"Wear this from me and for me," he said, speaking with great feeling. Tears were standing in Margaret's eyes, there was a big lump in my throat, and the Colonel was wasting precious Strasburg on the cobbles in the square. When the Prince had pinned it there, he doffed his bonnet, bent gracefully down, kissed her on the lips, and so left her. The standers-by now cheered in earnest, and the ancient dame fell on her knees in prayer. When she rose she plucked her robe around her, safeguarding her royal gift in her withered hands, and was for timidly stealing away.

"Madam," said I, "I think you are alone."

"Yes, sir," she whispered.

I offered her my arm, saying, "Allow me to escort you to your home?"

The sharp eyes swept over me from my belt upward, and then, without a word, she placed her arm in mine. I looked around to bow to Margaret before starting, but she had disappeared.

We soon reached her house or, rather, cottage, which was in a street behind the west side of the square. She was too tottery, too dazzled, too afflated to speak on the way thither, but, at the door, when with a bow I was intending to leave her, she bade me, in a madam-like way that cut off debate or refusal, to enter with her.

Plain to the casual eye, it was the home of decayed gentility. Here would be refined eating of a dinner of herbs, solaced by talk of prideful yesterdays. You saw it in the few things that still kept their grip on the past: on the wall an old, black painting of a knight in ruff and quilted doubtlet; a pounce-box and a hawking-glove on the chimney-piece, and above it an oval scutcheon, with a golden eagle naissant from a fesse vert. And hope was ever new-born here, but it was the hope centred in the Virgin-Mother, posed in ivory over a wooden prie-Dieu. Nor did I feel that I had shifted from my familiar moorings as I bowed my head when she knelt in prayer.

"Madam," said I, when, with a happy face, she rose and turned and thanked me, "it is in your power to do me a great kindness."

"I shall, then, most surely do it."

"I ask you to pray for the soul of John Dobson."

"He was your friend?" she said gently.

"My friend from boyhood, madam, and this morning I slew him."

There was silence for a space. Then she said, "I will pray daily for the soul of your friend, and for you that God will have mercy upon you and give you peace. We women, who can only pray, do not, I fear, realize how, for our men, the facts of life seem to make havoc of our creeds."

"You are right, madam," I said sombrely. "For me to-day there is no God in heaven."

"Yet the morrow cometh," she replied confidently. "It has come for me. My mind goes back to the time when the evil began that our glorious Prince is now uprooting. In eighty-eight, when I was a maid of some twenty Junes, not uncomely as I remember myself in my mirror, though not comparable with your sweet and splendid mistress, we, then the ancient Hardys of Hardywick, gave our all and lost our all for the cause. Yon scutcheon then hung in a noble hall. I have looked at it with pride and, God be thanked, without regret, during nearly sixty years of loneliness and poverty, but I shall die rich and friended in the possession of this."

She lifted the brooch to her lips and kissed it, and then, poor soul, broke into a fit of coughing that racked her thin frame. A comely serving-woman rushed in to her aid, and together we seated her near the fire and wrapped a shawl around her. She seemed as one who slept with half-shut eyes and dreamed.

"She's of'n tuk like this'n," whispered her woman. "As lively as a lass at a wedding for an hour maybe, and then dreamy and dead-like for hours at a stretch. She's seventy-six come June, but I dunna think she'll live to see it, and to be sure, God bless her, I shall be glad to see her broken heart at rest."

She put a smelling-bottle to her mistress's nose, and bathed the white lips with eau-de-Luce.

"I love her no end," she said simply.

It was time to go. I dropped on my knee and kissed the fair, thin, wrinkled hand. At the touch of my lips she spoke again:

"Good-bye, Harold, my beloved! The God of all good causes go with thee!"

She was back in the long-ago with her lover at her knee, sending him off to fight for the cause, and the ringless finger showed that he had never come back.

I stole out of the room with a mist in my eyes.

When I got on the corner by the Prince's lodging, the first thing that caught my eye was a calash drawn up in the middle of the square, with two very elegant ladies in it, and a sprig of a blackamoor in green breeches and yellow doublet at the horse's head. Margaret and Maclachlan were standing by, and a merry rattle of conversation was going on between them and the new-comers, though Margaret, her quick mind interested in the vivid scenes around, kept turning her head to sweep the square with her eyes.

I had always felt and, for the most part I trust, observed the difference between us, but it struck me now like a blow between the eyes. It was easy to see that Margaret, for all her grey domino, was the mistress of the gay, courtly group; easy, too, to catch the meaning of the eyes the stranger ladies made at one another as they noted with amusement the young Chief's infatuation. Well, he was there, and I was here, by right. I said so to myself very savagely, that there should be no mistake about it, but I must admit to a sour taste in my mouth as I pushed into a passing group of clansmen, and then dodged behind a clump of ammunition wagons, and so got into a side-alley unseen by those searching eyes.

I came to an ale-house where I managed very well, for all that it had its full share of clansmen stuffed into it, making a square meal of bread and cheese and cold bacon, washed down with excellent ale. I made a point of marking myself off as an Englishman by paying for my meal in the English fashion.

Sallying forth, and still avoiding the square, I roamed round the little town, distracting my mind by forcing an interest in what was going on. The Highlanders were happy, noisy, and full of confidence—not unjustly, for so far they had played ninepins with the Royal troops. Everywhere they were hard at it, sharpening dirks and claymores and furbishing muskets, and such of their talk as I could understand was all of battle imminent. In the churchyard I found a number of them practising shooting, with a grand old cross as a target. They had chipped it somewhat already. I cursed them roundly and then bargained it off at the price of a few shillings. They turned their attention, with hopeful grins, to the brass weathercock on the church tower, which I did not deem worth saving. Moreover, it was a better mark, and good shooting was to be encouraged.

I mooned around for an hour or so, very miserable. If my mind was idle a moment, I saw Jack's body lying in the dim-lit passage and the calash in the market-square.

Tired of watching the Highlanders, I suddenly struck out for the "Angel," intending to see how the horses were doing, a necessary task which I was to blame for neglecting so long. I was going at a great pace along by the shops on one side of the square and, in heedlessly passing a mercer's, had to skip aside to avoid a finely dressed lady coming out of the door, with the shopmaster, his nose nearly at his knees, bowing behind her. She was a stranger to me and, moreover, I had my eye on the spot where the calash had stood, so that, having clean avoided her, I was for striding on, but she said sharply, "What do you mean by such conduct, sir?"

I cannot remember any other occasion in my life when I have been so completely taken aback. The elegant lady who stood there, a quizzing smile on her face and a roguish twinkle in her eyes, was Margaret.

"I've waited and waited your honour's convenience till I could wait no longer," she said.

There was still the delightful mock anger in her voice, but the smile and twinkle changed their meaning, so to speak. At least I, who delighted to watch the varying shades of expression sweep over her exquisite face, thought so as I stood there, twizzling my cap in my hand, and feeling an utter fool.

"You cannot expect a perfect match in this light," she went on, plainly enjoying my discomfiture, "especially as I have had to carry the colour in my eye."

"No, madam," said I desperately, having to say something, but not having the faintest idea of what she was driving at.

"I disclaim all responsibility if it's a bungle. It will be your fault entirely. Your arm, sir!"

I offered her my arm, into which she slipped hers, jammed on my wretched hat, and together we made for the "Angel." Of course we must meet Maclachlan, to complete my misery I suppose, and he was keen on joining us, but Margaret disposed of him in a way that reminded me of Kate shooing a turkey off from her feeding chickens. Arrived at the "Angel," she led the way to her parlour overlooking the square, dragged me hurriedly to the window, and undid the packet. From it she took a patch of cloth and a hank of silk thread. These she first dabbed on my sleeve, and then flourished before my eyes.

"Quite a good match after all! Do they suit me, Oliver?"

She was dressed in a cinnamon-brown joseph, buttoned at the waist, and showing, above and below, an under-dress of supple woven material, creamy in colour and flowered in golden silk. A hat of a military cast, made of some short-napped fur and set off with a great white panache, half hid and half revealed her masses of yellow hair.

"You look perfect," I said emphatically.

"For my Prince," she replied softly. "Off with your coat, and let me show you what sort of a housewife I am."

I did as she bade me, and she doffed hat and joseph. She set me comfortably before the fire in an elbow-chair, and handed me a new pipe and a fresh paper of tobacco, and insisted on my smoking. Then, sitting almost at my feet in a squat rush-bottomed chair, with quaint bow legs and a back like a yard of ladder, she set to work on the holes Brocton's rapier had made in my coat.

I felt very cubbish as I sat feeding my soul on the picture she made as she bent over her stitchery. A rare hobbledehoy I was in my villainous coat, but what I looked like in my shirt-sleeves, good linen enough but home-made and with never a shred of cuff or ruff to them, was past imagining.

