something of
coquetry was part of her nature, so feeding a secret lover did
mightily tickle my fancy.

"Do not fret for the ale, Simon," I said gaily.  "Please Heaven, it
will find its way down a thirsty throat.  If Prue be the thief
indeed, I shall know the drinker before sunset.  She is a good maid,
and will not long keep a secret from a mistress that holds her in
much affection and esteem."  These last words were as much for the
other serving-woman that was by as for Prue's censorious grandfather.

Sending word to Lady Royston that I would gladly know when her
ladyship was willing I should wait upon her, I now retired to my
garden, finding more company in its few remaining flowers, and in the
fresh and sunny autumn air, than in a house but yet half awake.  And
I had within me, whether carried from the house, or gathered from the
sweet odors drawn by the sun from the sodden earth, I know not, a
sense that some great thing was coming; that this was but the lull
before our wits and tongues should be again engaged in a conflict for
love, for honor, and perhaps for life.

And I knelt on a little stone bench, warmed with the sun, and prayed
to Him who did make these three best things, that wit might be keen,
and tongue eloquent, to set them high above doubt and question
hereafter.

To me, after it might be half an hour, came Prudence, bearing in a
very innocent countenance an expression of injury most Christianly
endured.  Madam Royston, she said, would be vastly obliged by a visit
from me, but she was bidden by Captain Royston to say he had matter
for my ear that was of moment, to be delivered before I should speak
with madam his mother.

"And where is Captain Royston to be found?" I asked.

"He is now taking his breakfast in the hall," answered the little
minx, vastly demure.

"And why was I not informed that he was risen?" I demanded.

"If madam gave order to that effect," she replied, "it came not to my
ear."

This petty vantage of feminine fence had not long remained hers, had
I not been more concerned to reach the great hall than to open a
general attack in the matter of the missing beef and beer.  The
better part of the way to the house I ran rather than walked--that
part, I mean, that is not in sight of the hall windows.  Within I
found Ned alone, eating his breakfast.  A cloud of gloom was over his
face, and, though he rose with great courtesy and alacrity to meet
me, his greeting seemed rather a submission to my embrace than the
clasp of an ardent lover.

It is not unlikely that in a happier hour I had taken this reception
ill, but, thinking I could read his thought, I let it pass, which I
was soon very glad to have done, when his words made it plain that I
had not read him amiss.  For a while I pressed him with food, with
questions of what rest he had taken, of his mother's health, and with
other talk indifferent to the issue that yet, as I plainly saw, did
lie between us.  But, do what I might, I could bring no smile to his
face; I could see the man held a tight rein upon himself, for all he
could not keep his eyes from taking full account of my person on this
his first seeing me after so many years in the full light of day, and
in my proper garb.  And there was great holiday in my heart, for I
knew that I pleased him well; had I not the word both of mirror and
handmaid that I was not ill to look upon?  Moreover, those eyes of
his, restrained though they were from all expressive admiration,
could not conceal something that I took to be a kind of hunger.

At length, finding that his discomfort was in no way diminished, I
asked him, speaking mighty small and meek, what it was he wished to
say to me, before I should pay my respects to my Lady Mary.

"I would pray you," he answered, "by no means at this present to make
mention to my mother of--of the matter--I mean, of my disgrace with
His Highness of Orange."

It was only by an effort, it seemed, that the last words could be
uttered.  I arose from the seat whence I had confronted him at the
table, dropped him a little courtesy, and walked toward the door.
But, passing behind his chair as I went, I felt my heart so filled
with pity and sorrow that I knew I must either fall into a passion of
tears or speak more fully and closely with him who now bore such
things for me and mine.  So behind him I stayed, and, casting an arm
about his neck, "Ned," I whispered, "dear Ned, wilt in no manner be
comforted?'"

His voice shook a little, in spite of that curbing rein, as he
answered me.  "Where lies the comfort that I should take, sweet
Phil?" he said.

"'T is unkind in you, dear, to make me speak unmaidenly," I replied.
"I know your woes, but is it, then, nothing that I also share them?
Am I perhaps of no account, for that my love is no new thing?"

"Your love, Philippa," he said, in a voice that was now become very
tender and solemn, "is a pearl of price so great that but yesterday
it was all I asked of Heaven.  But shall this jewel be set in a
filthy copper ring?  I know, sweetheart," he went on, "that you have
found me churlish this morning.  But since I awoke I have one only
thought in my mind, that I did wrong last night, with my honor thus
overshadowed, to tell you of my love."

"Nay," I said, "there was no telling; and there needed none."

"Did I not tell you--" he began.

But from over his shoulder I gently clapped hand upon his mouth,
crying: "Hush, dear Ned!  'T was this way that it befell.  Listen,
for all else is what you have dreamed."  And I took here the tone and
manner of one that tells to a child the sweetest fairy-tale he knows.
"Two did ride in the night.  The two had each a heart, and the heart
of one was sore hurt.  Now of the other the heart was well and safely
lodged behind a little secret door.  And this door was never opened,
though there was one did know the way to it, and at his knock it had
been wont of old to move somewhat ajar on the hinge.  But in that
dark night the heart that was hurt did cry aloud, and--and that small
door did fly open, and now, Ned----"

"Ay, sweetheart?" he said, as I paused; and he tried to look round at
me: but I would not let him.

"And now, Ned," I continued, "the door is closed forever; but the
heart is abroad, and hath no home but here."  And here I slipped to
my knees by his side, leaning with hands tight clasped in
supplication against his breast.  "My lord," I said, "must even keep
his promise to his handmaid, who will gladly bear all that she may
share with him.  But, without his presence and his love, the sun will
be darkened to her eyes all the days of her life."

And so there was an end; for his arms came about me and ended all
strife between us even to this moment of writing.




CHAPTER XVIII

And thus my father surprised us, by which accident we were not a
little taken aback.  My lover, however, rose bravely to the occasion,
and very plainly and without any mincing of the matter asked him for
my hand in marriage; saying in conclusion, however, that he was aware
his present state and condition might well justify Sir Michael's
refusing to grant his request: "Which, sir," said he, "I had not made
until cleared of all suspicion of treason to His Highness, but for
you knowing me innocent, and the recent avowal of my affection being
by surprise, as it were, wrung from me."

"Indeed, sir," I broke in, hoping by a little boldness to cover my
confusion the better, "there was no surprise but this same gad-about
daughter of yours.  It was through no fault of his, for none but I
did wring from Captain Royston that offer of alliance he now seems
minded to repent."

"Be silent, child," said my father; "Captain Royston stands in need
of no champion with me."  Whereat I was abashed to a blushing hotter
than before.  "My lad," said Sir Michael, "I have twofold reason to
be glad.  It would go hard with me to refuse the man who has done for
my name what you have done, even were he not the husband I have this
many a day desired for my child.  And, if we cannot put you right
with the Prince, we must together endure.  But I hope for better
things."  And with these words my father drew me to him, and put my
hand in that of Captain Royston.

There is no need to rehearse all that was said and felt on this
occasion of my betrothal.  There was among us regard so reverent,
friendship so strong, and acquaintance so well tested of time, that
the dark shadow hanging over could not, even while it chastened, in
any way jar with nor distort the joy of the two who saw the future
each in the other's countenance; nor of him that saw in the faces of
us both a vision of the past that was ever green and poignant in the
young heart of the old man.

And as I left them to visit Lady Mary, now too long neglected, my
father told me that I had gained a husband such as is not had every
day.

So I went to my lady's door, and there, very proud in the thought
that out of all the world Captain Royston had chosen me, I loitered a
little; for I hoped that my cheeks would presently lose something of
the telltale color that still seemed to burn in them.  And after I
entered her chamber the time for a while went so exceedingly heavily
that I think it but charity to take my reader elsewhere.

Sir Michael and Captain Royston were now for a space engaged in
discussion of the future.  But, as they neither knew that Philip, in
the obstinacy of his opinion, had escaped them, nor that events now
in preparation should very shortly change the complexion of the whole
matter, their animadversions and reflections upon this occasion are
become of little moment.

Now my father, on his coming which did so mightily abash me, was
carrying under his arm in its sheath the sword which, in its day and
his, had been so terrible to many a man of the Parliament's forces.
It was indeed many years that he had not worn steel at his side; but
it was ever a custom with him, upon any occasion of state, danger, or
solemnity, to fetch with him in the morning this sword from his
chamber.  More than once or twice, when I was a little maid with a
conscience not seldom ill at ease, has the sight of that honorable
blade, tucked slantwise beneath his arm as he painfully descended the
great stair of a morning, driven me to hasty repentance and
confession of yesterday's prank or peccadillo.

My father, then proposing that they should take the air a little,
since the sun continued bravely to shine, remarked, as he laid this
sword upon his chair by the hearth, that his companion had but an
empty scabbard dangling at his sword-belt.  To Sir Michael's civil
offer of his own good weapon to replace that so unhappily lost, Ned
replied that he thanked him, but would make shift for a while with
the scabbard, having a mind to fill it again with the only blade that
fitted it, if haply it might be done.  And as he spoke his face was
suffused with a flush of deep crimson; the only blush, my father
said, that he had ever seen on the lad's goodly countenance.

And so they walked a turn in the park, amongst the trees and the
deer, Sir Michael supported, until a pleasant bench was reached, by
an arm that is, I have found, very good and comfortable to lean upon;
where I, having from my lady's window seen them pass, made shift
after a little to join them.  Ned rose to meet me, and I was glad to
see the shadow driven from his face by the smile of his welcome.

"My lady is very instant and pressing that you should go to her," I
said, as I seized in both mine the hand he stretched to me.

"What, what!" says my father merrily.  "Was all this bird-like haste
of swooping down upon us but to drive the man again from your side?
'T is early days, little Phil--early days!"

"Indeed, sir," I replied, panting a little yet for the speed I had
used, "I would not have the man leave me, and so ran to husband the
minutes with him.  Nor I would not have him go to Madam Royston, who
will, without doubt, very quickly draw from him our morning's doings."

"And wherefore should she not know them?" said Ned, smiling gently on
me the while he still clung to my hand, as finding comfort in the
touch of it.

