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The Yeoman Adventurer

by George W. Gough · English · Gutenberg #7326 · 694,461 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Yeoman Adventurer

Author: George W. Gough


        
Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7326]
                Most recently updated: August 3, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7326

Credits: Produced by Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks,
        and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YEOMAN ADVENTURER ***




Produced by Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team










The Yeoman Adventurer

By George Gough



To

A. D. Steel-Maitland, M.P.

In Gratitude and Admiration



CONTENTS


I. THE GREAT JACK

II. THE SERGEANT OF DRAGOONS

III. MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE

IV. OUR JOURNEY COMMENCES

V. THE ANCIENT HIGH HOUSE

VI. MY LORD BROCTON

VII. THE RESULTS OF LOSING MY VIRGIL

VIII. THE CONJURER'S CAP

IX. MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN

X. SULTAN

XI. IN WHICH I SLIP

XII. THE GUEST-ROOM OF THE "RISING SUN"

XIII. PHARAOH'S KINE

XIV. "WAR HAS ITS RISKS"

XV. IN THE MOORLANDS

XVI. BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE

XVII. MY NEW HAT

XVIII. THE DOUBLE SIX

XIX. WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY

XX. THE COUNCIL AT DERBY

XXI. MASTER FREAKE KNOWS AT LAST

XXII. A BROTHER OF THE LAMP

XXIII. DONALD

XXIV. MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT

XXV. I SETTLE MY ACCOUNT WITH MY LORD BROCTON

XXVI. THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN

EPILOGUE: THE LITTLE JACK




CHAPTER I

THE GREAT JACK


Our Kate, Joe Braggs, and I all had a hand in the beginning, and as great
results grew in the end out of the small events of that December morning,
I will set them down in order.

It began by my refusing point-blank to take Kate to the vicar's to watch
the soldiers march by. I loved the vicar, the grave, sweet, childless old
man who had been a second father to me since the sad day which made my
mother a widow, and but for the soldiers nothing would have been more
agreeable than to spend the afternoon with the old man and his books. But
my heart would surely have broken had I gone. A caged linnet is a sorry
enough sight in a withdrawing-room, but hang the cage on a tree in a
sunlit garden, with free birds twittering and flitting about it, and you
turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study, with the
rows of books he had made me know and love with some small measure of his
own learning and passion, was the perch and seed-bowl of my cage, the
things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy Kate, that made life
possible, but still part of the cage, and it would have maddened me to hop
and twitter there in sight of free men with arms in their hands and
careers in front of them. Jack Dobson would march by, the sweetness of
life for Kate--little dreamed she that I knew it--but for me the
bitterness of death. Jack Dobson! I liked Jack, but not clinquant in
crimson and gold, with spurs and sword clanking on the hard, frost-bitten
road. I laughed at the idea; Jack Dobson, whom I had fought time and time
again at school until I could lick him as easily as I could look at him;
Jack Dobson, a jolly enough lad, who fought cheerily even when he knew a
sound thrashing was in store for him, but all his brains were good for was
to stumble through _Arma virumque cano_, and then whisper, "Noll, you
can fire a gun and shoot a man, but how can you sing 'em?" And because his
thin, shadowy, grasping father was a man of much outward substance and
burgess for the ancient borough, Jack was cornet in my Lord Brocton's
newly raised regiment of dragoons, this day marching with other of the
Duke of Cumberland's troops from Lichfield to Stafford. And for me, the
pride of old Bloggs for Latin and of all the lads for fighting, the most
stirring deed of arms available was shooting rabbits. So, consuming
inwardly with thoughts of my hard fate, I refused to go to the vicar's.
Mother should go. For her it would be a real treat, and Kate would be the
better under her quiet, seeing eyes.

"Well then," said Kate, "grump at home over your beastly Virgil." Mother,
who understood as only mothers can, said nothing, and prepared my
favourite dishes for dinner.

The meal over, and the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more than
the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best fripperies
and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I stood in the
porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along the road till
they dropped out of sight beyond the bridge.

Then Kate's share of these introductory events became manifest. Search
high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in yellowing
parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and would have
flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint inscription on
the fly-leaf, in her big, pot-hooky handwriting:

  "KATHERINE WHEATMAN, her book,
   God give her grease to larn to cook.

   At the Hanyards.
   Jul. 1739."

The simple words stung me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no
scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world
than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and
devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to
do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to
a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the miraculous aid suggested
in her unintentional and, to me, biting epigram. I put the book down, and
gave over the hunt for my Virgil. It would probably be useless in any
case, since Kate had a cunning all her own, and had surely bestowed it far
beyond any searching of mine. I contented myself with a fair reprisal,
stowing a stray ribbon of hers in my breeches' pocket, and sat down to
smoke. My pipe would not draw, and I smashed it in trying to make it.

The tall oak clock tick-tocked on in the house-place, and Jane sang on at
her churning in the dairy across the yard. I sat gazing at the fire, where
I could see nothing but Jack Dobson in his martial grandeur, and I hated
him for his greatness, and despised myself for my pettiness. All the same
it was unendurable, and it was a relief to see Joe Braggs tiptoeing
carefully across the yard dairywards. The rascal should have been patching
a gap in the hedge of Ten-acres, and here he was, foraging for a jug of
ale. He could wheedle Jane as easily as he could snare a rabbit, but I
would scarify him out of his five senses, the hulk.

The singing stopped, and then the churning, and five minutes later I
crept up to the kitchen door, which was ajar. There was my lord Joe, a jug
of ale in hand, his free arm round Jane's neck. How endurable these two
found life at the Hanyards! I caught a fragment of their gossip.

"Be there such things as rale quanes, Jin?"

"Of course," she replied. "There's pictures of 'em in one of Master
Noll's books. Crowns on their yeds, too."

"There's one on 'em down 'tour house, Jin, but she ain't got no crown.
But bless thee, wench, I'd sooner kiss thee than look at fifty quanes."

Jane yelped as I murdered an incipient kiss by knocking the jug out of
his hand across the kitchen, but in kicking him out of doors I tripped
over a bucket of water, and about half a score fine dace flopped miserably
on the wet floor.

"Dunna carry on a' that'n, Master Noll," said Joe. "I only com' up t'ouse
to bring you them daceys."

"And what the devil do I want with them?" said I angrily.

Joe knew me. He said, "There's a jack as big as a gate-post in that 'ole
between the reeds along th' 'igh bonk."

He saw the cock of my eye, and went on: "I saw 'im this mornin', an'
'eard 'im. 'E made a splosh like a sack o' taters droppin' off the bridge.
So I just copped 'e a few daceys, thinkin' as you'd be sure to go after
'im."

"Put them in some fresh water, Joe, and you, Jane, fill him another jug.
I'll own up to Mistress Kate for smashing the other."

I fetched my rod and tackle, picked up the bucket of dace, and set off
across the fields to the river. The bank nearer the house, and about three
hundred yards from it, stood from two to six feet above the water, being
lowest where a brick bridge carried the road to the village. The opposite
bank was very low, and was fringed in summer with great masses of reeds
and bulrushes, now withered down nearly to nothing, but still showing the
pocket of deep water where the jack had "sploshed like a sack o' taters."
It was opposite the highest part of our bank--the Hanyards was bounded by
the river in this direction--and the bridge was about one hundred yards
down-stream to my left. In a few minutes a fine dace was swimming in the
gap as merrily as the tackle would let him.

For an hour or more I took short turns up and down the bank, just far
enough from the edge to keep my cork in view. If the jack was there, he
made no sign, and at length my sportsman's eagerness began to flag, and my
eye roamed across the meadows to the church spire, under the shadow of
which life as I could never know it was lilting merrily northwards. Here I
was and here I should remain, like a cabbage, till Death pulled me up by
the roots.

Worthy Master Walton says that angling is the contemplative man's
recreation, and, having had in these later years much to con over in my
mind, I know that he is right. But it is no occupation for a fuming man,
and as I marched up and down I forgot all about my cork, till, with a
short laugh that had the tail of a curse in it, I noted that a real gaff
was a silly weapon with which to cut down an imaginary Highlander, and
turned again to my angling.

And at that very moment a thing happened the like of which I had never
seen before, and have not since seen in another ten years of fishing. My
rod was jerked clean off the bank, and careered away down-stream so fast
that I had to run hard to get level with it. Here was work indeed, and at
that joyous moment I would not have changed places with Jack Dobson.
Without ado, I jumped into the river, waded out, recovered the butt of my
rod, and struck.

"As big as a gate-post." Joe was right. As I struck, the jack came to the
surface. The great stretch of yellow belly and the monstrous length of
vicious snout made my heart leap for joy. I would rather land him than
command a regiment. My rod bent to a sickle as I fought him, giving him
line and pulling in, again, again, and again. A dozen times I saw the
black bars on his shimmering back as he came at me, evil in his red-rimmed
eyes and danger in his cruel teeth, but the stout tackle stood it out.
Sweat poured off my forehead though I was up to the waist in ice-cold
water. Inch by inch I fought my way to the bank, and then fought on again
to get close to the bridge, where I could scramble out.

Probably I was half an hour in getting him there, but at last, by giving
him suddenly a dozen yards of loose line to go at, I was able to climb on
to the bank and check him before he got across to the stumps of the reeds.
But here I met with disaster, for in climbing up I jerked the hook of my
gaff out of my collar, where I had put it for safety, and it fell into the
stream.

"Stick to the fish," said some one behind me, "and leave the hook to me."

"Thanks," said I briefly, for I was scant of breath, and continued the
struggle.

A woman knelt on the bank, pulled the gaff in with a riding whip, plunged
down a shapely hand and recovered it. Then she stood behind me, watching
the fight. The jack, big and strong as he was, began to tire, and soon I
had him making short, sharp spurts in the shallow water at our feet.

My new ally stood quietly on the bank, holding the gaff ready for the
right moment. It came: a deft movement, a good pull together, and the
great jack curled and bounced on the bank.

"Over thirty pounds if he's an ounce!" I cried gleefully.

"Well done, fisherman!" she said. "It was a splendid sight. I've watched
you all along. When you jumped into the river, I thought you were going to
drown yourself. You had been walking up and down in a most desperate and
dejected fashion."

The raillery gave me courage to look into her eyes. I wondered if they
were black, but decided that they were not, since her hair was the colour
of wheat when it is ripening for the sickle and the summer sun falls on it
at eve. And I, who am six feet in my socks, had hardly to lower my eyes to
look into hers. Her face was beautiful beyond all imagining of mine. I had
conjured up visions of Dido enthralled of Aeneas, of Cleopatra bending
Antony to her whim. But the conscious art of my day-dreams had wrought no
such marvel as here I saw in very flesh before me. I felt as one who
drinks deep of some rich and rare vintage, and wonders why the gods have
blessed him so. And further, as small things jostle big things in the
mind, I knew that this was the real queen that had dazzled Joe Braggs.

"What do you call it?" she said, looking down at the fish.

"A jack, or pike, madam."

"'The tyrant of the watery plains,' as Mr. Pope calls him. You've heard
of Mr. Pope, the poet?" She spoke as if 'No' was the inevitable answer.

"Strictly speaking, no, madam," said I gravely, "but I have read his
so-called poems." She frowned. "Horace calls the jack," I continued,
"_lupus_, the wolf-fish, as one may say, and a very good name too.
Doubtless madam has heard of Horace."

My quip brought a glint into her eyes and a richer colour to her cheek.
"Yes, heard of him," she said, with a trace of chagrin in her voice. "And
now, O Nimrod of the watery plains, how far is it to the village smithy?"

"Just under a mile, madam."

"And how long does it take to shoe a horse?"

"How many shoes, madam?"

Again the glint in her eyes, and this time I saw some of the blue in
them. "One, sir," she said shortly.

"Ten to fifteen minutes, madam."

"He's a very long time," she said under her breath.

"The smith is probably very busy to-day."

"Busy! Why so?"

"The dragoons may have found him much work," said I, merely my way of
explaining the delay. But the words stabbed her. She laid a hand on my arm
and cried gaspingly, "Dragoons! What do you mean? Quick!"

"The Duke of Cumberland is marching north from Lichfield against the
Stuart, and Lord Brocton's dragoons are in the village."

"Brocton! O God! Brocton! My father is taken! And by Brocton!" She spoke
aloud in her agitation, and I saw that she was cut to the quick. And I
rejoiced, so strange is the human heart, that it was Lord Brocton's name
that came in anguish off her tongue. Oh for one blow at the man whose
father had harried mine into an untimely grave!

In sharp, frosty air sound travels far across the meadows of the
Hanyards. The hills that hem the valley to the west perhaps act as a
sounding board. Anyhow, further inquiry as to her trouble was stopped by
the rattle of distant hoofs. We were standing now less than a dozen paces
from the bridge. A straggling hedge, on a low bank, crossed flush up to
the bridge by a stile, cut the field off from the road. I rushed to the
stile, and cautiously pushed my head through near the ground. Half a mile
of level road stretched to my right towards the village, and along it, and
now less than six hundred yards away, a squad of dragoons was galloping
towards us. The hedge was thin and leafless, and there was not cover
enough for a rabbit. I ran back. "Dragoons," said I.

"After me," she replied carelessly, and I saw that danger for herself
left her cold.

I kicked the great jack motionless, flung him to the foot of the bank
under the hedge, and the rod after him, hurried her up to the stile,
leaped into the water, took her in my arms, and carried her under the
bridge. In less than a minute after I stopped wading, the dragoons
clattered overhead.

Not an hour ago I had been aching for life and adventures, and here I
was, up to the loins in water, with a goddess in my arms. Her right arm
was round my neck, and her cheek so near that I felt her sweet, warm
breath fanning my own. As the sounds died away, I turned and looked at her
face, and I had my reward. Her eyes told me that she thanked and trusted
me.

"Well done, fisherman!" she said for the second time.

"You're heavier than the jack," replied I, hitching her as far from the
water as possible before wading back. A minute later I put her down on the
bank with tumbled, yellow hair and face flaming red. I examined her
critically, and cried triumphantly, "Not a stitch wet!"



CHAPTER II

THE SERGEANT OF DRAGOONS


I threw the jack across my shoulder and we started for the Hanyards.
Madam offered no explanations, and I made no inquiries. It was obvious to
me that the dragoons had gone on to the little hedge ale-house, a good,
long mile away, where the road from the village struck into a roundabout
road to Stafford. Here, in the "Bull and Mouth," Mother Braggs ruled by
day and Master Joe by night, and here beyond a doubt the stranger lady had
tarried while her father had gone on with the horses to the nearest smithy
at Milford.

There was ample time to get to the Hanyards, but still, for safety's
sake, we kept behind hedges as far as possible. She walked ahead, and I
followed behind, water oozing out of my boots and breeches at every step,
and the jack's tail flopping against my legs. Never had I gone home from
fishing with such prizes. What pleased me most was her silence. It matched
the trust in her eyes. Except for brief instructions as to the direction,
no word passed until we gained the Hanyards from the rear, and I led her
into the house-place unobserved by anyone.

"There is little time to talk," I began. "The dragoons are certain to
come here, as this is the only house between the inn and the village. Your
father is, you fear, a prisoner, and indeed it seems the only explanation
of his absence. I do not ask why. I gather that there is no purpose to be
served by your sharing his fate."

"Free, I may be able to help him. A prisoner, I should...." She stopped,
hesitating.

"My Lord Brocton?" said I interrogatively. For the second time her face
burned, and I saw in it shame and distress and fear. My lord was piling up
a second account with me, and for humbling this proud beauty he should one
day pay the price in full.

But it was time to act. I ran to the porch and roared out, "Jane! Jane!
Where are you? Come here quick!"

Jane came running in from the kitchen. She stopped dead with surprise
when she saw my companion, and could not even cackle on about the jack.

"Now, Jane, do exactly what I say. Take this lady upstairs and dress her
as nearly like yourself as you can. It's good you are much of a height.
Pack her own clothes carefully out of sight. Off, quick!"

They disappeared upstairs, and I watched the yard gate with eager eyes.
No dragoons appeared, and in a short time madam and Jane were back in the
house-place. Jane had done her work well. The great lady was now a fine
country serving-wench, her shapeliness obscured in a homespun gown that
fitted only where it touched, her feet in huge, rough boots, her yellow
hair plastered back off her forehead and bunched into one of Jane's
'granny caps,' and indeed totally hidden by the large flap thereof, which
in Jane's case served the purpose of "keepin' the draf out'n 'er
neck-hole" when she was at work in the dairy. For my share of disguising,
I now rubbed together some ruddle and dry soil, and the mixture gave a
necessary touch of coarseness to her hands. Altogether she was changed out
of recognition, even if, which was not the case, any of her pursuers had
seen her previously.

"Jane," said I, "her name is Molly Brown. She has served here two years.
Her mother lives at Colwich. Have you both got that?"

"Molly Brown--two years--mother at Colwich," said madam with a smile, and
Jane repeated it after her.

"Now, Molly," said I, with an answering smile, "Jane will start you
churning. It's an easy job. You just turn a handle till the butter comes.
Do not flatter yourself that you'll get any butter, but I'll forgive you
that. And, having learned from Jane how to pretend to do it, you need not
churn in earnest till the dragoons ride into the yard. Listen to Jane, and
you, Jane, for the next ten minutes, teach the lady how to talk
Staffordshire fashion."

"Rate y'are, Master Noll," said Jane, who was plainly bursting with the
importance of her task.

"First lesson, madam," said I. "'Rate y'are,' not 'Right you are!' It was
not Mr. Pope's manner of speech, but it will suit your circumstances
better. Off to the dairy, and leave the dragoons to me!"

"Rate y'are, Master Noll," said madam, and, our anxieties
notwithstanding, we both joined in Jane's rattle of laughter.

They went off to the dairy, and I began my own preparations. I displayed
the great jack in full view on the table, forestalling Kate's housewifely
objections by disposing him on an old coat of mine, so that he should not
mess the table. In the house-place he looked much finer and longer than in
the open air, and I gloated over him as he lay there. I longed to change
my clothes, not so much for comfort's sake as to cut a better figure in
her eyes; but I dared not run the risk of not being at hand when the
dragoons arrived. I drew a quart jug of ale, threw most of it away, got
down a horn drinking-cup, drank a little, spilled some down my clothes,
slopped some on the table, made up the fire, and sat down to wait. It was
now about half-past three, the straw-coloured sun was perching on the
hill-tops, and darkness would soon be drawing on apace.

For perhaps a quarter of an hour I sat there, living over again the
precious minutes under the bridge, when the clatter of hoofs awakened me
to the realities of the situation. Peeping cautiously past the edge of the
blind, I saw the dragoons--there were six of them--ride up to the gate.
Sharp orders rang out, and three of the men dismounted, including him who
had given the orders, and came up the yard. One stayed at the gate to mind
the horses, and the other two trotted off on the scout round the fields
near the farm.

I slipped back to my chair, and let my chin drop on my chest, as if I
were dozing in drink.

Some one said at the porch door, "In the King's name!" I took no notice,
and they crowded, jingling and noisy, into the porch. Again sharp commands
were given; the two men grounded their arms with a clang on the stone
floor of the porch, and waited there. The man in command stepped forward
into the firelight and said crisply, "In the King's name!"

It was idle to pretend any longer. I raised my head and blinked drunkenly
at him. Then I filled the horn, sang thickly and with beery gusto, "Here's
a health unto His Majesty," and said, "Fill up and drink, whoever you are,
and shut the door. It's damned cold."

He had little, red, ferrety eyes, and they looked fiercely at
me--fiercely but not suspiciously, I thought. He waved my hospitality
aside, and said, "You are Oliver Wheatman?"

"Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards, Esquire, at His Majesty's service to
command," I replied with great gravity, and filled another horn of ale. I
might pretend to be drunk, but I could not, unfortunately, pretend to
drink, and it was strongish ale. He made a motion to stop me--welcome
proof that he believed me tipsy in fact--and said, "Master Wheatman, the
less drunken you are, the better you will answer my questions."

"Sir," said I, draining off the horn, "I can drink and talk with any man
living, and, drunk or sober, I only answer the questions of my friends. So
get a horn off the dresser--I'm a bit tired--fill up, and tell me what you
want. D'you happen to be of my Lord Brocton's regiment?"

"I am."

"Then you'll be as drunk as me before you've finished with the Hanyards.
Our ale goes to the head most damnably quick, let me tell you. You tell my
dear old butty, the worshipful Master Jack Dobson, that I've caught a jack
half as thick and more than half as long as himself. Here it be. Fetch a
horn, I tell you, and drink to me and the two jacks--Jack Dobson and this
jack beauty here."

He was getting no nearer to the object of his visit, and, perhaps
thinking it would be well to humour me, he fetched a horn and tried our
Hanyards ale. This gave me a chance of taking stock of him.

He was a thin, wiry man of middle height and middle age. Such a face I
had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I
had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or
he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty
midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in
large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth
originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been
extended, as it seemed, to his left ear by a savage sword slash which had
healed very badly. He had an air of mean, perky intelligence, as of one of
low rank and no breeding who had for many years been accustomed to cringe
to the great and domineer over smaller fry than himself. Some sort of
military rank he had, judging by his stained and frayed but once gaudy
jacket. He carried a tuck of unusual length, stretching along his left
side from heel to armpit, and a couple of pistols were stuck in his belt.

