"You are too brave. Oh! I hoped to come here to comfort you, and I have only made you comfort me."

"The best way, sweetest. Now, I will seal and address this letter, and you shall take it to Mr. Fellowes to carry to the ambassador."

This gave Anne a little time to compose herself, and when he had finished, he took the candle, and saying, "Look here," he held it to the wall, and they read, scratched on the rough bricks, "Alice Lisle, 1685. This is thankworthy."

"Lady Lisle's cell! Oh, this is no good omen!"

"I call it a goodly legacy even to one who cannot claim to suffer wrongfully," said Charles. "There, they knock—one kiss more—we shall meet again soon. Don't linger in town, but give me all the days you can. Yes, take her back, Sir Edmund, for she must rest before her journey. Cheer up, love, and do not lie weeping all night, but believe that your prayers to God and man must prevail one way or another."



CHAPTER XXXI: ELF-LAND

"Three ruffians seized me yestermorn, Alas! a maiden most forlorn; They choked my cries with wicked might, And bound me on a palfrey white."

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Yet after the night it was with more hope than despondency, Anne, in the February morning, mounted en croupe behind Mr. Fellowes's servant, that being decided on as the quickest mode of travelling. She saw the sunrise behind St. Catherine's Hill, and the gray mists filling the valley of the Itchen, and the towers of the Cathedral and College barely peeping beyond them. Would her life rise out of the mist?

Through hoar-frosted hedges, deeply crested with white, they rode, emerging by and by on downs, becoming dully green above, as the sun touched them, but white below. Suddenly, in passing a hollow, overhung by two or three yew-trees, they found themselves surrounded by masked horsemen. The servant on her horse was felled, she herself snatched off and a kerchief covered her face, while she was crying, "Oh sir, let me go! I am on business of life and death."

The covering was stuffed into her mouth, and she was borne along some little way; then there was a pause, and she freed herself enough to say, "You shall have everything; only let me go;" and she felt for the money with which Sir Philip had supplied her, and for the watch given her by King James.

"We want you; nothing of yours," said a voice. "Don't be afraid. No one will hurt you; but we must have you along with us."

Therewith she was pinioned by two large hands, and a bandage was made fast over her eyes, and when she shrieked out, "Mr. Fellowes! Oh! where are you?" she was answered—

"No harm has been done to the parson. He will be free as soon as any one comes by. 'Tis you we want. Now, I give you fair notice, for we don't want to choke you; there's no one to hear a squall. If there were, we should gag you, so you had best be quiet, and you shall suffer no hurt. Now then, by your leave, madam."

She was lifted on horseback again, and a belt passed round her and the rider in front of her. Again she strove, in her natural voice, to plead that to stop her would imperil a man's life, and to implore for release. "We know all that," she was told. It was not rudely said. The voice was not that of a clown; it was a gentleman's pronunciation, and this was in some ways more inexplicable and alarming. The horses were put in rapid motion; she heard the trampling of many hoofs, and felt that they were on soft turf, and she knew that for many miles round Winchester it was possible to keep on the downs so as to avoid any inhabited place. She tried to guess, from the sense of sunshine that came through her bandage, in what direction she was being carried, and fancied it must be southerly. On—on—on—still the turf. It seemed absolutely endless. Time was not measurable under such circumstances, but she fancied noon must have more than passed, when the voice that had before spoken said, "We halt in a moment, and shift you to another horse, madam; but again I forewarn you that our comrades here have no ears for you, and that cries and struggles will only make it the worse for you." Then came the sound as of harder ground and a stop— undertones, gruff and manly, could be heard, the peculiar noise of horses' drinking; and her captor came up this time on foot, saying, "Plaguy little to be had in this accursed hole; 'tis but the choice between stale beer and milk. Which will you prefer?"

She could not help accepting the milk, and she was taken down to drink it, and a hunch of coarse barley bread was given to her, with it the words, "I would offer you bacon, but it tastes as if Old Nick had smoked it in his private furnace."

Such expressions were no proof that gentle blood was lacking, but whose object could her abduction be—her, a penniless dependent? Could she have been seized by mistake for some heiress? In that moment's hope she asked, "Sir, do you know who I am—Anne Woodford, a poor, portionless maid, not—"

"I know perfectly well, madam," was the reply. "May I trouble you to permit me to mount you again?"

She was again placed behind one of the riders, and again fastened to him, and off they went, on a rougher horse, on harder ground, and, as she thought, occasionally through brushwood. Again a space, to her illimitable, went by, and then came turf once more, and by and by what seemed to her the sound of the sea.

Another halt, another lifting down, but at once to be gathered up again, and then a splashing through water. "Be careful," said the voice. A hand, a gentleman's hand, took hers; her feet were on boards—on a boat; she was drawn down to sit on a low thwart. Putting her hand over, she felt the lapping of the water and tasted that it was salt.

"Oh, sir, where are you taking me?" she asked, as the boat was pushed off.

"That you will know in due time," he answered.

Some more refreshment was offered her in a decided but not discourteous manner, and she partook of it, remembering that exhaustion might add to her perils. She perceived that after pushing off from shore sounds of eating and low gruff voices mingled with the plash of oars. Commands seemed to be given in French, and there were mutterings of some strange language. Darkness was coming on. What were they doing with her? And did Charles's fate hang upon hers?

Yet in spite of terrors and anxieties, she was so much worn out as to doze long enough to lose count of time, till she was awakened by the rocking and tossing of the boat and loud peremptory commands. She became for the first time in her life miserable with sea- sickness, for how long it was impossible to tell, and the pitching of the boat became so violent that when she found herself bound to one of the seats she was conscious of little but a longing to be allowed to go to the bottom in peace, except that some great cause— she could hardly in her bewildered wretchedness recollect what— forbade her to die till her mission was over.

There were loud peremptory orders, oaths, sea phrases, in French and English, sometimes in that unknown tongue. Something expressed that a light was directing to a landing-place, but reaching it was doubtful.

"Unbind her eyes," said a voice; "let her shift for herself."

"Better not."

There followed a fresh upheaval, as if the boat were perpendicular; a sudden sinking, some one fell over and bruised her; another frightful rising and falling, then smoothness; the rope that held her fast undone; the keel grating; hands apparently dragging up the boat. She was lifted out like a doll, carried apparently through water over shingle. Light again made itself visible; she was in a house, set down on a chair, in the warmth of fire, amid a buzz of voices, which lulled as the bandage was untied and removed. Her eyes were so dazzled, her head so giddy, her senses so faint, that everything swam round her, and there that strange vision recurred. Peregrine Oakshott was before her. She closed her eyes again, as she lay back in the chair.

"Take this; you will be better." A glass was at her lips, and she swallowed some hot drink, which revived her so that she opened her eyes again, and by the lights in an apparently richly curtained room, she again beheld that figure standing by her, the glass in his hand.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Are you alive?"

The answer was to raise her still gloved hand with substantial fingers to a pair of lips.

"Then—then—he is safe! Thank God!" she murmured, and shut her eyes again, dizzy and overcome, unable even to analyse her conviction that all would be well, and that in some manner he had come to her rescue.

"Where am I?" she murmured dreamily. "In Elf-land?"

"Yes; come to be Queen of it."

The words blended with her confused fancies. Indeed she was hardly fully conscious of anything, except that a woman's hands were about her, and that she was taken into another room, where her drenched clothes were removed, and she was placed in a warm, narrow bed, where some more warm nourishment was put into her mouth with a spoon, after which she sank into a sleep of utter exhaustion. That sleep lasted long. There was a sensation of the rocking of the boat, and of aching limbs, through great part of the time; also there seemed to be a continual roaring and thundering around her, and such strange misty visions, that when she finally awoke, after a long interval of deeper and sounder slumber, she was incapable of separating the fact from the dream, more especially as head and limbs were still heavy, weary, and battered. The strange roaring still sounded, and sometimes seemed to shake the bed. Twilight was coming in at a curtained window, and showed a tiny chamber, with rafters overhead and thatch, a chest, a chair, and table. There was a pallet on the floor, and Anne suspected that she had been wakened by the rising of its occupant. Her watch was on the chair by her side, but it had not been wound, and the dim light did not increase, so that there was no guessing the time; and as the remembrance of her dreadful adventures made themselves clear, she realised with exceeding terror that she must be a prisoner, while the evening's apparition relegated itself to the world of dreams.

Being kidnapped to be sent to the plantations was the dread of those days. But if such were the case, what would become of Charles? In the alarm of that thought she sat up in bed and prepared to rise, but could nowhere see her clothes, only the little cloth bag of toilet necessaries that she had taken with her.

At that moment, however, the woman came in with a steaming cup of chocolate in her hand and some of the garments over her arm. She was a stout, weather-beaten, kindly-looking woman with a high white cap, gold earrings, black short petticoat, and many-coloured apron. "Monsieur veut savoir si mademoiselle va bien?" said she in slow careful French, and when questions in that language were eagerly poured out, she shook her head, and said, "Ne comprends pas." She, however, brought in the rest of the clothes, warm water, and a light, so that Anne rose and dressed, exceedingly perplexed, and wondering whether she could be in a ship, for the sounds seemed to say so, and there was no corresponding motion. Could she be in France? Certainly the voyage had seemed interminable, but she did not think it could have been long enough for that, nor that any person in his senses would try to cross in an open boat in such weather. She looked at the window, a tiny slip of glass, too thick to show anything but what seemed to be a dark wall rising near at hand. Alas! she was certainly a prisoner! In whose hands? With what intent? How would it affect that other prisoner at Winchester? Was that vision of last night substantial or the work of her exhausted brain? What could she do? It was well for her that she could believe in the might of prayer.