"Because," said I, "we have trouble enough, and she will surely make
more when she knows.  'T is now three years past that she told me I
must look for no such greatness as to be your--" and there my
boldness had an end.

"Is it indeed as you say?" cried poor Ned; and his eyes went in
question from mine to Sir Michael's.

And then that little devil of mischief was in me again.

"I vow 't is very true," I said.  "Nor I do not quarrel at that.  But
in this same matter she had a promise of me, that--that----"

"What promise was it?" he asked, in some distress.  "I do hope it was
nothing foolish, nor hard to keep."

"I had almost forgot it," I answered, lingering over my words, "but
now I do perceive I have to the letter kept it.  Yet indeed, dear
Ned, it was for some hours hard to observe that pledge, for I did
promise her that I would wait until I was asked."  And, if my jest
was of more boldness than wit, the laughter that greeted it, being
compounded of love, merriment, and confidence, lacked nothing of the
finest quality.

Conversation more sober ensuing, it appeared that Ned, who already,
before he broke his fast, had visited her, was neither now willing to
leave me, nor, with the present load of care upon him, to submit
again so soon to the searching scrutiny of his mother's eyes a
countenance that was, he well knew, of a very treacherous honesty.
For, if he saw little need to conceal our betrothal from her, he had
no mind she should get wind of his disfavor with His Highness of
Orange.  Whereupon my father, who seemed, indeed, to preside at the
feast of our joy with a tenderness almost feminine, undertook an
embassage to my Lady Mary, hoping, he said, by discovery of the
betrothal, to close her eyes for a while to all other troubles.

He stoutly refused every offer of assistance to his walking, saying
it were best with all the pains of a penitent to approach so awful a
shrine; and so, cheerily waving one hand and leaning with the other
upon his stick, made his way limping to the house.

It was not long after his leaving us that, although deep in
discussion of matters vastly entertaining at least to those engaged,
I heard the rapid approach of a horse, of which, with his rider, I
very soon had a glimpse as they passed the open space between the
last trees of the avenue and the southeastern corner of the house.

Now, while Ned spoke many things most sweet to hear, and I, though
finding my power of words strangely contracted since my father's
leaving us, now and again made shift to answer him; and while he was
about opening that question, to this day not with conclusion to be
answered, of when first each did begin to love the other, some part
of me was all the time with secret clamor asking who this mounted
visitor should be.  What if he were from the Prince?  And so, though
I heard most of his words, and held them all dear, I was at length in
such a fever of desire to know more of what was toward within doors,
that I told Ned my presence was needed in the house, as much in his
own interest as of the visitor, and my father that must entertain
him.  And I would not let him conduct me, for I wished (though to him
I said nothing of this), in case of news, ill or good, in the matter
of his standing with His Highness, to know it first myself; so begged
him where he was to await me a while, and left him, I doubt not, in
much amaze at the contradictions of the feminine nature.  At least it
was so that I was fain to hope he explained a behavior that may well
have appeared whimsical in me; having not infrequently observed that
this is with some of our masters a means much favored to avoid the
pains of understanding our vagaries even the most reasonable.

Sir Michael, being admitted to Lady Mary's presence, had come no
nearer his purpose than some prefatory compliments and good wishes,
when he was hastily called away to meet a gentleman that was come on
urgent business from His Highness of Orange.  Repairing at once to
the great hall, he found before him M. de Rondiniacque, just
dismounted and entered, looking with a wryness of countenance
ill-concealed upon the tankard of ale held out to him by little Prue.

Perceiving his host, the French officer politely waved aside the
refreshment, and bowed to Sir Michael with great reverence and all
the grace of the Paris manner.  Now his name, as was but natural,
when it reached my father's ears, was become twisted out of all shape.

"You are welcome," says Sir Michael, returning his obeisance.  "I
address, I believe, M. le Lieutenant--" and there stuck.

"Jean-Marie Godemar de Rondiniacque, at your service," replied that
gentleman.  "My poor name, Sir Michael, has great terror for unwonted
tongues!"

"'T is then a fit companion to your sword, M. de Rondiniacque," says
Sir Michael, in the older fashion of courtly compliment.

M. de Rondiniacque bowed again.  "It is well if they agree, sir," he
said, "for they are my whole estate."

"I can wish you, M. de Rondiniacque, no better," replied my father.
"You come, I believe, from His Highness of Orange."

And M. de Rondiniacque, saying that he had indeed that honor,
presented a letter from the Prince, in which it was set forth that
His Highness, being in the neighborhood, was fain to do himself the
pleasure of a visit, of necessity short, to so distinguished a
soldier and gentleman, and so stanch a supporter of that cause which
the Prince had made his own, as Sir Michael Drayton; and would not in
his coming lag far behind the bearer of the letter.

Having read, Sir Michael was at once for calling out his little
company of armed men and putting himself at their head, in order to
meeting His Highness in the village, and escorting him to the house,
but M. de Rondiniacque very respectfully opposed this course, saying
that His Highness was particular in his instructions that Sir
Michael's age and infirmities should be disturbed by no pomp nor
ceremony of reception.

"His Highness does me great honor," said Sir Michael.

"His Highness is little likely to forget," replied M. de
Rondiniacque, "that, in an hour when he almost despaired of that help
and countenance he was led to look for on his coming into England
from gentlemen of condition, Sir Michael Drayton was the first to
come forward and set a noble pattern to the rest.  There are,
moreover, other matters, I believe, in which the Prince holds himself
your debtor, sir.  But of these, being most curiously entangled with
some of another sort, I am not to speak; being straitly enjoined to
leave them for your meeting with His Highness."

Now these words did mightily please my father, filling him with hope
by his own influence and arguments of setting all things right
between Captain Royston and the Prince of Orange.  So, most
courteously praying M. de Rondiniacque that until His Highness's
arrival he would consider the house his own, begging excuse of his
absence on the ground of fit preparation to be made for the Prince,
and bidding Prudence attend the gentleman's wants, he took himself
off to find Philip, and with him concert a plan of action.

Alone with Prue, M. de Rondiniacque was not long in marking,
according to his habit, the dainty person and pretty face of her that
waited upon him.  Now Prudence was never slow to observe when she had
made a conquest, however slight, and soon responded to his flattery
by bringing him in a flagon something better than the ale she had
observed him to look upon so sourly.

"Perhaps, sir," says Prue, "being out of France, you will have more
thirst for good Burgundy than for our ale."

"Pour it to me yourself, fair Hebe," cried De Rondiniacque; and as
she obeyed he smiled upon her freely, and twisted in very gallant
fashion the little black mustachios that adorned his lip.  "Nay," he
continued: "but you must put those pretty lips to the cup before I
drink."

"Oh! la, no, sir!" cries Prue; "indeed I could n't," and straightway
sipped, making, I doubt not, as she cried "I' fecks, 't is good!" a
little grimace of satisfaction, with lips pursed up, as I have seen
her often, like a bird uplifting his bill in dumb thanksgiving to the
clouds for water in a thirsty land.  Indeed, M. de Rondiniacque has
told me, in these days of nearer acquaintance, that things had fallen
far otherwise than they did but for the pretty coquetry of Prudence
and his own too inflammable temper.

If the wine was red, he remarked, her lips were no less rich in
color; which led him incontinently to swear the wine was but the
second refreshment for his tasting; and if her coyness persuaded him
to change the order of succession, a great draught of that generous
wine of Burgundy did by no means lessen his desire to taste the red
velvet of her now pouting lips.

And so it was that I, nearing the door, was by a scream from my
handmaid drawn with such haste into the hall that I found her in the
arms of M. de Rondiniacque, whose mouth was pressed with much force
and no little enjoyment to the lips he had of late compared with the
wine.

At once recognizing the gallant officer for my friend of yesterday, I
wished indeed that I had stayed with Ned; but in the brief time spent
by Prudence in freeing herself (for she had immediately seen me), and
by M. de Rondiniacque in perceiving me, and letting her free, I had
called to my assistance all that dignity and state of bearing which
is seldom far to seek by the woman, however young and unversed in the
world, who has faith in her gown and her cause.

"Prudence!" I cried, standing half-way between them and the door, and
speaking with great severity, while she, red as fire, fumbled
piteously with her apron, and the gentleman sought to cover the
foolishness of his face with the hand that pulled at the hair upon
his upper lip; "Prudence, what means this noise and outcry?  Who are
you, sir?"

"A poor gentleman of France, mistress," he replied, "but now arrived
with word of the coming of His Highness of Orange."

"And does that good news fetch cries for help from my serving-woman?"
I demanded, bending my brows in a frown that I would have had very
awful.

"Nay, be not so moved, fair mistress," said M. de Rondiniacque, in a
voice very gentle and soothing.  "The outcry was for another matter,
and, _foi de gentilhomme!_ the fault was mine alone.  It was but
for--for a kiss that I did give the maid in jest."

"Such jests, good sir, are fitter for the camp," I answered, a little
relaxing my sternness.  Then, observing that he began with more
intentness to regard me, I sent Prudence at once from the hall.  When
she was gone, I prayed him, with a courtesy very frigid, to let me
know, ere I left him, if there were aught in which I could serve him,
or provide for his comfort, ending, as I thought very artfully, with,
"M. de--de--" as if I knew not his name.

"My name is De Rondiniacque," he said, smiling on me with an
expression of much cunning.  "I do perceive that you are at least
aware of my claim to noble family.  One thing, madam, there is, in
which you can oblige me,--to tell me, I mean, where I have before
encountered you."

"I cry you mercy, sir," I said, "for I know not what you mean."  For
somehow I had little mind to discuss with him the affair of last
night, and was abashed, moreover, at the thought of how I had then
appeared.  So I spoke with a great haughtiness and disdain, and made
to leave him.

But he came quickly between me and the door, and--"_Mon Dieu!_" he
cried, "'t is the pretty boy of yesterday!"

"You grow in mystery, M. de Rondiniacque," I said.  "Prithee, let me
pass!"

"Nay, nay," he answered, "this loftiness shall not bugbear me, pretty
one.  Thou dost know thy way to a camp and out again as well as
another.  Faith, I did ponder wherefore those bright eyes did draw me
so."

