Traitor or patriot?

CHAPTER XVIII.

"GOD SAVE THE KING!"

"Come back!" he shouted.

He might more effectually have summoned back the wind, as it swept past with a low snarling hiss, as if in mockery of his indignation; and before he had time to repeat the words, the last echo of Rumsey's footsteps had died on the lowermost stair, and Lawrence Lee heard the scraping of the key in the lock of the tower door.

"Coward!" he cried aloud, "will you have me fetch you back?" and gently replacing the wounded man upon the ground, he rose to his feet, and with a couple of strides reached the door; but scarcely had he done, so than a deep groan from Goodenough brought him to a halt, and he turned, dizzy with perplexity. "To allow this fellow to get clear off was not to be thought of; and yet, to give chase to him and leave the unfortunate Goodenough?—"

"Lawrence! Lawrence!" imploringly cried a voice which seemed to him to proceed from the wainscot to his right. He started and looked towards the spot.

"Lawrence!"

Ruth to the rescue.

"Ruth!" cried the young man in amazement, "is that you?"

"Yes, yes. For the pitying heaven's sake stay! See here, I am getting a light."

He waited, stock-still, listening to the scratching sound of the tinder-box, perfectly audible through the panel's rotten wood; and then, as the thin yellow streak of light broke through the crack, he flew to the spot. "Out of the way, Ruth!" he cried; and as he spoke he raised his clenched fist and struck the panel such a sledge-hammer blow as sent it splintering in all directions, revealing the figure of Ruth by the light of the candle she held in her hand, enframed by the woodwork, like some cunningly painted picture.

The illusion, was however, instantly dispelled, as she stepped eager and breathless to the floor; and hastening to Goodenough, and falling on her knees beside him, she carefully opened his coat. Then tearing her linen kerchief from her neck, she bound it gently but firmly over the wound in such a manner as to staunch it and stay the rushing blood, which, had it continued but a few moments more, must have drained his life away.

Then having bathed the unfortunate man's face with some water from a small pitcher which she motioned to Lawrence to bring her from the table, she gave a deep and long pent-up sigh, as she perceived a faint flicker of returning animation overspread the ashen features. "So," she murmured.

"Ruth, my poor Ruth," said Lawrence. "This is a cruel sight for you." She shuddered, and gazed momentarily from Goodenough's face to his.

A terrible sight.

"I'd have given all that's mine, child," he went on, "to have spared you the sight of it."

"Ay," murmured Ruth. "'Twas terrible, very very terrible."

"Still, my dear," went on Lee philosophically, "don't take it to heart too much. One of the two must always get the worst of it in a fair stand-up fight. Eh, mustn't one?

"But 'twas no such thing," flashed Ruth. "The coward lied, Lawrence—lied to you. I saw it all," she went on shudderingly, "from the hole in the panel there. And he—that man Rumsey—struck him unawares. Think of it, Lawrence; an unarmed man!"

"Nay, hardly that," said Lee, extricating the poignard from Goodenough's fingers, and examining it by the light of Ruth's lamp. "For he must have struck Rumsey. See, there is blood upon this. It is stained to the very hilt."

"And did not Rumsey himself tell you that he had been barely so much as scratched?" she said. "Lawrence, that witnesses against him. These very words, that he intended to screen his guilt, would tell the truth against him, even if there were no tongue to tell what eye has seen."

"No, Ruth," said Lee, slowly shaking his head, and gazing distressfully into the fiery brilliancy of her eyes and on her pale face, flushed on either cheek with two spots of burning red. "You did not see it. You must have been dreaming, child. It was some hideous nightmare. Such a double-dyed treacherous villain as that, no man could be. No, Ruth, no. Say he did not do it," he added imploringly.

Bad company.

But she shook her head silently.

"It is not possible," he went on. "He—Ruth—that man and I have touched hands, in—well, in token of good fellowship."

"And God forgive you then, Lawrence," she replied. "As indeed I think he will. Because you do not know all. I am sure you do not know— But hush!" she went on, interrupting herself; "hush, we must not be found here. My father will be back—"

"Ay, but not yet awhile. I left them all deep in—in their conversation, in the octagon vault."

"And did not their conversation interest you, Lawrence?" demanded she, gazing keenly into his face.

"Why, to confess the truth, not so very much," he replied, evading her look. "And your father—"

"Ay," she said eagerly, as he hesitated.

"He said I should mayhap do better to be coming on, and joining company with Colonel Rumsey and Master Goodenough here. I doubt," he continued ruminatively, "he suspected they might be falling to loggerheads; for I never knew them meet, but what they did always set to sparring like a pair of Kilkenny cats."