She durst not go beyond her door, for she heard men's tones, suppressed and gruff, but presently there was a knock, and wonder of wonders, she beheld Hans, black Hans, showing all his white teeth in a broad grin, and telling her that Missee Anne's breakfast was ready. The curtain that overhung the door was drawn back, and she passed into another small room, with a fire on the open hearth, and a lamp hung from a beam, the walls all round covered with carpets or stuffs of thick glowing colours, so that it was like the inside of a tent. And in the midst, without doubt, stood Peregrine Oakshott, in such a dress as was usually worn by gentlemen in the morning—a loose wrapping coat, though with fine lace cuffs and cravat, all, like the shoes and silk stockings, worn with his peculiar daintiness, and, as was usual when full-bottomed wigs were the rule in grande tenue, its place supplied by a silken cap. This was olive green with a crimson tassel, which had assumed exactly the characteristic one-sided Riquet-with-a-tuft aspect. For the rest, these years seemed to have made the slight form slighter and more wiry, and the face keener, more sallow, and more marked.

He bowed low with the foreign courtesy which used to be so offensive to his contemporaries, and offered a delicate, beringed hand to lead the young lady to the little table, where grilled fowl and rolls, both showing the cookery of Hans, were prepared for her.

"I hope you rested well, and have an appetite this morning."

"Sir, what does it all mean? Where am I?" asked Anne, drawing herself up with the native dignity that she felt to be her defence.

"In Elf-land," he said, with a smile, as he heaped her plate.

"Speak in earnest," she entreated. "I cannot eat till I understand. It is no time for trifling! Life and death hang on my reaching London! If you saved me from those men, let me go free."

"No one can move at present," he said. "See here."

He drew back a curtain, opened first one door and then another, and she saw sheets of driving rain, and rising, roaring waves, with surf which came beating in on the force of such a fearful gust of wind that Peregrine hastily shut the door, not without difficulty. "Nobody can stir at present," he said, as they came into the warm bright room again. "It is a frightful tempest, the worst known here for years, they say. The dead-lights, as they call them, have been put in, or the windows would be driven in. Come and taste Hans's work; you know it of old. Will you drink tea? Do you remember how your mother came to teach mine to brew it, and how she forgave me for being graceless enough to squirt at her?"

There was something so gentle and reassuring in the demeanour of this strange being that Anne, convinced of the utter hopelessness of confronting the storm, as well as of the need of gathering strength, allowed herself to be placed in a chair, and to partake of the food set before her, and the tea, which was served without milk, in an exquisite dragon china cup, but with a saucer that did not match it.

"We don't get our sets perfect," said Peregrine, with a smile, who was waiting on her as if she were a princess.

"I entreat you to tell me where we are!" said Anne. "Not in France?"

"No, not in France! I wish we were."

"Then—can this be the Island?"

"Yes, the Island it is," said Peregrine, both speaking as South Hants folk; "this is the strange cave or chasm called Black Gang Chine."

"Black Gang! Oh! the highwaymen, the pirates! You have saved me from them. Were they going to send me to the plantations?"

"You need have no fears. No one shall touch you, or hurt you. You shall see no one save by your own consent, my queen."

"And when this storm is passed—Oh!" as a more fearful roar and dash sounded as if the waves were about to sweep away their frail shelter—"you will come with me and save Mr. Archfield's life? You cannot know—"

"I know," he interrupted; "but why should I be solicitous for his life? That I am here now is no thanks to him, and why should I give up mine for the sake of him who meant to make an end of me?"

"You little know how he repented. And your own life? What do you mean?"

"People don't haunt the Black Gang Chine when their lives are secure from Dutch Bill," he answered. "Don't be terrified, my queen; though I cannot lay claim, like Prospero, to having raised this storm by my art magic, yet it perforce gives me time to make you understand who and what I am, and how I have recovered my better angel to give her no mean nor desperate career. It will be better thus than with the suddenness with which I might have had to act."

A new alarm seized upon Anne as to his possible intentions, but she would not forestall what she so much apprehended, and, sensible that self-control alone could guard her, since escape at present was clearly impossible, she resigned herself to sit opposite to him by the ample hearth of what she perceived to be a fisherman's hut, thus fitted up luxuriously with, it might be feared, the spoils of the sea.

The story was a long one, and not by any means told consecutively or without interruption, and all the time those eyes were upon her, one yellow the other green, with the effect she knew so well of old in childish days, of repulsion yet compulsion, of terror yet attraction, as if irresistibly binding a reluctant will. Several times Peregrine was called off to speak to some one outside the door, and at noon he begged permission for his friends to dine with them, saying that there was no other place where the dinner could be taken to them comfortably in this storm.



CHAPTER XXXII: SEVEN YEARS

"It was between the night and day, When the Fairy King has power, That I sunk down in a sinful fray, And 'twixt life and death was snatched away To the joyless Elfin bower."

SCOTT.

This motto was almost the account that the twisted figure, with queer contortions of face, yet delicate feet and hands, and dainty utterance, might have been expected to give, when Anne asked him, "Was it you, really?"

"I—or my double?" he asked. "When?"

She told him, and he seemed amazed.

"So you were there? Well, you shall hear. You know how things stood with me—your mother, my good spirit, dead, my uncle away, my father bent on driving me to utter desperation, and Martha Browning laying her great red hands on me—"

"Oh, sir, she really loved you, and is far wiser and more tolerant than you thought her."

"I know," he smiled grimly. "She buried the huge Scot that was killed in the great smuggling fray under the Protector, with all honours, in our family vault, and had a long-winded sermon preached on my untimely end. Ha! ha!" with his mocking laugh.

"Don't, sir! If you had seen your father then! Why did no one come forward and explain?"

"Mayhap there were none at hand who knew, or wished to meddle with the law," he said. "Well, things were beyond all bearing at home, and you were going away, and would not so much as look at me. Now, one of the few sports my father did not look askance at was fishing, and he would endure my being out at night with, as he thought, poor man, old Pete Perring, who was as stern a Puritan as himself; but I had livelier friends, and more adventurous. They had connections with French free-traders for brandy and silks, and when they found I was one with them, my French tongue was a boon to them, till I came to have a good many friends among the Norman fishermen, and to know the snug hiding-places about the coast. So at last I made up my mind to be off with them, and make my way to my uncle in Muscovy. I had raised money enough at play and on the jewels one picks up in an envoy's service, and there was one good angel whom I meant to take with me if I could secure her and bind her wings. Now you know with what hopes I saw you gathering flowers alone that morning."

Anne clasped her hands; Charles had truly interfered with good cause.

"I had all arranged," he continued; "my uncle would have given you a hearty welcome, and made our peace with my father, or if not, he would have left us all his goods, and secured my career. What call had that great lout, with a wife of his own too, to come thrusting between us? I thought I should make short work of him, and give him a lesson against meddling—great unlicked cub as he was, while I had had the best training at Berlin and Paris in fencing; but somehow those big strong fellows, from their very clumsiness, throw one out. And he meant mischief—yes, that he did. I saw it in his eyes. I suppose his sulky rustic jealousy was a-fire at a few little civilities to that poor little wife of his. Any way, when he bore me down like the swing of a windmill, he drove his sword home. Talk of his being innocent! Why should he never look whether I were dead or alive, but fling me headlong into that pit?"

Anne could not but utter her eager defence, but it was met with a sinister smile, half of scorn, half of pity, and as she would have gone on, "Hush! your pleading only fills up the measure of my loathing."

Her heart sank, but she let him go on, listening perhaps less attentively as she considered how to take him.

"In fact," he continued, "little as the lubber knew it, 'twas the best he could have done for me. For though I never looked for such luck as your being out in the court at that hour, I did think the chance not to be lost of visiting the garden or the churchyard, and there were waiting in the vault a couple of stout Normans, who were to come at my whistle. It seems that when I came tumbling down in their midst, senseless and bleeding like a calf, they did not take it quite so easily as your champion above, but began doing what they could for me, and were trying to staunch the wound, when they heard a trampling and a rumbling overhead, and being aware that our undertaking might look ugly in the sight of the law, and thinking this might be pursuers, they carried me off with all speed, not so much as stopping to pick up the things that have made such a commotion. Was there any pursuit?"

"Oh no; it must have been the haymakers."

"No doubt. The place was in no great favour with our own people; they were in awe of the big Scot, who is in comfortable quarters in my grave, and the Frenchmen could not have found their way thither, so it was let alone till Mistress Martha's researches. So I came to myself in the boat in which they took me on board the lugger that was waiting for us; and instead of making for Alderney, as I had intended, so as to get the knot safely tied to your satisfaction, they sailed straight for Havre. They had on board a Jesuit father, whom I had met once or twice among the Duke of Berwick's people, but who had found Portsmouth too hot to hold him in the frenzy of Protestant zeal on the Bishops' account. He had been beset, and owed his life, he says, to the fists of the Breton and Norman sailors, who had taken him on board. It was well for me, for I doubt if ever I was tough enough to have withstood my good friends' treatment. He had me carried to a convent in Havre, where the fathers nursed me well; and before I was on my legs again, I had made up my mind to cast in my lot with them, or rather with their Church."