"If you continue these matters with me, sir, I must leave you," I
cried, and so made attempt to pass him.

But he seized me gently by the arm.  "You shall not so," he
exclaimed.  "Nay, do not fear I will hurt you.  I do not handle a
woman as I grasped that ruffling youth.  How fare the pretty wrists?"

My anger here prevailing over my prudence, I declared roundly that I
would take these injuries to those that should exact account of them.
Whereupon he seized me very firmly by the hand, so that I could not
withdraw it.

"And tell them, too," he said, "of last night's masquerade.  I will
not be denied.  Your secret is safe with me.  Do I not know?  Have I
not many such in keeping?  But none, I swear, for so lovely a partner
in guilt.  But it must be a bargain between us."  And as I struggled
to free my hand he wound his arm about my waist, holding me with a
wonderful gentleness of strength.  "Nay, do not fret," he went on, "I
will not hurt you, and the bargain is soon struck.  A tender glance
of your eye will pay for much, as I doubt not you have been told
before.  Come, strife is folly with those that love us; and verily
you are so beautiful that I love you already.  What! still stubborn?"

"Loose me," I panted, now mad with rage and struggling.

"I vow," said he, "I am beside myself with love of you.  Oh, why so
easy but one day past, and now so proud?"

"I will call," said I, drawing breath for a loud cry.

"And not twice," said a harsh voice from the door, whither turning my
eyes I beheld Edward Royston.  He had followed me as I my father,
and, even as I, was arrived in a moment for M. de Rondiniacque most
unhappy.  To prove this, the mere sight of his countenance was
enough; I had often seen it stern, but never before so terrible.

Now, upon my entrance some few minutes before, M. de Rondiniacque had
very promptly and civilly loosed his hold of little Prue; but,
whether because he considered he now held a nobler prey, or because
he would grant to the presence of a woman what he must refuse to the
dictation of a man, certain it is that this time intrusion brought no
release.  With his eyes fixed upon my captor Captain Royston strode
slowly up the hall till close upon us; then, pointing with his finger
to M. de Rondiniacque's hand that was still about my waist: "You will
need that hand for your sword, Lieutenant de Rondiniacque," he said.
"Do you not take my meaning?  This, at least, is as French as it is
English."  And with that he struck him across the face with the glove
he carried in his hand.

And then at length I was free, and quickly out of reach of my
persecutor.  The Frenchman stepped back, and drew slowly and with
seeming reluctance; astonished no more by the blow than by this new
complexion put upon the matter.  I marked, moreover, with a great
pain of compassion in me, how poor Ned's hand went also to his side,
to find but the scabbard; and to me that watched his face the while
it was plain the emptiness of that sheath did not a little exacerbate
the bitterness of his spirits; so that I fell into a great fear of
what he should do.

Finding, then, that he had no sword, Ned went, still with the same
awful and deliberate calmness, to Sir Michael's great chair by the
hearth, and brought thence naked the sword my father had offered a
while since for his use.  But, as the two men faced each other, M. de
Rondiniacque lowered his point to the floor.

"Royston," he said with much gentleness, "I would not hurt you."

"You had best try," replied his opponent, "for I shall kill you else."

"I will explain the matter," said De Rondiniacque, still patient.

"You may do so," Ned replied unmoved, "afterwards--in hell."

"I do think, indeed, Ned," I here interrupted, "he did not know me
for what I am, but did mistake me for some runagate hussy."

"Then for that I will kill him!" said Ned, never turning my way, nor
taking his baleful eye from the other's face.  "If you would not see
it done, go, bid your father come to see it is no murder."

And somehow I could not altogether disobey his word; yet I made my
passage to the door as slow as foot can go.

"And now, sir," my champion continued, "I will show you how in
England we do serve him that affronts the daughter of his host."

"Sir Michael's daughter!" exclaimed the poor man, so wholly careless
of covering himself that Ned's intended attack upon him was perforce
again delayed.  "I knew her but for a pretty piece that did ride the
country as a lad, and that passed yesterday many hours among us.
Meeting her now in female attire, I did think----"

"For that thought alone I will kill you!" said Ned, and their swords
crossed.

And so I fled to find my father, having for my lover, indeed, no fear
at all, but much for the gentleman who was, when all was said, our
guest, and taken, as I thought, rather in a very luckless error than
in any wilful offence.

Now, as I passed through the lobby of entrance, the great door stood
wide to the sweet noontide air of that shining autumn day; and I,
glancing forth to see if Sir Michael were abroad and within hail,
beheld coming up the avenue a great number of horsemen, their steel
harness gleaming in the sun beneath the leafless trees.  So I knew
the Prince was come, and hastened the more to advise my father of all
that was toward.  Him I found very soon (though my inquietude did
lend great length to the search) in the stable-yard.  He was angry in
face and words, and vexed at soul, for he had just learned that
Philip was gone.  He was come to the stable to know what horse had
borne his son from the house, and it was therefore upon Christopher
Kidd that his wrath now fell.  The poor fellow had of this sort in
the past twenty hours received more than was by any means earned, and
turned upon me the eager countenance of one that looks for succor.

"Dear sir," I cried to my father, "His Highness is arrived."

"What!" cried he in answer.  "Why, then, was I not advised?"

"I come to tell you," I replied.  "His Highness is not yet
dismounted, and with haste you may yet receive him at the door."

Now, as we spoke, Christopher had been heavily searching for
something in the pocket of his breeches, which found, he hurried
after us, as my father with the help of my arm made painful haste to
the house.

"If the Prince be indeed come, Sir Michael," said Kidd, intercepting
us at the side door of the house, "I keep my word to Master Philip,
and rid myself of the plaguy thing at once."  And he thrust into Sir
Michael's hand a twisted and crumpled paper, and beat a rapid
retreat, vanishing in the stable before my father had deciphered the
last words of Philip's message.

When this was done we read it again together, and my father, after a
few words of the great need there was like to be of Philip's presence
among us during His Highness's visit to Drayton, despatched me in hot
haste to see to the hoisting of the banner, which fluttering from the
turret should bring back in the nick of time, if it pleased God, him
that had, through little fault of his own, been the cause of all
these troubles.

Meantime, in the hall, Ned's attack had been both skilful and bitter;
so fiercely indeed did he push his opponent that M. de Rondiniacque
has since taken, by his own account, no little credit to himself for
the swordmanship that enabled him for a while, at least, to resist
the onslaught, without, in his turn, attempting the injury of his
adversary.  At length, what with the fury of the attack and some
carelessness on the Frenchman's part in shifting his ground, Ned had
him so hemmed in and penned up in that corner of the hall that is
opposite to the chief door of entrance that De Rondiniacque seemed
wholly at his mercy.  But, even in that passion of anger with which
the despite of fortune had overwhelmed the habitual temper of his
spirit, it was quite foreign to Ned's nature to take his enemy thus
at an advantage.  Almost in the act of delivering his point in a
manner that for one in De Rondiniacque's constrained and
circumscribed position would have been more than difficult to parry,
he checked himself, and, retreating to the middle of the floor, cried
to him to come out, for he would not willingly nail him like a stoat
or weasel to the wall.

"Enough, Royston! 't is enough!" he cried, coming forward.  "I did
never know you bloodthirsty."

So saying, he raised his eyes and saw what Ned from his position
could not see, that within the doorway stood a small and silent
group, spectators of the duel.  These were His Highness of Orange and
some four or five others.  Dismounting, they had found no sign of
hospitality but the openness of the great door, and all hesitation to
enter unannounced was banished by the sound of the sword-play in the
hall.  The Prince stepped at once into the lobby; he then stood a
moment listening to the ring of meeting blades, and to the tearing,
striding hiss of their parting.

"This is no fencing bout," said he, and entered the hall.

"Bloodthirsty, forsooth!" cried Ned, in answer to De Rondiniacque's
essay at peacemaking.  "Bloodthirsty!  I have borne enough of late to
make me so, in all conscience.  Look to yourself, man, for I would
kill you, were you William and all his troops."  And with that he
fell upon him again with much fury, so that the other was beginning
of necessity a more aggressive defence, when the Prince stepped
between them, striking up their swords with his riding-whip.

"Since when, Mr. Royston," he said, "do you carry a sword?  And for
whom?"

But Royston, balked of his prey, and feeling the whole world in
league against him, was too full of anger to show either surprise or
reverence.  "Captain Royston," he said, with great and bitter
emphasis on the military title, "has left his sword in miserly hands,
Your Highness."

"How so?" demanded William, the frown growing deeper on his face.

"Hands that grasp what they do not need," replied Ned boldly.  "But
_Master_ Royston takes a sword where he finds it, uses it against
whom he pleases, and wields it for himself."

"The fault, Monseigneur, of this broil is wholly mine," interposed M.
de Rondiniacque.

"Lieutenant de Rondiniacque," replied the Prince, "I know your
generous nature, and for once mistrust it.  What is the occasion of
the broil, as you name it?"

With some hesitation M. de Rondiniacque answered that it was a
quarrel--about a woman.

His Highness laughed drily.  "I fear, Lieutenant," he said, "that to
protect a man that was once your friend, you play very nobly upon our
knowledge of your weakness."

"Indeed, sire," said De Rondiniacque, "it is as I say.  I did wrong a
lady, mistaking her for another kind."

"And did 'William and all his army' likewise wrong this lady?" asked
the Prince.

"Indeed, no, Your Highness," replied De Rondiniacque.

"Then I must believe, Lieutenant," the Prince continued, "that it is
for no kiss to a pretty girl, but for holding my commission, that you
were even now in danger of your life.  We have it from his own lips
that he had as lief kill me as you."  Then, as the generous fellow
would again have spoken in endeavor to put the matter in a better
aspect, "No more, sir," said His Highness; "stand aside."  He then
proceeded to address Captain Royston.

"Sir," he said, "I spared your life of late.  But I did warn you that
if found again in our neighborhood, or raising hand against us, were
it never so little, you were like to get such treatment as we give to
spies."  And, turning to the officers and gentlemen that had entered
the hall in his company, he added: "How think you, gentlemen?"