He put down the horn, smacked his lips, and began:

"Master Wheatman, I am searching for a Jacobite spy--a woman. We took her
father up at the 'Barley Mow,' and I learned from a man of yours that the
daughter was at his mother's ale-house down the road. She is not there,
and left to walk to meet her father, she said. She has certainly not done
that, and I have called to see if she is hiding here or hereabouts."

"By gad, we'll nab her if she is," said I heartily. "She's not been
through that gate in the last half-hour, for it takes me that to drink yon
jug dry, and I started with it full. But I'll ask the maids. Mother and
our Kate are at the parson's yonder, gaping at you chaps. I dare say you
saw them."

"No," said he doubtingly.

One of the men stepped out of the porch, saluted, and, being bidden to
speak, informed his officer that he had seen Lord Brocton and Mr. Cornet
Dobson talking to two ladies.

"That'd be they," I said, and going with unsteady steps to the door, I
vigorously shouted, "Jin, Moll, Jin, Moll, come here! They're in the
dairy," I added by way of explanation.

The crucial moment came. Jane and 'Moll' scurried across the yard like
rabbits, but stopped at the porch door with well-simulated surprise at the
sight of the dragoons.

"Gom, I thawt 'e'd set the house a-fire," said Jane thankfully,
addressing the company at large, and she bravely bustled through and
shrilled at me, "At it again, when your mother's out; y'd better get off
to bed afore she comes in. She'll drunk yer."

Jane's acting was so much better than mine that I nearly lost my head at
being thus crudely accused before 'Moll,' but she went on remorselessly,
addressing the dragoon, "Dunna upset him for God's sake, Master Squaddy.
'E'm a hell-hound when 'e'm gotten a sup of beer in'im."

"Don't trouble, my good girl. I'm used to his sort. Leave him to me and
answer my questions. The truth or the jail, my girl."

"Yow," sniffed Jane, "he'd snap yow in two like a carrot. Bed's best
place for 'im. He's as wet as thatch with his silly jacking."

"Jane," said I, "never mind me. I'm neither dry enough nor drunk enough
to go to bed yet. Captain here wants to ask you and Moll some questions.
Stop clacking at me like a hen at a weasel and listen to him."

Jane went through the ordeal easily, appealing to 'Moll' for verification
at every turn, and so cleverly that the latter appeared to be as much
under examination as herself. Moreover, Jane stood square in the
firelight, but so as to keep 'Moll' shouldered behind the chimney in
comparative gloom. They'd been churning all afternoon, the butter was
there to be seen, stacks of it; nobody had been in or near the yard; the
gate had never clicked once, and nobody could open it without being heard
in the dairy. She overwhelmed the dragoon with her demonstrations of the
impossibility of anybody coming up the yard without her or 'Moll' knowing
it.

"That's all right, Jane," said I, at length. "But she could easily have
got into the house or into the stables without you or Moll seeing her.
Let's all have a look for her. Unless she's small enough to creep into a
rat-hole, we'll soon find her."

Sergeant Radford--to give him his name and rank, which I learned later
from Jack Dobson--agreed to this, and in my joy at knowing that the ordeal
was over, I was on the point of forgetting that I was drunk till I caught
the clear eyes of madam fixed in warning on me. Jane acted as leader to
the two dragoons in overhauling the barns and stabling, while 'Moll,' the
sergeant, and I searched the house as closely as if we were looking for a
lost guinea. Of course our efforts were futile, slow as we were so as not
to outpace my drunken footsteps, and careful as we were so as to satisfy
the keen eyes of the sergeant, who was very evidently on no new job so far
as he was concerned. 'Moll' too seemed jealous of Jane's laurels, and went
thoroughly into the business. She and the serjeant peeped together under
beds and into closets, and she laughed brazenly at certain not very
obscure hints of his as to the great services I should render to the
search-party if I kept my eye on the house-place. She even said, "Master
Noll, don't 'e think as 'ow th' ale be gettin' flat downstairs? It wunna
be wuth drinkin' if y'ain't sharp."

The result was, that in about half an hour a thoroughly satisfied and
rather tired assembly filled the house-place, for the two scouts rode up
to the porch with the news that they, too, had found no trace of the
fugitive. With the sergeant's leave I sent the five dragoons into the
kitchen with the two maids to have a jug of ale apiece, while he stayed
with me in the house-place, to crack a bottle of wine.

I hoped, but in vain, that he would tell me news of the stranger's
father, but he was too wary for that, and I did not dare to ask him. He
made close inquiries as to the lie of the land hereabouts, and I pointed
out that there was a field-path leading plainly to the village from the
other side of the bridge and coming out at an obscure stile at the back of
the "Barley Mow." The spy might have taken that and become alarmed. She
could then avoid the village by another plain path, and so get ahead of
the troops on the Stafford road.

"But what for? Who's to help her there, Master Wheatman?"

"Ask me another, Captain," said I. "But a wise woman would know where to
find friends, and Stafford's full of papishes, burn 'em!"

"Ah!"

"There's Bulbrook and Pippin Pat and Ducky Bellows; there's old
sack-face, the parson there, as good as a papist, very near. You keep your
eyes on those big houses in the East Gate. As for me, look at that back
and breast and good broad-sword there. Damn me if I don't rub 'em up and
come and have a ding with 'em at these rebels. On Naseby Field they were,
Captain, long before your time and mine, but they did good work against
these same bloody Stuarts. Crack t'other bottle, there's a good fellow.
I'm dry with talking and wet with fishing, and it'll do me good."

I pressed him to stay and 'have a good set to,' but he refused, and after
drinking enough to keep me dizzy for a week, he nipped out and ordered his
men to horse. I walked to the gate with him. He thanked me for my help and
good cheer, and said it was quite clear that the spy was nowhere in or
near the Hanyards. I renewed my greetings to Cornet Dobson and even sent
my respects to his lordship. Off they rode, and it was with a thankful
heart that, remembering my happy condition in time, I stumbled back up the
yard to the house-place, where madam and beaming Jane were awaiting me.



CHAPTER III

MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE


Jane had taken the lady back to the house-place and was hovering around
her, with little of the grace of a maid-of-honour to be sure, but with a
heartiness and zeal that more than atoned for any lack of style. From
mother's withdrawing-room I fetched our chief household god, a small
ancient silver goblet, and, filling it with wine, offered it to the
stranger with what I supposed, no doubt wrongly, to be a modish bow. She
drank a little, and then, at my urging, a little more.

"Madam," I said, "I think you do not need to be 'Molly Brown' any longer.
Yon dragooner is quite certain that you are not here, and we can safely
take advantage of his opinion. As for you, Jane, you've done splendidly,
and I heartily thank you." I re-filled the goblet and handed it to Jane,
saying, "Drink, Jane, to madam's good luck."

The honest girl blushed with joy at my words, and as for drinking wine
out of the famous silver goblet of the Hanyards--such a distinction, as she
conceived it, was reward enough for anything.

"Thanks are payment all too poor for what you have done, sir," said
madam, "and any words of mine would make them poorer still. But, sir, I do
thank you most heartily. And you, too, Jane, have done me splendid
service. You are as brave and clever as you are bonny and pretty."

"Madam," said I, bowing low, "you are too kind to my services, which
have, indeed, been rather crudely performed."

"Not so," she replied, "but with shrewd, ready wit and certain judgment.
I cannot imagine myself in a tighter corner than at the bridge, and your
device had the effective simplicity of genius. Your plan here was, to be
sure, commonplace, but it, too, required caution and good acting, and you
and Jane supplied both. It was nicer than popping me into some musty
priest's hole, though I expect this ancient building has one."

I looked at the wall as half expecting the sword of Captain
Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman to rattle to the ground under this awful
insinuation.

"The only use our family has found for priests, madam," I said, "has
been, I fear, to hunt them like vermin. As a Wheatman of the Hanyards, I'm
afraid I'm a degenerate."

"You'll not even be that much longer if I keep you from getting into some
dry clothes. And, if Jane is willing, I will make myself myself. I would
fain be on."

With a sweet smile and a gracious curtsy, she followed the ready Jane
upstairs.

I removed all traces of what had taken place, and carried my precious
jack into the pantry, where I hung him in safety. He should be set up by
Master Whatcot of Stafford as a trophy and memento in honour of this great
day. I then hurried off to my room to attend to my own appearance, and
indeed I needed it, for I was caked with mud up to my knees and soaking
wet up to my waist. For the first time in my life I was grieved to the
bone at the inadequacy of my wardrobe, and even when I had donned my
Sunday best my appearance was undoubtedly villainous from the London point
of view. I feathered myself as finely as my resources permitted, but it
was a homely, uncouth yeoman that raced downstairs and awaited her coming.
I drew the curtains, lit the candles, kicked the fire into a blaze, and
built it up with fresh logs.

It would be impossible for me to set down the hubbub of thoughts and
ideas that filled my mind. I had been plunged into a new world, and
floundered about in it pretty hopelessly, I can tell you. The days of
knight-errantry had come over again, and chance, mightier even than King
Arthur, had commanded me to serve a sweet lady in distress. But I had had
no training, no preliminary squireship, in which I could learn how things
were done by watching brave and accomplished knights do them. I had lived
among the parts of speech, not among the facts of life. I could hit a bird
on the wing, snare a rabbit, ride like a saddle, angle for jack and trout,
strike like a sledge-hammer, swim like a fish--and that was all. I knew,
too, every turn and track and tree for miles round; and that might be
something now, and indeed, as will be seen, turned out my most precious
accomplishment. Some people said I was as proud as Lucifer, others that I
was as meek as a mouse, and I once overheard our Kate tell Priscilla
Dobson, Jack's vinegary sister, that both were right--which confounded me,
for our 'Copper Nob,' as I used to call her, was a shrewd little woman.
Still, such as I was, the stranger lady should have me, an she would, as
her squire, to the last breath in my body. Only let me get out of my
cabbage-bed, only give me a man's work to do, and I would ask for no more.
Neither for love nor for liking would I crave, but just for the work and
the joy of it.

The yard gate clicked, and a moment later mother and Kate came in.

"Oh, Noll, it's been grand!" burst out Kate. "I wish you'd been there.
There were hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers, horse and foot, and guns
and wagons without end. Lord Brocton was there, and Sir Ralph Sneyd, who
is just a duck, and a nasty-looking major with his face all over blotches.
And they saw us, and crowded into the vicar's to talk to us."

"And what about Jack Dobson?"

"Oh, Oliver, what have you got your best clothes on for?"

"Because I got wet through catching a great jack. But never mind my best
clothes. How did Jack look in his uniform?"

"A lot better than Lord Brocton, or anyone else there, if you must know,"
she said, jerking the words at me, with her cheeks near the colour of her
hair.

"Can he talk sense yet?"

"He talked like the modest gentleman he is," said my mother, "and looked
nearly as handsome as my own boy. He sent his loving greetings to you, and
would fain have come to see you but his duties would not allow of it."

Of course my gibes at Jack were all purely foolish and jealous, and,
moreover, I could now afford to be truthful; so I said, "If Jack doesn't
do better, as well as look better, than my Lord Brocton, I'll thrash him
soundly when he gets back. But he will. He's a rare one is Master Jack,
and by a long chalk the pluckiest soul, boy or man, I've ever come across.
And he'll learn sense, of the sort he wants, as fast as anybody when the
time comes."

"Of course the lad will," said mother, taking off her long cloak, and
Kate, when mother turned to hang it on its accustomed hook, gave a swift
peck at my cheek with her lips, and whispered, "You dear old Noll!"

All this time I had been listening with strained ears for footsteps on
the stairs. Now I heard them, and waited anxiously. The door opened, and
Jane came in, upright and important. She curtsyed to my mother, announced,
"Mistress Margaret Waynflete," and my goddess came into the room.

Straight up to my mother she walked,--a poor word to describe her sweet
and stately motion, _et vera incessu patuit dea_, as the master has
it,--curtsied low and nobly to her and said, "Mistress Wheatman, I am a
stranger in distress, and should have been in danger but for your son, who
has served me and saved me as only a brave and courteous gentleman could."

I had ever loved my mother dearly, but I loved her proudly now, for the
greatest dame in the land could not have done better than this sweet,
simple mother of mine. Without surprise or hesitation, she took Mistress
Waynflete's hands in her own, and said, "Dear lady, anyone in distress is
welcome here, and Oliver has done just as I would have him do. And this is
my daughter, Kate, who will share our anxiety to help you."

And then I was proud of our Kate, Kate with the red hair and the
milk-white face, the saucy eye and the shrewd tongue, Kate with the
tradesman's head and the heart of gold. She shook madam warmly by the
hand, and led her to my great arm-chair in the ingle-nook as to a throne
that was hers of right.

Thus was Mistress Waynflete made welcome to the Hanyards.

Mother and Kate took their accustomed seats on the cosy settle beside the
hearth. I sat on a three-legged stool in front of the fire, and Jane
flitted about as quietly as a bat, laying the table for our evening meal.

Never had the house-place at the Hanyards looked so fair. The firelight
danced on the black oak wainscot which age and polishing had made like
unto ebony, and the row of pewter plates on the top shelf of the dresser
glimmered in their obscurity like a row of moons. Our special pride, a
spice-cupboard of solid mahogany, ages old, glowed red across the room,
and from the neighbouring wall the great sword and back-and-breast with
which Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, Captain of Horse, had done service at
Naseby, seemed to twinkle congratulations to me as one not unworthy of my
name. Not an unsuitable frame, perhaps, this ancient, goodly house-place,
for the beautiful picture now in it, on which I looked as often as I dared
with furtive eyes of admiration.

She told her story with simple directness. Her father's name was
Christopher Waynflete, a soldier by profession, who had seen service in
many parts of the Continent and had attained the rank of Colonel in the
Swedish army. Her mother she had never known, for she had died when
Mistress Margaret was but a few months old, and her father had maintained
an unbroken reticence on the subject. Some six months ago, Colonel
Waynflete had returned to England to settle, desiring to obtain some
military employment, a plan which his long service and professional
knowledge seemed to make feasible. In London he made the acquaintance of
the Earl of Ridgeley, to whom, indeed, he bore a letter of introduction
from a Swedish diplomat in Paris. Through the Earl he had met Lord
Brocton, the Earl's only son and heir. The Colonel's hope of employment in
the army had not been realized, and this and certain other reasons, which
she did not specify, had embittered him against the Government. Not having
any real allegiance to King George, whom he had never served, and who now
refused his services, he easily entered into the plans of certain
influential Jacobites in London whose acquaintance he had made. Three days
previously he had set out from London to join Prince Charles. For certain
reasons (again she did not give details) she was unwilling to be separated
from her father, at any rate not until circumstances made it necessary for
them to part, and then the plan was that she should go to Chester, with
which city she was inclined to think her father had some old connexion,
and stay there with the wife of a certain cathedral dignitary of secret
but strong Jacobite inclinations. Colonel Waynflete's connexion with the
Jacobite cause had, naturally, been kept secret, but she was almost
certain that Lord Brocton had discovered it through a certain spy and
toady of his, one Major Tixall.

"Pimples all over his face?" broke in Kate.

"Yes," said Mistress Waynflete, with a little shudder.

"He was in the village this afternoon with Lord Brocton," returned Kate.

"Peace, dear one," said mother, "our turn is coming. Be as quiet as
Oliver."

"Oliver, mother dear, hasn't seen Major Tixall, whose face is enough to
make an owl talk, let alone a magpie like me."

Her right ear was near enough to me, the stool being big and I bigger, so
I pinched the pretty little pink shell, and whispered in it, "Shut up,
Kit, and think of Jack," which effectually silenced her.

Mistress Waynflete had little more to tell. They had travelled rapidly,
avoiding Coventry and Lichfield, where the royal forces had assembled, but
bending west so as to get by unfrequented roads to Stafford, and so on to
the main north road along which the Prince was now reported to be
marching. Just outride the "Bull and Mouth" her horse had cast a shoe.
Leaving her to rest in the ale-house, the Colonel had gone on with the
horses to the nearest smithy at Milford. He was quite unaware of the
northward movement of troops from Lichfield, and was under the impression
that he was now well beyond the danger zone. We had heard from the
serjeant of his capture.

Kate, at mother's request, took up the tale here. The road past the
Hanyards to the village enters the main road abruptly, and clumps of elms
prevent anyone travelling along it from seeing what is happening in the
village. The vicarage is opposite the smithy and the inn, and when mother
and Kate got there, only a few dragoons were about. They watched the
Colonel ride up, leading his daughter's horse, and saw him turn round at
once and attempt to go back as soon as he caught sight of the dragoons;
but a larger body, under the command of Major Tixall, cantered in at the
moment and, trapped between the two bodies, the Colonel had been compelled
to surrender. He was kept until my Lord Brocton's arrival nearly an hour
later, and had then been sent on to Stafford under a strong guard.

This was the only fresh piece of information that was of any importance.
There is a jail at Stafford, and no doubt the Colonel was by now lodged in
it.

"I fear that my views, or at any rate my father's views, make me a
dangerous guest," said Mistress Waynflete, "though your kindness has made
me a welcome one."

"Madam," I said coldly, "the only politics I know is that my Lord Brocton
is fighting against the Stuart, and if by fighting for the Stuart I can
get in a fair blow at my Lord Brocton, I fight for the Stuart."

"Oliver," said mother, "it is wrong--I say nothing about its wisdom--to
choose sides in such matters on grounds of personal enmity."

"Lord Brocton's a beast," said Kate shortly.

Mistress Waynflete had turned a richer colour at the mention of Brocton's
name, but at Kate's words she became scarlet, and for that I vowed I would
knock him on the head as ruthlessly as if he were a buck rabbit as soon as
I got the chance.

She recovered and continued her story, but as it only concerned my share
in the day's doings, it is unnecessary to repeat it here. She told it,
however, in such kind terms, that I made an end to my discomfort by going
to fetch the great jack for mother and Kate to look at. When returning,
however, I could not help hearing Kate say to Mistress Waynflete, "Without
a 'by your leave'?"

"As indifferently as if I had been a bag of flour," was the cool reply.
And I had dithered like an aspen leaf!

"I suppose he half drowned you?"

"On the contrary, there was not a wet stitch on me."

"Oliver," added my mother, "has not many things to do that are worth his
doing, but what he finds he does well."

"Such as catching jack," said I, staggering in with my heavy load. It was
admired unstintingly, and was indeed worthy of all praise.

"Supper is ready, mam," said Jane; "and Joe says he knowed it wor as big
as a gate-post."

"And where is Joe?"

"In the kitchen, Master Noll."

"Give him a good supper, not much ale, and that small, and tell him to
stop there. I shall want him." Then, turning to Mistress Waynflete, I went
on: "There's one way, and only one, into Stafford that's perfectly safe
to-night. Joe and I will row you there. Now, mother, I'm hungrier than the
great jack ever was."



CHAPTER IV

OUR JOURNEY COMMENCES


I have already said that the river was the boundary of the Hanyards on
the side towards the village. About a hundred yards above the pocket of
deep water where the jack had lain, I had built a little covered dock, and
here I kept a craft, half boat and half punt, which I used for my fishing,
and in which mother and Kate could lie on cushions while I rowed them on
the river on warm summer nights. It was heavy and ungainly, but very
comfortable, and as safe as the ark.

Joe received the information that he was to row to Stafford as cheerfully
as an invitation to a jug of beer, and went off whistling to get the boat
ready.

Everything that care could suggest was done for Mistress Waynflete's
comfort. Jane carried down to the boat two huge stone beer bottles, filled
with boiling water. Mother insisted on madam taking her thick hooded
cloak, shaped like a fashionable domino, and covering her from head to
ankles. Kate slipped into my pocket a pint flask of her extra special
concoction of peppermint cordial, the best possible companion on a night
like this. Jane came back and returned again laden with rugs and cushions,
and soon reported that the boat was ready.

Mother and Kate, with Jane behind them, came to the garden gate to bid us
farewell. Little was said, for Mistress Waynflete was too moved by their
kindness to say much, and I was too preoccupied. Madam kissed them all in
turn and murmured a good-bye. I kissed mother and Kate, and they wished me
a good voyage and a safe return. We turned our faces riverward and started.

It was now nearly eight o'clock. The night was pitch-dark, the sky
star-studded and moonless. It was freezing hard, the keen air stung our
faces, the tiniest twig was finger-thick with hoar-frost, and the grass
crunched under our feet at every step. I went ahead as guide, and in five
minutes we arrived at the dock, where Joe, the boat out, cushioned and
trim for the voyage, was vigorously slapping his hands crosswise round his
waist to keep them warm. He held the boat up to the bank, I stepped in,
handed in Mistress Waynflete, bestowed her with all possible comfort,
settled by her side, and took the ropes. Then Joe, clambering in, pushed
off and the voyage began.

It was up-stream, but fortunately the current was gentle, though there
was a fair amount of water coming down. There was, or rather would have
been on an ordinary night, no danger of discovery, since the river was
half a mile from the main road at our starting-place, and ran still
farther away from it for nearly two miles. Then came the one possible
danger-spot on such a night as this, with the road occupied by troops on
the march. A long bend in the river took it so close to the road that the
yard of a wayside inn ran right down to the water. If we got safely past
this, all danger would be over till we ran sheer up to the ruined wall of
the town. The moon would not rise for two hours, so there was ample time
for our row of about five miles.

"I trust you are comfortable, madam?" I said.