She was quite silent too, and though talk of any sort would have been distasteful to me then, for the picture was enough, I could not help remembering how she had rattled on with Maclachlan. Here was another cursed deficiency. My conversation was as country-like and poverty-stricken as my clothes. I had always ruled the roast at our market ordinaries, where I was looked upon as a bit of a fop and a miracle of learning, and even my farming was solemnly respected because I was so hard and ready a hitter. Here, in a parlour and with her, so beautiful that even her beautiful dress scarce attracted a passing glance, I was dull and ill at ease. The only thing I did, except to look at her, was to let my pipe out and light it again, time after time.

"The man in the shop told me," Margaret said, "that was the best tobacco that comes from the Americas."

"I should think it is," said I; "I've never smoked better."

"It gives you a lot of trouble," she answered, and stayed her stitching for a moment to look at me.

"Did you get some right Strasburg for the Colonel?" I asked.

"No. Is he running short?"

"Yes," said I.

"And no marvel, either. He puts his snuff-box under his pillow, and when I take him his chocolate of a morning, he takes a long, affectionate pinch, and then says, 'Good morrow, sweetheart!'"

I laughed, and then fell silent and wondered. While I had been loafing about the town, she had been attending to my small whims and needs.

And now, after a smart rap at the door, in flounced a sprightly, elegant lady, very gay and very certain of herself.

"What a charming, domestic picture!" she broke out. "I fear I intrude, Margaret dear, but I'm going to stay. The girl is bringing up the tea, and I'm positively dying for a cup and a sit-down. Of course this"—turning gaily round on me, standing there like a great gawk, volubly cursing my shirt-sleeves under my breath—"is the incomparable Oliver! Charmed to meet you, sir!"

I bowed, and Margaret said staidly, "Yes, my lady. This is Master Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. Oliver, I have the privilege of introducing you to the Lady Ogilvie."

I bent in the middle again and gabbled something. It was suitable to the occasion, I hope.

Lady Ogilvie eyed me up and down carefully, much as I should overlook a bullock I had a mind to buy.

"When Davie left me at Macclesfield I told him I'd be guid, and I will be guid, but I wish he hadn't asked me," she said. "Never mind! At Derby, when we meet again, my promise will be lapsed, and I shall flirt with you, sir, most furiously."

"Really, my lady," I replied, "my knowledge of the art of flirtation is merely rudimentary, but I always understood that it required two."

"Naturally," she retorted, "that's its great charm."

"I see my mistake now," said I, as if thoughtfully. Margaret sat with her needle poised for a stitch, and waited.

"You're learning already, you see! What is it?" said Lady Ogilvie.

"One and a bit would suffice when your ladyship was the one," I said boldly.

Margaret laughed and resumed the swift play of her needle.

"Indeed so, and I've struck sparks out of turnips in my time," she replied, with much complaisance. "There's a glisk of intelligence about ye now that was sair to seek when I came into the room. Men are like diamonds, you must know, Margaret darling, all the better for being cut and rubbed. I'll teach ye things, sir, at and after Derby, that is. Till then I'm to be verra guid."

The bringing in of the tea interrupted us. Over the cups, though Margaret stuck to her work, there was gay talk about the main business of the day —the supper and ball to come.

"The men will simply rave over you, dear," she said to Margaret. "There's only six of us, seven with you added, you see, for no town ladies wait on His Royal Highness nowadays, and I'm danced off my feet. Maclachlan will want you every time, and you'll be wise to have him as often as possible, for he dances like a fairy. Davie's none so bad, but Maclachlan is just grand. And the incomparable one," grimacing prettily at me, "will foot it trippingly by the look of him."

"I dance like a three-legged bear," said I, grim enough at having my defects brought home to me.

"Is it that you're telling me?" she replied. "Legs like yours and no music in them! Well, well, I'll take you in hand, that's flat. At Derby, of course."

"Now, Oliver, pray attend to the simpler matters that I deal with," said Margaret, cutting off the last needle of silk. "I've done the best I can for you. Come and appraise my work!"

She held the coat up by the collar, and I stepped forward and examined it.

"Marvellous!" said I. "It's as good as new."

Her ladyship screeched with laughter. "Oh, you courtier!" she said. "I never saw anything better done at the Tuileries. Look a foot higher, you rogue!"

Still even there the job was neatly and thoroughly done, and I thanked Margaret for it heartily. With my coat on, I brightened up, and indeed I had need to, for most of their talk was in and about a world of which I knew nothing. Thanks to Margaret's hints and half-lights, I did well enough.

There came a gentle rap at the door and then, without further ceremony, the Colonel bowed in a visitor. In the twilight at the door there was no seeing who the new-comer was, but as he stepped forward the full light revealed him. It was Prince Charles.

"Stir not, ladies, on your allegiance!" he said gaily. I rose, bowed him into my chair, and stood behind him.

"Oddsfish, as my great uncle used to say, I've come to save your life, Master Wheatman!"

"You need not trouble, sir," said I, "to save what is freely yours to throw away."

"Very well said, sir," he answered, "and I shall not forget it."

"Good lad, Oliver!" said the Colonel, dipping for his snuff-box.

"Still, I must prove my point!" said Charles, smiling merrily. "My Court consists of precisely seven ladies and an unlimited number of gentlemen, the latter, for the most part, fiery chiefs who slash off men's heads as if they were tops of thistles. Yet here are you, sir, keeping two of them all to yourself. And such a two! Lady Ogilvie, whose charms are without blemish—"

"Nay, sir," said I.

"May I pull his ears, Your Highness?" asked her ladyship tartly.

"You may," said Charles, "unless he proves his point. A Prince must be just, you know!"

"That's fair," said Margaret.

"Of course," retorted Lady Ogilvie. "He'll be right if he says I've an eye like an ox and a mouth like a frog."

"Save your ears, Master Wheatman!" said Charles, grinning at me. "What's the blemish?"

"Davie!" said I.

The Prince rocked with laughter, and her ladyship enjoyed it quite as fully.

"It's the smartest hit I've heard since I left Paris," said the Prince.

"Sir," said I, "be good enough to explain. Who is Davie?"

"Her ladyship's husband," he replied.

"Damme!" I ejaculated. "I thought he was only an ordinary Scotchman." Whereat everybody laughed.

"A most delightful interlude in a heavy day's work," said the Prince. "I am unfeignedly vexed, ladies, at having to rob you of so agreeable a cavalier, but I need Master Wheatman myself."

* * * * *

Half an hour later the Colonel stood with me at the town's end to give me my final instructions. I was on Sultan, with urgent letters in my pocket and important work on hand.

We took a pinch of snuff together very solemnly. Then he snapped his box, rubbed Sultan's velvet nose, shook my hand, said good-bye gruffly, and strode back townward. I cantered on into the open road and the night.



CHAPTER XVII

MY NEW HAT

Here was what I had dreamed of. Here was the dearest wish of my heart gratified. I was twenty-three, and I had three-and-twenty's darling equipment—a magnificent horse, a pair of unerring pistols, a fine rapier, a pocket full of guineas, the memory of a woman's grace and beauty, and a tough job in hand. The only material thing I really wanted was a new hat, for yester morning's milk and subsequent bashings and bruisings had ruined my old one. I had not bothered about it as long as it had bobbed alongside the grey woollen hood of Margaret's domino, but, cheek by jowl with her new hat, it had become an offence, and must be remedied.

The black shadow flitted in and out of my mind. I was clean and clear of all blood-guiltiness. I had struck for Margaret as he would have struck for Kate. Fate had been too strong for us, but whatever penance life should lay upon me should be paid to the uttermost farthing. I had this comfort that, could Jack ride up to me now, there would be no change in him. There would be for me the old hearty hand-grip and the boyish, affectionate smile, just as when he had run in to me on the town-hall steps.

I had been commissioned by the Prince to do three things: first, to deliver a dispatch to my Lord George Murray, wherever I should find him, which would probably be at Ashbourne, twelve miles ahead along a good road; second, to carry a letter to Sir James Blount at his house called Ellerton Grange, somewhere near Uttoxeter; third, to make a wide circuit west and south of Derby, picking up all the information I could as to the feeling of the populace and the disposition of the enemy's forces, and to report on this to the Prince in person at Derby at six o'clock the following night. On this third commission the Prince and Colonel Waynflete had laid great stress. An independent and trustworthy report was, it appeared, of the utmost importance.

Finally, as a dependent commission arising out of the first of the duties imposed on me by the Prince, I bore a letter to my Lord Ogilvie from her ladyship. She had summoned me willy-nilly to her room privily.

"Tell Davie yonder that I'm very well and very, very guid," she said, as she handed me the letter.

"With infinite pleasure, my lady," I replied.

"It will be true, ye ken," she asserted, as if there was a corner for dubiety in her own mind regarding the matter.

"Solemnly and obviously true, my lady," I agreed.

"Oh, thou incomparable Oliver, I wish you were a lass," she said, lifting her merry, girlish face level with mine, and putting a hand on each of my shoulders.

"Why, my lady?" I said, straightening at her touch.

"Then you could give Davie this as well!" which said, she pecked lightly at me with her sweet lips and kissed me.

It had flustered me greatly, but she only laughed ringingly and delightsomely as I backed out of the room. And when, door-knob in hand, I made my last bow, she had wagged her finger at me for emphasis and said, "Dinna forget to tell Davie I'm very guid."