To this question Mr. Bentinck contented himself with replying that
His Highness had indeed promised as much, and that it was for him to
judge whether his conditions had been infringed; Count Schomberg, who
was still of the party, said, speaking in the French language, that
an example would not come amiss at this juncture, for he believed
these raw English levies were proving not a little turbulent and
likely to give trouble.  The rest, much, I think, to their honor,
kept silence, having perhaps the greatest difficulty in believing the
matters alleged against Captain Royston, that his confession of the
night before came to them but at second-hand.

There is little doubt in my mind that the silence of these two
younger gentlemen, taking sides, as it seemed to do, with the small
doubt or hesitation that still lurked in the Prince's mind, added for
the moment fuel to his anger.  He bade the junior of them go to the
escort, and send in a file of men; this gentleman, as he went,
encountering Sir Michael in the doorway, after one glance in his
face, stood back, giving way to him with a natural and involuntary
respect.  For M. de Rondiniacque has told me that my father entered
the hall with that pure and noble dignity of bearing to which age,
infirmity, and even lameness can but add distinction.

"Your Highness is welcome," he said, at once singling out and
approaching his chief guest.  "I regret my failure to welcome his
arrival, and could wish I had better entertainment to give."

"I am wholly of your mind, Sir Michael Drayton," replied the Prince.
"I like it so little that I take my leave of you."  And with that he
turned his back upon his host, addressing some words in a low voice
to Mr. Bentinck.

The insult was plain, and, although he was in a measure prepared for
trouble by the few words he had heard before he entered the hall,
such an attack upon himself was wholly beyond Sir Michael's
expectation.  He was, however, a man to resent discourtesy most
readily from the highest source.

"I will ask Your Highness," said he, in a voice very clear and
steady, "how we have incurred his displeasure."  Then the old man
drew himself to his full height, and his voice recovered for a space
some of the fuller and rounder tones of earlier days.  "Ay, but it
is," he said very solemnly, "a matter very weighty.  Since Your
Highness has so spoken, and within my walls, I may ask the reason of
it."

The Prince turned upon him with a great suddenness.  "Then know,
sir," he answered, almost fiercely, "that I was yesterday received
under pretence of loyalty and friendship into the house of an English
gentleman that has served me beyond the seas.  But the house, sir,
was a trap, and I the rat for whom the bait was set."  At this point
it was that two troopers, preceded by the young officer, entered the
hall.  His Highness regarded them for a moment, and then continued to
Sir Michael his explanation, which rapidly unfolded itself as a
charge against more than Edward Royston.  "Well, Sir Michael, I
spared that man's life, moved to clemency, I believe, in chief by the
persuasion of a young fellow that did bring me warning of my danger.
For this treacherous host, I dismissed him my service, and, if proof
that I then erred was lacking last night, it is not far to seek this
morning.  For I now find the man here, with my messenger to you at
his sword's point, and threats against me and mine mingling with his
sword-play.  How shall I know this is not yet another hotbed of false
friends?  In truth, I do believe it such.  Therefore, I say again,
sir, I do not like my entertainment."

"Your Highness is much abused," said Sir Michael, mighty calmly.

"Indeed," replied the Prince, with a harsh and unkindly laugh, "I do
believe I am."

"For this is a matter," continued my father, loftily passing over the
twisting of his word, "of which I do know the rights."

"'T is like enough, sir," said the Prince.  "But I do not look to
hear them from you."  Then, turning to the two troopers, he bade them
arrest Captain Royston, saying to them and the officer that he should
hold them responsible for the prisoner's person till Exeter was
reached.  Now, Ned had stood all this while with my father's sword
still naked in his hand, the point resting upon the floor.

"Take his sword," said His Highness.

And poor Ned, by this caring little what he did, flung the borrowed
weapon on the ground.

"The sword is mine!" said Sir Michael.

"I ask your pardon, Sir Michael," cried Ned, and stooped to raise it,
saying, as he reverently presented the hilt to its owner: "I did use
it for your daughter, sir."

For which Sir Michael thanked him very civilly, and then addressed
the future King of England in words that I think he has not to this
day forgot.

"William, Prince of Orange," he said, "this sword had been raised
against King Charles the Martyr himself in defence of the friend
beneath my roof.  But now my hand can barely fetch it from the
sheath.  Yet is my tongue not rusted, and the old man's voice must be
heard."  And then, as a silence fell heavy upon the room, he added,
"Ay, and heard it shall be."

The Prince turned his aquiline gaze upon him, but the man who had met
and endured unflinching the eyes of the Lord Protector Cromwell was
no whit abashed.  I have heard old men say that thirty years ago my
father's glance could be terrible as his sword; and even now there
were moments when from the dimmed azure of that deep-set eye the mist
of its many years was lifted, and the color grew cerulean round the
keen and glowing spark that lit up, it seemed, not only the orb, but
the whole countenance of the man, while it pierced the heart of the
wicked, and not seldom affected even the innocent with a great fear.
The Prince, like the brave man he ever was, met the old man's eye
with courage.

"Be brief, sir," said he, "and I will hear you."  And although it was
at this moment that without we heard the clamorous arrival of a
despatch-rider who shortly after entered, with bloody spurs and
bespattered to the eyes with mud, and presented a sealed packet to
Mr. Bentinck, yet, throughout the little commotion thus made, His
Highness never once turned his attention from Sir Michael.

"I do here solemnly declare," said my father, "that Edward Royston
hath done no treason to you."

"He has refused all account of his action," replied the Prince, very
coldly.

"And so doing," retorted the old man, "he intended the sacrificing
his own honor to mine."

"Said I not you were in league with him?" cried the Prince.

"Indeed, I am so," answered Sir Michael; "but in no treason."

"If the truth will clear his name," said His Highness, "the truth
must be said."

"And shall be, if Your Highness grant us breathing time of one short
half-hour."  And here Ned's valiant advocate paused a little, waiting
a reply that came not, for this concession of time he was determined
to win, if it were by any means to be gained; having no mind to tell
Philip's story without his son's knowledge of the telling, and his
presence to bear witness, if need were, to the truth of the tale.
And all this while, from the coming of the courier, Mr. Bentinck had
perused the papers he had taken from the packet placed in his hands.
He now raised his head, and eyed keenly the two speakers, as one that
had not missed a word of their talk.  "How saith the great Prince,"
my father continued, "that is come to set free a land enslaved?
Thirty little minutes on the dial's face?  It is surely no great boon
to ask."

And Mr. Bentinck stepped up to the Prince, saying privately, but not
so low as to be unheard of all: "Grant it.  I have here news that do
affect the matter."

And so it came about that the Prince, with a growth of courtesy
forced upon him by Sir Michael's bearing, did promise in half an
hour's time to hear his story in defence of the accused, asking very
civilly his host's permission to walk with his suite in the garden
that he spied from the windows until the time were past.  So--the
Prince and his following walking abroad; my father despatching Simon
and others not only with refreshment for the gentlemen, but also
great tankards of ale and other good things to the soldiers of the
escort; Ned with his guard, moreover, being quartered for this
momentous half-hour in my father's little chamber on the ground
floor; and I, like Sister Anne in the tale of Bluebeard and his many
wives, being posted on the roof of the turret, and, beneath a flag
that would not at all, in the light breeze that there was, spread
itself to my liking, watching with an old spy-glass to my eye for the
horseman that should by his coming make us all happy again--there was
left in the hall none but the luckless cause of this present phase of
our troubles.  M. de Rondiniacque at least thought himself alone; and
since he is of a nature very generous and candid, who so unhappy as
he?




CHAPTER XIX

M. de Rondiniacque had little reason to hope for anything better than
a second rebuff if he pursued the Prince to plead Royston's cause in
the garden.  He therefore sat him down in the hall where they had
left him, to ponder miserably enough the mischief he had done.  But
scarce, being wont at times to speak to himself aloud, had he cried:
"_Mort de ma vie!_ but if poor Royston suffer for this, I will
forswear all and turn monk" (wholly forgetting, as he was at times
not a little used, the grave cause of his expatriation), when there
ran lightly out from the shelter formed by the hanging that was
before the door that leads to the kitchens, who but little Prue?

Now, it was not far from this door that Mr. Bentinck had stood while
he read the letters brought by the courier, and it was at this point
that Prudence now paused, and stooping, raised from the floor a sheet
of thin paper, twice folded, which it soon appeared she had from her
cover observed that gentleman to let fall.  Holding this behind her
back, she addressed M. de Rondiniacque.

"'T is a mighty fine business, Master Foreigner," she said.  "See how
you have embroiled everything with this love of kissing!  It is like
enough you have by this means cost an honest man his life."

"'T is all true that you say," replied he; "yet I cannot tell how you
should know it, if you have not wilfully listened since ever your
mistress sent you from this place."

"I came between that door and its curtain," she replied, "in the same
moment that Sir Michael did ask the Prince the reason of his
churlishness.  So it was not long before I heard good Mr. Royston
tell how he did use the sword for Sir Michael's daughter.  And I were
a ninnyhammer indeed, if I could not from that tell the rest of the
tale.  Therefore, I say again, that 't is all your fault, ill man
that you are!"

"It is mine, indeed," said De Rondiniacque sadly.

Then did Prudence pull a very long and solemn face.

"Do you repent of your sins?" she asked.

"Most heartily I do," he answered.

"And would you atone?" she continued.

"Most gladly--but how?" he asked.

"Will you leave kissing forever," she demanded with great severity,
"if I do put you in the way to make amends?"

"Ay, that, and more!" he cried, in reckless penitence, "do but show
me the way."

"Nay, softly," she answered.  "'T will take three at least, and one
of them a woman of a very pretty wit, even if I be not mistaken, to
undo the mischief one witless man can work with this same foolish
kissing."

"Have done with your gibes!" said De Rondiniacque angrily.  "I would
not kiss you again if you asked it."  For which discourtesy Mistress
Prue deferred her revenge, thinking, as she has told me, that it was
but his sorrow and zeal of penitence made the gentleman speak so
unmannerly.