"Oh!"

"I had been baulked of winning the one being near whom my devil never durst come. And blood-letting had pretty well disposed of him. I was as meek and mild as milk under the good fathers. Moreover, as my good friend at Turin had told me, and they repeated it, such a doubly heretical baptism as mine was probably invalid, and accounted for my being as much a vessel of wrath as even my father was pleased to call me. There was the Queen's rosary drawing me too. Everything else was over with me, and it seemed to open a new life. So, bless me, what a soft and pious frame I was in when they chastened me, water, oil, salt and all, on what my father raged at folks calling Lammas Day, but which it seems really belongs to St. Peter in the Fetters. So I was named Pierre or Piers after him, thus keeping my own initial."

"Piers! oh! not Piers Pigwiggin?"

"Pierre de Pilpignon, if you please. I have a right to that too; but we shall come to it by and by. I can laugh now, or perhaps weep, over the fervid state I was in then, as if I had trodden down my snake, and by giving up everything—you, estate, career, I could keep him down. So it was settled that I would devote myself to the priesthood—don't laugh!—and I was ordered off to their seminary in London, partly, I believe, for the sake of piloting a couple of fathers, who could not speak a word of English. It was, as they rightly judged, the last place where my father would think of looking for me, but they did not as rightly judge that we should long keep possession there. Matters grew serious, and it was not over safe in the streets. There was a letter of importance from a friend in Holland, carrying the Prince of Orange's hypocritical Declaration, which was to be got to Father Petre or the King on the night—Hallowmas Eve it was—and I was told off to put on a secular dress, which I could wear more naturally than most of them, and convey it."

"Ah, that explains!"

"Apparition number one! I guessed you were somewhere in those parts, and looked up at the windows, and though I did not see you, I believe it was your eyes that first sent a thrill through me that boded ill for Roman orders. After that we lived in a continual state of rumours and alarms, secret messages and expeditions, until I, being strong in the arm and the wind and a feather-weight, was one of those honoured by rowing the Queen and Prince across the river. M. de St. Victor accepted me. He told me there would be two nurses, but never knew or cared who they were, nor did I guess, as we sat in the dark, how near I was to you. And only for one second did I see your face, as you were entering the carriage, and I blessed you the more for what you were doing for Her Majesty."

He proceeded to tell how he had accompanied the Jesuit fathers, on their leaving London, to the great English seminary at Douai, and being for the time convinced by them that his feelings towards Anne were a delusion of the enemy, he had studied with all his might, and as health and monotony of life began to have their accustomed effect in rousing the restlessness and mischievousness of his nature, with all the passions of manhood growing upon him, he strove to force them down by fasting and scourging. He told, in a bitter, almost savage way, of his endeavours to flog his demon out of himself, and of his anger and disappointment at finding Piers Pilgrim in the seminary of Douai, quite as subject to his attacks as ever was Perry Oakshott under a sermon of Mr. Horncastle's.

Then came the information among the students that the governor of the city, the Marquis de Nidemerle, had brought some English gentlemen and ladies to visit the gardens. As most of the students were of British families there was curiosity as to who they were, and thus Peregrine heard that one was young Archfield of the Hampshire family, with his tutor, and the lady was Mistress Darpent, daughter to a French lawyer, who had settled in England after the Fronde. Anne's name had not transpired, for she was viewed merely as an attendant. Peregrine had been out on some errand in the town, and had a distant view of his enemy as he held him, flaunting about with a fine lady on his arm, forgetting the poor little pretty wife whom no doubt he had frightened to death."

"Oh! you little know how tenderly he speaks of her."

"Tenderly!—that's the way they speak of me at Oakwood, eh? Human, not to say elf, nature, could not withstand giving the fellow a start. I sped off, whipped into the Church, popped into a surplice I found ready to hand, caught up a candle, and!—Little did I think who it was that was hanging on his arm. So little did I know it that my heart began to be drawn to St. Germain, where I still imagined you. Altogether, after that prank, all broke out again. I entertained the lads with a few more freaks, for which I did ample penance, but it grew on me that in my case all was a weariness and a sham, and that my demon might get a worse hold of me if I got into a course of hypocrisy. They were very good to me, those fathers, but Jesuits as they were, I doubt whether they ever fathomed me. Any way, perhaps they thought I should be a scandal, but they agreed with me that their order was not my vocation, and that we had better part before my fiend drove me to do so with dishonour. They even gave me recommendations to the French officers that were besieging Tournay. I knew the Duke of Berwick a little at Portsmouth, and it ended in my becoming under-secretary to the Duke of Chartres. A man who knows languages has his value among Frenchmen, who despise all but their own."

Peregrine did not enter into full details of this stage of his career, and Anne was not fully informed of the habits that the young Duke of Chartres, the future Regent Duke of Orleans, was already developing, but she gathered that, what the young man called his demon, had nearly undisputed sway over him, and she had not spent eight months at St. Germain without knowing by report of the dissolute manners of the substratum of fashionable society at Paris, even though outward decorum had been restored by Madame de Maintenon. Yet he seemed to have been crossed by fits of vehement penitence, and almost the saddest part of the story was the mocking tone in which he alluded to these.

He had sought service at the Court in the hope of meeting Miss Woodford there, and had been grievously disappointed when he found that she had long since returned to England. The sight of the gracious and lovely countenance of the exiled Queen seemed always to have moved and touched him, as in some inexplicable manner her eyes and expression recalled to him those of Mrs. Woodford and Anne; but the thought had apparently only stung him into the sense of being forsaken and abandoned to his own devices or those of his evil spirit.

One incident, occurring some three years previously, he told more fully, as it had a considerable effect on his life. "I was attending the Duke in the gardens at Versailles," he said, "when we were aware of a great commotion. All the gentlemen were standing gazing up into the top of a great chestnut tree, the King and all, and in the midst stood the Abbe de Fenelon with his little pupils, the youngest, the Duke of Anjou, sobbing piteously, and the Duke of Burgundy in a furious passion, stamping and raging, and only withheld from rolling on the ground by the Abbe's hand grasping his shoulder. 'I will not have him killed! He is mine,' he cried. And up in the tree, the object of all their gaze, was a monkey with a paper fluttering in his hand. Some one had made a present of the creature to the King's grandsons; he was the reigning favourite, and having broken his chain, had effected an entrance by the window into the King's cabinet, where after giving himself the airs of a minister of state, on being interrupted, he had made off through the window with an important document, which he was affecting to peruse at his leisure, only interrupting himself to hurl down leaves or unripe chestnuts at those who attempted to pelt him with stones, and this only made him mount higher and higher, entirely out of their reach, for no one durst climb after him. I believe it was a letter from the King of Spain; at any rate the whole Cabinet was in agony lest the brute should proceed to tear it into fragments, and a musqueteer had been sent for to shoot him down. I remembered my success with the monkey on poor little Madam Archfield's back—nay, perhaps 'twas the same, my familiar taking shape. I threw myself at the King's feet, and desired permission to deal with the beast. By good luck it had not been so easy as they supposed to find a musquet fit for immediate use, so I had full time. To ascend the tree was no more than I had done many times before, and I went high in the branches, but cautiously, not to give Monsieur le Singe the idea of being pursued, lest he should leap to a bough incapable of supporting me. When I had reached a fork tolerably high, and where he could see me, I settled myself, took out a letter, which fortunately was in my pocket, read it with the greatest deliberation, the monkey watching me all the time, and finally I proceeded to fold it neatly in all its creases. The creature imitated me with its black fingers, little aware, poor thing, that the musqueteer had covered him with his weapon, and was waiting for the first sign of tearing the letter to pull the trigger, but withheld by a sign from the King, who did not wish to sacrifice his grandson's pet before his eyes. Finally, after finishing the folding, I doubled it a second time, and threw it at the animal. To my great joy he returned the compliment by throwing the other at my head. I was able to catch it, and moreover, as he was disposed to go in pursuit of his plaything, he swung his chain so near me that I got hold of it, twisted it round my arm, and made the best of my way down the tree, amid the 'Bravos!' started by the royal lips themselves, and repeated with ecstasy by all the crowd, who waved their hats, and made such a hallooing that I had much ado to get the monkey down safely; but finally, all dishevelled, with my best cuffs and cravat torn to ribbons, and my wig happily detached, unlike Absalom's, for it remained in the tree, I had the honour of presenting on my knee the letter to the King, and the monkey to the Princes. I kissed His Majesty's hand, the little Duke of Anjou kissed the monkey, and the Duke of Burgundy kissed me with arms round my neck, then threw himself on his knees before his grandfather to ask pardon for his passion. Every one said my fortune was made, and that my agility deserved at least the cordon bleu. My own Duke of Chartres, who in many points is like his cousin, our late King Charles, gravely assured me that a new office was to be invented for me, and that I was to be Grand Singier du Roi. I believe he pushed my cause, and so did the little Duke of Burgundy, and finally I got the pension without the office, and a good deal of occasional employment besides, in the way of translation of documents. There were moments of success at play. Oh yes, quite fairly, any one with wits about him can make his profit in the long-run among the Court set. And thus I had enough to purchase a pretty little estate and chateau on the coast of Normandy, the confiscated property of a poor Huguenot refugee, so that it went cheap. It gives the title of Pilpignon, which I assumed in kindness to the tongues of my French friends. So you see, I have a station and property to which to carry you, my fair one, won by myself, though only by catching an ape."