"Comfortable and warm and cosy," she replied. "But for my fears for my
father I should even be happy, for it has never before been my lot, and I
have wandered far and wide over half Europe, to experience such and so
much kindness in one day from perfect strangers."

"I am, indeed, happy in my mother and sister. They are pearls of great
price."

"None better in all Staffordsheer," said Joe.

"You have rendered me a greater service than you know of, and I must not
let you leave yourself out." To hide a note of wistfulness in her voice,
she added mischievously, "Must I, Joe?"

"Yow could find wus'n' Wheatman o' th' 'Anyards," said Joe, with sturdy
precision of praise.

"Is he really a hell-hound, Joe, when he's got a sup of beer in him? I've
no clear notion what a hell-hound is, but clearly it means something as
bad, say, as a janissary--the worst animal I ever came across."

"Sup o' beer in 'im," snorted Joe contemptuously. "He dunna really know
what beer is, my lady. It's a grand thing is beer, if y'll only tak'
enough of it to do y' good, but there's no vartue in half a pint of it.
I've told 'im that lots of times. But it's God's truth, my lady, 'e dunna
want no beer, dunna Master Noll, to mak 'im 'it like the kick of a 'oss. I
on'y brought 'im a few daceys up t'ouse this mawnin', an'--"

"You row harder, Joe, and yawp less," said I, interrupting him. "Between
you and Jane I shan't have a rag of character left."

"Sup o' beer in him," he growled, and spat loudly on his hands. Joe
looked at all men as potential customers of the "Bull and Mouth," and
judged them accordingly.

"I know the worst about you now, Master Wheatman, and by way of providing
you with a less embarrassing topic of conversation, you might tell me what
we shall do when we get to Stafford."

"We are going to Marry-me-quick's."

She started so abruptly that I laughed outright, and Joe rumbled like an
overloaded wagon. I explained.

"We shall approach the town on the south side where the wall comes down
to the river. 'Marry-me-quick' is not, as you seem to suppose, a
disagreeable process, but an agreeable old woman who lives in a cottage
which backs on to the river. Every schoolboy in the town knows her by that
name, which is also the name of a kind of toffee she makes, and by the
sale of which she earns a modest living. I cannot tell you how the name
originated, but there it is. I went to the grammar school in the town, and
in my time I must have bought and consumed some hundredweights of her
'marry-me-quick.' In her tiny cottage you may rest in safety while I hunt
up Jack Dobson and learn what has been done with your father."

"An' if I'd got a shilling," said the irrepressible Joe, "for every pat
of butter I've taken owd Marry-me-quick, I'd--I'd--"

He seemed lost for words, so I assisted him, and paid him back at the
same time, by saying, "Pluck up courage enough to speak to Jane."

"That's rate, Master Noll."

"Is Jane so very fond of money, Joe?" asked Mistress Waynflete curiously.

"No," said Joe. "She ain't grasping, ain't Jin. She told me t'nate, she
c'd 'ave 'ad a mint of money if she'd liked, but she wouldna tak' it. Said
it would 'a' burnt 'er fingers. 'More fool yow,' says I; 'it'd 'a' soon
gotten cowd weather like this'n.' But Jin's all rate. Er'll never bre'k
'er arm at church door, wunna Jin."

I explained to Mistress Waynflete that a woman who broke her arm at the
church door was a housewifely maiden who became a slatternly housewife
after marriage. "There's no fear of Jane doing that," she replied; "she's
as good as the guineas she would not take."

For a space silence fell on us. All my attention was required to keep the
boat clear of the banks, for the little river turned and twisted through
its meadows like a hunted hare. There was only the starlight to steer by,
but I had fished every yard of the river, and knew it so well that I gave
Joe a clear channel to row in. Not a sound jarred on the rhythmic purr of
the oars in the rowlocks and the gentle lapping of the stream against the
bow. This day had God been very good to me. This was life as I would have
it; work to do for brain and brawn, and a woman to do it for who was worth
the uttermost that was in me. Romance had flushed the drab night of my
life with a rosy dawn, and my heart was lifted up within me. If it faded
away, there would at least be the memory of it. But it might not fade. I
was under no illusions as to the stiffness of my task. I was matched
against the powers that be, against my Lord Brocton, whose ability to work
this maiden ill was increased a thousandfold by his military authority. I
saw my way into Stafford, and I saw no more, not even my way out of it,
and least of all my way out of it with the Colonel rescued and restored to
his daughter. Mistress Waynflete had been so determined in her decision to
follow her father that perhaps she had some plan in mind. She said nothing
if she had, and if she had, it would, I supposed, depend on her woman's
power of influencing Brocton. The future was as black as the outlook along
the river, but I faced it eagerly.

She broke the silence: "The last boat I was in was a gondola. It was on a
perfect night in a Venetian June, the sky a sapphire sprinkled with
diamonds, the warm, scent-laden air filled with murmurings and snatches of
song. And there was no danger."

"Romance, perchance," said I.

"You cannot have a one-sided romance. Romance is an atmosphere breathed
by two, not an emotion felt by one. To be sure, he was the most
appallingly in earnest lover woman ever had. He wept for a kiss with his
fingers twiddling on the hilt of his stiletto. Dear heart, these Italians!"

"I should like to meet his countship," said I energetically.

"Yes, he was a count, with a pedigree as long as the Rialto, and he had
not two silver piastres to rub against each other. He was the handsomest
man I have even seen. Fortunately, we left Venice before he had quite
decided that it was time to dig his knife into me."

"You speak lightly of your danger, madam," I said coldly.

"A hot-blooded Italian with a stiletto in his hand is a much more
desirable creature, let me tell you, than a cold-blooded Englishman with
the devil in his heart. That fiery little count, conceited and
poverty-stricken, did at any rate pay me the compliment of thinking for at
least a fortnight that I was a patch of heaven fallen in his way, whereas
to your cold-livered English lord I am no more than an appetizing dish."

She was not speaking lightly now, but with cold, concentrated anger. I
remembered the reticencies of her statement at the Hanyards, and began to
see dimly some of the connecting links in her story. My Lord Brocton's
character was well enough known to be the subject of common talk at our
market ordinaries. My very manhood shamed me in the presence of this
queenly woman, marked down by a titled blackguard as his quarry, and I sat
still, fists tightly clenched on the tiller-ropes, and said nothing,
waiting for her to speak again.

"I have seen to-day, Master Wheatman," she said, "a sight I have never
seen before--a beautiful English maiden growing up to womanhood in the
calm and safety of an English country home. You will be tempted, I know,
to envy me my wanderings, my experiences, my freedom, but, believe me, I
would rather be your sweet Kate in the quiet of the Hanyards."

"It isn't as quiet as it might be when Jack's about," said I, seeking to
change the current of her thoughts. Then I had to tell her all about Jack,
and our boyish escapades and fightings and friendings, and because I had
earlier in the day though evil of dear Jack, I now could say nothing good
enough about him.

It was time to relieve Joe at the oars. At first he would not agree, for,
he said, he'd been "lagging a bit during the day 'long o' them squaddies,"
and wanted to put in a day's work.

"You will, before you've done, Joe, for you've got to pull the boat back.
So have a swig of beer and we'll change over. And madam shall acknowledge
the virtues of our Kate's peppermint cordial."

Joe shipped his oars and reached out for his bottle of beer. I got out
the flask and said in a sing-song voice: "Take two gallons of the best
Hollands money can buy, and add thereto, first, four pounds of choice
Barbados sugar, and, secondly, two bushels of freshly gathered leaves of
the plant peppermint. Steep together for a whole moon, stirring the
concoction every four hours during the daytime, and as often as you wake
o' nights. Strain through a piece of linen, if you've got one; if not, do
what our Kate did this year, use a fair maiden's silk stocking. The result
is a drink fit for the gods, and, indeed, one which may even be offered to
goddesses. Drink, madam!"

She was laughing merrily before I had finished. "Kate's stocking sounds
the most innocent ingredient in it, Master Wheatman, but I must try her
skill in brewing."

She did so, and pronounced it excellent but strong. I tried it too,
rather more copiously, I confess. Indeed, it was good, but to me, I know,
the charm of the cordial this time lay in the thought of the rich red lips
that had touched the flask before mine.

Joe and I then changed places, and I kept hard at the oars until we came
to the reach which ran close up to the "Why Not." Here Joe resumed the
oars and I the ropes.

"This is the only danger-spot," I said. "Yonder are the lights of the
ale-house. On an ordinary night there would be no one about, even if it
mattered if there were, but to-night, when it does matter, there are
thousands of soldiers on the march, and there is some risk of our being
observed."

In another five minutes or so we heard faint snatches of song and bursts
of applause, and shouting and laughing. The "Why Not" was now about a
hundred yards ahead on our left. On the right the bank was lined with
willows which, not having been pollarded for many years, stretched their
long, thin branches well over the river. I ran the boat as far under them
as I could. Joe pulled with short, soft strokes, and we crept slowly
along. For a minute the lighted windows were obscured by the outhouses,
and just as I caught sight of them again, a door was flung open, and the
jumble of noises swelled into a roar of jeering laughter. A young woman
flew out, heedlessly and noisily as a flustered hen, and a burly soldier
lurched after her down the yard. At a whisper, Joe shipped his oars, and I
ran the boat right into the bank. I grabbed in the dark for a hold-to, and
luckily seized the roots of a willow. At his end Joe did the same. We
hardly dared to breathe as we watched the doings on the other bank.

Lust, of blood or worse, and the fear of it, were there. The lighted
windows and the open door made every movement of the man and the girl
clearly visible. No one followed them. It was so ordinary an event to the
company, perhaps that it was not worth while leaving mirth and beer to see
the issue. But all serious elements in their affair changed abruptly and
to our instant jeopardy. On the very edge of the water the girl, knowing
her whereabouts to an inch, turned cleverly. The man, a stranger
obviously, ran on and pitched clean and far into the river, while she,
laughing and triumphant, scuttled back to the house. Her tale brought out
at once a spurt of men, yelling with joy, to watch the fun. Some of them
had snatched up lanterns and lighted candles, and they were followed later
by a fresh, older, shrieking woman who carried a huge, burning brand
plucked from the hearth.

Happily for us the river was shallow, for a couple of strokes would have
brought the man clean into us. The shock of the icy water sobered him. He
splashed and spluttered to his feet, climbed up the bank like a giant
water-rat, and would have slunk towards the house; but the rabble were on
him before he had taken a dozen paces, and tormented him till he roared
like a wounded bull. The woman with the brand cried out on him with vile
words that made my face burn in the dark, and belaboured him about the
head with her blazing cudgel. At every blow a shower of sparks flew out
that drove his rollicking mates into a ring around them at a safe distance
away. The man must have been set afire had he not been soused in the river
beforehand. None of his fellows tried to help him, just as before none had
tried to hinder him. It was his look out either way, and they enjoyed his
discomfiture with all the gusto of children. At last the breathless woman
and the cowed man came to a parley, the result of which was that, with a
whoop of "pots round," they all crowded back into the ale-house, and we
were once more alone on the river.

"The ordeal by water and by fire," I said. "Push out, Joe."

"Gom! Owd Bess give 'im sock," he replied, and levered the nose of the
boat into midstream again.

Although there was no real need for it, the escape kept us all quiet. I
persuaded Mistress Waynflete to lie down, so as to avoid the biting wind
that was sweeping across the river, and Joe and I by turns made such
progress that in less than an hour we drew up to the town meadow.

The greatest caution was now necessary, since we saw that the bridge
leading into the town was thronged with people, many carrying lanterns or
torches. The town wall ran parallel to the river, on our right, with a
narrow fringe of meadow between them. Here the wall was for the most part
tumbled into ruins, and in the gaps stood little cottages, built in part
of the stones that had once formed the wall. In one of these lived little
old Marry-me-quick, Mistress Martha Tonks, to give her her christening
name, and we ran up to the bank level with her place without being
observed from the bridge, although it was only a few boat-lengths distant.

I stepped cautiously out and tiptoed to her back window. There the
ancient maiden was, busily engaged in the manufacture of her staple, no
doubt in anticipation of a greater demand for it in these stirring days,
when much extra money would be passing around in the town, and many
pennies thereof would dribble into the pockets of the youngsters. I lifted
the latch and stepped in. She squeaked with affright till she saw who it
was, and then turned her note into a gurgle of astonishment.

"Are you alone?" I asked. She nodded. "Just a minute then, and I'll be
back again, with a visitor. Keep quiet!"

I returned to the boat, and as I was obliged to move as stealthily as a
cat, I could not help, as I approached, hearing Joe say emphatically, "I
wunna." I cursed him silent, without troubling to ask what he was
objecting to, and handed Mistress Waynflete out.

"Now, Joe," I whispered, "off you go back! The moon will be up in a few
minutes, and you ought to do it in an hour. You can sit in the kitchen all
to-morrow to make up for this."

"Jin said 'er'd sit up for me," he said, and I was glad he had such a
good motive to keep him up to his hard task.

"Good-bye, Joe," said Mistress Waynflete, shaking the good fellow warmly
by the hand. "Give my loving remembrances to your mistresses and to Jane.
Say how grateful I am."

"Good-bye, my lady," he said simply, "and God bless you." So that only I
could hear him, he added, "Tak' good keer on 'er, Master Noll. Jin's awful
sot on 'er, and wunna luk at me if any 'arm 'appens 'er."

I gripped his hard hand, gave him my parting message home, and then
crouched and pushed the boat into and down the stream. As I lifted my hand
from her and she glided into the blackness, I felt in my heart that the
last link with the old life was broken. Then, as I rose to my feet, a hand
was placed on my arm, and I tingled in every fibre at this sweet link with
the new life.



CHAPTER V

THE ANCIENT HIGH HOUSE


I had found Mistress Tonks in her little back room, where she
manufactured marry-me-quick by day and slept by night. Her cottage
contained only one other room, serving as shop and living room, and
fronting on a narrow lane which turned abruptly from the main street at
the bridge-end to follow the curve of the walls. By the time I returned
with Mistress Waynflete she had shuttered the window of the shop, snuffed
the candles, and stirred the fire into a blaze.

Marry-me-quick was an ancient, wizened, little woman, so small that she
hardly escaped being a dwarf, humpbacked, and inexpressibly ugly. In times
not so long gone by she would assuredly have burned as a witch, and many
supposed her to be in league with the evil one. But in actual fact she was
a cheery, voluble, and warm-hearted little body, and one on whom I could
rely to serve us in this pinch.

"Mistress Tonks," I said, "I want you to shelter this lady for the night."

"To be sure," chirped the little woman. "Luckily I've kept the sojers
off. Every house in the town is full of 'em, and the Mayor's at his wits'
end to know how to stuff 'em all in. I should think a score of 'em have
come here, in ones, and twos, and threes; and when I stood bold up to them
and said, 'Do you want any marry-me-quick?' they were off like scared
rabbits. A great, sweet lady like you wouldn't think it, of course, but
it's a godsend at times for a lone woman when she's ugly enough to turn
cream sour, and somedeal crooked o' the body into the bargain."

"I shall certainly desire some marry-me-quick," said Mistress Waynflete,
deftly evading the awkward conclusion of this speech, "for Master Wheatman
has described it in terms that make my mouth water. And though you do not
want to billet soldiers, you will, I know, befriend a soldier's daughter."

"I should befriend the devil's dam, asking your ladyship's pardon, if
Master Wheatman brought her here. I'm a little, lone, ugly woman, but
Master Noll always stood by me. The lads, drat 'em, were for ever pinching
Master Dobson's bull's-eyes and gingerbread, and him mayor of the town,
though he's got lots grander than that since, but they never pinched any
marry-me-quick, not in Master Noll's time. But he's gone now, and I'm not
as nimble as I used to be. Jesus help me, how he had used to fight! He
used to put my heart in my mouth, coming in here all blood and muck to
wash himself afore he went home. But take your things off and make
yourself at home."

"I'm afraid you'll hear a too full and too true account of me, madam,
while I am away," said I. "Soldiers are likely to call, but you can leave
Mistress Tonks to deal with them. Still, please discard your own jacket
and hat, and wear mother's domino. It's homely and country-like, and you
must pull the hood over your head, since, if your hair has been described,
and any soldier who calls has heard of it, he will have to be blind not to
notice it."

"Yes, it's dreadful stuff," she said, with amusing meekness.

"So dreadful, madam," said I soberly, "that all England cannot match it.
Therefore you must hide it, lest it should shock some poor soldier who
comes seeking a billet and finds it."

She took off her hat, preparing to do what I asked, and the wondrous
yellow hair, coils upon coils of it, was revealed. "Jesus help me," said
little Marry-me-quick in a hushed voice, "the back of her head looks like
a harvest moon. If the same God that made her ladyship made me, we shall
begin life in heaven with a row, that's all I've got to say."

I smiled at the quaint conceit of the little woman, which lost its
irreverence towards God in its reverence for His handiwork. "Now mother
Tonks," said I, "I leave this lady in your charge for a time while I go
into the town to see Master Dobson. I may be away some time, and you'll
get us some supper. Anything you have will do."

"Anything I have?" she echoed scornfully. "I've got one of them rabbits
you sent me last market day by that lozzicking Joe Braggs, but he's a good
gorby is Joe"--here her voice softened, and madam smiled agreement--"and
this frost has kept it as sweet as a nut. If you're not too hungry to
wait, I'll make you some rabbit-stew."

"Rabbit-stew? I'll wait for that, and I'm sure Mistress Waynflete will,"
said I.

"I'll live on marry-me-quick in the meantime," she replied, laughing.

"I leave you then in good hands, and hope to come back with cheerful
news," I said, bowing low, and stepped forth on my errand.

I turned to the left and fifty paces brought me into the main street. A
gun and a train of wagons were rumbling over the bridge, convoyed by a
handful of dragoons and a riff-raff of noisy lads and lasses. Late and
cold as it was, the main street was thronged as on a fair day at noon.
Most of the shops, especially those that dealt in provisions, were open
and full of vociferous customers, while every alehouse was a pandemonium.
The street was choked with townspeople and soldiery; lanterns flickered
and torches flamed; oath and jest, bravado and buffoonery, filled the air.

I pushed my way to the market-place. Here about a dozen guns were parked,
and at least a hundred horses tethered. At each corner a huge fire cracked
and roared. The town hall was a blaze of light, and I heard from passersby
that the mayor and council had been in session since noon. The current
rumour was that the Stuart, with fifty thousand Highlanders, savages who
disembowelled women for sport and roasted children for food, had sacked
Manchester and was now marching south, with hell in his heart and
desolation in his train. If one-hundredth of it were true, the worthy
mayor had his work cut out, for the town was so ill-found that it would
have fallen to a bombardment of turnips.

I took my stand on the town-hall steps to scan the scene and collect my
thoughts. And here I had the best of luck, for who should come clanking
down the steps but Jack Dobson. I had no need to envy him now, having
better work on hand than his, but even if the mood of the midday had been
prevailing, it would have disappeared before his hearty greeting.

"Noll, by gad, Noll," he cried, wringing my hand joyously. "I am glad to
see you, bully-boy; I thought you were sulking in your tent like--like,
you know his name, the fellow old Bloggs was always yarning about."

"Iphigenia," said I.

"Was that the chap?" he said cheerily. "And now I've got you, come along
to the house. I've more to tell you than there is in all your silly old
Virgil, and it's alive, man, alive, alive. That's why it suits me. Come
along, Noll. Lord Brocton's supping and staying with dad, so's Sneyd, and
a lot more, and you'll hear all the news. Brocton's a beast, and I'm glad
I'm an officer, if it's only a cornet in his rotten dragoons. There'll be
one beast less in the world, I'm thinking, before long."

"What's he done to upset you?"

"I say, Noll," was his reply, "Kate did look sweet this afternoon. I was
glad to have her come and see me off to the wars. I only had a few
snatches of talk with her. Brocton was for ever finding me something to
do, rot him, but she did look sweet."

"All right, if she did. Never mind our Kate."

"Never mind your Kate, you barbarian, you one-eyed anthropathingamy! Oh,
Noll, old friend"--there was a catch in his voice as he dragged me into
the entry at the side of old Comfit's shop,--"she's your Kate now, but if
I come back, I want her to be my Kate. Don't breathe a word to her, Noll,
unless I never come back,--war has its risks, Noll, and I'm going to take
'em all,--but if I never come back, Noll, just tell Kate that I loved her."

A plump of townspeople yelled their way past the entry, and their torches
lit up his fresh, boyish face, all alight with the enthusiasms of war and
love. I clasped his hand, and we looked into each other's eyes.

"I'm glad to tell you, Noll."

"I'm glad to hear it, Jack. Come back, for Kate's sake."

The good fellow bubbled with joy at the meaning in my words, and we
continued our way up the entry, intending a detour where we could talk in
quiet, but before we had got out of the glare of the torches, he stopped
me, looked searchingly at me and said, "Old Noll, there's more in your
head now than Virgil." This confirmed my suspicion that Master Jack Dobson
was learning in his way more than I had learned in mine.

"Farming," said I. "Tell me why Brocton is a beast."

"He thinks every pretty woman a butterfly for his filthy fingers to crush
the beauty out of. But if he rolls his beast's tongue round one name,
either he or I will want that ferryman chap. What's his name?"

"Charon," said I, forgetting to tease him.

"That's him, Charon, I'm sure you're right this time. I wasn't sure about
the sulky old boy in the tent. I always thought Iphi-something was the one
that got his throat--Abram and Isaac sort of tale without any ram and
thicket at the end of it--but of course you'll be right."