"Hark then to me," she said.  "As I stood there by the door, where I
could hear all and see not a little, after that the Prince had said
they would walk a turn in the garden, and while they were taking away
poor Mr. Royston a prisoner, the sour-faced man in black drew the
Prince aside so that they almost touched the curtain that hid me.
And there for a little space they stood, talking soft and low.  What
is he--the surly one, I mean, that had the papers?"

"That is Mr. Bentinck," replied De Rondiniacque, with some
impatience.  "Well, what said they?"

"The Prince was minded that Sir Michael spoke truth, but the man in
black that they must use all means to lay hands on the priest; he
said, too, that in his letter was a paper with every mark of this
priest's person, so as it might be his very portrait cunningly
painted; and he said that he cared not a groat for Sir Michael, nor
for poor Mr. Royston, so he might come at the priest.  They are
mightily in love with this priest, Mr. Mar-all, and I do think----"

"Did you hear his description?" interrupted De Rondiniacque.  "Did
Bentinck read it to the Prince?"

"They should do that in the air, said the Prince.  And as they went I
saw how this Mr. _Benting_, as you call him, did search among the
papers in his hands as if he had lost one of them.  And 't is little
wonder," added she, "that he could not find it, for His Highness's
great boot had it fast under heel the while they talked; and to that
heel it stuck for three good strides of their passage to the other
door.  See the mark of his tread."  And she showed him the paper she
had found, with its impress of a muddy heel.  "And I do think," said
Prudence, "that it is, perhaps, by the grace of God, that same paper
that tells of this priest's person."

"I see little good in it for us, even if it be so," said he; "but let
me read."  And, leaning over her as she unfolded the paper, he put an
arm round her waist.  But Prue twisted sinuously from his grasp.

"Nay, Mr. Mar-all," she cried, "I will read it myself.  I can read a
bold hand o' write near as well as print."  And then, after peering
closely for a while at the crabbed, slanting, and unfamiliar
characters upon the paper, she said dolefully: "Alack-aday! 't is an
outlandish thing, and will not be read.  I vow 't is French lingo!"

M. de Rondiniacque snatched the paper from her hand.

"I will read it for you, my pretty one," he said.

"I am not that, thank Heaven!" says Prue, bridling, as he hastily
scanned the writing.

"What! not pretty?" he asked, toying with her as it were by rote of
habit, while eyes and mind were both upon his reading.

"That I hope I am," replied Prue, "but not yours.  Your love is
unlucky."  Then, as she saw that she was like to get little sport
while he still would read: "Can you read French, sir?" she asked.

"What else?" he answered.  "Do I not speak it since I was weaned?"

"Ay, to speak it," said she; "that I can understand, being
natural-like to a poor thing hearing no better from a child.  But to
read it--'t is wonderful indeed.  Come, do it into English for me."
Then, hearing a footstep without, she cried: "Have you mastered it?
For I think he returns," and as M. de Rondiniacque looked up from
reading the last words, she snatched from him the paper and hid it in
her bosom.

The next moment Mr. William Bentinck entered the hall, walking slowly
and casting his eyes from side to side in anxious search of the floor
for the very thing she had hidden.  When he perceived that he was not
alone, he asked with some eagerness whether by chance Lieutenant de
Rondiniacque had seen him drop a paper.  That gentleman replying that
he had seen no paper fall, and proceeding with great appearance of
innocent good nature to peer about in the same search, Mr. Bentinck
turned his regard upon Prudence, who was about leaving the room.

She seemed, however, on a sudden to change her purpose, for, turning
again into the hall, she approached Mr. Bentinck, and, speaking with
a very fine assumption of timidity: "If it please your honor," she
said, "was it a very thin paper that you mislaid, and twice folded?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Bentinck very sharply.  "Where is it?"

"La, now," cries Prue, "where did I lay it?  I did think perhaps it
was of import, and know I did put it in safety."

"Then find it," growled he so angrily that poor Prue appeared much
frightened.

"Nay, sir," she pleaded very piteously, "do not so frown upon a poor
maid."

She looked around a little, as in great puzzlement; then, feeling
daintily beneath her stomacher, she produced the paper, crying
triumphantly that she had said it was safe, and here it was.  Mr.
Bentinck was at once upon the paper like a hungry hawk, asking, so
soon as it was safe in his hand, whether she had read what was there
written.  At which Prudence opened wide her blue eyes in an amazement
vastly childlike.

"And how does your honor think I should read French?" she asked.

"And how know 't was French," retorted her inquisitor, with bitter
keenness, "if you did not read?"  But Prue was too strong for the
great statesman.

"Mercy on us, sir," she cried, clasping her hands most prayerfully,
"do not hang me!  I' fecks I did try to read, and making nothing of
it, did know it for French."

When Mr. Bentinck, for all reply, had tushed, pshawed, and growled a
few words wholly inaudible, he turned sharply upon his heel and left
them.

And when he was well away M. de Rondiniacque, forgetful alike of
pious vow and petulant threat, seized Prudence in his arms and very
heartily embraced her.

"By all my Huguenot ancestors!" he cried, kissing her vigorously to
punctuate his oath, "but I do love thee, good wench."  And 't is
enough proof that she forgave him this breach of decorum that she
said never a word of threat nor promise broken.

"Was it not purely done?" she said, pushing him away.  "Now tell me
what was writ in the paper.  Pray Heaven you did read enough."

"All," replied M. de Rondiniacque.  "But, though I put much faith in
you, I know not yet what is your scheme, nor for what reason, if it
be of use to us, you have returned to the Dutchman his lost paper."

"'T is as needful he should know what there is written as we, if it
is as I guess," said Prue.  "And that I cannot tell until you give me
its purport."

"Somewhat in this way it ran, then," rejoined M. de Rondiniacque:


"'Father Francis, otherwise and at present known as "James Marston,
of the City of Oxford," fat, short, red periwig, his own hair
tonsured----'"


Prue's head had so far nodded to each particular, but at this she
checked her pretty chin in mid-air.  "Tonsured!" she cried; "and what
is that?"

"Shaven so," he replied, describing with his finger a ring upon the
top of his head.  "There is much more in the paper, however."

"You have told me enough," said Prue, much elated.  "Come with me,
and I will show you the man."

"But this is not the man that escaped our hands last night," said M.
de Rondiniacque, thoughtfully.

"What matter, Mr. Mar-plot?  Can you not see it is the man they would
have?  Come."  And she seized him by the hand and ran for the door,
almost dragging him after her.  But at that turn of the gallery that
leads to the stable-yard she paused a moment.  "But in truth," she
said, "it does hurt me to betray the poor man."

"Betray!" cried M. de Rondiniacque.

"To be sure," answered Prue; "it will be nothing else.  Since last
evening have I hid him in the barn loft.  He told me he was a poor
soldier of His Highness that was to be hanged for stealing an old
hen.  Now 't is a wicked thing indeed to steal a hen, but since the
hen was, he says, very tough and bad eating, I think it a worse thing
to hang the poor man for it.  Moreover, I did once save my
grandfather when Kirke's men would have hanged him, and the mere name
of a rope would make me pity a very Judas."

"But what made you think him a soldier, and yet know him for a
priest?" asked M. de Rondiniacque, not a little puzzled.

"He has a sword and other vile things for killing," replied the
tender-hearted little fool, "and also a great cloak like those of the
Prince's guard."

"I begin to smoke the man," said the Lieutenant, remembering the
escape, after the affair in the orchard at Royston, of one of the
conspirators.

"But this morning, when I privily took him food," continued Prudence,
"the thing of steel, which is for all the world like those of your
men, was no longer upon his head.  For he lay sleeping, and before I
had him awake I had well marked the little round spot atop of his
head, which had not long since certainly been shaven, having now but
a very short and stubby growth of hair upon it.  And he made me
think, too, of a bad man that Farmer Kidd did tell me of.  So I
thought he was perhaps the priest your Mr. _Benting_ hunts."

"'T is very like," said M. de Rondiniacque.  "So lead me where he is,
child.  In any case, he is a bad man."

"You would not have me betray a man for no reason but his badness,"
said the girl piteously.

"I would have you spend your pity first upon the good and innocent,"
replied M. de Rondiniacque, with some sternness; and then added:
"Moreover, the man is a Papist."

"A Papist!  Ah!  I do forget," cried Prue.  "He must even make way
for better men."  And with that she led him at once the same road
that the ale and beef had taken.  From which it is clear that M. de
Rondiniacque's dealings with her kind had at least taught him the
dexterous art of matching a bad reason with a worse upon the other
side.

Such, then, was my little handmaid's great secret, which nothing,
perhaps, but her pique at her mistress's reticence could have induced
her so long to maintain.




CHAPTER XX

Meantime, upon the turret roof I was enduring very tediously the
flight of these anxious minutes.  The spot we used to call the Crow's
Nest is marked plain to the unaided eye by a gap in the woods that
cover the low ridge of hills along which runs the road Exeter way
from Holroyd Grange.  This break in the line of trees did I watch, it
may be, for no more than ten minutes; but if it be remembered that I
knew not yet what was the end of the struggle in the hall, that a
thousand accidents suggested by the active mind to the unwilling
heart might delay or prevent Philip's keeping of his promise, and
that even if his coming availed to restore Ned to the favor of His
Highness, my brother must himself run great risk at his enemies'
hands, it will be found little surprising that those minutes were to
me tense, full, and slow-footed as so many hours.

At length in the gap appeared something--a horse was it, or a cow?
Certainly there was no man upon its back.  But it stopped in the open
space.  For at least the fiftieth time I raised to my eye the old
spy-glass Ned had given so many years ago to his little friend, and
with its aid I could now see that it was indeed a horse, with a man
that led it by the bridle, and seemed, I thought, to be gazing toward
me.  I laid down the glass, and in a passionate desire by some means
to signify to him the need there was that he should with haste cover
the three miles that lay between us of broken country, I seized the
cords that held the flag aloft, and, loosing that which passes
through the little pulley atop from the pin to which it was fast, I
pulled first on the one and then on the other cord in such wise that
I made the banner run down and up the mast again and again like a
flag gone mad.

And then once more through the glass I saw the man leap upon the back
of his horse, wave his hat to my signal, and disappear behind the
trees the way he had come.