Good she was, as beaten gold, and she kept her spirits up to this high pitch to the very end. You can read in Mr. Volunteer Ray's history of the whole affair of the 'Forty-five' how, after Culloden, she was taken prisoner while dressing for the ball which was to crown the expected victory.

I smiled a young man's smile as I thought of it. Experience was writing some items on the credit side of my new account with life. I had met a winsome lady of title and she had kissed me. Margaret, behind my back and to a third party, had called me an "incomparable" something. What, I knew not,—"servant" probably, but I cared not what.

Mile after mile passed without incident of any kind until, at a second's notice, I rode into a ring of muskets which closed round me out of vacancy as if by magic. It was the outermost picket of the army at Ashbourne. I gave the parole, "Henry and Newcastle," and demanded a guide to my Lord George Murray's quarters. There came a Gaelic grunt out of the gloom; men and muskets disappeared, with the exception of a single clansman, who seized Sultan's bridle and led me into the town.

The General was quartered at the "Swan with Two Necks," a very respectable hostelry, where my first care was to have a cloth thrown over Sultan, and to order for him a bucket of warm small beer with three or four handfuls of oatmeal stirred into it. While this was adoing, and I was awaiting a summons to his lordship's presence, I took a nip of brandy in the public room of the inn, and over it amused myself by reading a crude fly-sheet nailed on the wall, offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of one Samuel Nixon, commonly called 'Swift Nicks,' a notorious highwayman, six feet high, of very genteel appearance, well-spoken, but a cruel, bloody ruffian with it all. The Highlander interrupted my reading by beckoning me to follow him. Upstairs we went, and he ushered me into a room where were two gentlemen seated on opposite sides of a table on which were a small map and two large glasses containing a yellowish liquid.

The younger of them was of much the same general appearance as Maclachlan, though by the look of him a simpler and sweeter man. The other, a middle-aged, domineering man with a powerful face, looked angrily at me as I handed him my dispatch.

He read it impatiently, threw it down beside the map, and said, "They're coming on to-night, Davie." Then, curtly to me, "Your name, sir?"

"Wheatman of the Hanyards."

"Hanyards? Humph! Are you an Irishman?"

"No, my lord. Not even a Scotchman!"

He glared at me, but his companion laughed, and said, "That's one under your short ribs, Geordie!"

"Damn the Irish!" cried Murray. "They're the ruination of the whole business, Davie, and ye know it."

"Of course they are," he replied, "but that's no reason for telling it to an English loon who thinks less of a Scotchman than he does of a pickelt herring."

"That may be, my lord," said I to him, "but I think so well of one Scottish lady that I'm proud to be her humble courier." And I handed him his letter.

"Man! man!" he said ecstatically, as he ripped it open, "ye're welcome as sunshine in December. It's from Ishbel. God bless her pretty face!"

He read the letter eagerly and then thrust it into his bosom.

"I am, further," I went on, "entrusted with a message from her ladyship."

"God bless her! Out with it, man, out with it!"

"I was to inform you that she was very, very good," said I, soberly as a judge passing sentence.

"What do you think of that, Geordie Murray? Very, very guid! Eh, man, isn't she a monkey? God bless her!"

"I'll send the whole lot of 'em packing off back to Edinburgh," said Murray. "Women are a nuisance on a campaign. Your Ishbel, be hanged to her, wants a carriage all her own and another for her fineries."

"Ye ken a lot about soldiering, Geordie," retorted Ogilvie, "no man more, but ye ken less about soldiers than a lad of ten. At Gladsmuir I said to MacIntosh, 'Let's get the damn thing over, Sandy, and be back to breakfast wi' the leddies!' And we did."

"You did so," acknowledged Murray. "Now, Davie, take our courier out and feed him. I thank you, sir! You have ridden speedily. Your pace is faster than your tongue."

"My lord," said I, "although I am doing his Royal Highness such poor service as lies in me, I am not yet duly acting under his commission and authority."

"What of it?" he asked.

"Hence I am not an officer under your command, my lord!"

"Excellent logic! And the therefore, my beef-eating friend, is....?"

"That I would as lief knock your head off as look at you!"

"When you are an officer," cried he, "by gad, sir, I'll teach ye the manners of an officer. Till then, my birkie," rising and holding out his hand, "guid luck to ye!"

We shook hands heartily and so parted.

"He's a grand man is Geordie Murray," said Ogilvie, as he led me to another room across the landing. "Just a wee bit birsy, maybe, but these damned Irish have got his kail through the reek. They're o'ermuch on his spirits of late."

All his other talk was of his lady, though he looked well enough after me, and I made a good meal of the better half of a cold chicken, a cottage loaf, and a tankard of poor ale. Ashbourne is noted, say the wise in such matters, for the best malt and the poorest ale in England.

I am overmuch English, as is often the case with us who live in the very heart of England. The famous Mr. Johnson is a shire-fellow of mine, and very proud I am of it, and reckon it among the greatest events of my life that he has bullyragged me soundly for differing from him, and being right, about a line of Virgil he had misquoted in my hearing. Like Mr. Johnson, I love men and loathe dancing-masters, and these Scotsmen were men indeed, my Lord Ogilvie, as I came to know later, one of the choicest. He was a spare-built man, in years thirty or thereabouts, with a face all lines and angles, and dotted with pock-marks. For a lord, his purse was very bare of guineas, and nature had made up for it by giving him a belly full of pride. For him, the Highland line had been the boundary of the known world, so that his mind was a chequer-work of curious ignorance and knowledge.

From the first I liked him for his joy in his dainty lady. She was the daughter of a cadet of a distant branch of the famous Bobbing John's family, and had spent nearly all her life in France till, on a chance visit to Scotland, she had been snapped up by Ogilvie. They were a strangely matched pair, she from the gay salons of Paris, he from the misty mountains of the north; but mutual love had assorted them to admiration, for the heart of each was sound as a bell.

Between bites I answered questions as to how she had looked, what she'd said, done, and so forth.

"Was she wearing her brown riding-coat with the pretty wee shoulder capes?" he asked.

"No," said I, becoming more interested.

"Or her creamy dress with the gold flowers all over it?"

"No," said I again, smiling at my discoveries.

"She's keeping 'em for London," he explained. "Gosh, man! She will look divine in 'em."

"She won't," said I, clipping away at the sweet bits still hanging on the carcass of my chicken.

"It'll take your logic all its time to keep six inches o' cauld steel out of your brisket," he said very fiercely.

"Never had better chicken in my life," said I, watching him out of one eye—quite enough for any Scotsman.

"Damn the chicken!" he roared. "Why won't she?"

"Because she's given 'em away," I explained in my airiest tones.

"The blue blazes of hell!" gasped his lordship. "Given 'em away, and they cost me twenty pounds English! Given 'em away!" he whined, utterly lost for words, "given 'em away! The callack's clean dawpit. Twenty pounds good English money!"

"Nothing like enough!" said I. "You'll be sorry it wasn't two hundred."

Two hundred pounds English was, however, something too stupendous for his mind to grasp, and the gibe had no effect on him. While I finished my ale he chuntered away in his own Gaelic.

"I'll mak' it up in London," he said at length, "but it'll be the deil's own job."

"It will indeed," I agreed, and drained my tankard dry.

A look at my watch told me it was time to set about my second commission. Sultan was brought from the stable, fit as a fiddle and eager to be going. I examined my pistols, ran the tuck up and down in its scabbard, leaped on Sultan, and asked for the Uttoxeter road.

My Lord Ogilvie parted from me on the fairest terms, bringing me with his own hands a great stirrup-cup, or "dock-an-torus," as he called it.

"Man," said he, "I'm right glad to be acquent wi' ye. I was thinking I'd gang all the way to London without coming across a man worth fighting, much less friending, but I was in the wrang of it. Here's to ye!"

"My lord," said I, "you match your sweet lady. Both of you have been wondrous kind to a hard-hit man."

We gripped hands, saluted, and parted.

It was all but pitch-dark, and the moon was not due to rise for more than an hour, but the sky was clear and the stars were out in masses for company and guidance. Ellerton Grange was near Uttoxeter, and Uttoxeter was a sizeable townlet just inside my own county, and some fifteen miles from Ashbourne. The road was the usual cross-road, all of it bad and most of it vile. I left the going to Sultan, who did the best he could, like the gallant and experienced creature he was. There was nothing for me to do except to keep a good look out and the north star just behind my right hand.

My mind was busy going over all the memories of the last three days. I tried hard, but in vain, to skip the black part, the thought of which made me flinch as if the branding-iron was white-hot against my cheek. Mentally I saw double—Jack's red blood with one eye and Margaret's amber hair with the other. As I rode I fought memory with memory, mingling gall and honey, now mumbling broken prayers and now singing snatches of country love-songs, and so got on as best I could. In the journey of life a man pays for what he calls for. Life had given me what I wanted, and the price thereof had been death.