"And what sort of dragoons are you cornet of?" I asked.

"They give me the bats, Noll. There's about two hundred town-sweepings,
not worth powder and shot, who want tying on their horses, and hardly know
butt from bayonet, and there's another two hundred better men, got
together coming along, or in the country around Lichfield. Sneyd, a
rattling good fellow, and I have tossed for stations, and when it comes to
a battle he's to lead the yokels and I'm to follow behind, kicking the
scum of London into the firing-line. Damn 'em. But I'll kick 'em right
enough. Then there's Major Tixall--major, by gad--a slinking cut-throat,
with a face the colour of pigs' liver. What he's majoring it for, Brocton
and the devil alone know. The only good thing is we've got a first-rate
drill sergeant. He's Brocton's toady, and for that I don't like him, but
he does know his business, I must say that for him."

"Big-headed man, with a mouth slit up to his left ear?" said I, seizing
the welcome opportunity.

"How the deuce do you know?" asked Jack, astonished.

"He came searching the Hanyards this afternoon for a Jacobite spy, a
woman. But he didn't find her. She slipped through his fingers somehow. I
understood from big-mouth that you'd caught her father. What have you done
with him? Is he crow's meat yet?"

"No, for some reason or other, which is a mystery to me, Brocton sent him
on with the van."

"Here?"

"No, farther on. Their orders are to push into Stone to-day, and
Newcastle to-morrow. They ought to be in touch with the enemy there. Of
course it's not certain which way they'll come, and if they come this way,
Noll, mark you, we've made a mistake. We ought to have waited for 'em at
Milford. We could have blown 'em to bits from the top of the hills, long
before they could have got at us."

Our talk had brought us to an alley containing a side entrance to Master
Dobson's fine, old, timbered house, the pride of the town and known there
as the "Ancient High House." It stood on the main street of the town,
which led from the bridge to the market-place. For a moment I was
undecided, since I had obtained the news that mattered most, but I had
only been out a short time, the rabbit-stew would not be ready, Mistress
Waynflete was safe and comfortable, and might prefer to be alone, it was
possible that I might learn something further--and on these grounds I
decided that it would be well worth while to accept Jack's invitation. I
therefore followed him into the withdrawing-room. Here I paid due
courtesies to buxom Mistress Dobson and Mistress Priscilla Dobson, Jack's
oldest sister, a wasp-waisted bundle of formalities, for ever curtsying
and coquetting, after the London mode as she fondly imagined. My back
fairly ached with answering bobs and bows before we had drunk our part of
a dish of tea, which Mistress Dobson had brewed wherewith to refresh
herself after the toils of hospitality, but at last I jerked my way out at
Jack's heels, and we climbed to the stately barrel-roofed room where the
great ones were assembled.

Horseshoe-wise round a mighty fire of logs, with a small table covered
with decanters and glasses between each pair, some dozen men sat at their
wine. There was, of course, Master Dobson, his meagre body all a twitter
with importance, sitting in the centre of the bend, opposite the fire,
whence he could survey all his guests at once, and urge them on with their
carousing.

"My son returneth, my lord," he said, "with news from the worshipful the
Mayor, and he hath brought with him a worthy yeoman, one Master Wheatman,
who--"

"Of the Hanyards, Esquire," said I in a testy whisper.

"Ha, yes," he corrected and compromised, "Master Wheatman of the
Hanyards, a loyal subject of His Gracious Majesty."

"The best friend and hardest hitter in broad Staffordshire," added Jack
heartily.

I stepped into the horseshoe and made a bow general to the company, and a
lower one for the benefit of my Lord Brocton, who sat next to the hearth
in pride of place and comfort. Some years older than I, but not yet
thirty, handsome as a god carved by Phidias, but with drink and devilment
already marking him out for a damned soul, he sat there, the idol of that
lord-worshipping company. The only vacant chair was on his left. It was
Jack's place, earned by his father's guineas, which had remained vacant
during his absence. The good lad, I record it with pride, notwithstanding
a forbidding glance from his father, motioned me towards it, and fetched a
glass and poured out wine for me. As I was stepping forward his lordship
was good enough to address me.

"Ha, Master Wheatman of the Hanyards,"--there was a sneer in his voice,--"it
is well I see thee on the right side, or, by gad and His Gracious
Majesty, we'd have that other five hundred acres of yours." He tossed off
a bumper of wine and added, "Or a solatium, Master Wheatman, a solatium."

I caught Jack's eye as I stepped right into the middle of the group. To
my astonishment it was glowing with anger. Did he not think I could take
care of myself? Really Jack was becoming mysterious, but I supposed that
as I was Kate's brother he was feeling unusually interested in my welfare.
For my own part I was quite comfortable, and I replied easily, "As a
matter of fact, my lord, I have chosen my side expressly on account of the
well-known propensities of your lordship's family."

For a full minute nothing was heard in the room but the cracking and
sputtering of the fire. This was not because of what I had said, though no
one present, and he least of all, could be fool enough to misunderstand
it, but because of its effect on him. Then, as now, blood flowed like
water on far lighter occasions than this, and Brocton, with all his
faults, was a ready fighter. For once, however, his fingers did not seek
his sword hilt, but fumbled with his empty glass, and his face went white
as the ashes at his feet. At length he recovered himself somewhat.

"The loyal propensities of my family are well known to all men," he said.

"And its determination to profit by them," I retorted coldly, and plumped
me down at his side.

Right opposite me was the rector, a gross, sack-faced, ignorant
jolt-head, jowled like a pig and dew-lapped like an ox. Nature had meant
him for a butcher, but, being a by-blow of a great house, a discerning
patron had diverted him bishopward. In a voice husky with feeling and
wine, he said, "Surely it is the part of a gracious king to reward such
faithful service as that of the noble Earl of Ridgeley and my Lord
Brocton."

"Decidedly, your reverence," I answered briskly, "and of others too, and
if, as seems likely, the Highlanders have left a vacant deanery or two
behind them, I hope your loyal services and pastoral life will be suitably
rewarded with one."

Here Jack drew up another chair and I moved to make more room, so that he
could sit next to Brocton, to whom he was soon detailing in eager whispers
the result of his visit to the town hall. The others took up the broken
links of talk, and this gave me an opportunity of inspecting the company.

There could be no doubt about the man on my left. His vicious, pimply
face manifested him Major Tixall, and Mistress Margaret's shudder was
easily accounted for. He turned his shoulder to me and talked to another
officer, who, so far, was only in his apprenticeship at the same game.
Beyond were two other officers of a wholly different stamp, and the one
who smiled at me with his eyes I took to be Sir Ralph Sneyd, a young
Staffordshire baronet of high repute. Then came Master Dobson, separating
the military sheep from the civilian goats. There was the Friday-faced
clothier and mercer, Master Allwood, strange company here since he was the
elder of a dissenting congregation in the town, and therefore well
separated from his reverence. The worthy mercer's dissent did not extend,
so rumour had it, to the making of hard bargains, and doubtless he was for
once hob-nobbing with the great in respect of his long purse rather than
of his long prayers. Other townsmen, whose names I did not know or cannot
recall, separated deacon from rector.

The last man in the company, sitting opposite to his lordship, was a
stranger, and by far the man best worth looking at in the room. He had
drawn back a little, either out of the heat of the fire or to avoid his
reverence's vinous gossip as much as possible. Except that he was
certainly neither soldier nor parson, and probably not a lawyer, I could
make nothing of him. He had a massive head and a resolute and intelligent
face. He wore no wig and his hair was grey and closely cropped. I judged
him to be a man nearing sixty, but he appeared strong and vigorous. He was
dressed with rich unostentation, in grey jacket and breeches, with a
lighter grey, silver-buttoned waistcoat, and stockings to match.

There was only one thing to be talked about in any company in Stafford
that night. What was going to happen? What of truth and substance was
there in the rumours that filled all mouths? At Master Dobson's two
currents of opinion ran violently in opposite directions. The soldiers on
my left were of course certain that the Stuart Prince and his Highland
rabble would be driven back. The towns-people opposite were equally
impressed with the fact that so far he had not been driven back but had
carried all before him.

Sir Ralph had been stoutly maintaining that the rebellion was hopeless.
"There's no getting away from it, Sir Ralph," squeaked Master Dobson,
summing up for the doubtful townsmen; "between the rebels and us this
night there's not thirty miles nor three hundred men, and you've so far
only got about two thousand men in Stafford. I'm as loyal a man as any in
England, but there's no getting away from that."

"Nobody wants to get away from it, Master Dobson," replied Sir Ralph.
"Any body of men with arms in their hands and the knack of using them, can
march much farther than the Highlanders have come, if no other body of
armed men stands in their way. The Stuart Prince's march will come to an
end just as soon as he is opposed, and we're here to oppose him."

Master Dobson was still gloomy. "What sort of men have you got? Raw
militia lads, young recruits, and newly raised dragoons form at least half
of your force in Stafford."

"Agreed," said Sir Ralph, "but we're rapidly licking 'em into shape, and
the Duke will be after us to-morrow with the regulars."

"My good Sir Ralph," put in the mercer, "fifty thousand savage
Highlanders will cut through Stafford as easily as if it were a Cheshire
cheese. I fear the worst."

"My worthy sir," said his lordship, and in his dulcet tones I heard the
tinkle of the mercer's guineas, "you need fear nothing. Neither stick nor
stone in Stafford will be disturbed. We are at least strong enough to make
good terms."

"And Mistress Allwood," said the rector with a leer, "will be spared the
wastage of her charms on a ragged Highlander."

The mercer's wife had all the charms of a withered apple, but here was
opening for discord, and our twittering host staved it off by appealing to
the stranger: "What do you think, Master Freake, of the way things are
going?"

"I have not formed an opinion as to what is likely to happen here, good
Master Dobson," he replied, "but, speaking generally, I should feel much
easier in mind if the Duke's horses were not so utterly worn out."

There was a distinct note of patronage in the tone in which this shrewd
and sensible remark was uttered, nor was this affected, I thought, but
rather the natural manner of a strong man speaking to a weak one.

"Egad, you're right there, sir," cried Jack. "Nineteen out of twenty of
them couldn't be flayed into doing another five miles. I was over an hour
getting them from Milford, under five miles."

"The Highlanders would march it in less," replied Master Freake, "and
this is not a campaign, but a race."

"Where to?" It was Brocton who spoke.

"London," was the prompt reply. "That's the heart of England, my lord,
and if Prince Charles gets into the heart he need not be concerned over
Wade marking time in the heels or the Duke sprawling about in its belly."

"Your speech is light, Master Freake," said the rector with drunken sense
and gravity. "I trust it savoureth not of treasonable hopes."

I turned during this absurd remark to glance at Brocton to see what
effect this excellent summary of the situation had had on him. To my
surprise I caught him looking so meaningly at the pimple-faced Major, that
I felt sure something was going to happen, and I was right.

"God rot the man," said the Major thickly. "Does he say that I'm
sprawling about in somebody's belly?" He staggered to his feet, hand on
sword, and made to cross to the stranger, shouting, "Damnation to you,
I'll thrust something into your belly!"

Brocton, not in the least to my surprise, made no attempt to interfere.
Jack couldn't, for I was in the way. His father began to splutter
helplessly. I shot out my foot, and swept the Major heavily to the floor.
I plucked him up by his collar as if he were a rabbit, and choked him till
his face was nearly black. Then I put him back in his chair, where he sat
huddled up and gasping.

"Sir," said I to him, with much politeness, "you are tired by the
exertions of the evening. But I like a man who sticks up for his
commander, and desire to have the honour of drinking your health." And I
toasted him complacently, smiling the while into his little pig's eyes.

This terminated the trouble, which Master Freake had watched with quiet
amusement. For my own part I was now anxious to go, for I was learning
nothing. Accident favoured me, for a servant came in and whispered
something to Brocton which took him out of the room. I seized the
opportunity to follow, declining to allow Jack to accompany me, and
wishing him good-bye and good luck. "Remember about Kate," were his last
words, whispered eagerly as he loosed my hand and opened me the door.

Several rooms opened on the landing, and I noticed that one door was
ajar. As I passed the slit of light I caught sight of the sergeant of
dragoons, and stopped beyond the door to listen. I heard Brocton's voice,
and caught the words, "Egad, I'll e'en try her. Take the best horse
available. There's no danger, but speed is everything." He dropped his
voice to a whisper and for a moment or two I caught nothing. Then, raising
his voice again, he said, "And now for your prize." I heard him move to
go, and darted ahead, silent as a bat in a barn, and a moment later was in
the noisy street. There was nothing to keep me now, and a few minutes
later I quietly lifted Marry-me-quick's latch, stepped into the room, and
observed at once that Mistress Waynflete's look imported news.

"Now, little mother," said I to Mistress Tonks, "supper's the blessedest
word I know."

"And the rabbit-stew's as good as done by now," she said, and went into
the back room to dish it up.

"The man with the slit face has been," said Mistress Waynflete
composedly. "He came hunting for quarters, but Mistress Tonks frightened
him off. At any rate, he soon left."

"Did he recognize you as 'Moll' of the Hanyards?"

"I'm quite sure that he did not. I turned my back the moment he entered,
and my hood was up. Moreover, I did not speak a word. Mother Tonks said
that I was staying here for the night because my father's house was full
of soldiers. She couldn't and wouldn't, she said, have a soldier here for
all the worshipful mayors in England. I was quite amused at the way she
talked him back to the door and through it."

The little woman bustled in to lay the supper things. She was bubbling
over with elation. "It'll be another ten or fifteen minutes, will the
rabbit-stew. The lady will have told you about ugly mug, Master Oliver. I
got him out in no time. His head was all mouth like a cod-fish. I'll soon
be back. I expect you're both hungry."

Off she bustled again, and we again settled down to our talk. I was
anxious to see if she could throw any light on Brocton's dealing with her
father. His conduct was to me wholly inexplicable. Then, too, there was
his obvious understanding with Major Tixall in the matter of the latter's
attack on Master Freake. Who was this stranger and why had he incurred
Brocton's enmity? Here was a whole string of puzzles awaiting solution.
But before I could start the conversation we were again interrupted. The
latch clicked, the door opened, and in walked my Lord Brocton.



CHAPTER VI

MY LORD BROCTON


I was as new to a life of action as an hour-old duckling is to water, and
this ironical upset of all my plans left me helpless. The very last man
whom I wanted to see Mistress Waynflete was here, his plumed hat sweeping
to the floor, triumph on his handsome face and in his easy, languid tones.
Indeed, more astonishing than his being here, was his manner and bearing.
At Master Dobson's, a natural remark of mine had beaten all his wits out
of him. Here his assurance was such that it puzzled me out of action.

"My sergeant, madam," he began, "no mean judge, since he has seen the
reigning beauties of half the capitals of Europe, told me to expect a
prize, but it is the prize. Master Wheatman, you are not, I am told, as
good a judge of cattle as Turnip Townshend, but you are, let me tell you,
a better one of women. I understand you know. Both acres and solatium
shall be mine in any event. And, dear Margaret, though I do not understand
what your haughtiness is doing here alone with my farmer friend, I need
hardly say that your devoted servant greets you with all humility."

Again his hat curved in mockery through the air. He replaced it on his
head, drew his rapier, with quick turns of his wrist swished the supple
blade through the air till it sang, then flashed it out at me like the
tongue of an adder, and said, "Sit you still, Farmer Wheatman, sit you
still. Move but your hand and I spit you like a lark on a skewer. So,
little man, so!"

The contempt in his words stirred the gall in my liver, but I neither
spoke nor shifted, and he continued, addressing her, but with cold, amused
eyes fixed on me, "You see, sweet Margaret, how yokel blood means yokel
mood. Your turnip-knight freezes at the sight of steel."

In part at least he spoke truth. I had rarely seen a naked sword, other
than our time-worn and useless relic of the doughty Smite-and-spare-not,
and had never sat thus at the point of one drawn in earnest on myself. It
is easy to blame me, and at the back of my own mind I was blaming and
cursing myself, as I sat helpless there. I was keen as the blade he bore
to help her, for here was her hour of uttermost need, but I did not see
that I should be capable of much service with a hole in my heart, and he
had me at his mercy beyond a doubt, so long as he had me in his eye. No,
galling as it was, there was nothing to do but to wait the turn of events.
Something might divert his attention. One second was all I wanted, and I
sat there praying for it and ready for it. Meanwhile the scene, the talk,
and she were full of interest.

Marry-me-quick's cottage was no hovel, either for size or appointments.
Brocton was standing with his back to a dresser. On his left was the outer
door, and on his right, between him and Mistress Waynflete, the door in
the party wall leading to the back room where the rabbit-stew was now
being dished up. Madam and I sat on opposite sides of the large hearth, a
small round table, drawn close to the fire for comfort and covered with
the supper things, occupied part of the space between us, but there was
plenty of room for action. When Brocton had stretched out his rapier
towards me in threat and command, the point was perhaps three feet from my
breast, and he could master my slightest movement.

And Mistress Waynflete. At the bridge in the afternoon I had noticed that
while danger for her father had stirred her heart to its dearest depth,
danger for herself troubled her not one whit. When I looked at her now
there was no fear in her face, which was calm as the face of a pictured
saint, but I saw questionings there and knew they were of me. Plainly as
if she spoke the words, her great blue eyes were saying, "Am I leaning on
a broken reed?" As she caught my look she turned to Brocton, and I gritted
my teeth and listened.

"So your lordship has found me!" She spoke easily and lightly. "How small
the world must be since it cannot find room for me to avoid you!"

"Say rather, dear mistress, that my love draws me unerringly towards you."

"I thought I gathered that there was another motive for your coming here
to-night."

"Margaret, believe me, I am distraught," he said, not wholly in mockery
it seemed to me.

"So distraught, it seems, that you neglect your plainest duty as an
officer in order to corrupt, if you can, a supposed country maiden, of
whom you have heard by chance. His Grace of Cumberland will be glad to
hear of such devotion."

"Won't you listen to me, Margaret? You know I love you."

"If you were offering me, my lord, the only kind of love which an
honourable man can offer, I should still refuse it. Your reputation,
character, and person are all equally disagreeable to me, and that you
should imagine that there is even the smallest chance of your succeeding,
is an insult for which, were I a man, you should pay dearly."

"On the contrary, dear Margaret," he replied, in his most silken tones,
plainly shifting to more favourable ground, "I fancy that the chance is by
no means small."

"Your fancy does not interest me," was the cold reply.

"Every woman has her price, if I may adapt a phrase of the late Sir
Robert's, and I can pay yours. Excuse my frankness, Margaret. It would be
unpardonable if we were not alone. Yon cattle-drover hardly counts as
audience, I fancy, for he is already as good as strung up as a rebel."

After a long silence, so long that I tried to find an explanation of it,
she said, "You refer to my father?" There was a quaver in her voice which
all her bravery could not suppress.

"Exactly, Margaret, to your dear father."

"In times like this, no doubt, your conduct in arresting him will pass
for legal, but fortunately some evidence will be required, and you have
none. The fact is that in your loyal zeal you have acted too soon."

"I thought your daughterly instincts would be aroused," he answered,
scoffing openly as he saw his advantage. "They have lain dormant longer
than I expected. Believe me, Margaret, for my own purposes I have acted in
the very nick of time, and you will do well to drop your unfounded hopes
of the future. Your father's fate is certain if I act, for I can call a
witness--you remember Major Tixall, a beery but insinuating person--whose
evidence is enough to hang him fifty times over. Whether or not I produce
it depends, as I say, on the depth of your affection for him."

"I shall know how to save my father, my lord, when the time comes. Now,
perhaps, having played your last card, you will leave me."

"My dear Margaret," was the cool reply, "your innocence amazes me. My
last card! Not at all, sweet queen. You are my last card."

"I? How so?"

"You, too, are a rebel, if I choose to say the word, and a dangerous one
to boot. So here's your choice: come where love awaits you or go where the
gallows awaits you."

"And if I could so far forget my nature as to come where love of your
sort, the love of a mere brute beast, awaits me, you would forget
everything?"

"Everything, Margaret."

"Your duty to your King included?"

"Certainly. There's nothing I will not do, or leave undone, at your
behest for your fair sake."

"You flatter me, my lord, far above my poor deserts. And now, if your
lordship will excuse me,"--she arose at the words, pale and determined as
death,--"I will e'en go and give myself up to some responsible officer and
acquaint him with your conduct."

"He would not believe you, my sweet Margaret."

"You forget I have a witness, my lord." For the first time during the
conversation she looked across at me.

"He would not be there to witness, Margaret. Surely you suppose that I am
wise enough to prevent that move. Keep on sitting still, Farmer Oliver.
I'm glad, believe me, to see you so interested. A difficult piece of
virtue she is, to be sure, and if you could only escape a hanging, which
you will not, you might have learned to-night a useful lesson in the art
of managing a woman. It's an art, sir, a great, a curious art, and I
flatter myself I am somewhat of a master therein."

All this time he had kept me in his eye, and the point of his rapier was
ready for my slightest move. It had grieved me to the heart to hear him
shame this noble woman so, bargaining for her honour as lightly as a
marketing housewife chaffers for a pullet. How she had felt it, I could
judge in part by the deathly paleness of her face, and the tight hold she
was keeping on herself. She dropped into her chair again and buried her
face in her hands. He only smiled as one who presages a welcome triumph. I
kept still and silent, never moving my eyes from his, praying and waiting
for my second.