And I knew then that he would not be long; for he had gone the way to
take the shortest track to Drayton, and Philip, though he had no love
of horses, could, like all his family, ride when he pleased both
fearlessly and well.  I left the flag flying, and descended the
winding stair with heart much lightened, to meet at its foot my
father.

"He is coming, sir," I cried.  "Philip is coming!  I have seen him."

And then I learned from him all that had happened below; and, hearing
that Ned was arrested for his attack on M. de Rondiniacque, was for
going forthwith to find him and to give him what comfort I was able.
This, however, my father would not permit, but led me to his own
chamber, where from the window we watched for Philip's coming.  And
although he made his return with a quickness truly wonderful, when
the nature not only of the country he traversed, but also of the
horse that carried him, come to be considered, so that we saw him
close at hand before the Prince's half-hour was expired, yet the time
seemed long indeed that he was coming, and the space left for
conference when he was come appeared all too short.  Having seen us
waving signals to him as he forced his jaded nag up the grassy hill
behind the house, he came at once to my father's chamber, where a few
words told him how the matter stood.  But when it was now time to
descend and meet His Highness in the hall, the half-hour being
expired, Sir Michael would by no means consent that his son should
accompany him, having perhaps but little hope that his surrender
might be avoided, yet keeping it, as it were, a last piece to move in
the game.  But it was good to stand by and hear these two men, so
diverse in purpose, in honor so alike, and to feel in my heart so
sweet a glow of pride in my own people.  For I, with most at stake,
could say no word to urge Philip's sacrificing himself.  But they
were agreed that no claim nor duty must be counted so great as that
of shielding, and even, if it might be done, of restoring the man who
had held his own honor second to theirs.

And so Sir Michael went to meet the enemy, telling me, as together we
descended the stair, that I was his second line of support, and that
Philip, waiting above, was his reserve, in case the struggle should
begin to go against him.

In the hall we found awaiting us the Prince and Mr. Bentinck.  In His
Highness's countenance I thought were signs of a humor more kindly
than my father would have had me to expect; for his aspect recalled
rather the man that gave me his sword than him that took from me the
broken blade.  I had but one glance at him, however, for as Sir
Michael passed on to address the Prince, there came over me a very
hot and comfortless sense of shame, along with a wish--vastly
unreasonable--that they should not recognize my features.  So I
turned aside from my father, and rested my arm upon the mantel, while
I gazed blankly upon the glowing logs that filled the hearth.  And
behind me I heard my father tell, in phrases now judicial, now
eloquent, and at times even impassioned, the tale of those accidents
and troubles which had brought, as he said, his old friend, young
Royston, into this bog of His Highness's disfavor.

But before it was all told a hand touched me upon the shoulder, and a
dry and guttural voice with the one word--"Mistress," made me turn
and confront Mr. Bentinck.  His keen eyes seemed to search my
countenance for the answer to some doubt or question in his mind.
"Pray tell me," he said at length, "where is the latter part of His
Highness's sword?"

"It is here, Mr. Bentinck," I answered, laying my hand where I had
concealed that pointed fragment of steel; "here; near the heart it
shall surely pierce if Edward Royston come to harm amongst you."

"I did think," he said, "that you were that boy that braved us all.
And I believe, moreover, that you had great part in the escape of the
priest."

"I had indeed the greatest part of all," I answered, being now
resolved to cast myself upon his mercy; "for without my share the man
had been still fast in your hands.  But oh, Mr. Bentinck," I
continued, "why are you his enemy?"

"Enemy!  Whose enemy?" cried Mr. Bentinck.  "Is it Captain Royston's
you mean?"

"Ay, his," I answered.  "Oh! he told me that you loved him not, but
withal has no ill word for you, declaring you always the most honest
of His Highness's servants."

Mr. Bentinck here seemed to muse a little.  And then--"I thank him,"
he said.  "If he be the same, I were sorry to be his enemy."

"He is honest as the daylight!" I cried.  "He has but wronged the
seeming of his honor for another--and that other without fault but in
appearance--as my father now makes plain to His Highness."

"Indeed, Mistress Drayton," he replied, speaking with a gentleness
well-nigh tender, "I do hope he may."  And with that he turned from
me as if to rejoin His Highness.  But I summoned all my daring to
make a plea yet more fully feminine, being much emboldened thereto by
the softness of his last words.

"Mr. Bentinck, Mr. Bentinck," I whispered eagerly, and he turned
again.  "Captain Royston and I were to be wed, if--if--" said I, and
could say no more.

"Ah," said he, "if what?"

"If you--if His Highness destroy us not utterly," I replied.  "Grant
us your aid, Mr. Bentinck."  And into these words I put, I do
suppose, much prayerfulness of face, voice, and gesture.  For he
looked a moment very kindly on the clasped hands and streaming eyes
that begged his help.

"Do not weep, mistress," he said.  "You shall have all I may give,"
and so turned his back upon me.

And here the Prince came a little toward me.  "It is truly a tale of
romance, Sir Michael," he said.  "Here was I vainly seeking the
serpent, and, lo! there is none but Eve."  And then to me: "Come
hither, Mistress Eve," he said.  So I went over to him, and made
before him a courtesy very deep and humble.  "I do like you better
thus, child," he went on, "than booted and spurred.  Is this a true
history that I hear?"

"So please Your Highness," I answered, "'t is true as the Gospel."

"How so?" he asked, smiling.  "You have not heard it."

"But it was my father," said I, "that told it."

At which reply the Prince appeared much pleased, for, addressing
himself to Mr. Bentinck: "'T is indeed a pious family," he remarked,
"and such mutual faith can hardly go with treason.  And, on my
conscience, William," he went on, "the tale has an appearance."
Then, to my father: "If all this be true, Sir Michael, you are much
abused."

"How that, Your Highness?" asked the old man.

"By a son," said the Prince, "departing from the faith of his
fathers."

"It is between him and his Maker," replied Sir Michael, with a touch
of pride.

"And by me," continued His Highness, "departing from the courtesy
incumbent upon princes.  Does that stand in the same awful
arbitrament, Sir Michael?"

"If Your Highness do me right," said my father, "'t is between us
two, and shall go no further."

"That is kindly said, sir," answered the Prince.  "So, if this be all
true--as it must be, if you have not all the art of deceiving the
most naturally in the world--I must needs fling pardon broadcast, eh?"

"I do not see what other course is open to Your Highness," said my
father.

But here the Prince's face grew vastly stern: "Except to this
priest," he said, "who, if he has not aimed at my life, is at least
my enemy, however honorable."

"My son?" asked Sir Michael; and my heart was sore to see the pallor
of his cheek.

"Ay, sir, your son--I must have your son.  Captain Royston's deed may
become the man of heart, however ill it fits the office of the
soldier.  But your son is my open enemy.  Must I lose both culprits?"

And so a shadow fell again upon us all, and with it a solemn silence,
which endured, I believe, all the time that I was absent from the
hall.  Certain it is that when I returned in my brother's company not
one of the three looked as if he had spoken.

When Philip stood before him, the Prince for a while eyed him with
great keenness, which rejoiced me to see; for surely no man had ever
words so eloquent to speak in his own defence as was my brother's
pure and noble countenance.

"Do you come of your own will to see me?" His Highness at length
enquired.

"I do," said my brother.

"And wherefore?" demanded the Prince.

"To take what blame I may from my friends," Philip answered.

"I have heard your story, sir," said the Prince.  "If you would
escape the fate that comes of ill company, describe to me now him
that constrained you in this matter."

"I may not," replied Philip.

"Tell me, then," said His Highness, "what power he held over you."

"I must not," said Philip.

This reply seemed not a little to vex the Prince.  "Must not!" he
cried.

"Nay, then," said the priest gently, "an Your Highness like it
better, I will not."

"'May not, must not, will not,'" said William, bitterly quoting his
words; "by the rule of war, Sir Priest, I may hang you to that tree.
Deny me not, for may can wax greater in other mouths."

"Hanging," says Philip very coolly, "is little likely to rob me of
the power to hold my tongue."

Now during this strife, while I both trembled and admired, I had yet
eyes to remark that Mr. Bentinck's gaze did wander to and fro between
a paper he held in his hand and the countenance of this stanch
brother of mine.  At the time I knew not what it meant, but have
since reason to believe it that same description of a priest that had
been trodden by the heel of a prince, hid in a maiden's bosom, and
feloniously perused by a gentleman of France.  Finding in it little
likeness to the man before him, he proceeded to the execution of a
small but vastly cunning _ruse_, to discover if the man whose
description he held in his hand were indeed the plotter of the late
murderous attack upon His Highness.

"Your Highness," said he sourly, "this subtile fellow does well know
that this Francis,"--and here Mr. Bentinck glanced with some
ostentation at the paper that was in his hand,--"or 'Marston,' as he
is here named, with his round body and red periwig, is already in our
hands.  This aping of constancy is but a means to keep from himself
the blame of a complicity that the other confesses."

"Nay, faith!" cried Philip, with an eagerness wholly innocent, "I
knew not that he was taken."

At this His Highness laughed loud and right merrily.  "Cunning
William!" he said, as he patted Mr. Bentinck upon the shoulder, "your
politic tricks are better than my threatenings."  He then addressed
Philip in a voice much softened: "Mr. Drayton," he said, "I ask your
pardon for my rough soldier ways.  We have taken no such person, but
you have most innocently told us what we much desired to know.
Wherefore did you scorn our hospitality last evening?  Was that also
of compulsion?"

"Nay," says Philip, "but to keep my father's name clear of a most
foul reproach.  From the bottom of my heart I am Your Highness's
enemy.  I never cease to pray that all your purpose may miscarry.
But you will not hang a Drayton and a cutthroat in one noose."

"I vow," cried the Prince, "you are all of one mould, you Draytons."

He seemed here to muse a while, and then begged Mr. Bentinck to give
order that Mr. Royston be brought before him.  And my heart very
miserably sank in my bosom, for I remembered how, but a little while
back, he had, in speaking of poor Ned, used the military title,
saying "Captain," as if restoration to rank and honor were already in
sight.

Mr. Bentinck soon returned, and not long after him came Ned with his
guard, which, in obedience to a sign from the Prince, halted at the
door, where they stood impassive with drawn swords.