Not only was the night dark but the countryside was empty. I rode past dim outlines of houses and through vague, dreamlike villages without seeing a soul or hearing a sound. Once I saw a light ahead by the roadside, but out it went as the rattle of Sultan's hoofs told of my coming. It was no wonder, for these poor folk were living between two armies and wanted neither, friend nor foe. For them it was only a choice between the upper and the nether millstone. At last I came to a wayside ale-house where lights were showing. I rode up, dismounted, ran the reins over the catch of the shutter, and went in.

In the low, untidy room I found a man and a woman, bent over a miserable fire, with their backs to a table whereon were set out mug and platter and other things useful for a meal. They rose to greet me, and their faces told me that they were expecting some one and supposed that I was he. When they saw their mistake, the woman stepped smartly in front of the man and said, "Lord, sir, how you frighted us! What can I get for your worship?"

"A mug of good mulled ale," said I. "Give me good mulled ale and a little information, and you shall have a crown for your pains."

I spoke pleasantly, having no need, as a mere passer-by, to do otherwise, but if I had been obliged to have dealings with them, I should have begun by distrusting them outright. The man was of the common sort of ale-house keeper, ugly, beery, and stupid, and old enough to be the father of his wife, as I call her on account of the wedding ring on her finger. She was, for the place and post, a complete surprise, being a jaunty, townish, garish woman, dressed in decayed finery. He would have slit my throat for a groat, she for a grudge. They looked that sort.

The woman went into another room, beyond the little bar where the drinkables were stored, to get the spices for the mulling, and the man shuffled grumpily after her. Hanging on the wall behind the bar was a fly-sheet, the very same I had read in the "Swan with Two Necks" at Ashbourne.

"Swift Nicks" was a much-wanted gentleman, and evidently a tobie-man with a wide range of activities. Out of mere vacancy of mind I walked near to read the fly-sheet again, and, by a curious chance, among the drone of words from the other room, the only one my quick ear could pick out distinctly was "Nicks."

This made me wary, and when the woman came out and busied herself at the fire, and called me to see what a prime mull she was brewing, I stood over her, to all intent watching the process but ready for anything. And not without need, for her dirty husband crept softly out after her, thinking to catch me unawares. I flashed at him like a jack at a minnow, wrenched a wretched old blunderbuss out of his hands, and with the butt of it knocked him sprawling back into the other room.

The prime muller merely cackled with false laughter and went on with her mulling. I fetched him in by the scruff of the neck, stood him up against the bar, and said, "I think you're in for the soundest thrashing you've ever had in your life."

"Sarves yer right, sawney," said the woman. "Plase let him off, sir. He thought yow was Swift Nicks."

"Yow bitch!" he growled. "Yow set me on!"

"Yow'm a ligger!" she retorted. "I towd yow the gen'leman was nowt like Swift Nicks."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"By the print," was the quick reply. "It tells yow all about him."

I fetched the fly-sheet down, held it out to her, and said sharply, "Read it to me!"

I thought this would clean beat her, but she said, simply enough, "I canna rade it mysen, but I've heard it read lots o' times."

"Have you heard it read?" I asked the man.

"Lots o' times," he echoed surlily, and I saw the woman's fingers twitch as if she longed to furrow his ugly face with her nails.

"Then why didn't you know?"

I spoke to him but turned sharp on the woman, and saw hell in her face. She was almost too quick for me, and answered fawningly, "The thought o' the money made a fool on 'im, sir. Plase let him off. I've mulled th' ale prime for her honour."

This was true and I enjoyed it greatly. I sent the man out to rub Sultan down while she prepared for him under my eyes a warm drench of ale and meal.

"Be y'r honour going far?" she asked.

"That depends how far it is to Ellerton Grange. Do you know it?"

"Oh aye, y'r honour. Sir James Blount lives there. It's three miles out'n Tutcheter on the Burton road."

"Is it a straight road to Uttoxeter?"

"Half a mile on yow'll come to a fork. Tek the road on the right and just ride after y'r nose. Fetch the drench, Bob!"

She carried it off well, but I felt there was a deep strain of roguery in her. Still, willing to part on a lighter note, I gave her the crown, saying, "You deserve a better trade."

"It's none so bad," she said.

"And a better husband."

"Oddones! D'ye think...."

She stopped abruptly, plainly caught out for the first time.

A minute later I was off again. At the fork Sultan made for the left, and I had to pull him sharply to the right. The road got steadily worse, but Orion was clear in view ahead of me, dropping down behind Uttoxeter, and I pushed on. If a man is to turn back because of a bad road, he'll not travel far in the Shires. Soon, however, there was no road at all, and I was plump in open country. Sultan stopped and sniffed, and then turned his head round as if to tell me, what I already felt was the truth, that I had been an ass for not leaving it to him.

"So ho! Sultan!" said I, patting his warm neck. "I deserve all you say, my beauty! I've put you in for a nice job."

The right road must lie somewhere to my left. I turned him that way and he walked on suspicious and sniffing. Fortunately the moon had risen, and the Jezebel's lie would only cost me a trifling delay. She would have lied with a purpose, and I puzzled myself in trying to reason it out. In a few minutes we came to the side of a spinney with a low wall of rough stones cutting it off from the field. I was intently looking ahead, when on a sudden Sultan swerved so powerfully that I rocked in the saddle. I wouldn't have touched him with the spur, short of utter necessity, for a fistful of guineas, and I soothed him, and then turned to look for what had upset him.

To be candid I swerved myself. Most of us in these days are pleased to laugh at superstitions, provided we are in good company round a roaring fire. I was here alone in a lonely field, at nine of the clock on a winter night, and there, flittering and gliding through the spinney was a something in white. Virgil believed in ghosts, and so did Joe Braggs, and I, by oft reading the one and listening to the other, had preserved an open mind. Apparently Sultan had his doubts, for he shivered and whinnied.

I pulled his head round away from the ghost, drew out a pistol, and watched the unchancy thing's movements. It was evidently meant for me, for it made a slight turn and came straight towards me. Then my man's logic, as Margaret twittingly called it, came to my aid. Gloomy as it was, I saw the outlines of some steps by which the low wall could be crossed, and ghosts, both my authorities being in agreement on this, were independent of such purely human contrivances. So, waiting till the ghost was climbing down on my side, I said sternly, "Stop, or I fire!" Whereon it heaved a great sob and tumbled full length to the ground.

I jumped down, slipped the reins over Sultan's head, and pulled him up to the spot. The ghost was a well-grown girl, dressed in nothing but a white night-gown, for I could see her bare feet beyond the hem of it.

"Don't be afraid, dear," said I soothingly, for she was dumb and half dead with fright. "What can I do for you? Say it, and it's done. Come now, be brave!"

She sat up, leaning on her right hand, and turned her pallid, quivering face up to mine.

"Robbers, sir!" she gasped. "They're murdering father and mother. For God's sake, sir, go and stop them."

"Of course," I replied cheerfully, slipping off my jacket. "Come on, my brave lass!"

I helped the lass to her feet, put her into my jacket, jumped into the saddle, and lifted her astride behind me.

"Clip me tight! Which way?"

"Round the spinney first, sir!"

Off we went, and this time I touched Sultan with the spur and he flew along. Round the spinney; slantways across a field; up and over a gate, the girl clinging to me like a leech; down a lane; up and over another gate; and then the girl's shaking right arm was thrust over my shoulder.

"There's th' ouse! 0', God, if we anna in time!"

"How many are there?"

"Two, sir."

I pulled Sultan up at the farmyard gate, helped her down, and jumped after her. Hitching the horse, we started across the yard.

Luckily the low-down moon was on the far side of the house, and we could run softly up in the pitch dark. As I write I feel that brave girl's hard grip of my hand as we raced on. At a half-open door we halted; she loosed hold of me, and I tiptoed on alone. From within I heard the crash of one pot and then another on the brick floor of the kitchen, as the villain, searching for hidden money, smashed them to the ground. Bitten to the vitals by his want of success, he yelled, "I'll burn the sow's eye out! That'll open her mouth."

With wrath flaming in my heart I stepped into the doorway leading to the kitchen. My eyes lit on a poor woman bound hard and fast in a chair, and a masked beast, his big white teeth showing through lips thrust wide apart in a grin of hellish rage, approaching a red-hot poker towards her face. I shot him, and he tumbled into a squirming heap. The other villain raced for dear life through the open front door. My second bullet got him on the very threshold, for he yelped and sprang into the air like a stricken buck, but he held on. I e'en let him go, not daring to leave the unkilled scoundrel on the floor, for he had a regular battery of pistols in his belt. The girl was already untying her mother, and her father, bound and gagged in his chair in the ingle-nook, could bide a while. So I plucked the pistols out, there were six of them, and rattled them down on the table. The man was bleeding like a stuck pig, and his purpling face and heaving throat showed that he was choking. As I destined him for the gallows, I picked him up, flung him face down on the table, and thumped him violently in the back, whereupon he coughed up a tooth. My bullet had stripped out all his grinning front teeth clean and clear, just as our Kate's dainty thumb strips the row of peas out of a peascod. Once the tooth was up he was not greatly hurt, and, holding one of his own pistols to his head, I bade him unstrap the farmer. As soon as the latter was free, I ordered him to strap the robber to a kitchen chair, which he did very thoroughly. The instant this job was done, he leaped to fondle and hearten his wife. She kissed him back and, without a word, feebly pointed to me, whereupon he turned and thanked me.