She raised her head and spoke again: "If I did not know you, my lord, I
would plead with you. Two men's lives are in my hands, you say, and there
is"--she paused--"but one way"--another terrible pause--"of saving them."

"You want me to throw in the cattle-drover?" he asked gaily.

"Yes," she replied, in a scarcely audible whisper.

"It's throwing in five hundred acres of land each of which my father
values at a Jew's eye, let me tell you, but, egad, Margaret, you're not
dear even at that. Run away home, Farmer Wheatman, and don't be fool
enough to play the rebel again."

I sat still and silent. Speech was useless, and action not yet possible.
That keen swordsman's eye must be diverted somehow. There was a God in
heaven, and the rabbit-stew would be ready soon. It was useless to attempt
to force matters. And as for his taunts, well, he was but feathering my
arrows. So I sat on like a stone.

"Go, Master Wheatman," she urged faintly, but I did not even turn to look
at her. My heart was thumping on my ribs, my nerves tingling, my muscles
involuntarily tightening for a spring.

"These yokels are so dull and lifeless, Margaret. He cannot understand
our impatience." Out of the corner of my eye I saw her crimson to the
roots of her hair at this vicious insult. "Off, my man," he added to me,
"or I'll prick your bull's hide." He thrust out his rapier to give point
to the threat. Nothing moved me. My eyes were glued to his.

And now the door on his right hand opened, and little Mistress
Marry-me-quick appeared with our supper. She saw the sword directed at the
breast of the one man on earth she loved with all the fervour of her
honest, womanly heart. The sight scattered her senses. With a
nerve-racking shriek she flopped heavily to the floor, and the rabbit-stew
flew from her hands and crashed loudly at his feet. It was too much for his
wine-sodden nerves. His eyes turned, his body slackened, the point of his
rapier flagged floorward. God had given me my second.

I bounded at him, not straight, but somewhat to his left. He recovered,
but, anticipating a straight rush, thrust clean out on the expected line
of my leap. His blade ran through between my coat and waistcoat, and the
guard thumped sore on my ribs. Then he was mine.

I struck hard on heart and belt and knocked the wind out of his body. He
sucked for breath like a drowning man. Now he could not call for help, and
I finished him off, quickly, gladly, and smilingly. His twitching fingers
fumbled at his belt as if seeking a pistol. Finding none, he made no
further attempt to defend himself, and covered his face with his arms to
keep off my blows, but I struck him with such fierce strength on his
unprotected temples that he weakened and dropped them. His ghastly,
bleeding face turned upwards, his dazed eyes pleading for the mercy he had
denied her a moment ago. It was brute appealing to brute in vain, and with
one last blow on the chin that drove his teeth together like the crack of
a pistol and nearly tore his head off his shoulders, I knocked him
senseless to the floor.

His rapier hung in the skirt of my coat, so close had I been to sure and
sudden death. I drew it out and tossed it to the floor at his side. "I
wish, madam," said I, reaching out for mother's domino, "that we could
have saved the rabbit-stew."

"Is he dead?" she whispered, with white lips, coming forward and looking
shudderingly down on him with troubled eyes.

"No such luck," said I. "He may be round in five minutes, but that's
enough, though poor little Marry-me-quick will have to be left to fend for
herself." I helped her into the domino, pulled the hood over the wonderful
hair, and seized my own hat.

"Now, Mistress Waynflete," said I, "the northern halt of Staffordshire is
before us, and the sooner some of it is behind us the better." With these
words I led her to the door, which I closed carefully behind me, and into
the street.

A little explanation will make our subsequent movements clearer. The
eastern side of Stafford is roughly bow-shaped. The main street is the
straight string and the wood is the curve of the wall, now mostly fallen
down and in ruins, the line of which was followed by the street we were
in, and only some fifty yards from the southern end of the string. The
marksman's thumb represents the market square, and the arrow the line of
the east gate street.

No cat in the town knew it better than I did, or could travel it better
in the dark. Indeed, our only danger now came from the moon, but,
fortunately, she had not yet climbed very high. Mistress Waynflete placed
her arm in mine and we turned to the right, away from the still noisy and
crowded main street. We passed an ale-house bursting with customers, the
central figure among whom, plainly visible from the street, was Pippin
Pat, an Irishman with so huge a head that he had become a celebrity under
this name for miles around. He had made himself rolling drunk and,
suitably to the occasion, had been made into a Highlander by the simple
process of robbing him of his breeches and rubbing his head with ruddle.
He was a sorry sight enough, but, the main thing, he had attracted an
enormous company. I rejoiced to see him, for it meant that the wicket of
his master's tanyard, half a stone's throw ahead, would be unbolted. This
would save us a longish detour and lessen the danger of being observed.

Arrived at the tanyard gate, I tried the wicket. It was unbolted, as I
had anticipated, and we were soon in the quiet and obscurity of the
tanyard. The far side of the yard was separated by a low stone wall from
the end of a blind alley leading into Eastgate Street. I guided my
companion safely by the edges of the tan-pits, and on arriving at the
wall, I made no apology but lifted her on to it. As she sat there a shaft
of moonlight lit up her fine, brave face. I feasted my eyes upon it for a
moment, and then made to leap over to assist her to the other side, but
she stayed me with a hand on each shoulder.

"I will go no farther, Master Wheatman," she said in a low, troubled
voice, "till you forgive me."

"Forgive you?" I cried, astounded. "Forgive you? What for?"

"For thinking meanly of you. I thought you were afraid of Brocton. Not
until that lion leap of yours did I realize how cleverly and nobly you had
sat there through his insults, foreseeing the exact moment when you could
master him. My only explanation, I do not offer it as an excuse, is that
the utter beast in Brocton makes it hard for me to think well of any man.
Oh, believe me, I am ashamed, confounded, and miserable. Say you forgive
me!"

"Madam," I said laughingly, "the next time I play the knight-errant, may
God send me a less observant damsel. There's nothing to forgive. The plain
truth is that I was frightened, a little bit. But I'm new to this sort of
thing, and I hope to improve." Then, after a pause, I met her eyes full
with mine and added, "As we go on."

"Frightened," she said scornfully, "you frightened, you who leaped
unarmed on the best swordsman in London? No, don't mock me, Master
Wheatman, forgive me."

"Of course I do, and thank you for your kind words. And we've both got
some one to forgive."

She smiled radiantly--"Whom? And what for?"

I leaped over the wall, and put my arms around her to lift her down.

"Marry-me-quick, for dropping the rabbit-stew."



CHAPTER VII

THE RESULTS OF LOSING MY VIRGIL


We slipped down the blind alley and came out in the street leading to the
East Gate. There was still great plenty of people strolling up and down,
for night had not yet killed off the novelty and excitement caused by the
arrival of the army. The smaller houses were crowded with soldiery,
hob-nobbing with the folk on whom they were billeted, and all were yelling
out, "Let the cannakin clink!" and other rowdy ditties in the intervals of
drinking. At the East Gate itself, a fire blazed, and pickets warmed
themselves round it, while along the street late-coming baggage and
ammunition wagons were trailing wearily. It was idle to expect to pass
unseen, so we plunged into the throng, threaded through the wagons, and
skirted leftward till we arrived at a quieter street running down to the
line of the wall.

Here every brick and stone was as a familiar friend, for the little
grammar school backed on to the wall at the very spot where the main
street led through the old north gate of the town. Old Master Bloggs lived
in a tiny house on the side of the school away from the gate. There were
the candles flickering in the untidy den in which the old man passed all
his waking hours out of school-time, and there, I doubted not, they would
be guttering away if the Highlanders sacked the town. I led the way across
the little fore-court, paled off from the street by wooden railings,
gently opened the door, and walked in to the dark passage.

The study door was ajar, and we peeped in. There the old, familiar figure
was, eyesight feebler, shoulders rounder, hair whiter, and clothing
shabbier than of yore, crumpled over a massive folio. He was reading
aloud, in a monotonous, squeaky half-pitch. Latin hexameters they were,
for even his voice could not hide all the music in them, and as I listened
it became clear that the old man had that night been moved to select
something appropriate to the occasion, for he was going through the
account of the fall of Troy in the second Aeneid.

I put my fingers on my lips and crept on, followed by Mistress Waynflete.
In the little back room I whispered, "My old school and schoolmaster. We
will not disturb the old man. Poor little Marry-me-quick may have to
suffer on our account, and old Bloggs shall at any rate have the excuse of
knowing nothing about us. He's happy enough over the fall of Troy. Nothing
that he can do can help us. Let him be."

She nodded assent and I looked round. Opening a cupboard, I found half a
loaf of bread, a nipperkin of milk, and a rind of cheese. "Eat," said I,
"and think it's rabbit-stew." I made her take all the milk, but shared the
bread and cheese. Troy went on falling steadily meanwhile, and when we had
finished our scanty nuncheon I once more led the way, and we passed out
into the little yard behind the schoolhouse, and gained the playground,
the outer boundary of which was the town wall, here some twelve feet high
and in a fair state of preservation. Many generations of schoolboys had
cut and worn a series of big notches on each side of the wall, and by long
practice I could run up and down in a trice to fetch ball or tipcat which
had been knocked over.

From the bridge at the Hanyards onwards, Mistress Waynflete had always
acted promptly and exactly to my wish. I felt a boor, and was in truth a
boor, in comparison with her. Brocton's 'yokel blood' gibe had put murder
into my blows, but it had truth enough in it to make it rankle like a
poisoned arrow. Yet here was this wonder-woman, trustful as a child and
meeker than a milkmaid. My work was new, but at any rate I had sometimes
dreamed that I could do a man's work when I got my chance, and I had limbs
of leather and steel to do it with. My thoughts, however, were newer
still, and had no background of daydreams to stand against. Moreover,
things had gone with such a rush that I had had no time to shake and sift
them into order. At the foot of that wall all I knew, and that but dimly,
was that there were thoughts that made a man's work the one thing worth
living for.

"Get your breath, madam," said I. "You want it all now, and there's no
need to hurry."

She leaned easily against the wall, and peered round to make out her
surroundings. The only result could be to give her the impression that she
was cooped up like a rat in a trap, but with characteristic indifference
for herself, she only said:

"And this was your school?"

"For many years, seven or more."

She was silent for a time and then went on.

"You have led a quiet life, Master Wheatman?"

"Ha," thought I, "she's gauging my capacity to help her," and added
aloud, bitterly reminiscent, "The life of a yokel, madam."

"You have read much?"

"Yes, I'm fond of reading. It passes the long winter nights."

"And no doubt you know by heart the merry gests of Robin Hood and the
admirable exploits of Claude Duval?"

I felt her eyes on me in the dark, and longed for the sun so that I could
see the blue glint in them.

"No such rubbish, indeed," said I hotly. It was a slight on Master
Bloggs, droning away yonder at the fall of Troy, not to say the sweet old
vicar.

"What then?"

"Livy and Caesar, and stuff like that, but mainly Virgil."

"Then it's very, very curious," she whispered emphatically.

No doubt yokel blood ought not to run like wine under the mighty pulse of
Virgil, and I sourly asked, "What's curious, madam? Old Bloggs has nothing
to teach except Latin, and I happened to take to it. Why curious?"

"Really, Master Wheatman, not curious? Here we are in a narrow yard at
the foot of a high wall. I'm perfectly certain that within five minutes I
shall be whisked over to the other side. And you got that out of Virgil?"

"Straight out of Virgil, madam. Stafford was our Troy, and this the wall
thereof. I've got in and out thousands of times."

She peered comically around the dark playground and said gaily, "I see no
wooden horse. There should be one, I know. Master Dryden says so, and he
knows all about Virgil."

"Poof," said I. "If old Bloggs heard you, he'd tingle to thrash you black
and blue."

"He couldn't now I've got my breath again," she laughed.

"I'm glad of that. Let me explain. Here is a ladder of notches in the
wall, left and right alternately. Feel for them." She did so, and I went
on: "They are roughly three feet apart on each side. I'll climb up first
and assist you up the last few. Your skirts will trouble you, I fear."

"Not much, for I'll turn them up." She promptly did so, and fastened the
edges round her waist. She also discarded the long, cumbrous domino, and I
took it from her.

"Watch me," said I, "and follow when I give the word. I'll have a look
round first."

Up I went, hand over hand, as easily as ever I had done it. I crouched
down on the top of the wall, which, fortunately, lay in the shadow of the
schoolhouse. I saw in the sky the reflected glare of a fire at the north
gate, another picket I supposed, but there were houses without the gate,
and these were dark and silent. There was no fear of our being observed.

"Come!" I whispered.

She started boldly and came up with cheering swiftness. I spread the
domino in readiness, then stretched down to help her, and in another
moment she was sitting the wall as a saddle.

"Splendid, for a novice," I said.

"And a novice in skirts, short ones."

She went first down the other side, and I nearly pitched headlong in
assisting her as far down as possible. She lowered her skirts while I
followed and then I helped her into the domino, rejoicing in the silken
caress of her hair on my hands as I arranged the hood, a pleasant piece of
officiousness for which I got thanks I did not deserve, and off we started.

Again she asked nothing as to what we were going to do and whither we
were bound. The blazing windows of a comfortable inn might have been in
sight for aught she cared to all outward seeming. Yet here she was, close
on midnight, in bitterly cold weather, stepping out into rough and unknown
country in company with a man she had only known a few hours.

I went ahead and thought it over. For ten minutes we picked our way in
the deep shadow along the foot of the wall, _per opaca locorum_, as
the great weaver of words puts it, and then I turned outwards into the
open field and the clear moonlight. Of her own accord she placed her arm
in mine, and we stepped it out bravely together.

"We are in unenclosed land here," I explained. "On our right is a patch
which varies between bog and marsh and pool, according to the rains. The
townsmen call it the King's Pool, whatever state it is in. Just ahead, you
can see the line of it, is a little stream, the Pearl Brook. If it isn't
frozen over yet, I can easily carry you across, as it's not more than six
inches deep. The freemen of the Ancient Borough--yon little town has
slumbered there nearly eight hundred years--have, by immemorial custom,
the right of fishing in the Pearl Brook with line and bent pin."

"They do not catch many thirty-pound jack, I suppose?"

"Dear me, no. But it was here I learned to like fishing, and I went on
from minnows and jacksharps to pike."

"And wandering damsels," she interrupted, with a laugh that sounded to me
like the music of silver bells. A minute later, on the edge of the brook,
she said vexedly, "And it's not frozen over." But I had already noticed
that fact with great elation.

"Not more than six inches, you say," she muttered, and made to step in.

"And if it were not so much as six barley-corns," I said, "I would not
suffer you to wade it. What am I for, pray you, madam?"

Without more ado, I lifted her once more in my arms--the fourth time that
day--and started. I cursed the narrowness of the Pearl Brook. I could
almost have hopped across it, but by dawdling aslant the stream I had her
sweet face near mine in the moonlight, and my arms round her proud body,
for a couple of minutes. "Yokel blood or not," I thought, "this is
something my Lord Brocton will never do."

A quarter of an hour later, after helping her up a short, steep scarp, we
stood and looked back on the little town. Its roofs were bathed in
moonlight, and the great church tower stood out in grey against the
blue-black sky. Patches of dull, ruddy glow in the sky marked the sites of
the picket-fires, and there came to us, like the gibbering of ghosts in
the wind, the dying notes of the day's excitement. To our left, bits of
silver ribbon marked the twistings of the river, and that darker line in
the distant darkness was the hills of my home and boyhood. At their feet
was the Hanyards, and Kate and mother. There was a little mist in my eyes,
and the eyes I turned and looked into were brimming with tears.

"And now, Mistress Waynflete," said I, "let us on to our inn."

"Our inn!" she echoed, and there was dismay in her voice. "Our inn, and I
haven't a pennypiece. For safety, I put my hat, my riding jacket, and my
purse under the bed at Marry-me-quick's, and the fight and hurry drove
them out of my mind completely."

"And I'm in the same case exactly," said I, and laughed outright. I had
little use for money at the Hanyards, least of all in the pockets of my
Sunday best, and not until she told me her plight did I realize the fact
that in the elation of starting from home, I had forgotten that money
might be necessary. Though I laughed, I watched her closely. Now she would
break down. No woman's heart could stand the shock.

"My possessions," she said, "are precisely two handkerchiefs, one of
Madame du Pont's washballs, and most of a piece of the famous
marry-me-quick."

I had been mistaken. She made no ado about our serious situation, but
spoke with a grave humour that fetched me greatly.

"Quite a lengthy inventory," I replied. "My contributions to the common
stock are--" and I fumbled in my pockets--"item, one handkerchief; item,
a pocket-knife; item, one pipe and half a paper of tobacco; item, one
flask, two-thirds full of Mistress Kate Wheatman's priceless peppermint
cordial, the sovereign remedy against fatigue, cold, care, and the
humours; item, something unknown which has been flopping against my hip
and is, by the outward feel of it, a thing to rejoice over, to wit, one of
Kate's pasties."

I pushed my hand down for it, and then laughed louder than ever, as I
drew forth my dumpy little Virgil.

"Item," I concluded, "the works of the divine master, P. Vergilius Maro,
hidden in my pocket by that mischievous minx and monkey, Kate Wheatman of
the Hanyards." And I told the story.

"Then if Kate had not hidden your beloved Virgil, you would not have gone
fishing?"

"I'm sure I shouldn't."

"Life turns on trifles, Master Wheatman, and to a pretty girl's sisterly
jest I owe everything that has happened since I first saw you on the river
bank."

"We owe it, madam," I corrected gently, and I turned to go on, for I saw
that she was moved and troubled at the evil she thought she had brought on
me. Evil! I was enjoying every breath I drew and every step I took, and my
heart was like a live coal in the midst of my bosom.

"Have no fear, Mistress Margaret," said I cheerfully, sweeping my hand
out. "There's broad Staffordshire before us, a goodly land full of meat
and malt and money, and we'll have our share of it."

"But you'll have to steal it for me."

"'Convey the wise it call," "I quoted.

"That's better," and she smiled up at me in the moonlight. "Virgil puts
you right above my poor wits, but say you love Shakespeare too, and we
shall have one of the great things of life in common."

"I do, madam, but you must learn to rate things at their true value. You
speak French?"

"Oh yes."

"And Italian?"

"Yes."

"And play the harpsichord?"

"Yes."

"Then, madam, I am a half-educated boor compared with you, for I know
none of these things. But though I do not know the French or Italian for
marry-me-quick, if you will get it out of your pocket, I'll show you the
Staffordshire for half of it."

We marched on gaily for another quarter of an hour, eating the sweet
morsel. Then I said, "Even an old traveller and campaigner like you will
be glad to learn that our inn is at hand."

"Very glad, but I see no signs of it."

"Well, no," said I, "it's not exactly an inn, but just a plain barn. You
shall sleep soft and safe and warm, though, and even if we had money and
an inn was at hand, it would be foolish to go there. Your case is hard,
madam, and I wish I could offer you better quarters."

Under the shelter of a round knoll clumped with pines, lay an ancient
farmhouse. We were approaching it from the front, and its sheds and barns
were at the rear. We therefore turned into the field and fetched a
circuit, and soon stood at the gate leading into the farmyard. No one
stirred, not even a dog barked, as I softly opened the gate and crept,
followed by Mistress Waynflete, to the nearest building. I pushed open the
door, we entered a barn, and were safe for the night. The moon shone
through the open door, and I saw that the barn was empty, probably because
the year's crops, as I knew to my sorrow, had been poor indeed in our
district. The fact that the barn was bare told in our favour, as no farm
hand would be likely to come near it should one be stirring before us next
morning.

A rick stood handy in the yard, and on going to it I found that three or
four dasses of hay had been carved out ready for removal to the stalls. I
carried them to the shed, one by one, and mighty hot I was by the time I
dumped the last on the barn floor. Starting off again, I poached around in
another shed, and was lucky enough to find a pile of empty corn sacks.
Spreading these three or four deep in the far corner of the barn, I
covered them thickly with hay, and having reserved a sack on purpose, I
stuffed it loosely with hay to serve for a pillow.

All this busy time Mistress Waynflete stood on the moonlit door-sill,
silent as a mouse, and when I stole quietly up to tell her all was ready,
I saw that her hands were clasped in front and her lips moved. I bared my
head and waited, for she had transformed this poor barn into a maiden's
sanctuary.

She turned her face towards me. "Madam," said I, very quietly, "your bed
is ready, and you are tired out and dead for sleep. Pray come!"

Still silent, she stepped up and examined my rude handiwork. Then she
curled herself up on the hay, and I covered her with more hay till she lay
snug enough to keep out another Great Frost.

"Good night, madam, and sweet sleep befall you," and I was turning away.

"Ho!" she said, "and pray where do you propose to sleep?"

"I shall nest under the rick-straddle."

"Sir," and her tone was almost unpleasant, "for the modesty you attribute
unto me, I thank you. For the gratitude you decline to attribute unto me,
I dislike you. But pray give me credit for a little common sense. I shall
desire your services in the morning, and I do not want to find you under a
rick, frozen to a fossil."

"No, madam."

She sprang out of bed, tumbling the hay in all directions.

"Master Wheatman, I will not pretend to misunderstand you, and indeed, I
thank you, but you are going to put your bed here," stamping her foot, "so
that we can talk without raising our voices. I am much more willing to
sleep in the same barn with you than in the same town with my Lord
Brocton. Where's your share of the sacks?"