"Come hither, sir," said His Highness; and Ned approaching, I saw
that, although the passion was burnt out of him, and his face was
worn and haggard, he still met with an eye unsubdued the glance of
the man on whom his fate depended.

"Mr. Royston," said the Prince, "I have heard all this midnight
mystery.  'T is a brave tale, which, in my thinking, clears all
therein involved of wicked design.  But no tale, be it never so true,
clears you, Mr. Royston, from the great fault of aiding my enemy
there to escape.  You know what in war-time is the law of military
discipline.  Have you anything to say, Mr. Royston, before this
matter be ended?"

And Ned looked him straight in the eyes, and answered him with a very
gentle fearlessness.

"I have little to say, Your Highness," he said; "and nothing of
contention.  One thing only I ask, if Your Highness mean to push the
matter to extremity.  Since I have never shown fear, I would die, if
it please you, rather by bullet than the--the cord.  Then, sire," he
went on,--and this was the sole occasion upon which I did hear
Captain Royston use to the Prince before his coronation the regal
form of address,--"then, sire, shall I take with me no grudging to
you."

Here following a little silence, I had much ado, for all my growing
belief that the Prince did mean well by us all, to keep back the sobs
that rose in my throat and caught at my breathing.  And then came my
lover's voice again.  "I have failed in my duty.  I had just drawn on
the seeming lad that was the companion of my watch, because he would
not let me follow the priest.  He crossed swords with me, and I
struck him in the neck,"--and here, I thought, His Highness's eyes
lighted curiously upon me, and I grew warm with blushing as I thought
of the black patch of plaister upon my bosom,--"and then I learned
that it was no blood of man that I had drawn, but the drops fell from
the soft flesh of a woman.  And more I found that fatal night--that
the woman was she that I did love well when she was but a little maid
no higher than my sword-hilt,"--and here the man's hand went to his
side, but found nothing,--"the sword, God's truth! that I must not
wear!  And then I learned why she would have the popish fellow
escape.  He was her brother, and she loved him, even as both did love
the great old name.  And I?  I loved the maid, even the more that I
had hurt her.  And the man swore--not by his order, nor by his
heretic bishop of Rome, but on his honorable lineage as a gentleman
of England, to do you nor yours further hurt of any kind till his
foot was set once more in France.  It was hard to see so pretty a
maid weep; harder, when the tears fell from eyes that had already
forgiven the wound.  Moreover, Your Highness, I did put faith in the
man.  Papist that he was, yet did he bear himself so as none could
doubt his worth.  I do but ask that, before I bear my punishment, the
master I have ever served in a love hedged about with reverence and
awe will put faith in my word that I had no will to wrong him, or to
fail, as it seems fail I did, in the service that was due."

"For that I do believe you, sir," said the Prince; "yet can it not
undo what is done."

While Ned was speaking, His Highness had seemed to my jealously
watching eye not unmoved.  He now laid his hand on Mr. Bentinck's
arm, and drew that gentleman apart into the window which is nearest
the door where Prue had played the eavesdropper.  I had no intent to
do the like, and it was more His Highness's fault than mine if he did
not perceive that I stood so much nearer than the rest of the company
that some words of his discourse with Mr. Bentinck were plainly
audible to me.  And, while their voices rose and fell in that
murmured conference, the curtain that hangs before that little door
was brushed aside, and M. de Rondiniacque, with his hat in his hand
and a smile upon his lips at once merry, mocking, and triumphant,
stood beside me.

"This is no plot, William," said the Prince,--"but a matter of one
family."  And there followed much that escaped my ear, until His
Highness's voice rose with the words, "How think you, William?  If we
had this Francis--" and then dropped into the former murmuring.

"Had we the fat one," says Mr. Bentinck; "for this priest"--and at
the word he twisted his head a little toward Philip, who stood by the
hearth with Ned and my father--"this priest is too spare to make a
meal of."

"Ay," said the Prince, "if we could but find this 'Marston,' and if
it were made plain he had no ties here with these good people, we
might well treat these late adventures with the largeness that safety
can use."

And then much more from Mr. Bentinck that I did not hear, until he
said that the good-will of such men as these was of much value, and
ended with some words of Captain Royston's difficult dilemma of the
past night.

"Look on her but once, Your Highness," said he, "and weigh the
temptation."  So I knew he had kept faith with me.

But it was not to my ears alone that these last words were audible;
for no sooner were they uttered than M. de Rondiniacque stepped
forward some paces and, speaking in tones of much levity: "'T is very
true, Your Highness," said he, "as Mr. Bentinck has observed: the
women of these parts are the very devil for the seducing a man from
his duty."

The Prince turned upon him very sharply.  "Peace, Lieutenant!" he
said harshly; "such levity becomes neither my presence nor the
occasion."  He then turned his back upon the interrupter, and
continued, addressing Mr. Bentinck: "But then--this Francis--we have
not taken him.  What then?"

Again the dauntless and merry Frenchman interrupted; he well knew, I
think, that the import of what he was to say would cover a measure of
insolence, and could not resist the inclination to practise his
raillery a little upon the ponderous gravity of Mr. Bentinck's
statecraft.  "Nay, but, Your Highness," he said gaily, "we have taken
him.  Had not Your Highness so sharply snubbed my ardor for his
service, I was even now to remark that these fair ones do also at
times render notable aid to his cause.  Of late one did save Your
Highness's life, and now a rustic Eve has put in my hands a morsel of
Adam's flesh much coveted, if I mistake not, of Mr. William Bentinck
here."

"What is he?" cried Bentinck.

"Very fat, an it please you, Mr. Bentinck," says De Rondiniacque,
laughing.  Then, pushing aside the curtain, he opened the door and
beckoned with his hand.  His signal was answered by the entrance of a
company vastly comical to behold.  For little Prue's prisoner was
very roughly thrust into the hall by Christopher Kidd, whose tall and
burly person towered above and behind the little, fat, evil-visaged
priest, the yeoman grasping in one of his huge hands both wrists of
his captive.  They were followed by Prudence, beaming with smiles at
the thought of the importance brought upon her by her act of
compassion.  And there came upon the bearing of Mr. Bentinck, at
sight of the prisoner, a wonderful change.  For his face flushed and
his eye gleamed; he forgot the impertinences of M. de Rondiniacque,
he passed over the lack of ceremony evinced by this sudden intrusion,
and pounced, as it were, at once upon his prey.

From his own lips I have since heard the cause of Mr. Bentinck's
emotion.  He had for many months endeavored to instil into his prince
and master what he held to be a fitting and wholesome dread of the
secret assassin.  He had indeed in those days and during many years
to come good reason enough for his own fears, yet none could he
contrive to arouse in that most fearless of men that is now our most
gracious sovereign; who, after some abortive attempt upon his person,
or upon the news of some fresh and subtile plot discovered and
prevented, would jest lightly of the matter, or turn aside from it
with a few sharp words.

"As for assassins, William," he would say, "I hold it wholly beneath
me to speak of them, and much more to give them serious thought."

Now, in this case, not only did Mr. Bentinck hope by means of this
fat rascal to come at the source and instigation of the attempted
crime, but also, through discoveries the captive should be compelled
to make, to arouse in His Highness's mind a more sensible conviction
of the dangers to which his careless magnanimity so frequently
exposed his person.  Successful, however, as Mr. Bentinck ultimately
was in proving to his own satisfaction the guilt of greater persons
than the shaking wretch before him, I have never heard that His
Highness was prevailed upon by this or any other means to give one
serious thought to perils of this nature.

"Bring him here," cried Mr. Bentinck very sharply to Kidd, who pushed
his helpless prisoner forward until the light from the window fell
upon his ill-favored countenance.  "H'm---h'm--h'm!" grunted Mr.
Bentinck, as his eyes rose and fell between his paper of description
and the face of the fellow that trembled and sweated before him.
"H'm!  But the red periwig is wanting."

Whereupon Prue whips out that tangled wig from beneath her apron,
vowing she had found it in the straw where the fellow had slept.

"'T is enough," says Mr. Bentinck: then in a voice very terrible and
sudden he cried to the culprit: "Your name is Francis."

"'T is not," stammered the poor wretch, "nor no such name."  And his
gaze went round the room very despairfully till it lighted upon
Philip.  "For the love of God, Mr. Philip Drayton," he cried, "tell
them how I am called."

Philip regarded him with a disgust that he tried in vain to conceal.

"I have met you once," he said, "as James Marston, of Oxford."

"Did I not tell you?" said Francis, his face lighting with hope.

And Mr. Bentinck laughed.  "Truly you did," he replied, "and more
than you purposed telling.  These trappings," he continued, turning
to the Prince, "are the same that were stolen from Your Highness's
guard in the affair of the orchard.  I think we have proof enough."

His Highness approached at once the window and the prisoner.

"Would Your Holiness hang from that elm?" he asked, pointing to the
great tree that stands over against the stable.  "If not, a true
account of all these matters will save the tree so foul a fruit.  I
hear it is thought you abuse your masters as much as ourselves,
forging written powers beyond their intent.  You shall have some
hours to make choice between confession and the rope."  And he bade
the guard that stood at the great door to take him away.  "And look
to it," said His Highness to the young officer, as he was about
following after his men and their prisoner, "that no woman come near
him."  He then laughed a little at his jest, which by the direction
of his glance I took to be aimed at myself, and, turning to M. de
Rondiniacque, asked how he came to lay hands upon the fellow.

"I owe him to Mistress Prudence here, Your Highness," replied the
Frenchman.  Whereupon the Prince would have Prudence to tell him of
the matter.

Little Prue, as she did afterwards tell me, was "all of a twitter"
betwixt pride and bashfulness, and it was only with much blushing and
stammering that she at length found her voice.

"I' fecks, Your High and Great Mightiness, sir," she said at last, "I
have been fatting him like a great pullet in the loft of our barn.  I
did take him for a soldier you would have hanged for thieving."

"How chanced it," said the Prince, "that you knew our need of him?"