"Thank your brave daughter," said I, and then he jumped at her and hugged her in his big arms, blubbing out, "My bonny, bonny Nance!"

At my wish he lit a lantern, and we went out and stabled Sultan. We went back through the kitchen to make a search of the front of the house. A pretty sight awaited me within doors. The good wife was sipping at a cup of parsnip wine, and the girl was again wearing nothing but her nightdress. With crimson face and downcast eyes, she stood there holding my coat out.

"Hallo, ghostie!" said I, smiling at her. "You want to frighten me again, do you?"

Too confused to say a word, she lackeyed me into my coat and then ran upstairs. To cut short her mother's tearful thanks, I led the way to the door, and we started our examination.

Some two yards from the door-sill the feeble rays of the lantern were reflected from something on the ground. To my great satisfaction it was fair booty to me, nothing less than my closest need, a rare good hat made of the finest beaver. The band was buckled with gold, and there was a taking and surely very fashionable cock to the brim. I sent my old one spinning into the blackness and clapped my new treasure on my head. Now I could walk side by side with Margaret and not be ashamed, at any rate not of my hat.

"The rogue jerked it off when I winged him," said I.

"Gom! He did jump, that's sartin," said the farmer, whose name, I ought to say, I had learned was Job Lousely.

It was quite a step down to the road, and we made no further discovery till we got to the gate. Here it was his turn to be lucky, for there was an excellent nag hitched to a rail. It was on Job's ground and he gave it a home in his stable.

"It'll mak up for the crockery," he said, with great delight.

Back in the kitchen we found Nance fully dressed and busy laying a meal on the table. She was so taken aback when I declared I was not hungry and couldn't stay if I had been, that, to save her distress, I had a bite and a sup of ale, while Job fetched Sultan round to the door. She was a sweet, comely maiden, and it did my heart good to see her put a horn of ale to the bleeding lips of the robber. He drank ravenously, like a dog after a hard run. He was where he deserved to be, with his feet in the short, straight path to the gallows, and I pitied him not. Nance did, and it's good for the world that women are made that way.

"How far is it to Ellerton Grange?" I asked Job, who came in to tell me Sultan was ready.

"A matter of six miles, sir. Three from here to Tutcheter, and three more on to the Grange."

"How funny, father," interposed Nance. "This is the second time tonight a gentleman has asked the road to Ellerton Grange."

It would hardly have struck Job as funny if it had been the twenty-second, but Nance was quick and shrewd.

"Ho! Ho!" said I. "Tell me about it, little woman!"

"I was wishing my Jim good night at the gate, just before father came home, when a man riding by pulled up and asked the road to Ellerton Grange."

"Did you make him out, Nance?" I asked.

"Not much of him, sir, but the moon shone on his face when he took his hat off to wipe his forehead, and it looked for all the world like an addled duck-egg."

"Well put, Nance," said I, laughing. "First time I saw that face I thought it was like a bladder of lard."

"You know him, sir?"

"I think I do, Nance, and I must be after him."

Out of the robber's string of pistols I selected a pair for myself. They were lawful prize, and equal in quality to those Master Freake had given me, so that the rascal had probably stolen them. I saw that all the others were loaded, and advised Job to watch him all night and to lift him, chair and all, into a cart the next morning and drive him off to the nearest Justice.

Job and his wife renewed their thanks when I was in the saddle. Nance insisted on coming to open the gate, and on the way there she gave me full and careful directions as to the way to Tutcheter and thence to the Grange.

She swung the gate open and let me through. Then she came to my sword side and held up her face to be kissed.

"Good-bye, ghostie!"

"Good-bye, sir! God bless you!"

Kissing and blessing were reward enough for my service, and I rode on lighter at heart for them.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE DOUBLE SIX

The time had not been wasted. I had had a stirring experience and got a hint of dangers and uncertainties ahead. Moreover, and on this I plumed myself most, I had acquired a handsome hat. It was a trifle roomy, but a wisp of paper tucked within the inside rim would remedy that defect. The moon was getting higher and brighter, and I pulled my new treasure off again and again to admire it. It had belonged to a rascal with an excellent taste in hats. I was very content with it, and looked forward eagerly to catching the glint in Margaret's eyes when she saw it. After all it behoved me to look well in her presence, and I regretted that the rogue had not shed his coat and breeches as well. No doubt they were equally modish and becoming, and would have set me up finely, though all the tailors in London town couldn't make me a match for Maclachlan. A man has to be born to fine clothes, like a bird to fine feathers, before he looks well in them. The thought made me rueful. I jammed my hat on fiercely, and slapped Sultan into a longer stride.

The man ahead of me was, out of question, the Government spy, Weir. It was now a full day and more since I had crammed my Virgil into his maw, and he had had time to get into these parts. Thirty years before there had been much feeling for the honest party hereabouts, and among the gentry along the border of the shires there would be some in whose hearts the old flame still flickered. Indeed, my own errand proved so much, and a noser-out like Weir would be well employed in rooting up fragments of gossip over the bottle and memories of beery confidences at market ordinaries—sunken straws which showed the back-washes of opinion beneath the placid surface flow of our rural life. I dug my fingers into my thigh and imagined I was wringing the rascal's greasy neck, and the feeling did me good.

I began to ride past scattered houses and then between rows of cottages. Sultan was tiring a little, but, being an experienced horse, pricked up at the sight and cantered down the dead main street of the town. The shadows of the houses on my left ended in an irregular line on the cobbled causeway on my right. Near the town end I came on an exception to the black-and-white stillness of the houses—an inn on my right ablaze with light and full of noise. A merry liquorish company it held, some quarrelling, some rowdily disputatious, and a few stentors trying to drown the rest by roaring a tipsy catch. I pulled Sultan towards the verge of the shadows to see if I could make anything out, and he, supposing, no doubt, that I was guiding him towards bait and stable, made a half-turn towards the portico that ran on pillars along the face of the inn. I checked him at once, but, in that trice of time, a man leaped from behind a pillar, laid one hand on the pommel of my saddle, and raised the other in warning. He was a little man, and in his eagerness he stood on tiptoe and whispered, "Ride on, Master Wheatman! One second may cost you dear!"

Even as he spoke, some movement within startled him, and he leaped back into the shadow before I could question him.

I urged Sultan onward, and once out of footfall of the inn, pricked him into a gallop. Out of the town he fled, past the end of the Stafford road, along which two hours of Sultan's best would bring me to the Hanyards and mother and Kate, and I kept him at it for a full two miles before I gave him a breather and settled down to think out what it meant.

I did not know the man from Adam, but he had me and my name quite pat. He was obviously a friend, for his bearing and his warning alike bespoke his goodwill towards me. He must be waiting there for some purpose, and he must have seen me somewhere and learned enough about me to know from what source danger to me was certain to come. In this case it was plain that the danger was within the inn. The carousers might be, nay, almost certainly were, soldiers, though there had been none in the town when Job Lousely had left it less than two hours ago. The news of my escapade might well have leaked into Stafford by now; I was very well known in the town, and the stranger might be some Stafford chap benighted at Uttoxeter after his business at the market. As I say, I did not know the man, but he might very well know me; he was, perhaps, some old schoolfellow, grown out of recollection by moonlight, and still willing to serve an old butty. This seemed the likeliest solution of the difficulty, and it made me very sad. The news about Jack would be whispered round by now, and I could never walk the old streets again without seeing nods and shudders everywhere. See him? That's him! Killed his best friend! Wheatman of the Hanyards! Never held his head up since! And hadn't ought to! The chatter of the townsfolk crept into my ears between the hoof-beats, and made me sick and dizzy.

It would not have happened but for the bladder-faced scoundrel ahead of me, now creeping around like a loathsome insect to sting a man of ancient name and fame, and I was eager to be at him again. Sultan, without more urging, had made the furlongs fly in gallant style, and it was time to be looking out for my landmarks. Nance had made me letter-perfect in them. Here, on the right, was the woodward's cottage where the road began to run downhill into a bottom dark with ancient elms: there, on my left, in an open space among the boles, the moon showed up a worn, grey column which marked the spot where, in the wild days of the Roses, a Parker Putwell had slain a Blount in unfair fight for a light of love not worth the blood of a rabbit. Nance had very earnestly told me the old, sad tale, to impress the spot on my mind, for the long lane up to Ellerton Grange began in the shadows just beyond the monument, and wound away up the slope to the right. The road carried us up where the moon-light fell on meadows that were almost lawns, and across them to a maze of buildings. A minute later, I leaped off Sultan and hammered away at the studded oaken door of Ellerton Grange.

No man came to my summons, and I sent a second volley of rat-tats echoing through the house before I heard a shuffling of feet within and a drawing of big bolts. The door crept open for a foot or so, and an old man's head, with a lantern trembling over it, appeared in the gap.