I did without sacks, but I fetched more chunks of hay, and she helped me
strew a bed for myself close up to her own. I tucked her up once more, and
then made myself cosy. I was miserable lest I should snore. Yokels so
often do. Joe Braggs, for instance, would snore till the barn door rattled.

I remembered the cordial, and we each had a good pull at the flask. I
felt for days the touch of her smooth, soft fingers on mine as she took it.

"It certainly does warm you up," she said. "I feel all aglow without and
within."

"Then I may take it that you are comfortable?"

"If it were not for two things, I should say this was a boy-and-girl
escapade of ours, every moment of which was just pure enjoyment."

"Naturally you are uneasy about your father, but I cannot think he will
come to any immediate harm. Why Brocton should send him north instead of
south is, I confess, a mystery, but to-morrow will solve it. And what else
makes you uneasy?"

"You," she replied, very low and brief.

"I? And pray, madam, what have I done to make you uneasy?"

"Met me." Still the same tone.

"I am not able to talk to you in the modish manner, nor do I think you
would wish me to try to ape my betters, so I say plainly that our meeting
has not made me uneasy. Why then you?"

"Had you not met me, you would now be asleep at the Hanyards, a free and
happy country gentleman. Instead you are here, a suspect, a refugee, an
outlaw, one tainted with rebellion, the jail for certain if you are
caught, and then--"

She broke off abruptly, and I think I heard a low sob.

"And then?"

"Perhaps the gibbet."

"It's true that the thieving craft is a curst craft for the gallows, but
to-morrow's trouble is like yesterday's dinner, not worth thinking on. We
are here, safe and comfortable. Let that suffice. And to-day, so far from
doing harm at which you must needs be uneasy, you have wrought a miracle."

"Wrought a miracle? What do you mean?"

"You have found a cabbage, and made a man. Good night, Mistress Waynflete."

"Good night, Master Wheatman."

I imitated the regular breathing of a tired, sleeping man. In a few
minutes it became clear that she was really asleep, and I pretended no
longer, but stretched out comfortably in the fragrant hay and soon slept
like a log.



CHAPTER VIII

THE CONJURER'S CAP


I awoke between darkness and daylight. Mistress Waynflete still slept
peacefully and there was as yet no need to rouse her. I had slept in my
shoes, but now, I drew them off, lifted the bar of the door, and stole out
to look around. Not a soul was stirring about the farm, and the only
living creature in sight was a sleepy cock, which scuttled off noisily at
my approach. I entered a cowshed, where a fine, patient cow turned a
reproachful eye on me, as if rebuking me for my too early visit. I
cheerily clucked and slapped her on to her hoofs, and then, failing to
find any sort of cup or can, punched my hat inside out and filled it with
warm foaming milk. With this spoil I hurried back to our quarters.

I had to leave the door open, and this gave me light enough to look more
closely at my companion. She was still sleeping, her face calmly content,
and so had she slept through the night, for the coverlet of hay was rising
and falling undisturbed on her breast. It was now time to wake her, and,
having no free hand, I knelt down to nudge her with my elbow. As I did so,
her face changed. A look of concern came over it, then one of hesitation,
then a sweet smile, chasing each other as gleam chases gloom across the
meadows on an April day. She was dreaming, dreaming pleasantly, and it was
to a hard world that I awakened her.

At my second nudge she half-opened her eyes and murmured, "It's very
wide." Then my greeting aroused her fully, and she blushed wondrous red
and beautiful.

"Good morrow, Mistress Waynflete," said I. "I grieve to disturb you, and,
pray you, do not move too abruptly or over goes the breakfast."

"Good morrow, Master Oliver," she replied. "I have slept well. I feel as
if I've quite enjoyed it. We do enjoy sleep, I think, sometimes."

"Or the dreams it brings, madam."

She glanced quickly at me, as if afraid that I had the power of reading
dream-thoughts, and gaily said, "And breakfast ready! This is even better
than the Paris fashion. What is it? More of dear Kate's cordial?"

I did not know what the Paris fashion of breakfast was, and she did not
enlighten me. Anyhow, I, the yokel, had improved on it, and that was
something.

"A far better brewage, madam," I said, "but you must pardon the
Staffordshire fashion of serving it."

She sat up, took the cap, and drank heartily, the dawn still in her eyes
and cheeks, and masses of yellow hair tumbling down from under her hood on
throat and bosom. When she handed back the cap, I could not forbear from
saying, "You look charming after your night's rest, and I profess that
tear of milk on the tip of your nose becomes you admirably." With the rim
of my cap at my lips, I added with mock concern, "Have a care, Mistress
Waynflete, or you'll rub off tip as well as tear."

"I suppose you thought 'As a jewel of gold' and the rest of it," she
said, squinting comically down to examine her nose.

"Really, no, madam; I thought of nothing so scandalous, from the Bible
though it be. I thought of--of...."

"I'm all ears," she said archly.

"I'm a poor hand at turning compliments to ladies," said I.

"On the contrary, you turn them admirably. See!" She held up my sopping
cap, and laughed merrily.

"It's ruined for best," said I, "but it will do for market days. And now,
madam, it's cold enough to freeze askers, as Joe Braggs says, and for
toilet you must e'en be content with first a shiver and then a shake. I
will await you at the yard gate, and pray close the door behind you. The
quicker the better."

She rejoined me in two or three minutes. I closed the gate cautiously
behind me, and we started our journey. From the farm we got away quite
unobserved, but I looked behind me at every other step to make surer, till
we turned the top of the knoll, and it was with great relief that I saw
the chimney-pots sink out of sight.

For a time we walked along briskly and in silence. So far I had carried
everything with a high hand and successfully, but the cold grey of the
morning began to creep into my thoughts as I looked ahead over miles and
miles of dreariness and danger. Houses were few and far between; every
village was a source of danger; the high roads were closed to us by our
fear of the troops. Further, the object we had in view was vague and
unformed, if not impossible of achievement, for even if we arrived at the
very place where Colonel Waynflete was held prisoner, what could we do to
help him? We should be safe from immediate need and danger if we could
reach the Prince's army, but where that was, and which way it was
travelling, were unknown to us. Certain it was that between us and any
real help ranged some thirty miles of cold, bleak country packed with
enemies for miles ahead. And here we were, on foot, penniless and hungry.
I had longed for a man's work; this was a regiment's.

A sidelong look at my companion drove all the mist and frost out of my
heart. Something about her made me feel a sneak and a traitor even for
harbouring such thoughts. From the first she had asked for no help of
mine. I had forced it on her, or circumstances had forced me to help her
in helping myself, as when I cut our way from Marry-me-quick's cottage.
The more I was with her, the better I began to understand Brocton's
madness. It was the madness of the mere brute in him to be sure, and a man
should kick the brute in him into its kennel, though he cannot at times
help hearing it whine. Her majestic beauty had dazzled him as a flame
dazzles a moth, but at this stage, at any rate, it was not her beauty that
made me her thrall. That I could have withstood. Because she was so
beautiful, so stately, so compelling, she made no appeal to me. What I
mean is, that I did not fall in love with her at first sight, simply
because the mere stupidity of such a thing kept me from doing it.
Glow-worms do not fall in love with stars or thistles with sycamores. She
was something to be worshipped, served at any cost, saved at any
sacrifice, but not loved. No, that was for some lucky one of her own class
and state, not for a simple squireling like me. Her comradeship, her
graciousness, her sweet equalizing of our positions, were, I felt, just
the simple, natural adornments of the commanding modesty which was her
spiritual garment.

Manlike, however, I had an evil streak in me, and thence, later, came
madness. In any company I must be top dog. I had been head of the school,
not because of any special cleverness, but because I would burst rather
than be second to anybody in anything. I had fought and fought, at all
hazards, until not a boy in school or town dare come near me. So now,
since my Lord Brocton--and many a lord beside, I doubted not--had failed,
I must needs step in and say, "I will please her, whether she like it or
not." And so, plain countryman as I was, I had done my work ungrudgingly
but not, I feared, too modestly, and since I could not speak court-like, I
had been over-masterful, and given her mood for mood, and turned no cheek
for her sweet smiting. And as I had of old time licked every lad in
Stafford, so now neither Staffordshire nor all the King's men in it should
turn me back. Through she should go, and in safety and comfort, so that
when the time came for me to hand over my precious charge to a worthier,
she should say that the yokel had done a man's work and done it
gentlemanly. Therefore, when Mistress Waynflete looked up to me from the
bleak uplands with serious, questioning eyes, I said, as calmly as if we
were pacing the garden at the Hanyards, with Kate and Jane active in the
kitchen behind us, "Ham and eggs for breakfast!"

"I don't see any," she said, in answering mood, scanning the fields
around us. "Not that that matters. I didn't see the steps, but they were
there. You make me think, Master Wheatman, of a Turk I saw in a booth at
Vienna, who drew rabbits and rose-bushes out of an empty hat.
Staffordshire is your conjurer's hat. And I do like ham and eggs."

My assurance and her comfortable belief in it made us both brighter, and
we stepped out merrily. She gave me an entertaining account of Vienna,
where she had spent some months, and which was then the great outpost of
Christendom against the Turk. When this talk had brought us on to the
field of Hopton Heath, I gave her the best account I could of the battle
there in the Civil War time, and of the slaying of the Marquis of
Northampton. And this led me on to my pride of ancestry, and I told her of
Captain Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, a tower of strength to the
Parliament in these parts, who fought here and later on Naseby Field
itself. Many tales I told of him that had been handed down from one
generation of us to another, and how so greatly was he taken with his
incomparable lord-general that he had named his first-born son Oliver, and
ever since there had been an Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. Then I told
how one of these later Olivers, which one a matter of no consequence, had
written verses and put them into the mouth of the doughty
Smite-and-spare-not, sitting his horse, stark and strong, at the head of
his men on Naseby Field, and gazing with grim, grey eyes on the opening
movements of the fight. And, nothing loth, I trolled them out roundly
across the meadows, till the peewits screamed and a distant dog began to
bay:

  "Princelet and king, and mitre and ring,
     Earl and baron and squire,
   Oliver worries 'em, harries and flurries 'em,
     With siege and slaughter and fire.
   With the arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit,
     Push of pike and the Word,
   Smiting and praying, and praising and slaying,
     Oliver fights for the Lord.
   With the sword He brought the work is wrought,
     We finish here to-day.
   When yon rags and remnants of Babylon
     Are blown and battered away.

   Hurrah for the groans of 'em, soon shall the bones of 'em,
    _Steady!_ Hell-rakers at large,
   Rot under the sod. _Pass the word: 'God_
    _Is our strength?'_ There goes Oliver. _Charge!_"

When I had done she applauded so that my face burned until I was
discommoded and fell into her trap.

"I wish you'd written them, Master Wheatman."

"Well, I did," said I grumpily, not liking to be bereft of any little
glory in her eyes.

"What, you?" Her eyebrows arched and her lips curled. "You, oh, never.
'Smiting and praying'? 'The arm of the Flesh and the sword of the
Spirit.'" She mouthed the words deliciously.

"But, doubtless, when you see my Lord Brocton again, you'll put in the
Word and the praying." Here her sweet voice trailed off into a dainty
snuffle: "'My dear lord, since out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
proceedeth wisdom, hearken, I pray you, unto me, Oliver Wheatman, to wit
of the Hanyards, and amend ye your ways lest I hit you over your cockscomb
again, and very much harder than before. Repent ye, my lord, for the hour
is at hand, and if you don't, I'll thump you into one of our Kate's
blackberry jellies.' And here endeth the goodly discourse of that saintly
rib-roaster, Master Hit-him-first-and-then-pray-for-him Wheatman of the
Hanyards."

It was simply glorious to be so tormented by this witch with the dancing
blue eyes.

"For this scandalous contempt of the Muses," said I soberly, "I shall
punish you by frizzling your share of the ham to a cinder."

During my schoolboy days I had roamed the countryside till I knew it as
an open book, and this minute knowledge was our salvation now. The
immediate need was food, and food obtained without price and without our
being observed by anyone. At seven o'clock on a hard winter morning in
open country, this seemed to require a miracle. As a matter of fact, it
was as easy as shelling peas.

Since crossing the heath we had been travelling nearer to one of the main
roads, that leading out of the east gate to the town, and now we got our
first glimpse of it lying like a broad, brown ribbon half-way down the
slope of a very steep hill. In the upper half, this hill was pretty well
wooded and the road cut clean through the wood, but between us and the
wood there lay the level crest of the hill, cut by hedges into several
fields, and crossed by a rough cart-track leading past a roomy,
one-storied cottage, grey-walled and brown-thatched, and on through the
wood into the main road. The cottage, with its outbuildings, made a
little farmstead, and here lived Dick Doley and his wife Sal, who did a
little farming, but mainly lived by huckstering. Today was market-day at
Stafford, and unless they had broken the routine of half a lifetime, they
would now be packing their little cart with marketables and soon be off
for the town. They had neither chick nor child, lad-servant nor lassie,
and they would leave the cottage empty and at our disposal. At this time
of the day I could, of course, have trusted both, but they were very human
bodies of a sort to rejoice the business side of the heart of Joe Braggs,
and it was best not to give them the chance of blabbing later in the day
when, for a moral certainty, they would both be market fresh. Besides, it
was unfair to thrust myself on the kindness of anyone. I had more than
once wondered what had happened to poor little Marry-me-quick.

I scrambled through the hedge and peeped down the road. I was right. Dick
and his wife were busy loading up. So we waited behind the hedge till they
had cleared off, and indeed did not move till I saw them and their cart
pass along the road at the foot of the hill.

Time has not blurred the memory of a single detail of our stay in this
welcome house of refuge, but the telling of what was moving and charming
to me would, I fear, bore others. There was a ham, two indeed, and
flitches beside, in the rack hanging from the ceiling, and there were
eggs--three, to be precise--in the larder, to which, by equal good luck
considering the time of the year, I added two more by a raid into the
hen-house. It was all natural and simple enough, but Mistress Waynflete
hailed their production almost as amazedly as if I had indeed drawn them
out of my hat. But how I fetched and carried, chopped wood and drew water,
swept the floor and laid the table, fried ham and boiled eggs, doing all
these things with music in my heart and a noisy song on my lips--is
everything to me and nothing to my tale.

Mistress Waynflete had disappeared into one of the three or four rooms of
which the house consisted, to make herself presentable, as she absurdly
put it. When the table was laid and the ham cooked, I halloed the news to
her, and rushed off to the shed to attend to my outward appearance. I did
want it, being indeed not far short of filthy.

Perhaps I hurried unexpectedly. At any rate, on returning I found
Mistress Waynflete bending over something on the hearth. Straightening
herself hastily, and with a pretty confusion, at my approach, she cried,
"Oh, Master Oliver, the ham was burning, and you threatened my share of
it, you know!"

I could not reply. Down to her hips her rich amber hair flowed like a
bridal veil, and from amid a wealth of snowy lace, fluttering on the orbed
glory of perfect womanhood, her neck rose smooth and stately as a shaft of
alabaster. Her cheeks crimsoned with maiden shamefastness, but the blue
eyes met mine without a hint of maiden fear, and for that thanks as well
as reverence filled my heart as I bowed to her. Maidenlike, she drew her
golden veil more closely over her bosom, and tripped back to finish her
toilet, leaving me amated and abashed by the vision I had beheld. I think
it was from that moment that my joy in my work began to be mingled with
the despair of my love. Certainly it was a chastened Oliver Wheatman who
placed a chair for her when she came in again for breakfast, and helped
her to the good things a kindly fortune had provided.

It is my belief that each of us was secretly amused at the steady zeal
with which the other attacked the meal. We wrangled over the odd egg, each
insisting on the other having it, she because I was strong, and needed it,
I because I was strong and could do without it, and finally adopted the
usual compromise. We had more than gone round the clock with barely a
mouthful, and we ate as those who know not where the next meal's meat is
to come from. Frankly, I, at any rate, gave myself a fair margin before
the pinch should come again, and Mistress Waynflete averred that she had
never in her life before eaten so much or so toothsomely.

Our meal over, I stacked the fire with fresh logs, asked and obtained
permission to smoke a pipe, and made my sweet mistress cosy in the
chimney-corner. Then we began to take stock of our position.

"There's no good to come of hurrying," said I. "Here we are both snug and
safe, and your night's rest was but short. Let us see where we stand."

I did not really believe that any amount of talking would help much, but
repose would do her good, and I had a big idea running in and out of my
mind. Our first difficulty, food and rest, had been overcome, and I was
bent on mastering the next. No amount of discussion gave us any key to the
one great mystery. When Brocton had captured Colonel Waynflete at Milford,
the obvious thing to do with him was to send him prisoner to the Duke at
Lichfield. Though the Colonel carried no papers which made his purpose
clear, Brocton knew well what the object of his journey was, and the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act put the Colonel in his power. Or, he
might have carried him before a justice of the peace, his friend Master
Dobson for choice, and had him committed to the town jail. The course
actually taken, that of sending him ahead, under guard, in the very van of
the royal army, was to us utterly inexplicable. His mad lust for Mistress
Margaret explained the separation of father and daughter. The thought did
occur to me, though I took great care not to hint at it, that he intended
to make away with the Colonel, and looked to finding tools among his
blackguardly dragoons and an opportunity when in actual conflict with the
Highlanders. I hesitated, however, to believe that Brocton was such a
villain as to commit an unnecessary murder. The plan he had adopted had,
anyhow, this advantage to us that, when we did come into touch with the
prisoner, our chances of assisting him were far greater than if he were in
jail in Stafford or Lichfield.

Whatever my lord's motives were, it was clear that he was not acting in
the plain, straight-dealing manner to be expected of one in his position.
There were other signs of crookedness, slight but not without weight. I
could understand his joy on finding me at Marry-me-quick's. It meant that
I was a rebel, and as a loyal man, who had gone to expenses to prove his
loyalty, he might easily get the Hanyards as a reward, and thus round off
the family property in our neighbourhood. His reference to a "solatium"
puzzled me, but it did not seem anything of consequence. What had I but
the Hanyards to solace him with? A more important puzzle had been his
behaviour at Master Dobson's. To find me on the royal side, as he then
supposed, and to hear my reason for it, had clean dazed him. Then there
was the look, a signal-look beyond a doubt, which I had surprised him
giving his bully, Major Pimple-face, and which was followed by the
latter's attempt to embroil the stranger from London in a row.

"It is useless, Master Wheatman, to speculate further on what Lord
Brocton is doing," said my mistress at last. "He has his ends. I am one of
them. Another is, no doubt, to fill his pockets, somehow or other. It was
common talk in town that he was head over ears in debt."

While we had talked and had rested, I had not been idle. Dick Doley's
roomy kitchen had two windows, one overlooking the cart-track, and another
the slope of the hill. The hill was so made and the house so placed that
from this second window we could see the strip of road at the bottom of
the hill where it curved on to the level again. I had kept a sharp look
out on that bit, but had seen no one pass along it either way as yet.

In one corner of the room Dick kept an ancient fowling-piece, more of a
tool of husbandry than a weapon, since his only use for it was to scare
birds. It was a heavy, unhandy thing, with a brass barrel down which I
could have dropped a sizable duck egg, and round its thick-rimmed nozzle
some one had rudely graven, "Happy is he that escapeth me." I fetched it
out of its corner, and cleaned and oiled it. I now loaded it, for
powder-horn and shot-bag hung near it on the wall, putting in a handful
of the biggest sort of shot, swan-shot as I should call them. During this
task, Mistress Waynflete watched me narrowly, but made no reference to it.

"Now," said I, "our main requisite is the stuff, the ready, the rhino,
the swag--call it what you will. How do you fancy me as a knight of the
road? The first copper-faced farmer I come across shall surely stand and
deliver. Here's an argument he cannot resist."

At last my scrutiny of the road was rewarded. A solitary horseman came in
sight from the direction of the town.

"Mistress Waynflete," said I, picking up the fowling-piece, "there's a
traveller yonder coming from Stafford. It will be well if I go and ask him
a few questions."

She almost leaped at me, red anger flashing in her eyes but her face
white as milk. "Sir," she said, "you shall not turn thief for me. I will
not have it."

"Pray, madam," replied I huffily, "expound the moral difference between
stealing ham and stealing guineas. I'm all for morality."

"I cannot, Master Wheatman, but you must not, shall not go." She caught
hold of my sleeve. "Say you won't! If you are found out it means--"

"I shall not be found out. You may take that for sure. Think you that I
cannot pluck yon chough without being pinched? It's no more robbery than
our eating Dick's ham and eggs. We are soldiers in enemy's country, and we
plunder by right of the known rules of war. As a concession to your
prejudices in favour of the jog-trot morality of peace, I will e'en ask
him whether he be for James or George, and borrow or command his guineas
in accordance with his reply. Loose my sleeve, madam!"

I loosened the grip of her fingers, and led her back to her chair. "You
overrate my danger, sweet mistress, and under rate our need. Without
money, we might as well lie under the nearest hedge and leave Jack Frost
to settle matters his way, and a cold, nasty way it would be. Your guinea
is a good fighter, and we need his help. It must be done, and, never fear,
I'll carry it through safely."

So I left her, white hands grappling the arms of her chair, and white
face turned away from me.