He went on to say that the spot had been chosen advisedly, with a view to communication with the opposite coast, where his old connection with the smugglers was likely to be useful in the Jacobite plots. "As you well know," he said, "my father had done his utmost to make Whiggery stink in my nostrils, to say nothing of the kindness I have enjoyed from our good Queen; and I was ready to do my utmost in the cause, especially after I had stolen a glimpse of you, and when Charnock, poor fellow, returning from reconnoitring among the loyal, told me that you were still unmarried, and living as a dependent in the Archfields' house. Our headquarters were in Romney Marsh, but it was as well to have, as it were, a back door here, and as it has turned out it has been the saving of some of us."

"Oh, sir! you were not in that wicked plot?"

"Nay; surely you are not turned Whig."

"But this was assassination."

"Not at all, if they would have listened to me. The Dutchman is no bigger than I am. I could have dropped on him from one of his trees at Hampton Court, or through a window, via presto, and we would have had him off by the river, given him an interview to beg his uncle's pardon, and despatched him for the benefit of his asthma to the company of the Iron Mask at St. Marguerite; then back again, the King to enjoy his own again, Dr. Woodford, archbishop or bishop of whatever you please, and a lady here present to be Marquise de Pilpignon, or Countess of Havant, whichever she might prefer. Yes, truly those were the hopes with which I renewed my communications with the contraband trade on this coast, a good deal more numerous since the Dutchman and his wars have raised the duties and driven many good men to holes and corners.

"Ever since last spring, when the Princess Royal died, and thus extinguished the last spark of forbearance in the King's breast, I have been here, there, and everywhere—Romney Marsh, Drury Lane, Paris, besides this place and Pilpignon, where I have a snug harbour for the yacht, Ma Belle Annik, as the Breton sailors call her. The crew are chiefly Breton; it saves gossip; but I have a boat's crew of our own English folk here, stout fellows, ready for anything by land or sea."

"The Black Gang," said Anne faintly.

"Don't suppose I have meddled in their exploits on the road," he said, "except where a King's messenger or a Royal mail was concerned, and that is war, you know, for the cause. Unluckily my personal charms are not easily disguised, so that I have had to lurk in the background, and only make my private investigations in the guise of my own ghost."

"Then so it was you saved the dear little Philip?" said Anne.

"The Archfield boy? I could not see a child sent to his destruction by that villain Sedley, whoever were his father, for he meant mischief if ever man did. 'Twas superhuman scruple not to hold your peace and let him swing."

"What was it, then, on his cousin's part?"

Peregrine only answered with a shrug. It appeared further, that as long as the conspirators had entertained any expectation of success, he had merely kept a watch over Anne, intending to claim her in the hour of the triumph of his party, when he looked to enjoy such a position as would leave his brother free to enjoy his paternal inheritance. In the failure of all their schemes through Mr. Pendergrast's denunciation, Sir George Barclay, and one or two inferior plotters, had succeeded in availing themselves of the assistance of the Black Gang, and had been conducted by Peregrine to the hut that he had fitted up for himself. Still trusting to the security there, although his name of Piers Pilgrim or de Pilpignon had been among those given up to the Privy Council, he had insisted on lingering, being resolved that an attempt should be made to carry away the woman he had loved for so many years. Captain Burford had so disguised himself as to be able to attend the trial, loiter about the inn, and collect intelligence, while the others waited on the downs. Peregrine had watched over the capture, but being unwilling to disclose himself, had ridden on faster and crossed direct, traversing the Island on horseback, while the captive was rounding it in the boat. "As should never have been done," he said, "could I have foretold to what stress of weather you would be exposed while I was preparing for your reception. But for this storm—it rages louder than ever—we would have been married by a little parson whom Burford would have fetched from Portsmouth, and we should have been over the Channel, and my people hailing my bride with ecstasy."

"Never!" exclaimed Anne. "Can you suppose I could accept one who would leave an innocent man to suffer?"

"People sometimes are obliged to accept," said Peregrine. Then at her horrified start, "No, no, fear no violence; but is not something due to one who has loved you through exile all these years, and would lay down his life for you? you, the only being who overcomes his evil angel!"

"This is what you call overcoming it," she said.

"Nay; indeed, Mistress Anne, I would let the authorities know that they are hanging a man for murdering one who is still alive if I could; but no one would believe without seeing, and I and all who could bear witness to my existence would be rushing to an end even worse than a simple noose. You were ready enough to denounce him to save that worthless fellow."

"Not ready. It tore my heart. But truth is truth. I could not do that wickedness. Oh! how can you? This is the prompting of the evil spirit indeed, to expect me to join in leaving that innocent, generous spirit to die in cruel injustice. Let me go. I will not betray where you are. You will be safe in France; but there will yet be time for me to bear witness to your life. Write a letter. Your father would thankfully swear to your handwriting, and I think they would believe me. Only let me go."

"And what then becomes of the hopes of a lifetime?" demanded Peregrine. "I, who have waited as long as Jacob, to be defrauded now I have you; and for the sake of the fellow who killed me in will if not in deed, and then ran away like a poltroon leaving you to bear the brunt!"

"He did not act like a poltroon when he saved the life of his general, or when he rescued the colours of his regiment, still less when he stood up to save me from the pain of bearing witness against him, and to save a guiltless man," cried Anne, with flashing eyes.

Before she had finished her indignant words, Hans was coming in from some unknown region to lay the cloth for supper, and Peregrine, with an imprecation under his breath, had gone to the door to admit his two comrades, who came into the narrow entry on a gust of wind as it were, struggling out of their cloaks, stamping and swearing.

In the middle of the day, they had been much more restrained in their behaviour. There had at that time been a slight clearance in the sky, though the wind was as furious as ever, and they were in haste to despatch the meal and go out again to endeavour to stand on the heights and to watch some vessels that were being tossed by the storm. Almost all the conversation had then been on the chances of their weathering the tempest, and the probability of its lasting on, and they had hurried away as soon as possible. Anne had not then known who they were, and only saw that they were fairly civil to her, and kept under a certain constraint by Pilpignon, as they called their host. Now she fully knew the one who was addressed as Sir George to be Barclay, the prime mover in the wicked scheme of assassination of which all honest Tories had been so much ashamed, and she could see Captain Burford to be one of those bravoes who were only too plentiful in those days, attending on dissolute and violent nobles.

She was the less inclined to admit their attentions, and shielded herself with a grave coldness of stately manners; but their talk was far more free than at noon, suggesting the thought that they had anticipated the meal with some of the Nantz or other liquors that seemed to be in plenty.

They began by low bows of affected reverence, coarser and worse in the ruffian of inferior grade, and the knight complimented Pilpignon on being a lucky dog, and hoped he had made the best use of his time in spite of the airs of his duchess. It was his own fault if he were not enjoying such fair society, while they, poor devils, were buffeting with the winds, which had come on more violently than ever. Peregrine broke in with a question about the vessels in sight.

There was an East Indiaman, Dutch it was supposed, laying-to, that was the cause of much excitement. "If she drives ashore our fellows will neither be to have nor to hold," said Sir George.

"They will obey me," said Peregrine quietly.

"More than the sea will just yet," laughed the captain. "However, as soon as this villainous weather is a bit abated, I'll be off across the Island to do your little errand, and only ask a kiss of the bride for my pains; but if the parson be at Portsmouth there will be no getting him to budge till the water is smooth. Never mind, madam, we'll have a merry wedding feast, whichever side of the water it is. I should recommend the voyage first for my part."

All Anne could do was to sit as upright and still as she could, apparently ignoring the man's meaning. She did not know how dignified she looked, and how she was daunting his insolence. When presently Sir George Barclay proposed as a toast a health to the bride of to-morrow, she took her part by raising the glass to her lips as well as the gentlemen, and adding, "May the brides be happy, wherever they may be."

"Coy, upon my soul," laughed Sir George. "You have not made the best of your opportunities, Pil." But with an oath, "It becomes her well."

"A truce with fooling, Barclay," muttered Peregrine.

"Come, come, remember faint heart—no lowering your crest, more than enough to bring that devilish sparkle in the eyes, and turn of the neck!"

"Sir," said Anne rising, "Monsieur de Pilpignon is an old neighbour, and understands how to respect his most unwilling guest. I wish you a good-night, gentlemen. Guennik, venez ici, je vous prie."

Guennik, the Breton boatswain's wife, understood French thus far, and comprehended the situation enough to follow willingly, leaving the remainder of the attendance to Hans, who was fully equal to it. The door was secured by a long knife in the post, but Anne could hear plainly the rude laugh at her entrenchment within her fortress and much of the banter of Peregrine for having proceeded no further. It was impossible to shut out all the voices, and very alarming they were, as well as sometimes so coarse that they made her cheeks glow, while she felt thankful that the Bretonne could not understand.