Now this was for Prue a very distressful question, and, since she
would not tell the truth, nor could readily think upon a fiction of
any appearance, she felt herself in sorry plight, which she made no
better by showing very plainly in her face the distress that she
felt.  Her rescue came quickly from a source whence it was little
expected.  For her piteous glance of appeal was cast in vain on M. de
Rondiniacque, who himself was not a little taken aback by the
Prince's question, and then in a very helpless fashion she passed it
on to me.  And I, all in the dark as I was, strove blindly for the
means to come to her aid, when Mr. Bentinck, with a little laugh that
was very dry and yet vastly humorous, interfered.

"It were best, Your Highness," he said, "to pass that point."

The Prince looked upon him for a moment, and seemed to lay the matter
aside in his mind for future enlightening.

"Well, my pretty maid," said he to Prudence, who now regarded Mr.
Bentinck as if she would willingly have kissed his feet, "we owe you
some return.  How shall we render it?"

"What I did, sir," says Prue, "was done for my dear mistress there.
If you will but add my debt to her prayers, sir, I shall be overpaid."

"That is well said.  Even the servants, William," said His Highness,
turning to Mr. Bentinck, "in this terrible family are at one with
their masters.  'T is a tribe we had best have on our side."  And
then he went over to the knot of men that stood against the hearth.
"Mr. Royston," he said, "this matter shall rest as it stood
yesternight, when you left your house.  You are free."  And then to
Philip: "Mr. Drayton, you are an honest foe, from a camp whence I
have least reason to expect such.  Will you give me a promise to add
to that which Mr. Royston holds of you?"

"Most willingly, Your Highness," replied Philip, "if I may with
honor."

"Then I ask you," said His Highness, "to abide six months from this
day with your good father.  After, do what and go where you will.  He
is worth the time that will be so spent, sir.  To ease your
conscience on the Roman side, Sir Priest, I give you leave to effect
his conversion"--and here His Highness laughed very drily--"if you
prove able.  Is it agreed?"

"The punishment is not a hard one," answered Philip.  "I will observe
your conditions.  You have my word."

"I shall always regard a Drayton's word," said His Highness, with a
very grave and sweet courtesy, "as _par excellence_ the oath of
honor.  And you, Mistress Drayton," he continued, "must I go fight my
enemies with a sword that cannot thrust?  I do perceive I did you
wrong, and now once more I thank you for that you did yesterday.  But
my sword does lack its point."  And the Prince drew from a scabbard
that was never made for it the shortened blade whose other part I
guarded so close.

"Ay, it lacks yet its point," I answered, "even as Your Highness's
clemency does still lack its crowning grace.  The sword's latter half
is not yet redeemed."

"What, what! fair enemy?" cried the Prince, in tones of raillery.

"More fair I do hope than enemy, Your Highness," I replied.

"Well, pretty friend," he continued, seeming not ill pleased,
"wouldst have me thus armed?  'T is true--in your ear--I purpose
using English swords against such good English fellows as come not
over to our side.  But what of these hordes of Irish kerns, with
Tyrconnel and Sarsfield at their head?  Surely on these we poor
Dutchmen may flesh our blades; and when the time comes, is it with
this you would have me fight?"

Now, while the Prince did tease me with the sight of his broken
blade, and while I felt for words to clothe the thought in me, I
marked that M. de Rondiniacque, as one taking time by the forelock
upon a signal long expected, went hurriedly out from the hall, a
circumstance that I had speedily forgot but for its sequel.  Meantime
I had inwardly breathed a little prayer to God for the gift of a
prevailing tongue, and now drew from my bosom that seven inches of
pointed steel that I purposed selling at so great a price.

"Your Highness," I said, "this kind of iron is sold mighty dear.  Ah,
will a great Prince have a poor maid that is his true servant wed
with a man unhappy all his days?  And yet a man so true, did Your
Highness know him as I have known him for many, many years?  As he
and I rode hither in the smallest hours of this very day, it was a
broken man at my side--a man whose one half would rejoice for his
company, while the other part of him cried out for his Leader, his
Prince, his King.  And, woman-like, I upbraided you sore, finding in
my passion of pity no word too bitter for you, sir.  But from him
there fell no word of blame, for no hard thought of you did cross his
mind.  Your Highness, he tried to serve two masters, indeed, but
himself was never one of them.  If he did ill, it was for me--me that
he loved since his arms were my childhood's harbor of refuge, his
shoulder my horse that tired not.  For that part of your sword that
you hold, you gave me his life.  For this part that I have kept,
where I hope all the days of my life to keep his honor, give me his
old rank in your service--and ever, during his desert, his old favor
in those eyes that, when they will, can read so deep."

The Prince gazed at me a while, and his face grew somehow to a
softness that is seldom, I think, observed upon it.  And, as we
looked upon each other, there was a little bustle at the door, made,
I doubt not, by M. de Rondiniacque's return.

"Give it me, child," said William, and I handed him, without further
doubt of his purpose, the remnant of his pledge.

"Why so ready, mistress?" asked His Highness.  "I have granted
naught."

"Nay," I replied, "but love can read deep, even as the eyes of a
prince."

"In this world, my child," he said, speaking still with that
gentleness I had marked in his face, "there is no going back.  But,
if Mr. Bentinck will fill us out a major's brevet for Mr. Edward
Royston, will that serve to balance the uneven division of last
night, sir, or madam?"

Upon which the joy in my heart was so near to seeking its relief in
tears that I had much ado to answer him.

"I do thank Your Highness," I murmured, "beyond all telling."  And
then, finding a better voice, I continued: "And, if it please Your
Highness, I will be always madam."

"Then must you begin soon," he answered; "to which end I shall impose
a condition on this settlement."  But here the Prince checked
himself, turning suddenly upon M. de Rondiniacque, by which action he
was able to detect that pleasant gentleman in the act of restoring to
Ned the sword taken from him the night before.

To my ear he has since declared that he had some inward premonition
on his arising that morning that the matter of poor Royston's
disgrace was by no means concluded; and this feeling, whether
foresight or presentiment, had waxed in him so strong, that he had
brought with him that weapon, as well as his own, in spite of his
previous intent to leave it privily in its owner's house.

As His Highness turned from me to observe him, De Rondiniacque
uttered these words: "Your sword, Major Royston," with so much of
kindly triumph in voice and countenance that even the visage turned
on him with enquiry so stern broke into a smile very responsive.

"How now, Lieutenant," said His Highness, "what is this?"

"When Mistress Drayton did begin to adjure Your Highness so
movingly," said the Frenchman, "holding in her hand that fragment of
Your Highness's sword, I made sure she would ask and obtain her
price; and so, Your Highness, I went straightway to fetch it.  And,
knowing Your Highness has need not only of swords, but also of men
that wield them as few but Major Royston can, I do trust I have done
no wrong."

"'T is well, sir," replied the Prince.  "As it seems your nature to
take much upon yourself, let it always, as now, be the discharge of
my wishes."

At which M. de Rondiniacque appeared not a little disconcerted; but,
since he has done His Highness many a notable service in these latter
days, it cannot be said that the mildness of the reproof was
ill-advised.

"But what was that, sweet child," the Prince now continued,
addressing me anew, "of which I was to speak?"

"I think, Your Highness," I replied, "that it was of some condition
to be set upon us in regard to--to----"

"Faith, I do remember," said he.  "It is that Major Royston do wed
you within the week, and thereafter join us at Salisbury.  And
quarters shall be found for the pair of you," he continued, "for if
the steel be near the magnet it will not wander again."  And so
saying he laid his hand very kindly upon Ned's shoulder.  And Ned
Royston looked him in the face with that look that an hour agone I
had given my life to bring into his face.

"My life is yours, sir," said he, with a blunt heartiness; and,
taking my hand very firmly and tenderly in his, he added: "and Your
Highness will now have from me two services in one."

And here Simon Emmet, who, upon a word of his master, had been for
some minutes mighty full of a kind of bustling greatness, did give
into Sir Michael's hands that great silver drinking bowl that no lip
for over forty years had touched.  And Sir Michael held the bowl
high, and gave it then into the hands of the Prince of Orange.

"From this cup," said my father, "the last to drink was Your
Highness's grandfather, King Charles the Martyr."

"Then in his name, and in the name of England, I drink first of a
loving-cup," cried the Prince; which when he had done he passed the
vessel to me, and from me it went the round of every living soul
there present, leaving, I suppose, in the bottom of the bowl but a
few drops of wine to wet the lips of Prudence, who, as luck would
have it, came last of all in the drinking; for, after she had tipped
it high to catch the last, she gazed beseechingly around, daintily
licking her lips the while, as if she would know whether she might
truly say she had drunk that toast.  His Highness, marking with the
rest her pretty gesture, could not forbear smiling.

"Ah, my pretty maid," he said, "it was you that did bring us that fat
rooster in the nick of time.  Do you then ask no reward?"

And Prue, as a woman can, asked of me in two movements of her eyes a
question.  Once most indicatively they went to His Highness's belt
and sword, and once, with interrogation as plain, to my face,
catching thence the answer before one man in the room, I truly think,
had fully gathered the sense of the Prince's question.

"There is a thing, if it please Your Mightiness," she said, "that I
would have."

"What is it, then?" said His Highness.  "For it seems I must spend
this day in giving."

"The fragments, Your Honor," says Prue, "of that same blessed sword."

And he gave her the broken pieces of the sword, which in triumph she
straightway brought to me; and I hung them then and there above the
hearth, standing upon the table most comfortably thrust into place by
many willing hands.

And when it was done, I cried, facing them all in my joy before I
descended: "And there it shall stay: and hereafter they shall say
whose it was."

"'They,' Mistress Drayton?" cried the Prince.  "Who are 'they'?  Thy
children?"

And I wished heartily then for a more lowly station.  But princes
will be answered, and, for all the shame I felt, I answered the
Prince of Orange.

"Yes, Your Highness," I said.  "The children of Royston and Drayton
shall say--shall say that it is--

"The sword of the Prince of Orange?" says His Highness, willing to
help me in my confusion.

"Not so, I hope and pray to God," I answered.  "May He grant that it
then be the sword of their King."

And this is the story of the sword that was his that is the King.
For my own, it did not end there, nor is it ended yet.



THE END











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