"Who's there?" he quavered.

"Wheatman of the Hanyards," I answered; "but my name is nothing to the purpose and my business is. I must see Sir James Blount."

"He's abed," said he, "hours ago!"

"Then fetch him out!"

The old man pushed his lantern close to my face and straightened himself to take a fair look at me. He had sunken cheeks and toothless gums, and hairless eyes with raw, red lids, and out of all question was some ancient, rusty serving-man, tottery and slow, but quick-minded enough, and of a dog-like faithfulness to the hand that fed him.

"Young and masterly," he muttered, "and o'er young to be so o'er masterly. But I mind the day when I would 'a' raddled his bones with my quarterstaff."

"I won't naysay it, grandad," I answered, seeking to humour him. "In your time you've been a two-inch taller lad than I am. Not so big o' the chest, though, grandad."

"Who're you grandadding? I was big enough o' the chest when I could neck meat and drink enough to fill me out. Now!"

As he spoke he gripped a handful of the waistcoat that hung loosely about him, and added, "Once it was a fair fit, my master. It's cold and late for my old bones to be creaking about, but Trusty's the dog for the tail-end of the hunt, and a Blount's a Blount and mun be served."

"Fetch him out!" I repeated. "I've ridden hard and far to serve him."

The ancient took another look at me and said to himself in a loud whisper, after the manner of old and favoured serving-men, "A farmering body all but his hat, and none o' your ride-by-nights."

"Fetch him out!" said I again, not for want of fresh words to say to the candid old dodderer but to keep him to the point.

"Oh-aye," said he, and shuffled off.

He left me fuming, for his last mutteration, as he shook his lantern to stir the flame up a bit, was, "Knows a true man when he sees one. More used to a carving-knife than a sword, I'll be bound. What did he say? Wheatman o' sommat! Reg'lar farmering name!"

I kicked the door wide open and watched the lantern bobbing along the hall. The light made pale shimmerings on complete suits of mail hanging so life-like on the high, bare, stone walls, that it seemed for all the world as if the knights had been crucified there and, little by little, age after age, had dropped to dust, leaving their warrior panoplies behind —empty shells on the shore of time from which the life had dripped and rotted. The old man toiled up the grand staircase at the far end of the hall and turned to the right along a gallery. The friendly light disappeared, leaving me darkling and alone. Sultan sniffed his way to the door, pushed in his head and neck, and rubbed his nose against my breast in all friendliness. I flung my arms round his neck and caressed him, and in those anxious minutes in the doorway of Ellerton Grange he was comrade and sweetheart to me, and comforted my spirit greatly.

Footsteps and a voice within made me turn my head. A man came at a run down the stairs and along the hall. After him the old serving-man hastened, lantern in hand, as best he could.

"Sir James Blount?" said I.

"The same," said he curtly and confusedly.

"I bring you a letter from a very exalted person, Sir James," I explained.

He took it from me much as he would have taken a bowl of poison. "The light! The light! You slow old fool! The light!" he said, jerking the words out as if his soul was in distress, and the ancient, barely half-way down the hall, quickened his poor pace up to his master. He, tearing the lantern out of the feeble hands, and rattling it down on a table, ripped open the letter and devoured its contents.

The light of the lantern revealed the face of a man still young, but at least a half-score years my elder. He had a thin-lipped, sensitive mouth, a great arched nose, and quick, eager eyes. His mind was running like a mill-race, and his fine face twitched and wreathed and wrinkled under the stress of the flow. Another thing plain enough was that the old man had lied when he said his master was abed, for he was fully and carefully dressed and his wig had not in it a single displaced or unravelled curl. This was no half-awakened dreamer, but a man with the issues of his life at stake.

He crushed the letter in his hand and paced up and down the hall, muttering to himself. I turned and rubbed Sultan's nose to keep him quiet and happy. The old servant took charge of the lantern again, and followed his master up and down with his eyes.

"A year ago, yes! A year ago, yes!" I heard Sir James say. He quickened his steps and the words came in jerks, mere nouns with verbs too big with meaning for him to utter them. "A word! A dream! A dead faith! Yes, father! The devil! Sweetheart!"

There is a great line in the Aeneid which I had tried in vain a hundred times to translate. Three days agone I would have tilted at it once more with all the untutored zeal of a verbalist. I should never need to try again. There are some lines in the Master that life alone can translate. Sunt lachrymae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

After a turn or two in silence, Sir James broke off his pacing and came to me.

"Sir," he said, "you will know enough to excuse my inattention to a guest. I must make it up if I can. Give me the lantern and wait for us here, Inskip. Come with me, sir, and stable your horse. Gad so, sir," holding up the lantern, "you ride the noblest animal I have ever seen. Woa, ho, my beauty! All my men are abed, so we must do it ourselves, but, by Heaven, it will be a pleasure, Master—what may I call you, sir?"

"Just the plain name of my fathers—Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards."

"A good strong name, sir, though my fathers liked it not."

"And you, Sir James?"

"Frankly, it is a name which to me has ceased to be a symbol. A good fellow can call himself 'Oliver' without setting my teeth on edge. I had a grand foxhound once, and called him 'Noll,' just because he was grand. My dear old father consulted a London doctor as to the state of my mind. It made him anxious, you see! The great man said, gruffly enough, that I was as sane as a jackdaw. Thereupon my dear dad, one of the best men that ever lived, had the dog shot!"

He laughed, reminiscently rather than merrily, and was to my mind bent on getting a grip on himself again. We made Sultan comfortable for the night, and then Sir James courteously said it was high time to be attending to me. He made no further indirect reference to the situation, until, as he was leading me along the hall, he stopped opposite a great dim picture, hanging between two sets of mail, and held the lantern high over his head to give me a view of it. With a strange mixture of resentment and pathos, he said, "A man's ancestors are sometimes a damned nuisance, sir!"

"They are indeed!" I replied. "There's one of mine shaking his fist at me over the battlements of the New Jerusalem."

He laughed heartily, and, with Inskip trailing patiently behind us, led me upstairs, and through the gallery into a long corridor, lit by lanterns fixed in sconces on the walls. We stopped opposite a door, and he was about to lead me in when another door farther along the corridor opened and a lady came out. She was all in white with dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders, and there was a something in her arms.

Down went the lantern with a bang, and Sir James flew like a hunted buck along the corridor. He whipped his arms around the lady and kissed her passionately, and then flung on his knees and held out his arms. She put the something in white into them and there was a little puling cry.

"Married a year come Christmas," whispered old Inskip, "and the babby's five weeks old to-morrow."

A serving-woman bustled out of another room, and the lady and child were affectionately driven off to bed under her escort. Sir James came slowly back.

"My wife and son, Mr. Wheatman," he said. "You must meet them to-morrow. The young rascal cries out whenever I desecrate him with my touch. It would have served him right to have christened him 'Oliver.'"

I laughed heartily, for he was fighting himself again by gibing at me. He sent off the old man to scour the pantry for a supper for me, and then pushed open the door and led me into the room.

For size and dignity, it was a room to take away the breath of a poor yeoman. It seemed to me a Sabbath day's journey to the great blazing hearth, where two men were sitting; the high white ceiling was moulded into a wondrous design, with great carved pendants hanging from it like icicles from the eaves of the Hanyards. Many bookcases ran half-way up the walls round the greater part of the room, filled with stores of books such as my heart had never dreamed of, great leather-bound folios by platoons, and quartos by regiments. If I could get permission I would steal an hour or two from sleep to eye them over, and as we walked towards the hearth I got behind my host in my slowness and had to step up smartly to get level with him to make my bow of introduction. I gasped with the shock as I stepped into the arms of Master John Freake.

"My dear lad," he cried, "what luck! What luck! How are you? How are they?"

He made me sit down beside him, for here as elsewhere he was easily the most important man present, though his bearing was ever quiet and modest. He spoke of me to Sir James in warm and kindly phrases, and it soon became manifest that his good word was a passport into my host's confidence and regard. The three gentlemen filled their glasses and toasted me with grave courtesy, and I easily slid out of the uneasy mood into which Inskip's candour and my unaccustomed surroundings had driven me.

The third man present was a Welsh baronet, Sir Griffith Williams, a far-away cousin and close friend of Sir Watkin Wynne, whose name I remembered to have heard on the Colonel's lips at Leek. Sir Griffith was a brisk, apple-cheeked man of forty or thereabouts, very fluent of speech in somewhat uncertain English, with fewer ideas in his head than there are pips in a codlin, but what there were of them singularly clear and precise. He reminded me of Joe Braggs, who could only whistle three tunes, but whistled them like a lark.

Inskip brought me a rare dish of venison-pie and various other good things, and laid out the table for me. I left Master Freake's side to eat my supper and listen to their talk.

They made various false starts, followed by dead silences. It was clean useless for Sir James to talk about his baby. Sir Griffith had had a long family and so had exhausted the topic years ago, whilst Master Freake, a bachelor, knew nothing about it. There had been a great flood in the Welshman's valley in the autumn and he harangued upon it in style, and not without gleams of native poetry, but Sir James had never seen a flood and Master Freake had never been to Wales, so the flood soon dried up.