"That may be so," answered Ruth; "but this I am positive of, that those dreadful men wanted to be rid of you, for they would not have you know of the shameful deeds they are plotting. They make but a tool and a cat's-paw of you, Lawrence. Ay, but they do," she insisted, in no way daunted by the wave of offended dignity Lee's hand made. "For they know well enough that your heart is too honourable to stoop to baseness like theirs."

"Tut! tut!—"

"They think you but a fool, and right proud I am they do; for they are knaves and murderers. Their whole talk to-night was of the best way of killing the king."

"Killing the king?!!"

"And the Duke of York When they should come back next week from Newmarket."

"But—but your father?!" gasped Lee. "He—"

A child's grief.

"Oh do not—do not speak of him," implored she, clasping her hands in agony. "My good, dear father, Lawrence. How can we save him?" she went on in calmer tones.

"Save your father?" said Lawrence, gazing in helpless dejection into the misery of her face.

"The king; the king; for to save him, is to save my father from—from—sure, Lawrence, he must be mad; he must be saved from himself. And I—you must do it. Do you hear? Do you understand?"

Understanding, Lawrence felt, might come in time. For the present, only his ears fully mastered what Ruth had said, and, helplessly shrugging his shoulders, he continued to stand gazing vacantly at the prostrate form of Rumsey's victim.

"Yes, yes," she said, her eyes following his, "you are quite right. He must not be found here."

The secret kept.

"But," began Lawrence, "how can we hide him?" and he glanced towards the door communicating with hers. She shook her head. "'Tis locked; my father has the key. He took it this morning. There is but one way;" and she pointed to the broken panel—"this."

Half an hour later, had any of the conspirators returned to the Warder's Room, they would have found no trace of what had occurred there since their departure.

First, as gently as he was able, Lawrence, with Ruth's assistance, carried the wounded man to the secret passage, and laid him on the bed which she hastily prepared for him from the pillows and coverings of her own bed. That done, he stepped back into the Warder's Room, and having, with the aid of the pitcher of water, succeeded in effacing the worst of the ugly tell-tale stain upon the floor, he set the chairs overturned in the fray upon their legs again, and then busied himself in collecting the scattered pieces and splinters of the broken panel. Finally, after no small labour, not lessened by having to reach across the space occupied by the body of the unconscious Goodenough, he pieced the panel together, so that it looked, as he said, keenly surveying it when he had done, "as if catapults could have made no impression on it."

"I doubt," said Ruth with a faint smile, "one must not, however, breathe on it too roughly lest it fall to pieces."

"Hark! what's that?" whispered Lawrence in alarm, as a low curious burring, purring sound in the room beyond made itself audible.

Placing her finger warningly on her lip, Ruth crossed the floor, and, lifting a piece of tapestry half-covering one of the walls, she disappeared; returning, however, almost immediately with a bottle of cordial in her hand, and a look of relief on her face.

"Maudlin is sleeping as fast as a dormouse," she said, pouring a few drops of the bottle's contents into a cup, and moistening the wounded man's lips.

"But if she should waken?" said Lawrence.

"We will take difficulties only as they come," answered Ruth. "'Tis scarce likely to happen before daybreak. And long before then, Lawrence, you must be upon the road."

"Upon the road! To where?" demanded Lawrence aghast.

"Newmarket."

The warning to the King.

"The king," she went on, as he continued to stare at her in speechless astonishment, "must be warned of this danger that threatens him. And 'tis you must warn him."

"I!" flashed the young man. "Ruth, what do you take me for? I play traitor? I be a turncoat?"

"It is because you are not one," she answered calmly, "that you will do this. It is because you are loyal and true that you will not stand by and see this crime done."

"Betray my oath?"

"You never swore to taking the life of a fellow-creature; least of all your king's."

He was silent. She had indeed spoken the truth; yet how could he bring himself to acknowledge to her, what he shrank from admitting to his own heart, the weakness of that easy nature of his, which had brought him to this terrible pass? His one thought had been to "keep neighbourly," as he called it, with difficult Master Rumbold. To give the maltster offence, was never to see Ruth again, and that was an unendurable thought. And so, hardly conscious whither he was drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of this abyss of crime, from which the soft, sweet, but resolute voice at his side now warned him back ere it was too late. "Choose," she said.

Lawrence decides.

"I cannot," he answered, turning and gazing sadly down on the pale agonized face which had never before seemed so dear to him. "There is no choice for me, Ruth, but to go."