These three men were all proscribed traitors in haste to be off, but Peregrine, to whom the yacht and her crew belonged, had lingered to obtain possession of the lady, and they were declaring that now they had caught his game and given him his toy, they would brook no longer delay than was absolutely necessitated by the storm, and married or not married, he and she should both be carried off together, let the damsel-errant give herself what haughty airs she would. It was a weak concession on their part to the old Puritan scruples that he might have got rid of by this time, to attempt to bring about the marriage. They jested at him for being afraid of her, and then there were jokes about gray mares.

The one voice she could not hear was Peregrine's, perhaps because he realised more than they did that she was within ear-shot, and besides, he was absolutely sober; but she thought he silenced them; and then she heard sounds of card-playing, which made an accompaniment to her agonised prayers.



CHAPTER XXXIII: BLACK GANG CHINE

"Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us grace, Let us fly this cursed place, Lest the sorcerer us entice With some other new device. Not a word or needless sound Till we come to holier ground. I shall be your faithful guide Through this gloomy covert wide."

MILTON.

Never was maiden in a worse position than that in which Anne Woodford felt herself when she revolved the matter. The back of the Isle of Wight, all along the Undercliff, had always had a wild reputation, and she was in the midst of the most lawless of men. Peregrine alone seemed to have any remains of honour or conscience, and apparently he was in some degree in the hands of his associates. Even if the clergyman came, there was little hope in an appeal to him. Naval chaplains bore no good reputation, and Portsmouth and Cowes were haunted by the scum of the profession. All that seemed possible was to commit herself and Charles to Divine protection, and in that strength to resist to the uttermost. The tempest had returned again, and seemed to be raging as much as ever, and the delay was in her favour, for in such weather there could be no putting to sea.

She was unwilling to leave the stronghold of her chamber, but Hans came to announce breakfast to her, telling her that the Mynheeren were gone, all but Massa Perry; and that gentleman came forward to meet her just as before, hoping 'those fellows had not disturbed her last night.'

"I could not help hearing much," she said gravely.

"Brutes!" he said. "I am sick of them, and of this life. Save for the King's sake, I would never have meddled with it."

The roar of winds and waves and the beat of spray was still to be heard, and in the manifest impossibility of quitting the place and the desire of softening him, Anne listened while he talked in a different mood from the previous day. The cynical tone was gone, as he spoke of those better influences. He talked of Mrs. Woodford and his deep affection for her, of the kindness of the good priests at Havre and Douai, and especially of one Father Seyton, who had tried to reason with him in his bitter disappointment, and savage penitence on finding that 'behind the Cross lurks the Devil,' as much at Douai as at Havant. He told how a sermon of the Abbe Fenelon's had moved him, and how he had spent half a Lent in the severest penance, but only to have all swept away again in the wild and wicked revelry with which Easter came in. Again he described how his heart was ready to burst as he stood by Mrs. Woodford's grave at night and vowed to disentangle himself and lead a new life.

"And with you I shall," he said.

"No," she answered; "what you win by a crime will never do you good."

"A crime! 'Tis no crime. You know I mean honourable marriage. You owe no duty to any one."

"It is a crime to leave the innocent to undeserved death," she said.

"Do you love the fellow?" he cried, with a voice rising to a shout of rage.

"Yes," she said firmly.

"Why did not you say so before?"

"Because I hoped to see you act for right and justice sake," was Anne's answer, fixing her eyes on him. "For God's sake, not mine."

"Yours indeed! Think, what can be his love to mine? He who let them marry him to that child, while I struggled and gave up everything. Then he runs away—runs away—leaving you all the distress; never came near you all these years. Oh yes! he looks down on you as his child's governess! What's the use of loving him? There's another heiress bespoken for him no doubt."

"No. His parents consent, and we have known one another's love for six years."

"Oh, that's the way he bound you to keep his secret! He would sing another song as soon as he was out of this scrape."

"You little know!" was all she said.

"Ay!" continued Peregrine, pacing up and down the room, "you know that all that was wanting to fill up the measure of my hatred was that he should have stolen your heart."

"You cannot say that, sir. He was my kind protector and helper from our very childhood. I have loved him with all my heart ever since I durst."

"Ay, the great straight comely lubbers have it all their own way with the women," said he bitterly. "I remember how he rushed headlong at me with the horse-whip when I tripped you up at the Slype, and you have never forgiven that."

"Oh! indeed I forgot that childish nonsense long ago. You never served me so again."

"No indeed, never since you and your mother were the first to treat me like a human being. You will be able to do anything with me, sweetest lady; the very sense that you are under the same roof makes another man of me. I loathe what I used to enjoy. Why, the very sight of you, sitting at supper like the lady in Comus, in your sweet grave dignity, made me feel what I am, and what those men are. I heard their jests with your innocent ears. With you by my side the Devil's power is quelled. You shall have a peaceful beneficent life among the poor folk, who will bless you; our good and gracious Queen will welcome you with joy and gratitude; and when the good time comes, as it must in a few years, you will have honours and dignities lavished on you. Can you not see what you will do for me?"

"Do you think a broken-hearted victim would be able to do you any good?" said she, looking up with tears in her eyes. "I do believe, sir, that you mean well by me, in your own way, and I could, yes, I can, be sorry for you, for my mother did feel for you, and yours has been a sad life; but how could I be of any use or comfort to you if you dragged me away as these cruel men propose, knowing that he who has all my heart is dying guiltless, and thinking I have failed him!" and here she broke down in an agony of weeping, as she felt the old power in his eyes that enforced submission.

He marched up and down in a sort of passion. "Don't let me see you weep for him! It makes me ready to strangle him with my own hands!"

A shout of 'Pilpignon!' at the door here carried him off, leaving Anne to give free course to the tears that she had hitherto been able to restrain, feeling the need of self-possession. She had very little hope, since her affection for Charles Archfield seemed only to give the additional sting of jealousy, 'cruel as the grave,' to the vindictive temper Peregrine already nourished, and which certainly came from his evil spirit. She shed many tears, and sobbed unrestrainingly till the Bretonne came and patted her shoulder, and said, "Pauvre, pauvre!" And even Hans looked in, saying, "Missee Nana no cry, Massa Perry great herr—very goot."

She tried to compose herself, and think over alternatives to lay before Peregrine. He might let her go, and carry to Sir Edmund Nutley letters to which his father would willingly swear, while he was out of danger in Normandy. Or if this was far beyond what could be hoped for, surely he could despatch a letter to his father, and for such a price she must sacrifice herself, though it cost her anguish unspeakable to call up the thought of Charles, of little Philip, of her uncle, and the old people, who loved her so well, all forsaken, and with what a life in store for her! For she had not the slightest confidence in the power of her influence, whatever Peregrine might say and sincerely believe at present. If there were, more palpably than with all other human beings, angels of good and evil contending for him, swaying him now this way and now that; it was plain from his whole history that nothing had yet availed to keep him under the better influence for long together; and she believed that if he gained herself by these unjust and cruel means the worse spirit would thereby gain the most absolute advantage. If her heart had been free, and she could have loved him, she might have hoped, though it would have been a wild and forlorn hope; but as it was, she had never entirely surmounted a repulsion from him, as something strange and unnatural, a feeling involving fear, though here he was her only hope and protector, and an utter uncertainty as to what he might do. She could only hope that she might pine away and die quickly, and perhaps Charles Archfield might know at last that it had been for his sake. And would it be in her power to make even such terms as these?

How long she wept and prayed and tried to 'commit her way unto the Lord' she did not know, but light seemed to be making its way far more than previously through the shutters closed against the storm when Peregrine returned.

"You will not be greatly troubled with those fellows to-day," he said; "there's a vessel come on the rocks at Chale, and every man and mother's son is gone after it." So saying he unfastened the shutters and let in a flood of sunshine. "You would like a little air," he said; "'tis all quiet now, and the tide is going down."

After two days' dark captivity, Anne could not but be relieved by coming out, and she was anxious to understand where she was. It was, though only in March, glowing with warmth, as the sun beat against the cliffs behind, of a dark red brown, in many places absolutely black, in especial where a cascade, swelled by the rains into imposing size, came roaring, leaping, and sparkling down a sheer precipice. On either side the cove or chine was closely shut in by treeless, iron-coloured masses of rock, behind one of which the few inhabited hovels were clustered, and the boat which had brought her was drawn up. In front was the sea, still lashed by a fierce wind, which was driving the fantastically shaped remains of the great storm cloud rapidly across an intensely blue sky. The waves, although it was the ebb, were still tremendous, and their roar re-echoed as they reared to fearful heights and broke with the reverberations that she had heard all along. Peregrine kept quite high up, not venturing below the washed line of shingle, saying that the back draught of the waves was most perilous, and in a high wind could not be reckoned upon.

"No escape!" he said, as he perceived Anne's gaze on the inaccessible cliff and the whole scene, the wild beauty of which was lost to her in its terrors.

"Where's your ship?" she asked.

"Safe in Whale Chine. No putting to sea yet, though it may be fair to-morrow."

Then she put before him the first scheme she had thought out, of letting her escape to Sir Edmund Nutley's house, whence she could make her way back, taking with her a letter that would prove his existence without involving him or his friends in danger. And eagerly she argued, "You do not know me really! It is only an imagination that you can be the better for my presence." Then, unheeding his fervid exclamation, "It was my dear mother who did you good. What would she think of the way in which you are trying to gain me?"