CHAPTER IX

MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN


I left the cottage from the rear and struck slantwise across the fields
to reach the shelter of the trees and undergrowth that covered the slope
down to the road. I ran hard so as to shake irresolution out of my mind,
for I found myself half wishing that Mistress Waynflete had pleaded with
me at first instead of trying to thrust me out of my plan. After all the
highwayman's was hardly my calling in life. So I ran hard, saying to
myself that it must be done, and the sooner it was over the better. Then I
laughed. With my rusty old birding-piece I was as ill-equipped for
highwaymanship as I was for farming with my Georgics. "Stand and deliver,"
quoth I to myself, "or I'll double your weight with swan-shot." Were the
unknown horseman a resolute man armed with a hair-trigger, I was as good
as done for.

Arrived in the shelter of the wood, I began picking my way through the
thick undergrowth towards the road. Fallen branchlets snapped beneath my
heedless feet and the sounds rang in my ears like pistol-shots. A saucy
robin cocked his care-free eye on me from the top of a crab-tree, and I
could have envied him as I stumbled by. It was perhaps fourscore yards
through, and half-way I stopped to listen. Yes, there came to my ear the
slow trot-ot-ot of hoofs on the hard road. I went on again until, through
the leafless tangle, I began to get glimpses of the highway. My fate was
dragging me on. In a month's time my shrivelling carcase might be swinging
in chains on the top of Wes'on Bank, an ensample to evil-doers. The
thought made me shiver, and I jerked out a broken prayer that my intended
victim might turn out some fat, unarmed farmer, as easy a prey as an
over-fed gander. Then I cursed myself for a fool. No man can mortgage past
piety for present sin. Who was I that I should be allowed to steal on good
security?

Trot-ot-ot. Trot-ot-ot. He was within easy shot now, and I stopped to
make sure of my rickety old weapon. A dragoon's musket would not have
needed such constant care. "Life turns on trifles," said Mistress
Waynflete.

In lifting my eyes from the priming to move on again, something in the
line of vision made me start. On my left, less than a dozen paces from me,
there lay on the ground, on a clean patch beneath a conspicuously-forked
hawthorn, a man's jacket and plumed hat.

A lion playing with a lamb would not have given me pause more abruptly. I
stole silently up to them. They were fine but somewhat faded garments,
modish and even foppish, and, so far as I could distinguish any
peculiarity, military in appearance, and evidently belonged to a person of
some quality. Nor had they been flung there in haste, for the coat was
neatly folded and the hat disposed carefully on top of it. How long had
they been there? I picked up the hat, and there was still the gloss of
recent sweat on its inside brim.

This, however, was no time for idle problems, a very urgent one being on
hand. Forward I crept to the side of the road, and, lying flat down on the
ground, pushed the stock of my gun on to the short grass, and peeped
cautiously to my right down the hill. I was about thirty or forty yards
from a bend in the road, and had intended to be much less, but my
discovery and my confused, half-conscious thinking about it, had deflected
me a little from my course.

Trot-ot-ot. He would be in sight in a few seconds. Trot-ot-ot, plainer
than ever, and there he was. The moment that he was in full view I made an
astonishing discovery, and saw an astonishing sight.

The discovery was that the solitary horseman, walking his powerful grey
with a slack rein, and lost in thought, was Master Freake.

The sight was the rush of three men from their lurking-places in the
brushwood. Two of them were soldiers, and Brocton's dragoons at that, a
sample of the town-sweepings Jack had complained of. One seized the reins,
the other held a carbine point-blank at the horseman's head.

These were plainly deserters or freebooters, acting after their kind, and
they had picked up a strange partner during their foray. He wore a yokel's
smock much too big for him, and yet not big enough to hide his bespurred
riding-boots. On his head he had a dirty tapster's bonnet, and his face
was completely hidden by a rudely-cut crape vizard. This singular person
was evidently the leader of the gang. He threatened Master Freake with a
glittering, long-barrelled pistol, and in gruff, curt tones ordered him to
dismount on pain of instant death.

Here was a strange overturn to be sure. Here again fate had rudely upset
my plans, and no fat purse would there be for me in this coil. However,
though I would have robbed Master Freake willingly enough, my blood being
up and he a manifest Hanoverian, I was not going to see Brocton's ruffians
rob him, much less kill him. The purse must wait, and when I took it--for
take it I must--God would perchance balance one thing against the other.

All that I had seen and thought took place in a mere fraction of time,
and even before Master Freake had pulled up, I was creeping like a ferret
from bush to bush to get nearer. Then, just as in his quiet, measured
tones he was asking what they wanted, I burst out into the wood, shouting,
"Forward, my men, here the villains are!" With the words, I fired my
handful of swan-shot clean into the group, and then charged at them
yelling, in boyish imitation of a knight of old, "Happy is he that
escapeth me."

The two dragoons instantly fled with yelps of pain and terror, and the
horse, squealing with fright, began to rear and plunge madly about the
road. Black Vizard turned on me, his pistol rang out, and the bullet
hissed by my ear. I sprang at him with clubbed gun, and struck hard for
his head, but caught him on the neck as he too turned to flee. He went
down, spinning and sprawling, in the road, right under the plunging horse.
With a squeal that curdled my blood, she rose in the air, kicking
viciously. Her hoofs came down with sickening thuds on the squirming man's
skull, cracking it like an egg-shell. His body twitched once or twice, and
then settled into the stillness of death.

I seized the horse's rein and soothed her. She let me pat her neck and
rub her nose, and soon stood quiet, her neck flecked with foam, her flanks
reeking with sweat. Master Freake, who had not spoken a word, dismounted,
and I led the mare into the wood and hitched her reins over a bough. Then
I returned to the man I had saved, and found him looking calmly down on
the man I had killed. The black vizard was now soaking in a horrid pool of
blood and brains. I stooped, and with trembling fingers moved it aside and
revealed the features of the dead man. It was the pimple-faced Major.

I turned to my intended victim, and found him looking calmly and
impassively at me.

"Master Wheatman of the Hanyards, unless I am mistaken," he said.

"Your servant, sir," said I, rather sourly. But for that dead rascal at
our feet I could beyond a doubt have plucked him like a chough, and here I
was, still penniless.

"Master Wheatman, I am not a man of many words, but what I say I stand
by. I am your very grateful debtor for a very fine and courageous action.
Three to one is long odds, but you won with your brains, sir, as much as
by your bravery. Your shout was an excellent device, happily thought on."

He held out his hand. I shook it heartily and then burst out laughing,
and laughed on till tears stood in my eyes. And this was the end of my
highwaymanship!

"Since the danger is, thanks to you, over, Master Wheatman," he said, "I
would e'en like to share your mirth--if I may."

"Sir," I replied, "I am laughing because I have saved you from robbers."

"But why laugh?"

"Because I set out ten minutes ago to rob you myself."

Master Freake gazed casually up and down the hill, and then, fixing his
quiet grey eyes on me, said whimsically, "I am a man of peace, and
unarmed; the road is of a truth very lonely, and I have considerable sums
of money on me."

"Yes, I'm quite vexed. This fire-faced scoundrel has upset my plans
finely. I may not get as good a chance for hours."

Now it was his turn to laugh. "Master Wheatman," he said, "you are not
the stuff highwaymen are made of. As you are in need of money, you need it
for some good purpose, and I shall--"

He stopped short. As we stood, he was facing the wood from which the
robbers had burst on him, while I had my back on it. As he stopped, his
strong, calm face changed, and his eyes were fixed on something in the
wood. Wonder, amazement, delight, awe--not one, but all of these emotions
were visible in his face. He looked as one who sees a blessed spirit. I
turned. It was Margaret, leaning, pale and spent and breathless, against
the trunk of a tree, looking and shuddering at the dread object in the
road.

I bounded up to her and touched her on the arm. "All's well, Mistress
Waynflete," said I. "I am as yet no gallows-bird."

"But--" Her eyes were still staring wide on the road, and she trembled
violently, so I stepped between her and the ghastly sight, and said,
"Courage, dear lady. The dead man is your father's worst enemy, Major
Tixall, and yon horse killed him, not I."

By this, Master Freake had come nearer to us, and I turned to greet him.

"Madam," said I, "this is my friend, Master Freake, whom I set out to
rob." To him I added, "This is Mistress Waynflete, whom I have the honour
to serve."

He bared his head and bowed. "And whom I hope to have the honour of
serving too."

I looked at him curiously. All other emotions had faded from his face
now, but it was clear that her peerless and now so helpless beauty had
appealed home to him.

"Sir," she said, recovering herself with a great effort, "I am pleased to
make your acquaintance. And now,"--speaking to me,--"since you have given
me a great fright and made me behave like a milkmaid rather than a
soldier's daughter, perhaps you will tell me what has happened, and how
it"--she looked over my shoulder--"comes to be lying there. I heard shots
and shrieks that turned me to stone. What has happened?"

"Master Wheatman," said our new acquaintance, taking my words out of my
mouth, "is hardly likely to give you a reasonably correct account. Allow
me to be the historian of his fine conduct." He told the story with
overmuch kindness to me, and as he told it the colour came back to her
face, and she was herself again. While he was telling it, I noticed for
the first time, or rather for the first time gathered its meaning, that
she had run out after me without the domino, and in the biting air she
might easily catch a chill. So while Master Freake was making a fine
sprose about me, much more applicable to Achilles or the Chevalier Bayard,
I slipped off and fetched the hat and coat. He was just concluding his
story on my return, and without interrupting him, I clumsily thrust the
hat on her head and flung the coat over her shoulders.

"Master Freake," she said, in her sweetest bantering tones, "my servant,
as he absurdly calls himself, is really an artist in helping people. I
told him this morning that his native shire was his conjurer's hat, when
he fetched ham and eggs out of it for poor hungry me. Now he observes that
I am coatless and a-cold, and lo, a hat is on my head and a coat on my
shoulders. It is marvellous and nothing short of it. Nay, I shall shun him
as one in league with the powers of darkness if there's much more of it.
If I be saved, you remember Master Slender,"--this in a sly aside to
me,--"I'll be saved by them that have the fear of God."

"Ingrate!" I cried, half angry and yet wholly delighted; "what of marvel
or devilment is there in picking up a hat and coat one has found lying
under a tree?"

"Major Tixall's," said Master Freake.

"Ass that I am, of course they are. Steady, Mistress Margaret, while I go
through the pockets. The odds are we shall find something useful in
checkmating my Lord Brocton."

In this I was wrong, for there was not a single scrap of writing in any
of them. I did, however, fish out two small but heavy packets, wrapped in
paper. They were easily examined, and each contained a roll of ten guineas.

"The hire of the two rascals," explained Master Freake.

"Really, Mistress Margaret," said I, "there's something in what you said
just now. I do have his nether highness's own luck. I came out for
guineas, prepared to rob for them, and here's twenty of the darlings lying
ready for me to pick up. Now we can go ahead in comfort."

Through all this talk I was turning over in my mind what account, if any,
we were to give Master Freake of our being here. If I had had only myself
to consider I should have trusted him without hesitation. He was the sort
of man that inspires confidence, his grave, serene, intelligent face
having strength and steadfastness written in every line of it. But I had
Mistress Waynflete to consider, and if any appeal was to be made for his
assistance, she must make it. I'm afraid that I hoped she wouldn't, since
I was jealous of any interference in my temporary responsibility for her
welfare.

"Master Freake," I said, "some account will, I suppose, have to be given
of yon ruffian's death. The two runaways are scarcely likely to appear as
witnesses, so, for Mistress Waynflete's sake, I must ask you, should an
explanation become necessary, to conceal my share in the matter."

"The manner of his death is fortunately quite obvious, and if it were
not, any account I choose to give of it will pass unquestioned."

"Then it will be easy for you, I hope, to forget me when giving it. And
now, madam, I think we must be moving."

"Before you go," said Master Freake, "let me say again that if I can help
you, you have only to ask. You, Master Wheatman, because your twofold
signal service is something it would shame me for ever not to be allowed
to return, and you, madam, because," he paused, and the curious rapt
expression came over his face again, "because you are very beautiful and
need help. Your father's politics will make no difficulty, so far as I am
concerned."

"You know my father?" she asked, surprised.

"Know of him. My Lord Brocton was boasting last night of his capture--and
of other things," he lamely concluded.

"Is he boasting this morning?" I asked.

"I have not seen him," he said, "but Mistress Dobson told me she thought
he'd been rooks'-nesting and had fallen off the poplar."

"I met him again," said I, "and did not like his conversation."

"Master Wheatman means," explained Mistress Waynflete, "that he saved me
from my Lord Brocton's clutches at the imminent risk of his own life." She
stretched out her hands and touched the holes in my coat with her white,
slender fingers. "My lord's rapier made these," she said.

"An inch to the left, my friend," quoth Master Freake, "and you'd have
been as dead as mutton. His lordship, it seems, is busily piling up a big
account with both of us. Well, in my own way, I'll make the rascal pay as
dearly as you have in yours. If you will be pleased to accept my help,
madam, I will do all I can for you. There are, fortunately, other means
than carnal weapons of influencing such persons as Lord Brocton."

"Like Master Wheatman, sir, you are too good to a poor girl." She said it
gratefully and humbly, and indeed so she felt, but no man could listen to
her meek words without pride.

"I'm glad I turned footpad, in spite of you," said I to my dear mistress.

"I can never thank you enough," was the simple reply. "It was wicked in
me to accept the sacrifice, but in God's good providence it was not made
in vain."

"Then I come into the firm," said Master Freake smilingly, and when,
catching the meaning of his metaphor, she smiled brightly back at him, and
held out her hand, he bowed over it formally, but very kindly, and kissed
it. She blushed prettily, and then, after a moment's hesitation,
stretching it out to me, said, "But I must not forget the original
partner." I took the splendid prize in my rough, red, farmer's hand, and
kissed it reverently. The touch of my lips on her sweet, smooth flesh made
me tremble, and I knew the madness was creeping over me, but I gritted my
teeth, and our eyes met again. The blush had gone, but not the smile. It
was not now, however, the smile of a frank maiden but of an inscrutable
and dominating woman. I knew the difference, for instinct is more than
experience, and I chilled into the yokel again and wondered.

"In one sense, at any rate," said Master Freake, "I am the senior
partner, and as such may, without presumption, speak first. I must go on
to Stone, but that will, I think, be best for our purpose. As I view the
situation, two things are requisite, first that you, Master Wheatman,
should get Mistress Waynflete in advance of all the royal troops, and so
out of danger, and secondly that we should learn precisely what has become
of Colonel Waynflete."

"Exactly," I agreed. "The action of Lord Brocton in sending the Colonel
north instead of south, or at least of lodging him in jail at Stafford, is
inexplicable. True, his plan separates father and daughter, which is what
he wants, but either of the other methods would have served equally well
for that."

Of course I said nothing of the other idea that was haunting my thoughts,
the idea that Brocton was scheming to get rid of the Colonel altogether.
In his lust and anger he might not stick at that, and any kind of
encounter with the enemy would serve his turn. The rascals under him were
worthy of their commander, a fact of which we had already ample proof.

"It looks crooked, I confess," was his reply, "but there is this to be
said for it, that the Duke is following north along with the bulk of his
army, and, I hear, intends to make Stone his head-quarters."

"That seems absurd," said I, "but of course he knows best."

"The movements of the Prince's army are uncertain. The plan of their
leaders is never to say where the next halt will be. They will be to-day,
I know, in or near Macclesfield, and I learn that it is possible they may
turn off for Wales, where they believe they will find many recruits. The
farther north the Duke can safely go, the better placed he will be for
checking them if they do that, and his advance guard is posted at
Newcastle. The question is, how are you to get there first and without
being taken?"

"By travelling the by-roads," said I. "We'll go through Eccleshall."

"How long will it take you to get there?" he asked.

"About three hours," said I, "if Mistress Waynflete can stand the pace."

"Very good," he replied. "I will join you there, and do my best to get
horses for you in the meantime, and bring them along with me."

"That's splendid," said I, "but I'd rather we met outside the village.
Not more than a mile and a half beyond it on the Newcastle road there's a
little wayside ale-house called the 'Ring of Bells,' at the foot of a
steep hill, with a large pool ringed with pines, known as Cop Mere, in
front of it. It's a lonely place and will serve better. Small place as
Eccleshall is, I shall skirt round it, and so get to the 'Ring of Bells.'
You cannot miss it if you ride through the village on the Newcastle road.
Whoever's there first will await the other."

"Then in about three hours we'll meet at the 'Ring of Bells,' and I hope
I shall bring good news of the Colonel. Believe me, dear lady, short of
foul play on Brocton's part, and we have no reason to suspect that, your
father will be all right. Plain John Freake is not without influence. As
for the ruffian lying dead in the road, think no more of him."

So saying he unhitched his horse, led her into the road, and mounted. He
bowed and smiled, said cheerily, "A pleasant walk to the 'Ring of Bells,'"
and cantered off.

I stepped between madam and the dead man. "We've found a good friend
there, Mistress Waynflete. Now we'll put the hat and coat as we found
them, save for the guineas, and go back to the cottage for your domino."

She gave them to me, and stepped out briskly towards the cottage. I
folded up the coat, put the hat on it, looked again at the still, stiff
horror in the road, soaking in its own blood, and silently followed her.



CHAPTER X

SULTAN


The lie of the land was as follows: To get to the "Ring of Bells," Master
Freake would have to ride over the hill to the main road at Weston, thence
some six miles north-west to Stone, thence another six or seven miles
south-west to the inn. Mistress Waynflete and I had a stiff walk of about
nine miles in front of us. For the first three miles our way ran east by
north, and then bent almost due east to the ale-house. Our difficulty
would come at the bending point, for there we should have to cross the
main road from Stafford along which the troops would be filtering north to
get into touch with the Prince and his Highlanders. If the Duke had heard
of the supposed intention of the Jacobites to turn off for Wales, he
would, I imagined, send a scouting party through Eccleshall to look out
for them, and we should, for the second time in our journey, be on
dangerous ground in the neighbourhood of that village. The "Ring of
Bells," however, lay north of that village, off his obvious line of march
in that direction, so that we stood a good chance of passing unchecked to
our goal, provided that we got across the main road north in safety.
Fortunately, at the place where I intended to cross, it climbed over a
fairly steep hill, and we could, if need were, lie and watch the road till
it was safe to venture out.

It was ticklish work at the best and any break in our run of luck might
ruin us. How ticklish was vividly brought home to me within a few minutes
of our getting safe under cover in the cottage. I had, of course, brought
back the birding-piece and, after once more helping in the blissful task
of getting Mistress Waynflete into the domino, bungling as usual over
arranging the hood because my fingers lost control of themselves at the
touch of her hair, I sat down to reload it, intending to carry it with me.
I had settled matters with the absent gaffer, Doley, by putting one of my
guineas conspicuously on the table, and was just finishing my task when
Mistress Waynflete, who had stepped to the rear window and was looking
back on the scene of my recent exploit, suddenly called out, "Oliver! Come
here!"

My heart leaped within me at that 'Oliver.' True, it was the familiarity
of one born to command, one who had last night icily desired my services
in the morning, and, womanlike, knew that she could queen it over me as
she listed, but still, and this was the main thing, it was familiar and
friendly, and seemed to lift me a shade nearer to her.

"What is it, madam?" I asked respectfully, and ran toward her, but not so
swiftly that I had not time to see the blue eyes fixed hard on mine. For
answer, she turned and pointed down the hill, and there I saw the patch of
brown road covered with wagons and soldiers. In five minutes they would
come across the dead body of the Major.

"Good," said I indifferently, "they save me a guinea," and I put the coin
back in my pocket. The soldiers didn't matter, but that look in her eyes
did.

"Isn't that rather mean?" For some reason she spoke quite snappily. The
soldiers clearly didn't matter to her, and something else did.

"Which of the soldiers provided our breakfast, madam? We might as well
leave a note asking them to pick us up at the 'Ring of Bells.' And, madam,
you can trust me to make Dick Doley content enough some day."

She smiled, with her characteristic touch of chagrin. I liked her best
so, for she never looked daintier. "With a bit of luck, Master Wheatman,"
she said whimsically, "there will surely come a time when you'll be wrong
and I right. Then, sir, look out for crowing. I've never been so unlucky
with a man in my life. But you'll slip some day!"

"Surely, madam," I said, and smiled, "and then I'll abide your gloating.
Now, pray you, let us be off. We've hardly a minute to spare."

Without losing another second we started on our long walk. It was now
about ten of the clock. The sun was shining cheerily, with power enough to
melt the white rime off every blackened twig it lit upon, and it was still
so cold that sharp walking was a keen delight.

"Eight miles and more of it, Mistress Waynflete. I hope you can stand the
pace and the distance."

"I'm a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," she replied curtly.

The vicar was right. "Oliver," he said to me one day, "what is the
difference between the Hebrew Bible and a woman?"

"Sir," said I, gaping with astonishment, "I know not, but of a truth it
seems considerable."

"It is, Oliver," replied the sweet old scholar. "Man can understand the
one in a dozen years, if he try, but the other not in a lifetime, strive
he as earnestly as he may."

This fragment of my dear friend's talk came back to me now as we walked
in silence side by side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her sweet
face set in earnest thinking, her rich lips compressed, her speaking eyes
fixed resolutely ahead. Not having to trouble about finding the road, and
there being no sign of anyone, either enemy or neutral, stirring on the
countryside, I let her go on thinking, and set myself the pleasant but
impossible task of accounting to myself for her mood. I went over all we
had said and done together that day, and at last, after perhaps half an
hour of unbroken silence, fell back on what seemed the only possible
explanation. She was thinking of her father. But why that suspicion of
asperity on her face? Was this explanation correct?