"And Heaven reward you!" she said, a ray of gladness breaking into her tearful eyes as she laid her hand on his arm.

"Farewell then, Ruth!" he said with an almost imperceptible shrug; "and if we should never meet again—." He paused. "Farewell then, Ruth."

Gone.

And turning away his face, as if he dared not again meet the sight of hers, he took her little hand in his and wrung it fast. Then springing to the window ledge, he flung the pane wide open, and planting one foot firmly on the fretted stonework outside, was lost in the darkness.

CHAPTER XIX.

"STARS AND GARTERS."

The inmates of the King's Arms had been in bed and asleep full four hours, and profound silence reigned throughout its precincts, when, a few moments after the gatehouse clock had chimed one, a loud rattling on the panes of Mistress Sheppard's bedchamber window roused her from uneasy dreams.

"Cuther! what a night!" ejaculated she, sitting up and listening to the sound as it fell again with increased violence. "There's hail for you! Big as pebble stones, be sure."

A third shower made it clear beyond all question that pebble-stones they were; and rising in haste, she opened a pane of the lattice and looked out.

"Is that you, Mistress Sheppard?" said a muffled voice immediately beneath, as the billowy outlines of her nightcap broke dazzling white amid the surrounding darkness upon the vision of the speaker.

"And is that you, Master Lee?" sharply replied the mistress of the hostelry, as her nocturnal visitor, turning the light of the dark lantern he carried full upon the casement, revealed at the same time his own form and features. "What do you want?" she went on in dudgeon, "coming here at this time o' night, bringin' honest folks' hearts into their mouths, and disturbin' their rest?"

"Yes, yes," hastily assented Lee; "'tis very late, I grant you—"

"Early, I suppose you mean," fumed Mistress Sheppard, clutching the pane, to snap it to again. "And let me tell you—"

"Oh, yes! whatever you please, if—"

"Please! There's little o' pleasin' in bein' waked up at this hour."

"No, no. Quite true. But listen, just listen."

"I'll do no such a thing. What do you want, Master Lee?"

"A horse."

"I'll see Sheppard has his horsewhip in nice trim for you next you come this way," irately retorted she; "an' be you ten times master o' Nether Hall."

Stars and garters.

"Nay; for that he need be at no trouble," laughed Lee, hitting a swish in the air with a short riding-whip he carried in his other hand. "I've got my own with me, as luck had it. And if not, 'twould have mattered little enough, for 'tis rarely Stars and Garters needs whip nor spur either."

"Stars and Garters!" gasped Mistress Sheppard.

"Ay, 'tis her I'll take, with your good leave," calmly returned Lawrence.

Now Stars and Garters was the name distinguishing the pride of the King's Arms, and of her mistress's heart, a beautiful black mare, marked with a white star on her left breast, and a curious ring of white hair below the left knee, whose match for docility and fleetness of foot was not to be met with in all the country side; and the audacity of Lee's proposition took Mistress Sheppard's breath away. "Stars and Garters!" ironically ejaculated she, when at last she recovered it. "What next, cuther?"

"A brace of pistols," began Lee.

"Ah! Thieves!" she shrieked. "Murder!—"

"Hold your silly tongue, woman," peremptorily interrupted Lee. "What do you take me for? Don't you know Lawrence Lee yet?"

"I'm none so sure that I do," replied she, recovering all her wonted presence of mind. "And I have liked not your ways of late, young man, and so I tell you."

"I doubt they have scarce pleased me better than they have yourself," said Lee, with a frank and yet humbled look in his upturned face, which somehow went straight to the good woman's heart.

Mistress Sheppard hesitates.

"If I know toadstools from mushrooms, he means honestly," she went on to herself, showing, however, no signs of capitulating, and sternly pursing her lips. "They would ill become your father's son," she said aloud, "and make sore places in his heart, as a certain prodigal son's we wot of, did."

"And he resolved, did he not, to try and mend his ways. So come, Mistress Sheppard, quick with the stable-door key; there's a good soul; and Stars and Garters for England and the King."

"The king?!" and curl papers all forgotten, Mistress Sheppard's head craned eagerly down from the casement.

"Ay, he's in danger," nodded Lee, catching up, as he spoke, a rusty crowbar lying in the grass; "and there's not a moment to be lost, I tell you. Shall I break open the stable door and help myself?"

A good start.

"No, no, one instant," she replied, glancing at the slumbering Sheppard, "one instant and I'll be down."