"That I cannot do without you."

"And what would you have in me? I could be only wretched, and feel all my life—such a life as it would be—that you had wrecked my happiness. Oh yes! I do believe that you would try to make me happy, but don't you see that it would be quite impossible with such a grief as that in my heart, and knowing that you had caused it? I know you hate him, and he did you the wrong; but he has grieved for it, and banished himself. But above all, of this I am quite sure, that to persist in this horrible evil of leaving him to die, because of your revenge, and stealing me away, is truly giving Satan such a frightful advantage over you that it is mere folly to think that winning me in such a way could do you any good. It is just a mere delusion of his, to ruin us both, body and soul. Peregrine, will you not recollect my mother, and what she would think? Have pity on me, and help me away, and I would pledge myself never to utter a word of this place nor that could bring you and yours into danger. We would bless and pray for you always."

"No use," he gloomily said. "I believe you, but the others will never believe a woman. No doubt we are watched even now by desperate men, who would rather shoot you than let you escape from our hands."

It seemed almost in connection with these words that at that moment, from some unknown quarter, where probably there was an entrance to the Chine, Sir George Barclay appeared with a leathern case under his arm. It had been captured on the wreck, and contained papers which he wanted assistance in deciphering, since they were in Dutch, and he believed them to be either despatches or bonds, either of which might be turned to profit. These were carried indoors, and spread on the table, and as Anne sat by the window, dejected and almost hopeless as she was, she could not help perceiving that, though Peregrine was so much smaller and less robust than his companions, he exercised over them the dominion of intellect, energy, and will, as if they too felt the force of his strange eyes; and it seemed to her as if, supposing he truly desired it, whatever he might say, he must be able to deliver her and Charles; but that a being such as she had always known him should sacrifice both his love and his hate seemed beyond all hope, and "Change his heart! Turn our captivity, O Lord," could only be her cry.

Only very late did Burford come back, full of the account of the wreck and of the spoils, and the struggles between the wreckers for the flotsam and jetsam. There was much of savage brutality mated with a cool indifference truly horrible to Anne, and making her realise into what a den of robbers she had fallen, especially as these narratives were diversified by consultations over the Dutch letters and bills of exchange in the wrecked East Indiaman, and how to turn them to the best advantage. Barclay and Burford were so full of these subjects that they took comparatively little notice of the young lady, only when she rose to retire, Burford made a sort of apology that this little business had hindered his going after the parson. He heard that the Salamander was at the castle, and redcoats all about, he said, and if the Annick could be got out to- morrow they must sail any way; and if Pil was still so squeamish, a Popish priest could couple them in a leash as tight as a Fleet parson could. And then Peregrine demanded whether Burford thought a Fleet parson the English for a naval chaplain, and there was some boisterous laughter, during which Anne shut herself up in her room in something very like despair, with that one ray of hope that He who had brought her back from exile before would again save her from that terrible fate.

She heard card-playing and the jingle of glasses far into the night, as she believed, but it seemed to her as if she had scarcely fallen asleep before, to her extreme terror, she heard a knock and a low call at her door of 'Guennik.' Then as the Bretonne went to the door, through which a light was seen, a lantern was handed in, and a scrap of paper on which the words were written: "On second thoughts, my kindred elves at Portchester shall not be scared by a worricow. Dress quickly, and I will bring you out of this."

For a moment Anne did not perceive the meaning of the missive, the ghastly idea never having occurred to her that if Charles had suffered, the gibbet would have been at Portchester. Then, with an electric flash of joy, she saw that it meant relenting on Peregrine's part, deliverance for them both. She put on her clothes with hasty, trembling hands, thankful to Guennik for helping her, pressed a coin into the strong toil-worn hand, and with an earnest thrill of thankful prayer opened the door. The driftwood fire was bright, and she saw Peregrine, looking deadly white, and equipped with slouched hat, short wrapping cloak, pistols and sword at his belt, dark lantern lighted on the table, and Hans also cloaked by his side. He bent his head in salutation, and put his finger to his lips, giving one hand to Anne, and showing by example instead of words that she must tread as softly as possible, as she perceived that he was in his slippers, Hans carrying his boots as well as the lantern she had used. Yet to her ears the roar of the advancing tide seemed to stifle all other sounds. Past the other huts they went in silence, then came a precipitous path up the cliff, steps cut in the hard sandy grit, but very crumbling, and in places supplemented by a rude ladder of sticks and rope. Peregrine went before Anne, Hans behind. Each had hung the lantern from his neck, so as to have hands free to draw her, support her, or lift her, as might be needful. How it was done she never could tell in after years. She might jestingly say that her lightened heart bore her up, but in her soul and in her deeper moments she thought that truly angels must have had charge over her. Up, up, up! At last they had reached standing ground, a tolerably level space, with another high cliff seeming to rise behind it. Here it was lighter—a pale streak of dawn was spreading over the horizon, both on sky and sea, and the waves still leaping glanced in the light of a golden waning moon, while Venus shone in the brightening sky, a daystar of hope.

Peregrine drew a long breath, and gave an order in a very low voice in Dutch to Hans, who placed his boots before him, and went off towards a shed. "He will bring you a pony," said his master.

"Excuse me;" and he was withdrawing his hand, when Anne clasped it with both hers, and said in a voice of intense feeling—

"Oh, how can I thank you and bless you! This is putting the Evil Angel to flight."

"'Tis you that have done it! You see, I cannot do the wicked act where you are," he answered gloomily, as he turned aside to draw on his boots.

"Ah! but you have won the victory over him!"

"Do not be too sure. We are not out of reach of those rascals yet."

He was evidently anxious for silence, and Anne said no more. Hans presently brought from some unknown quarter, a little stout pony bridled and saddled; of course not with a side saddle, but cloaks were arranged so as to make a fairly comfortable seat for Anne, and Peregrine led the animal on the ascent to St. Catherine's Down. It was light enough to dispense with the lanterns, and as they mounted higher the glorious sight of daybreak over the sea showed itself— almost due east, the sharp points of the Needles showing up in a flood of pale golden light above and below, with gulls flashing white as they floated into sunlight, all seeming to Anne's thankful heart to be a new radiance of joy and hope after the dark roaring terrors of the Chine.

As they came out into the open freedom of the down, with crisp silvery grass under their feet, the breadth of sea on one side, before them fertile fields and hills, and farther away, dimly seen in gray mist, the familiar Portsdown outlines, not a sound to be heard but the exulting ecstasies of larks, far, far above in the depths of blue, Peregrine dared to speak above his breath, with a question whether Anne were at ease in her extemporary side saddle, producing at the same time a slice of bread and meat, and a flask of wine.

"Oh, how kind! What care you take of me!" she said. "But where are we going?"

"Wherever you command," he said. "I had thought of Carisbrooke. Cutts is there, and it would be the speediest way."

"Would it not be the most dangerous for you?"

"I care very little for my life after this."

"Oh no, no, you must not say so. After what you are doing for me you will be able to make it better than ever it has been. This is what I thought. If you would bring me in some place whence I could reach Sir Edmund Nutley's house at Parkhurst, his servants would help me to do the rest, even if he be not there himself. I would never betray you! You know I would not! And you would have full time to get away to your place in Normandy with your friends."

"You care?" asked he.

"Of course I do!" exclaimed she. "Do I not feel grateful to you, and like and honour you better than ever I could have thought?"

"You do?" in a strange choked tone.

"Of course I do. You are doing a noble, thankworthy thing. It is not only that I thank you for his sake, but it is a grand and beautiful deed in itself; and if my dear mother know, she is blessing you for it."

"I shall remember those words," he said, "if—" and he passed his hand over his eyes. "See here," he presently said; "I have written out a confession of my identity, and explanation that it was I who drew first on Archfield. It is enough to save him, and in case my handwriting has altered, as I think it has, and there should be further doubt, I shall be found at Pilpignon, if I get away. You had better keep it in case of accidents, or if you carry out your generous plan. Say whatever you please about me, but there is no need to mention Barclay or Burford; and it would not be fair to the honest free-traders here to explain where their Chine lies. I should have brought you up blindfold, if I could have done so with safety, not that I do not trust you, but I should be better able to satisfy those fellows if I ever see them again, by telling them I have sworn you to secrecy."

Then he laughed. "The gowks! I won all those Indian bonds of them last night, but left them in a parcel addressed to them as a legacy."

Anne took the required pledge, and ventured to ask, "Shall I say anything for you to your father?"

"My poor old father! Let him know that I neither would nor could disturb Robert in his inheritance, attainted traitor as the laws esteem me. For the rest, mayhap I shall write to him if the good angel you talk of will help me."

"Oh do! I am sure he would rejoice to forgive. He is much softened."

"Now, we must hush, and go warily. I see sheep, and if there is a shepherd, I want him not to see us, or point our way. It is well these Isle of Wight folk are not early risers."



CHAPTER XXXIV: LIFE FOR LIFE

"Follow Light, and do the Right—for man can half-control his doom— Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past. I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last."

TENNYSON.