The vicar was right. She suddenly slipped her hand round my arm, looking
at me with laughing lips and dancing eyes, and said, "Isn't it splendid to
be alive on a day like this?"

"Yes, indeed it is," I replied, "but from your looks and your long
silence, I should hardly have judged that you were thinking so."

"You have been taking stock of me, sir!"

"Certainly I have been wondering why you were so silent, and looked
so ... grave."

"Be honest and fear not, Master Wheatman. You were not going to say
'grave.'"

"At the expense of many whippings from old Bloggs, I learned to be
precise in the use of words."

"I know, hence you were not going to say 'grave.'"

"You will allow me to choose my own words, madam."

"Certainly, so long as you choose the right ones."

She unhooked her hand, and we walked a minute or two without another
word, she frowning, and I fuming. Then she said wistfully, "Why did you
think I was cross?"

"I feared I had offended you," said I hastily and innocently.

She laughed long and merrily. "Old Bloggs taught you the silly rigmarole
you men call logic, but he didn't teach you woman's logic, that's plain.
Don't you see what I've made you do, Master Wheatman?"

"Not yet, Mistress Waynflete."

"Poof, slow-coach! I've made you admit that you were going to say 'cross'
but altered it, too late, to 'grave.'"

"You outrun me with your nimble and practised wit," said I, smiling.

"And when did you offend me, think you?"

"I answered you rather roughly when you took me up about the guinea."

"Oh, then? Not at all. You snibbed me, but I richly deserved it."

Another silence.

"Well?" she said. "Go on! I say I richly deserved it. Go on!"

"Go on where?" I asked testily. "You're not expecting me to say you
didn't, are you?"

"No, I'm not," she said, "but it was good practice trying to make you."
So saying, she slipped her hand under my arm again, and we stepped it out
together.

The current of her thoughts now ran and glittered in the opposite
direction. She made me for the moment her intimate, lifting up the veil
over her past life, and giving me peeps and vistas of her wanderings and
experiences. She jested and gibed. She sang little snatches of song in
some foreign tongue. "You're sure you don't understand Italian?" she
demanded, stopping short half-way through a bar, and quizzing me with her
eyes, now blue as sapphires in the bright sunshine.

"Not a word of it," said I.

"A grave disadvantage," she said airily. "It's the only language one can
love in." And off she struck again.

Now she sang something soothing and sad, with a wistful lilt in it that
died into a low wail. It needed no Italian to be understood, for it was
written in the language of human experience. A woman's heart throbbed in
the lilt and broke in the wail.

This sweet interval of intimacy verging on friendship was ended by our
close approach to the main road. We had been travelling, heedless of roads
and tracks, across a champaign country, and the slope up to the top of
Yarlet Bank now lay before us. I led the way, skulking behind such poor
cover as the gaunt hedgerows provided, and, when only a hundred paces from
the top, I asked her to crouch down, awaiting my signal to advance, while
I crept forward on my hands and knees to the edge of the road which here
climbed the brow of the hill through a deep cutting, along either margin
of which ran a straggling hedge.

To my relief, the road down the hill, both to right and left, was
completely deserted. I joyfully waved my arm to Mistress Waynflete, who
was soon by my side, looking down the road. To the right we could see for
nearly a mile. On the left our view was cut short by a bend, and I walked
a score of yards in that direction and shinned up a stout sapling. Our
luck was absolute. Not a soldier, not a living soul, was in sight.

"We might have had to skulk here for hours, waiting for an opportunity to
cross unseen," said I, on rejoining her, "but our gods above are
victorious, and we share their victory. So now for the 'Ring of Bells.'
There's a gate at the bottom of the hill. Come along, Mistress Waynflete!"

She followed me down the hedge-side. I turned once or twice to look at
her, carefully pretending that it was only to see how she was getting on.
The last time I thus stole another memory of her splendid presence we were
only a few paces from the gate, and when my reluctant eyes turned again to
their rightful work, they looked straight into a pair of fishy eyes set in
a face as blank and ugly as a bladder of lard.

Face and eyes belonged to a big, sleek, sly man, perched on the top bar
of the gate. He had a notebook in his hand in which he had been entering
some jottings. He suspended his writing to examine us, picking his nasty,
yellow teeth meanwhile with the point of his pencil. His horse was hitched
to the post on the Stoneward side of the gate, where the stile was. He was
well enough dressed, and, as far as I could see, unarmed.

It was a most exasperating thing to have pitched into him, whoever and
whatever he was, and indeed I much disliked the look of him, and would
gladly have knocked him on the head. True, travellers were not rare on
this road, since it was part of the great highway from London to Chester,
and the little thoroughfare town of Stone, some three miles ahead, had a
noted posthouse. However, I kept, or tried to keep, my feelings out of my
face and voice, and accosted him cheerily.

"Good day, friend! What may be the price of fat beeves in Stafford market
to-day?"

"Dearer than men's heads will be at the town gates after the next
assizes," he replied, stroking his notebook and grinning evilly.

"You'll never light on a Scotsman, dead or alive, that's worth as much as
a Staffordshire heifer," said I, leading the way past him to the stile,
over which I handed Mistress Margaret into the road.

"They won't all be Scotsmen, my friend," he replied, still stroking his
notebook.

"No?" said I, eager at heart to knock him off his perch.

"Nor men," he added, leering at Margaret.

"Come along, Sal," said I to her laughingly, "before the good gentleman
jots you down a Jacobite."

So we left him, and when, fifty paces down the road, I looked back at
him, he was jotting in his notebook again.

"I think he knows something about us," said I.

"Very likely," she replied calmly. "I've seen him once before in London,
talking to Major Tixall. Who could forget a face like that?"

"He's uglier than the big-mouthed dragoon."

"The dragoon was at any rate a soldier."

"And the worst of soldiers has, no doubt, some savour of grace in him."

"Quite so," she retorted. "His calling makes it necessary."

"And, so reasoning, you would say, I suppose, that the best of farmers
was to seek in the higher reaches of manliness."

"Have I not told you, Master Oliver, that between man's logic and woman's
logic there's a great gulf fixed?"

"Minds are minds," said I.

"And hearts are hearts," replied she, and so shut me up to my thinking
again.

We turned into a cart-track on our left leading in the direction of
Eccleshall. As we turned I saw that Bladder-face had mounted his horse and
was coming on toward Stone. There was no doubt that we should be pursued
from that quarter before long, and I grew heavy with anxiety as I saw how
hardly we were being pressed. The encounter had not, however, disturbed
Mistress Waynflete. On the contrary, she became gayer than ever, so gay
that, fool-like, I got quite vexed at it, for it was clear that something
had relieved her anxiety, and I knew it was nothing that I had done. I
worried over it, and at last hit on the explanation. She was rejoicing in
the help of the new partner.

"What do you make of Master Freake?" said I boorishly, cutting short a
lightsome trill, more Italian maybe.

"Make of what?" said she lightly.

"Master Freake."

"Forgive me, Master Wheatman," she replied, "but I didn't take you as
quickly as I ought to have done. I like the look of him. How pretty, pluck
them for me."

I stopped to gather the spray of brilliant vermilion berries she fancied,
saying meanwhile, "I wonder what he is? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,
or what?"

She seemed much more concerned with her berries, which she praised
rapturously, and placed carefully in the bosom of her riding-dress before
replying.

"He's no doubt a grave and prosperous citizen of London. I've seen many
such, and he looks sworn brother to worthy Alderman Heathcoat. Moreover,
he talks merchantlike."

It seemed pretty certain that she had hit the right nail on the head. Her
explanation fitted his account of the large sums he was carrying and his
stay with and hold over Jack's father. True, Staffordshire seemed the
wrong place for such a man. Both he and his money would have been far
safer in Change Alley. If her explanation was acute and probable, her
manner of making it had convinced me that my explanation of her gaiety was
wrong. Of him she certainly had not been thinking. Then there was only one
thing left to account for it. What makes a maid as merry as a grig? Didn't
our Kate sing all morning when Jack was coming in the afternoon?

It was no concern of mine, and as a man sometimes makes his right hand
play his left hand at chess, so I now made stern Oliver lecture paltering
Wheatman, but without doing him much good. Naturally all this made me a
poor companion on the road, and for a long time Mistress Waynflete bore
with me patiently. Then she turned from her tra-la-la-ing to waken me up,
roundly declaring that I was bored with her company; and I had no defence,
ridiculous as the charge was.

"I've sung every song I know, and sung them my best, too, and you've
never once praised me. You'll have to learn, you know, Master Oliver, to
smile at a lady even when you really want to smack her. What do you do?
You just write on your face as plainly as this"--and here her dainty
finger toured her face, ending up where the tear of milk had
trembled--"S-M-A-C-K." I roared aloud, she did it so frankly and mirthfully. What
a treasury of moods she was! She had stepped across our house-place like a
queen, she had fronted that devil, Brocton, like a goddess, and now she
was larking like a schoolmaid.

Long as the way was, we seemed to me to be getting over the ground too
rapidly. Mistress Waynflete did not tire, and did full credit to her
father's soldiership. We circled round the red-tiled roofs of Eccleshall,
and at length took shelter in the pines that ringed the great pool. Across
the mere lay the road, and on the far side of the road from us was the
"Ring of Bells," standing well back, with a little green in front, in the
centre of which a huge post carried a board bearing the rudely painted
sign of the ale-house.

I scouted ahead, dodging from tree to tree along the edge of the mere, in
order to keep out of view of anyone moving on the road. Over against the
ale-house I crept still more warily through the wood to the edge of the
road. There was no one moving in or about the ramshackle little place, but
there was one unexpected thing in sight which gave me pause. Hitched by
the reins to a staple in the signpost was the finest horse I had ever set
eyes on, a slender, sinewy stallion, champing on his bit and pawing
nervously on the stone-hard ground.

Here was the shadow of a new trouble, though, indeed, there was nothing
to be surprised at, seeing that the countryside far and near was buzzing
with enemy activities. A rat in a barn might as justly complain of being
tickled by straws as I of jostling into difficulties. The horse without
betokened a rider within, and probably some one in the Duke's horse. I
beckoned Mistress Waynflete, and by signs indicated that extreme caution
was necessary. During the moments I was awaiting her I examined the
birding-piece to make sure it was in order. Caution, however, she flung to
the winds, for the moment she set eyes on the horse she joyously shouted
'Sultan' and made a wild, happy dash to cross the road.

I stopped her sternly, and in a brief whisper asked, "Who's Sultan?"

"Father's horse."

"We do not know for sure that your father is in the inn because his horse
is outside, and by your leave, madam, we'll make sure first. Keep right
behind yon thick tree, and await my return."

She looked calmly at me, but even before she could glide off, there came
from the ale-house an appalling volley of oaths and curses. It was a man's
voice, yelling in agonized blasphemy, and a woman's shrill treble floated
on the surface of the stream of virulence.

I caught Mistress Waynflete's wrist and steadied her. "Not your father,
apparently?" I said in a cool voice, though my head was whirling a bit
under the strain. "Here," I went on, fetching a fistful out of my pocket,
"are some guineas. Follow me, unhitch the horse, and if I shout to you to
be off, mount him from yon horse-trough, and away like lightning. That's
the road to Eccleshall, along which Master Freake is bound to come."

I thrust the guineas into her hand, gripped my weapon, slipped out of the
pines and across the road, circled the horse, and made to peep round the
jamb of the open door into the guest-room of the ale-house. As I did so,
the man yelled, "God damn, I'm on fire!" and the woman shrieked back,
"Burn, you foul devil, burn, and be damned!"

This was enough, and I burst in on a spectacle, strange, serious, on the
point of becoming terrible, and yet almost laughable. In the middle of the
room, a stout, shock-headed, red-elbowed woman stood, a pikel in her
strong outstretched hands. The sergeant of dragoons, with his back to a
roaring fire, was pinned against the hearthstead by the pitchfork, the
tines of which were stuck in the oak lintel of the chimney-piece, so that
a ring of steel encircled his throat like the neckhole of a pillory, and
held him there helpless and roasting. When I first caught sight of him he
was making a frenzied attempt to wrench the prongs out, but, finding it
hopeless, drew his tuck, and lashed out at the woman. She calmly shifted
out of reach along the handle of the fork. He then hacked fiercely but
without much effect on the wooden handle, and finally, in his despair and
agony, poised the tuck and cast it at her javelin-fashion. The woman,
cooler than he in both senses of the term, dodged it easily. How she had
contrived to pin him in such a helpless manner, I could not imagine. The
motive was obvious. A little girl lay writhing and sobbing on the floor
amid the fragments of a broken mug and a scattering of copper and silver
coins.

"You've got him safe enough, mother," said I, "and it's no good cooking
him since you can't eat him."

"Be yow another stinking robber, like this'n?" she demanded. The epithet
was as apt as it was vigorous, for the stink of singeing cloth made me
sniff. "If y'be," she went on, "I'll shove' im in the fire and set about
yow."

"Not a bit of it, mother. I've come to help you, but shift him along a
bit out of the heat, and then we'll settle what to do with him." To him I
added, "Understand, sergeant, any attempt to fight or fly, and your neck
will be wrung like a cockerel's." Then laying down my gun I pulled out the
tines and shifted him along the lintel till he was out of danger. The
woman, whose fierce determination never faltered, jammed the pikel in
again and kept him trapped.

I went to the door and saw Mistress Waynflete standing by Sultan's head,
and the proud beauty arching his neck in his joy at finding his mistress
near him. I beckoned her.

"An old acquaintance, in a fix. Come in!" said I, and introduced her to
the strange scene. "The sergeant, madam," I went on, "and he has been
plucked like a brand from the burning." She took in the scene, judged what
had happened, and then gathered up the child, who had ceased crying out of
curiosity, and mothered the little one so sweetly that the red-elbowed
woman cried out hearty thanks.

In brief the story, as collected later from the mother and child, was
that the sergeant had ridden up and asked for a meal. After he had had
some bread and cheese and ale, he had taken advantage of the alewife's
absence to ask the child where mother kept her money, and, receiving no
answer, had twisted the poor little one's arm until in her terror and
agony she had told him of the secret hole in the chimney where the money
was kept in a coarse brown mug. The child's cry had brought the mother
running back with the pikel, snatched up on the way, and she, taking him
at unawares with the mug in his hand, had darted at him and luckily caught
him round the neck, and pinned him against the fireplace as I had found
him. Let him go she dared not, for she was alone except for the child, and
but for my arrival he would have roasted right enough till he was
helpless. As it was the skirts of his coat were smouldering, and he had
only just escaped serious injury. In fact, although smarting sore, he was
so little damaged that after tearing away the burnt tails, he collected
himself and tried to bam me.

"Master Wheatman," he began, "I call upon you in the King's name to aid
and assist me. This woman's tale is all a lie. The mug was on the
chimney-top for anyone to see, and I only took it down to examine it,
being struck with its appearance."

"Also in the King's name, Master Sergeant," was my reply, "I propose to
have you handed over to the nearest justice as a rogue and vagabond."

"And you shall explain why you are here with your--" I should have
strangled him if his foul tongue had wagged one word of insult, and he saw
it in my eyes. He stopped, and his face showed that he had discovered the
secret.

"The sergeant recognizes you again, Molly," said I lightly.

"Bammed and beaten by a damned yokel?" he burst out. "Ten thousand
devils! Where were my eyes yesterday?" In his anger he began to strain at
his steel cravat.

"Virgil for ever! The first town we come to I'll buy me a Latin grammar,"
said Margaret to me, with a low ripple of laughter.

"How'd on, fool," said the alewife to the sergeant. "Yow wunna be wuth
hangin' if y' carry on a this'n."

"If you don't loose me, you old bitch," he shouted, "I'll see you hanged!
Loose me, for your neck's sake! These people are Jacobites!"

"Gom, I dunna know what that be, but I wish Stafford-sheer was full on
'em. 'Tinna any good chokin' y'rsen, I shanna let go."

This method of keeping him, however, rendered the alewife useless, so I
took her place, and bade her fetch the longest and toughest rope she'd
got. She brought me a beauty and with it I trussed the sergeant, tying him
securely into a heavy, clumsy chair, and leaving him as helpless as a fowl
ready for roasting. Then a thought struck me and I went through his
pockets. His very stillness made me careful in my search, but I found only
some old bills for fodder and other military papers, and a heavily sealed
letter addressed "To HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS." I was not quite Jacobite enough
to make me willing to steal a dispatch addressed to the Royal Duke, and I
should have thrust it and the oddments of paper back again but for the
rattle of hoofs outside. It was probably Master Freake, and I was
particularly anxious that the sergeant should not see him, so I rushed out
with all the papers in my hand to forestall him.

Hurrying outside I saw Master Freake hitching his horse to the signpost,
and Mistress Waynflete already talking to him eagerly. When I got up he
delivered his news briefly and to the point, and bad news it was.

He had learned in Stone that the Colonel had again been taken on ahead
towards Newcastle in charge of a troop of Brocton's dragoons under the
command of Captain Rigby, "last night's table companion of the dead
Major," he explained.

"Whatever for?" asked Mistress Waynflete.

Master Freake said nothing, but his eyes were troubled, and I knew there
was something he would fain conceal.

"Whatever for?" she repeated. "Could you learn of no reason?"

"I was told," he answered slowly, "that Colonel Waynflete's knowledge and
assistance would be invaluable to the royal troops."

"Told that my father had turned traitor! Is that what you mean, sir?"
Scorn too great for anger covered her face, veiling its sweetness as with
a fiery cloud.

"That is the plain English of what I was told, I must admit." Here was
the grave, businesslike nature of the man, plainly posing awkward
questions that had to be answered.

"It's a wicked lie!" she burst out. She turned her face proudly to look
into mine, and I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

"Naturally, madam," said I.

"My father's honour is mine, Master Wheatman, and I am your debtor for
another splendid courtesy."

"I argue from the flower to the tree. Man's logic, and therefore
necessarily imperfect, you would say, but for once I stick to it." I spoke
lightly and reminiscently, so as to chase the gloom from her mind, and she
was immediately herself again.

Master Freake continued his story, which went from bad to worse. As I had
expected, Bladderface had ridden into Stone, and the result of his
communication to Captain Rigby had been that orders were issued for our
pursuit, and Master Freake had left the town not very far in advance of
the squad of horse sent on our track. He had thus been unable to procure
horses for us, but at Eccleshall he had managed to obtain a pillion for
Margaret's use behind him.

This was awkward indeed, for though Master Freake had ridden hard, the
pursuit could not be very far behind, and if, as was almost certain, the
dragoons turned up at the "Ring of Bells," the sergeant would be set free,
and be after us like a mad bull. There was, however, a margin of time
available, and therefore I put this problem out of my mind, and attended
only to the urgent one of the Colonel's position.

To me there was only one explanation possible. This continual shifting of
the Colonel, ever under the charge of those rascally dragoons, commanded
now by a man whose familiarity with Tixall was an evil augury, meant one
thing only. Soon, perhaps within an hour or two, there would be fighting,
and under cover of that a stab in the back or a bullet in the head would
clear the Colonel out of Brocton's path for ever.

"Take these papers, Master Freake," said I. "Mistress Waynflete will tell
you what has happened here, and you can give them back to their owner if
you choose. But do not, I beg you, on any account let the rascal inside
see or hear you."

I raced indoors, seized the sergeant's tuck and took his baldrick from
him, heedless of his vile threats. I left him there, choking with
foulness, unhitched Sultan, sprang into the saddle, and cantered up to my
friends.

"Now, Mistress Margaret," I said, "describe your father so that I shall
know him when I see him."

She sketched his portrait in broad, clear outlines, and I fixed the
description point by point in my memory.

"That's the road to Newcastle," said I, pointing along the edge of the
mere, "and it's fairly straight and good. Follow me there as quickly as
you can, and inquire for me at the 'Rising Sun.' I'll have news of the
Colonel, if not the Colonel himself, when we meet again."

I bowed to Margaret, dug my heels into Sultan, and was off like a flash.



CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH I SLIP


Sultan was a horse for a man, long and regular in his stride, perfect in
action, quick to obey, cat-like at need. I might have ridden him from the
day on which the blacksmith drank his colt-ale, for we understood each
other exactly, and I was as comfortable on his back as in my bed at the
Hanyards. In the open road at the mere-end, he settled down into a steady,
loping trot, and I was free to think matters out to the music of his
hoof-beats on the road.

It was only eight or nine miles into Newcastle, and as the dragoons would
travel slowly and warily there was just a chance that I should be there
first. Further, it was wholly unlikely that I should be interfered with,
since the only two enemies who knew I was aiding Mistress Margaret were
helpless in my rear--Brocton at Stafford, and the sergeant in the "Ring of
Bells." I was unknown in the town, not having been there since my
schooldays, and then only on rare occasions, as a visit to the town meant
a thirty-mile walk in one day.

Plan-making was futile. Everything would depend upon chance, but if
chance threw me into touch with the Colonel, it should go hard if I did
not free him somehow or other. The most splendid thing would be if I could
free him before Margaret overtook me at the "Rising Sun." True, I had only
an hour or so to spare, but now strange things happened in an hour of my
life, and this great luck might be mine. Then would come my rich and rare
reward--the light in her deep, blue eyes and the tremulous thanks on her
ripe, red lips.

And then a thought smote me like a blo

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