There was a silence for some minutes, busy minutes for me with an apple tart that was sublime with some cream to it, and I was settling down to the sweet content of the well-fed when Sir James broke out.

"Mr. Wheatman has brought me an invitation, hardly to be distinguished from a command, to meet His Royal Highness at the Poles' place tomorrow."

The eager Welshman bounced on to his feet, raised his glass and said, "To the Prince, God bless him." Sir James had to follow his example, though he was in no mood for it, and it would have looked ill had I not joined in, and moreover the wine was excellent.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Master Freake. "I am not clear which Royal Highness is referred to, and besides I have no politics."

"God bless him," bubbled the Welshman. "I shall join him when he has crossed the Trent."

Again there was silence for a space.

"So the question is put, and I must give my answer," said Sir James, breaking the stillness. "I must put my hand to the plough or draw back. I must keep my word or break it. Can I be loyal to my father's creed and also to my child's interests? I've got to be both if I can. If I can't be both, which is to have the go-by? Fate has put me in a cleft stick, Master Wheatman. On his death-bed my father handed on to me his place in the old faith. He was a devoted adherent of the exiled House, the close friend and associate of Honest Shippen, and even more intimately concerned than he in the underground network of intrigue and preparation which was constantly being woven, ruined, and re-woven up to his death ten years ago. He left me poor and encumbered with debt, for he had been prodigal in his sacrifices for the cause. It is a wonder that he died in his bed rather than on the block, but he was as wary as he was zealous. For nine years I lived here the life of a hermit, alone with my debts and my books. Then I met a young girl"—his voice broke badly—"who became to me the all-in-all of my life. By good fortune I also met Master Freake, who took my affairs in hand for me and has helped me wisely and generously."

"For ten per cent, Oliver," interrupted Master Freake.

"Nonsense! Wisely and generously, I repeat," said Sir James warmly.

"For ten per cent on good security, I repeat," answered Master Freake gravely.

"Damn your ten per cent!"

"Looks like it, and the security into the bargain!" said Master Freake very quickly.

"Swounds! that's just it!" said Sir James. He rose and paced backwards and forwards between me and the hearth. "A year ago, sir,"—he addressed me in particular—"I should have shouted with joy at the summons to take the place among the adherents of the cause which my father would have held had he lived, and which it was his heart's wish on his death-bed that I should take for him. The cause and the creed are nothing to me as such, for I place no value on either. Your talk about the right divine of old Mr. Melancholy, mumming and mimicking away there at Rome, makes me smile. He's an old fool, that's the long and short of it. But a Blount's a Blount after all. I owe something to my ancestors. My word to my father ought not to be an empty breath. Yet here I am, with all the interests of life pulling one way—wait till you've a boy five weeks old by a wife you'd be cut in little pieces for, and you'll know, sir,—and a dead father and a dead creed pulling the other. I knew what was coming, and I've talked about it and thought about it till my head's like a bee-hive. Now, sir, give me your advice!"

"I have joined the standard of your Prince," I said.

"Damme, sir, you mock me. That's not advice. That's torture."

"I have turned my back on the creed of my life and on every sound instinct in me," I continued.

He stopped his walk and looked intently at me.

"I have ancestors whose memory I cherish, and I have torn up their work as if it were a scrap of paper covered with a child's meaningless scribble."

Sir James stepped up to the table, his fine face alive with emotion.

"For what?" he asked.

I rose and looked straight into his eyes.

"For a woman," I whispered, very low but very proudly.

Our hands met across the table in a hard grip.

"You have done well, sir!" he said. "I asked you to give me advice. You have set me an example."

He sat down again, and looked hopefully at the fire and then moodily at Master Freake.

"There is this unfortunate difference between Mr. Wheatman's case and mine. I have, and he has not, given my plain word to a father."

"I admit that is a striking difference," said Master Freake. "I am no Jesuit, however, and cannot decide cases of conscience. I deal with business problems only, which are all cut and dry, legal and formal. When I make a promise in the way of business I always keep it precisely and punctually, for the penalty of failure to do so is a business man's death —bankruptcy."

"There's such a thing as moral bankruptcy," said Sir James gloomily.

"Very likely," replied Master Freake.

"This is all nothing whatefer but words, words, words," said the Welshman. "And words, my goot sirs, are indeed no goot whatefer. Sir James's head is wrapped up in a mist of words, words, words, and indeed he cannot see anything whatefer. I am not a man of words, and what you call 'em—broblems."

"Very good," said I.

"Indeed it is goot," said he. "To hell with your words and your broblems. They are of no use whatefer, whatefer. Our good friend, Sir James, is up to his neck in broblems like a man in a bog, and he cannot move. Now I have not your broblems. To hell with your broblems. My Cousin Wynne is full of 'em, and he's still gaping up at the cloud on Snowdon, while I'm here, ready. I say plain: if the Prince cross south of the Trent I will join him."

"Why the Trent?" said I.

"It is my mark. It is my way of knowing what I will do. It is all so simple. Indeed I am a simple man, not a broblem in my brain, none whatefer, I tell you plain. It is as this—so. If the Prince cross the Trent, say I to myself, well and goot. He do his share. It is time for me to do mine. It is better indeed, I tell you plain, to have it settled by a simple thing like the Trent than to have it all muddled up by your broblems. I can sing you off my ancestors by dozens, right back to the standard-bearer of the great Llewellyn, but they're all dead, and indeed I'm not going to poke about among their bones to find out what to do. I look at your pretty river, and I wait."

Sir James had looked at him during this harangue with unconcealed impatience.

"I sent a letter to Chartley of Chartley Towers," he said, "one of us, and a strong one by all accounts. At any rate, my father always reckoned him as such. So I asked him guardedly what he thought, and his reply was, 'The chestnut is on the hob. I am waiting to see whether it jumps into the fire or into the fender.' I cannot decide by appealing to rivers or nuts. There's much more in it than that."

Fate snatched the problem out of his hands. Without a tap, without a word, the door of the room was flung open, and a dozen troopers filed swiftly and silently in, and covered us with their carbines. An officer, sword in hand, pushed through a gap in their line and stepped half a dozen paces towards us. He saluted us ceremoniously with his sword and said, "In the King's name!" Behind the line a man in citizen clothes hovered uncertainly, and dim as the light was I made him out only too plainly. It was the Government spy, Weir. My goose was cooked. I had played for life's highest stake, and thrown amb's ace. It was good-bye to Margaret.

The Welshman stuck to his chair, stolid as his native hills. Master Freake, whose back was to the new-comers, made a swift half turn, and then he, too, settled down again as indifferently as if the interruption had only been old Inskip with the bedward candles. Blount leaped to his feet, livid with rage, and strode up to the officer.

"My Lord Tiverton, what does this intrusion mean?" he demanded.

"It means," was the composed reply, "that if any one of you makes the slightest attempt to resist, he will be shot out of hand. Close up, lads, and cover your men!"

The order was obeyed briskly and exactly. The three on the left of the line attended to me, and I sat there, toying with a wine-glass for appearance sake, though the three brown barrels levelled straight and steady at my head made my heart rattle like a stone in a can. These were none of Brocton's untrained grey-coats, but precise, disciplined veterans in blue tunics and mitre-shaped hats, white breeches and high boots, belted, buttoned, and bepouched. It was almost a compliment to be shot by such tall fellows.

Seeing we were all harmless, the officer dropped his military preciseness as if it were an ill-fitting garment. He was the daintiest, handsomest wisp of a man I had ever set eyes on, and looked for all the world like an exquisite figure in Dresden china come to life. He could not have had much soldiering—the air and aroma of the London salon still hung closely around him—and he was so very self-possessed that he was play-acting half his time, doing everything with a grace and relish that were highly diverting. It took all my pride in my new hat out of me to see this desirable little picture of a man.

"I assure you, my dear Sir James," he said, "that it's a damned annoying thing to me to have to act so unhandsomely. Stap me! I shouldn't like it myself, but law's law and duty's duty, and so on, you know the old tale, and I'm obleeged to do it."

He opened his snuff-box and offered it to Sir James, who brusquely waved it aside, saying, "Your explanation, if you please, my lord!"

"Damme, don't be peevish! Smoke the Venus in the lid? Isn't she a sparkler? Wish I'd lived in the times when ladies lay about on seashores like it! I hate these damned crinolines. Saw Somerset in 'em in the Pantiles. Could have pushed her over and trundled her like a barrel."

"My lord," reiterated Blount, "I await your explanation."

"Boot's on the other leg," he chirped. "A'nt I pouched you all cleverly, stap me, seeing the ink on my commission's hardly dry? Didn't think it was in me!"

"I will take the authority of your commission as sufficient, my lord, the times being what they are. But will you be good enough to tell me why you come?"