On they had gone in silence for the most part, avoiding villages, but as the morning advanced and they came into more inhabited places, they were not able entirely to avoid meeting labourers going out to work, who stared at Hans's black face with curiosity. The sun was already high when they reached a cross-road whence the massive towers of Carisbrooke were seen above the hedges, and another turn led to Parkhurst. They paused a moment, and Anne was beginning to entreat her escort to leave her to proceed alone, when the sound of horses' feet galloping was heard behind them. Peregrine looked back.

"Ah!" he said. "Ride on as fast as you can towards the castle. You will be all right. I will keep them back. Go, I say."

And as some figures were seen at the end of the road, he pricked the pony with the point of his sword so effectually that it bolted forward, quite beyond Anne's power of checking it, and in a second or two its speed was quickened by shouts and shots behind. Anne felt, but scarcely understood at the moment, a sharp pang and thrill in her left arm, as the steed whirled her round the corner of the lane and full into the midst of a party of gentlemen on horseback coming down from the castle.

"Help! help!" she cried. "Down there."

Attacks by highwaymen were not uncommon experiences, though scarcely at eight o'clock in the morning, or so near a garrison, but the horsemen, having already heard the shots, galloped forward. Perhaps Anne could hardly have turned her pony, but it chose to follow the lead of its fellows, and in a few seconds they were in the midst of a scene of utter confusion. Peregrine was grappling with Burford trying to drag him from his horse. Both fell together, and as the auxiliaries came in sight there was another shot and two more men rode off headlong.

"Follow them!" said a commanding voice. "What have we here?"

The two struggling figures both lay still for a moment or two, but as some of the riders drew them apart Peregrine sat up, though blood was streaming down his breast and arm. "Sir," he said, "I am Peregrine Oakshott, on whose account young Archfield lies under sentence of death. If a magistrate will take my affidavit while I can make it, he will be safe."

Then Anne heard a voice exclaiming: "Oakshott! Nay—why, this is Mistress Woodford! How came she here?" and she knew Sir Edmund Nutley. Still it was Peregrine who answered—

"I captured her, in the hope of marrying her, but that cannot be—I have brought her back in all safety and honour."

"Sir! Sir, indeed he has been very good to me. Pray let him be looked to."

"Let him be carried to the castle," said the commander of the party, a tall man sunburnt to a fiery red. "Is the other alive?"

"Only stunned, my lord, I think and not much hurt," was the answer of an attendant officer; "but here is a poor blackamoor dead."

"Poor Hans! Best so perhaps," murmured Peregrine, as he was lifted. Then in a voice of alarm, "Look to the lady, she is hurt."

"It is nothing," cried she. "O Mr. Oakshott! that this should have happened!"

"My lord, this is the young gentlewoman I told you of, betrothed to poor young Archfield," said Sir Edmund Nutley.

Lord Cutts, for it was indeed William's favoured 'Salamander,' took off his plumed hat in salutation, and both gentlemen perceiving that she too was bleeding, she was solicitously invited to the castle, to be placed under the charge of the lieutenant-governor's wife. She found by this time that she was in a good deal of pain, and thankfully accepted the support Sir Edmund offered her, when he dismounted and walked beside her pony, while explanations passed between them. The weather had prevented any communication with the mainland, so that he was totally ignorant of her capture, and did not know what had become of Mr. Fellowes. He himself had been just starting with Lord Cutts, who was going to join the King for his next campaign, and they were to represent the case to the King. Anne told him in return what she dared to say, but she was becoming so faint and dazed that she was in great fear of not saying what she ought; and indeed she could hardly speak, when after passing under the great gateway, she was lifted off her horse, at the door of the dwelling-house, and helped upstairs to a bedroom, where the wife of the lieutenant-governor, Mrs. Dudley, was very tender over her with essences and strong waters, and a surgeon of the suite almost immediately came to her.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "you should be with Mr. Oakshott."

The surgeon explained that Mr. Oakshott would have nothing done for him till he had fully made and signed his deposition, in case the power should afterwards be wanting.

So Anne submitted to the dressing of her hurt, which was only a flesh wound, the bone being happily untouched. Both the surgeon and Mrs. Dudley urged her going to bed immediately, but she was unwilling to put herself out of reach; and indeed the dressing was scarcely finished before Sir Edmund Nutley knocked at the door to ask whether she could admit him.

"Lord Cutts is very desirous of speaking with you, if you are able," he said. "Here has this other fellow come round, declaring that Oakshott is the Pilpignon who was in the Barclay Plot, and besides, the prime leader of the Black Gang, of whom we have heard so much."

"The traitor!" cried Anne. "Poor Mr. Oakshott was resolved not to betray him! How is he—Mr. Oakshott, I mean?"

"The surgeon has him in his hands. We will send another from Portsmouth, but it looks like a bad case. He made his confession bravely, though evidently in terrible suffering, seeming to keep up by force of will till he had totally exonerated Archfield and signed the deposition, and then he fainted, so that I thought him dead, but I fear he has more to go through. Can you come to the hall, or shall I bring Lord Cutts to you? We must hasten in starting that we may bring the news to Winchester to-night."

Anne much preferred going to the hall, though she felt weak enough to be very glad to lean on Sir Edmund's arm.

Lord Cutts, William's high-spirited and daring officer, received her with the utmost courtesy and kindness, inquired after her hurt, and lamented having to trouble her, but said that though he would not detain her long, her testimony was important, and he begged to hear what had happened to her.

She gave the account of her capture and journey as shortly as she could.

"Whither was she taken?"

She paused. "I promised Mr. Oakshott for the sake of others—" she said.

"You need have no scruples on that score," said Lord Cutts. "Burford hopes to get off for the murder by turning King's evidence, and has told all."

"Yes," added Sir Edmund; "and poor Oakshott managed to say, 'Tell her she need keep nothing back. It is all up.'"

So Anne answered all the questions put to her, and they were the fewer both out of consideration for her condition, and because the governor wanted to take advantage of the tide to embark on the Medina.

In a very few hours the Archfields would have no more fears. Anne longed to go with Sir Edmund, but she was in no state for a ride, and could not be a drag. Sir Edmund said that either his wife would come to her at once and take her to Parkhurst, or else her uncle would be sure to come for her. She would be the guest of Major and Mrs. Dudley, who lived in the castle, the actual Lord Warden only visiting it from time to time; and though Major Dudley was a stern man, both were very kind to her.

As a Whig, Major Dudley knew the Oakshott family, and was willing to extend his hospitality even to the long-lost Peregrine. The Lord Warden, who was evidently very favourably impressed, saying that there was no need at present to treat him as a prisoner, but that every attention should be paid to him, as indeed he was evidently a dying man. Burford and another of his associates were to be carried off, handcuffed, with the escort to Winchester jail, but before the departure, the soldiers who had been sent to the Chine returned baffled; the place was entirely deserted, and Barclay had escaped.

Anne allowed herself to be put to bed, being indeed completely exhausted, and scarcely able to think of anything but the one blessed certainty that Charles was safe, and freed from all stigma. When, after the pain in her arm lulled enough to allow her to sleep, she had had a few hours' rest, she inquired for Peregrine, she heard that for many hours the surgeon had been trying to extract the balls, and that they considered that the second shot had made his case hopeless, as it was in the body. He was so much exhausted as to be almost unconscious; but the next morning, when Anne, against the persuasions of her hostess, had risen and been dressed, though still feeling weak and shaken, she received a message, begging her to do him the great kindness of visiting him.

Deadly pale, almost gray, as he looked, lying so propped with pillows as to relieve his shattered shoulder, his face had a strange look of peace, almost of relief, and he smiled at her as she entered. He held out the hand he could use, and his first word was of inquiry after her hurt.

"That is nothing—it will soon be well; I wish it were the same with you."

"Nay, I had rather cheat the hangman. I told those doctors yesterday that they were giving themselves and me a great deal of useless trouble. The villains, as I told you, could not believe we should not betray them, and meant to make an end of us all. It's best as it is. My poor faithful Hans would never have had another happy moment."

"But you must be better, Peregrine," for his voice, though low, was steady.

"There's no living with what I have here," he said, laying his hand on his side; "and—I dreamt of your mother last night." With the words there was a look of gladness exceeding.

"Ah! the Evil Angel is gone!"

"I want your prayers that he may not come back at the last." Then, as she clasped her hands, and her lips moved, he added, "There were some things I could only say to you. If they don't treat my body as that of an attainted traitor, let me lie at your mother's feet. Don't disturb the big Scot for me, but let me rest at last near her. Then tell Robin 'tis not out of want of regard for him that I have not bequeathed Pilpignon to him, but he could do no good with a French estate full of Papists; and there's a poor loyal fellow, living ruined at Paris—a Catholic too—with a wife and children half starved, to whom it will do more good."

"I meant to ask—Shall a priest be sent for? Surely Major Dudley would consent."

"I don't know. I have not loved such priests lately. I had rather die as near your mother as may be."

"Miss Woodford," said a voice at the door, and going to it, Anne found herself clasped in her uncle's arms. With very few words she led him to the bedside, and the first thing he said was "God bless you, Peregrine, for what you have done."

Again Peregrine's face lighted up, but fell again when he was told of the Portsmouth surgeon's arrival at the same time, saying with one of his strange looks that it was odd sort of mercy to try to cure a man for Jack Ketch, but that he should baffle them yet.

"Do not set your mind on that," said Dr. Woodford, "for Lord Cutts was so much pleased with you that he would do his utmost on your behalf."

"Much good that would do me," said poor Peregrine, setting his teeth as his tormentor came in.

Meantime, in Mrs. Dudley's parlour, while that good lady was assisting the surgeon at the dressing, Anne and her uncle exchanged information. Mr. Fellowes had arrived on foot at about noon, with his servant, having only been released after two hours by a traveller, and having been deprived both of money and horses, so that he could not proceed on his journey; besides that he had given the alarm about the abduction, and raised the hue and cry at the villages on his way. There had been great distress, riding and searching, and the knowledge had been kept from poor Charles Archfield in his prison. Mr. Fellowes had gone on to London as soon as possible, and Dr. Woodford had just returned from a fruitless attempt to trace his niece, when Sir Edmund Nutley and Lord Cutts appeared, with the joyful tidings, which, however, could be hardly understood.

Nothing, Dr. Woodford said, could be more thorough than the vindication of Charles Archfield. Peregrine had fully stated that the young man had merely interposed to prevent the pursuit of Anne Woodford, that it was he himself who had made the first attack, and that his opponent had been forced to fight in self-defence. Lord Cutts had not only shown his affidavit to Sir Philip, but had paid a visit to the Colonel himself in his prison, had complimented him highly on his services in the Imperial army, only regretting that they had not been on behalf of his own country, and had assured him of equal, if not superior rank, in the British army if he would join it on the liberation that he might reckon upon in the course of a very few days.

"How did you work on the unhappy young man to bring about this blessed change?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh, sir, I do not think it was myself. It was first the mercy of the Almighty, and then my blessed mother's holy memory working on him, revived by the sight of myself. I cannot describe to you how gentle, and courteous, and respectful he was to me all along, though I am sure those dreadful men mocked at him for it. Do you know whether his father has heard?"

"Robert Oakshott is gone in search of him. He had set off to beat up the country, good old man, to obtain signatures to the petition in favour of our prisoner, and Robert expected to find him with Mr. Chute at the Vine. It is much to that young man's credit, niece, he was so eager to see his brother that he longed to come with me himself; but he thought that the shock to his father would be so great that he ought to bear the tidings himself. And what do you think his good wife is about? Perhaps you did not know that Sedley Archfield brought away jail fever with him, and Mrs. Oakshott, feeling that she was the cause by her hasty action, has taken lodgings for him in Winchester, and is nursing him like a sister. No. You need not fear for your colonel, my dear maid. Sedley caught the infection because he neither was, nor wished to be, secluded from the rest of the prisoners, some of whom were, I fear, only too congenial society to him. But now tell me the story of your own deliverance, which seems to me nothing short of miraculous."

The visit of the Portsmouth surgeon only confirmed Peregrine's own impression that it was impossible that he should live, and he was only surviving by the strong vitality in his little, spare, wiry frame. Dr. Woodford, after hearing Anne's story, thought it well to ask him whether he would prefer the ministrations of a Roman Catholic priest; but whether justly or unjustly, Peregrine seemed to impute to that Church the failure to exorcise the malignant spirit which had led him to far worse aberrations than he had confessed to Anne. Though by no means deficient in knowledge or controversian theology, as Dr. Woodford soon found in conversation with him, his real convictions were all as to what personally affected him, and his strong Protestant ingrain education, however he might have disavowed it, no doubt had affected his point of view. He had admired and been strongly influenced by the sight of real devotion and holiness, though as his temptations and hatred of monotony recurred, he had more than once swung back again. Then, however, he had been revolted by the perception of the concessions to popular superstition and the morality of a wicked state of society. His real sense of any religion had been infused by Mrs. Woodford, and to her belongings, and the faith they involved, he was clinging in these last days.

Dr. Woodford could not but be glad that thus it was, not only on the penitent's own account, but on that of the father, who might have lost the comfort of finding him truly repentant in the shock of finding a Popish priest at his bedside. And indeed the contrition seemed to have gathered force in many a past fit of remorse, and now was deep but not unhopeful.

In the evening the father and brother arrived. The Major was now an old man, hale indeed, and with the beauty that a pure, self- restrained life often sheds on an aged man. He was much shaken, and when he came in, with his own white hair on his shoulders, and actually tears in his eyes, the look that passed between them was like nothing but the spirit of the parable so often, but never too often, repeated.

Peregrine, who never perhaps had spent a happy or fearless hour with him, and had dreaded his coming, felt probably for the first time the mysterious sense of home and peace given by the presence of those between whom there is the tie of blood. Not many words passed; he was hardly in a state for them, but from that time, he was never so happy as when his father and brother were beside him; and they seldom left him, the Major sitting day and night by his pillow attending to his wants, or saying words of prayer.

The old man had become much softened, by nothing more perhaps than watching the way in which his daughter-in-law dealt with the manifestations of the Oakshott imp nature in her eldest child.

"If I had understood," he said to Dr. Woodford. "If I had so treated that poor boy, never would he have been as he is now."

"You acted according to your conscience."

"Ah, sir! a man does not grow old without learning that the conscience may be blinded, above all by the spirit of opposition and party."

"I will not say there were no mistakes," said the Doctor; "and yet, sir, the high standard, sound principle, and strong faith he learnt from you and your example have prevailed to bear him through."

The Major answered with a groan, but added, "And yet, even now, stained as he tells me he is, and cut off in the flower of his age, I thank my God and his Saviour, and after Him, you and yours, that I am happier about him than I have been these eight and twenty years."

With no scruple, Major Oakshott threw his heart into the ministrations of Dr. Woodford, which Peregrine declared kept at bay the Evil Angel who more than once seemed to his consciousness to be striving to make him despair, while friend and father brought him back to the one hope.

From time to time Anne visited him for a short interval, always to his joy and gratitude. There was one visit at last which all knew would be the final one, when she shared in his first and last English Communion. As she was about to leave him, he held her hand, and signed to her to bend down to hear him better. "If you can, let good Father Seyton at Douai know that peace is come—the Evil One beaten, thanks to Him who giveth us the victory—and I thank them all there—and ask their prayers."

"I will, I will."

Some one at the door said, "May I come in?"

There was a sunburnt face, a head with long brown hair, a white coat.

"Archfield?" asked Peregrine. "Come, send me away with pardon."

"'Tis yours I need;" and as Charles knelt by the bed the two faces, one all health, the other gray and deathly, were close together. "You have given your life for mine, and given her. How shall I thank you?"

"Make her happy. She deserves it."

Charles clasped her hand with a look that was enough. Then with a strange smile, half sweetness, half the contortion of a mortal pang, the dying man said, "May she kiss me once?"

And when her lips had touched the cold damp brow—

"There—My fourth seven. At last! The change is come. Old— impish—evil—self left behind. At last! Thanks to Him who treads down Satan under our feet. Thanks! Take her away now."

Charles took her away, scarce knowing where they went,—out into the spring sunshine, on the slopes above the turf bowling-green, where the captive King had beguiled his weary hours. Only then would awe and emotion let them speak, though his arm was round her, her hand in his, and his first words were, as he looked at the scarf that still bore up her arm, "And this is what you have borne for me?"

"It is all but healed. Don't think of it."

"I shall all my life! Poor fellow, he might well bid me deserve you. I never can. 'Tis to you I owe all. I believe, indeed, the ambassador might have claimed me, but he is so tardy that probably I should have been hanged long before the proper form was ready; and it would have been to exile, and with a tainted name. You have won for me the clearing of name and honour—home, parents and child and all, besides your sweet self."

"And it was not me, but he whom we so despised and dreaded. Had I not been seized, I could only have implored for you."

"I know this, that if you had not been what you are, my boy would have borne a dishonoured name, and we should never have been together as now."

It was in truth their first meeting in freedom and security as lovers; but it could only be in a grave, quiet fashion, under the knowledge that he, to whom their re-union was chiefly owing, was breathing out the life he had sacrificed for them. Thus they only gently and in a low voice went over their past doings and feelings as they walked up and down together, till Dr. Woodford came in the sunset to tell them that the change so longed for had come in peace, and with a smile that told of release from the Evil Angel.

* * * * *

Peregrine's wish was fulfilled, and he was buried in Portchester Churchyard at Mrs. Woodford's feet. This time it was Mr. Horncastle, old as he was, who preached the funeral sermon, the In Memoriam of our forefathers; and by special desire of Major Oakshott took for his text, 'At evening time there shall be light.' He spoke, sometimes in a voice broken, as much by feeling as by age, of the childhood blighted by a cruel superstition, and perverted, as he freely made confession, by discipline without comprehension, because no confidence had been sought. Then ensued a tribute of earnest, generous justice to her who had done her best to undo the warp in the boy's nature, and whose blessed influence the young man had owned to the last, through all the temptations, errors, and frenzies of his life. Nor did the good man fail to make this a means of testifying to the entire neighbourhood, who had flocked to hear him, all that might be desirable to be known respecting the conflict at Portchester, actually reading Peregrine's affidavit, as indeed was due to Colonel Archfield, so as to prove that this was no mere pardon, though technically it had so to stand, but actual acquittal. Nor was the struggle with evil at the end forgotten, nor the surrender alike of love and of hatred, as well as of his own life, which had been the final conquest, the decisive passing from darkness to light.