"Gadso! Certainly! There's a dirty rascal in pewter buttons behind there —come here, sir, and let Sir James see your ugly face!—who says you're a disloyal person, a traitor, and so forth. I don't believe him. I wouldn't crack a flea on his unsupported testimony, but he's in the know of things, and showed me a commission from Mr. Secretary, calling on His Majesty's liege subjects, etc., you know the run of it, and I was bound to look into it. Charges are charges, stap me if they a'nt. Don't come too near, pig's eyes! Out with your tale!"

His lordship plainly disliked the whole business, and it was a very awkward thing for Sir James that I was here, a circumstantial piece of evidence against him. I looked straight into Weir's eyes as he came forward, ungainly and uncertainly, smiling half his dirty teeth bare, and mopping his yellowy face with a dirty handkerchief. To my astonishment he made not a single sign of recognition. I was his trump card, and he left me unplayed.

"Sir James is a known Jacobite, my lord!" he quavered.

"Quite right, Mr. Weir, and if you propose to keep me out of bed these cold nights calling on known Jacobites, stap my vitals, Mr. Weir, if I don't have you flung into a pond with a brick tied round your sweaty neck like an unwanted pup. Anything else?"

"This is a Jacobite plot, my lord. There's scheming and plotting against our gracious lord the King agoing on here, my lord."

"I'll e'en have a closer look at 'em. Plots are damned interesting things, stap me if they a'nt, and I'm glad to see one. Here's a likely young fellow," striding up and examining me. "His is a plot in a meat-pie, it seems. There was one in a meal-tub once, I remember, so the meat-pie does look mighty suspicious, Mr. Weir. We're getting on. And here's a plotter toasting his toes. Not an intelligent member of the cabal. Stap me, if he a'nt asleep! I must circumambulate and have a quiz at him."

He walked gaily in his play-acting way round Master Freake's chair on to the hearth and then turned and took a peep at him. As soon as he had done so he gave a great shout, and then, recovering himself, burst into a roar of laughter. He clapped his hands on his knees and fairly swayed with merriment. Master Freake looked at him with a sedate half-smile, and said, "How d'ye do, my lord?"

"Very well, thankee!" cried his lordship gaily, too gaily. "Damme! It's the funniest thing that's happened since Noah came out of the Ark. Come here, spy! Mean to tell me this is a Jacobite?"

As the spy crept near, Master Freake stood up, wheeled round on him smartly, and said, "How d'ye do, Turnditch?"

"Stap me!" cried his lordship. "His name's Weir!"

"He will know me better if I call him Turnditch," said Master Freake icily.

He spoke unmistakable truth. I could see the shadow of the gallows fall across the man's face. What stiffening there was in him oozed out, and he stood there wriggling in an agony of apprehension, like a worm in a chicken's beak. Master Freake knew him to the bottom of his muddy soul. My Lord Tiverton was a man of another mould, but he too was in the hands of his master. Plain John Freake, citizen of London, had taken a hand in this game of fate, and had thrown double six.

This noble room had seen the agonizings and rejoicings of a dozen generations of the sons of men, but nothing to surpass this scene in living interest. They come back to me now—the line of blue-and-white troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper nobleman, still polished and lightsome, no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof. Last of all I remember myself, with my heart thrumming good-morrow to Margaret.

"Come now, Houndsditch, or Turndish, or whatever it is," said his lordship. "Precisely what have you to say?"

The poor devil had nothing to say. He was aflame to be off and out of Master Freake's eyesight. He choked up something about mistakes, and zeal, and forgiveness.

"That's enough! Out you go, the whole damn lot of you!" cried my lord. These not being familiar military words of command, the men stuck there like skittles. "Ground arms, or whatever it is!" he continued. "About turn! Quick march!"

Their sergeant took charge of them and they filed out. Sir James followed them and became their host, routing out servants to wait on them.

As soon as the door was closed on Sir James, his lordship hastened to Master Freake's side, and entered into low and earnest conversation with him. I walked across to the folios, hoping to find amongst them an editio princeps of Virgil, but was recalled by a loud "Oliver" from Master Freake.

"Oliver," he said, when I reached his chair, "I should like you to know the most noble the Marquess of Tiverton!"

I bowed, and his lordship bowed in reply, and said light and pleasant things about our meeting. Then, vowing he was monstrous hungry, he tackled the venison pasty, summoning me to sit opposite him.

"Gadso! I am sharp-set," he said, and indeed he ate with the zeal of a plough-lad. He pushed me over his snuff-box, which nearly made me sneeze before I took the snuff.

"It really is a masterpiece," he said, in a pause between pasty and pie. "I shall never hear the last of it at the 'Cocoa Tree' and White's. Stap me, I shan't want to! It's too good. The tale will keep my memory green when that old mummy, Newcastle, is dust at last."

"What tale?" said I.

"D'ye know why, a month ago, I badgered Newcastle into getting me a company in the Blues?"

"Not the faintest idea!"

He leaned across the table and, from under cover of me, nodded towards Master Freake, now talking with the Welsh-man. "To get out of his way!" he whispered.

I looked incredulous, whereupon his lordship tapped his pocket significantly.

"He's a damned good fellow. He gave me another six months without a murmur. Wish I'd known! There'd have been no campaigning for me. I prefer the Mall!"

So he said now, yet he was as steady as a wall and as bold as a lion at Culloden. He came of a great stock, and greatness was natural to him. The play-acting and gaming was only the fringe that Society had tacked on to him. It lessoned me finely to see him when Sir James came back into the room. Tiverton knew the position by instinct.

"Sir James," he said, "I crave a word with you."

"At your service, my lord."

"I will be frank," continued his lordship. "I ask no questions. I make no inferences. I simply point out that the spy fell to pieces because he found Mr. Freake here."

"I observed so much, my lord!"

"I don't know why," said the Marquess dubiously.

"I could hang him at the next assizes," interrupted Master Freake.

"I see. He doesn't want to be hanged, of course. No one does. It's a perfectly natural feeling. So he crumpled up at the prospect."

"Yes, my lord," said Sir James.

"I allowed him to crumple up, and I took full advantage of the fact. You saw so much?"

"I did."

"Now, Sir James, you, as a Blount, that is, as a man bearing an honoured name, are under the strictest obligation to me to see that I can say, if my conduct is challenged, that I saw nothing here because there was nothing to see. I have put myself absolutely in your power, Sir James. Whoever else joins the Prince, you must not, or you take my head along with you."

It was well and truly said, and there was no posing about it. Sir James Blount's problem was settled. He taught me something too, for all he did was to put out his hand.

"There's an end of Tundish!" said Tiverton, grasping it firmly. "And it's the best end too, for the Highland army hasn't a snowball's chance in hell."

He turned at once to banter me on my indifference to art, seeing that I had sniffed at a miniature by one of the most famous artists at the French Court. I let him rattle on, for my eye was on Sir James, who was rolling something in his hands. A moment later the Prince's letter went up in a tongue of flame and burnt along with it the Jacobitism of the Blounts.

A knock at the door interrupted his lordship's valuation of art and artists of the French school, and his sergeant entered to say that his men were in the saddle.

"Campaigning be damned!" said his captain wearily.

"Beg pardon, my lord," added the sergeant, "but Mr. What's-his-name has cut off."

"Good riddance. He's gone back to his crony at the 'Black Swan.'"

"Yes, my lord. T'other's a sergeant in my Lord Brocton's dragoons."

"Ah, I saw they were hob-and-nob together. A fellow with a ditch in his face you could lay a finger in!"

Fortunately for me, the Marquess was busy with a last glass of wine. Here was ill news with a vengeance. I had got out of the smoke into the smother.

"My lord," said Master Freake, "there is a man of mine, one Dot Gibson, at the 'Black Swan,' and I shall be greatly beholden to you if you will let your sergeant carry him a note of instructions from me."

"Stap me! I'll take it myself," cried his lordship heartily.

Master Freake went to a table to write the note. I knew now who it was that had given me the warning. My lord pocketed the note and we all crept quietly down to the main door to see him off. The guards made a gallant show in the brilliant moonlight, and Master Freake, taking my arm, dragged me out to watch them canter across the stretch of meadow, and drop out of sight down the hill.

"Sleep in peace, Oliver," he said. "Dot Gibson will give us early news of the movements of the enemy."

Then we strolled back, talking of the Colonel and Margaret.



CHAPTER XIX

WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY

It was eight by the clock next morning before I set about my third commission. To begin with, the bed pulled, and small wonder, since I had not slept in a bed since leaving home. Then I took my fill of the books, finding among them no less a prize than the editio princeps of Virgil, printed at Rome in 1469, which it was hard to let go. Next there was Baby Blount to be waited upon, and his mother, a pretty, appealing lady, with the glory of motherhood about her like a fairy garment. Part of the ceremonial was the putting of Master Blount into my arms, which was done very gingerly, with abundant cautions and precautions against my crushing or dropping him. He had a skin like white satin and a silvery down on his charming little head. Altogether I thought him a most desirable possession for a man to have, and wished he was mine, particularly when, to his father's outspoken chagrin, instead of puling he stared steadily at me with big blue eyes and smiled.