She was better than her word; and in a few seconds, attired in strange garments to protect her from the chilly night-air, she was standing beside Lee, assisting him to prepare Stars and Garters for her journey, before the good mare had well got her wits together. As, however, she felt Mistress Sheppard's own plump hands tightening the saddle-girths round her sleek body, she roused up, and uttered a loud neigh of pleasure.

"Pretty dear!" murmured Mistress Sheppard. "Hark how eager she is to be upon the road, bless her! 'Tis more, I'll warrant, than some Christians'd care about; bein wakened up out o' their beauty sleep. Sheppard, now, he'd been as growly as a bear with a sore head. Now, then, up with you, Master Lee. Here's your pistols," she added, thrusting a pair into the holsters. "You can tell me the tale when you come back. There's some o't won't be so mighty fresh to me, I'm thinkin'. So off with you, and good luck be your servant."

With a hurried wave of the hand Lee clattered out of the stable, and clearing the low garden fence by a bound, horse and rider started "thorough bush, thorough brier," across the fields, till they attained the high-road, winding on by the low open country to the fenny Cambridgeshire wastes, old England's least beautiful part, so lovers of nature say.

The King's highway.

For another class of folks, however, it possessed in those days immense attraction; inasmuch as it formed the highway from London to the town of Newmarket, which Charles the Second had made the most important and fashionable horse-racing place in the kingdom. He was accustomed to visit it some five or six times in the year; establishing his quarters at an old mansion situated in the middle of the High Street, which he had purchased from its owner, the Earl of Ormond, and had caused to be altered and enlarged, to accommodate himself and his retinue. Thither, as may be imagined, like wasps after honey, swarmed all sorts and conditions of men, and of women too; from my lord and my lady in their velvet gowns, to the ragged and jagged beggar, and worse than these, the footpads, and "gentlemen of the road," as it was the fashion to call these thieves on horseback, who infested the great highways all over the country.

It need hardly be said that this one and particular half hundred miles of road, stretching between London and Newmarket, was very carefully attended to by these gentry; and Lee, as he cantered on, did not forget to keep one hand near the holsters.

Nothing, however, occurred to vary the monotony of his way, beyond encountering now and again some solitary pedestrian, probably as honest and sober as himself, and here and there some few yards from the road, a group of wayfarers bound for Newmarket, encamped upon the stunted turf round the smouldering embers of their hastily kindled fire. Towards three o'clock he reached the large wayside hostelry at Chesterford called the Blue Bear, where travellers from London always stopped to change horses.

Here, before the big wooden horse-trough in front of the main door, Lee slackened his rein; and while Stars and Garters gratefully drank in the cool clear water, he called for a jack of ale for his own refreshment. The drawer was, however, so slow in getting his drowsy wits together, that when at last he did hand up the jack; he found that he was holding it in empty space, and his customer had disappeared.

In a mighty hurry.

"He wor in a mighty hurry," grumbled the man, as he stood listening for a few moments to the fast dying sounds of the horse's feet, and then stooped down to grope by the light of the lantern swinging to the sign-post, after the coin which Lee had flung down in discharge of the reckoning for the refreshment he had not stayed to enjoy. "Well, he must be a woundly wittol be sure, or his business is such a rare pressing one, that he can spare to pass by this;" and he gazed affectionately into the ale's clear amber deeps, "as if 'twere no more'n a cup o' fleet milk. Didn't the king's own self say, but t'other day, last time he comed by, and drinked his nippet o't, that naught o' the stuff in his Whitehall cellars don't hold a rushlight to't? Maaster'd be monsus put about, ef he comed to know of its being scorned so. Naa, Naa," he went on, putting the jack to his lips. "I shudn't dare let him knaw as my fine young gen'leman didn't drink so much as his neckum out o't;" and the charitable creature, to conceal the traveller's shortcoming, took a draught, so long and deep, that it absorbed two-thirds of the liquor, "there goes Sinkum—and," he said, drawing a long breath of satisfaction, and again contemplating the interior of the jug, "an' seein' as him as doan't knaa how to finish a job when he's begun't, but a poor sort o' creetur, why," and tipping up the jack, he emptied the remainder of its contents down his throat, "there goes Swankum after 'em." And having thus vindicated the honour of the house, he turned in to renew his interrupted slumbers.

The day dawns.

The rain had long ceased; the air smelt warm and fragrant, as, soon after daybreak, Lawrence Lee came in sight of the roof-tops of Newmarket showing sharp and dark against the clear gray sky, just rose-tinted with the hues of the rising sun, whose rays were gilding the smooth turfy down, till it gleamed like richest velvet. Very soft and pleasant it must have felt to the weary feet of Stars and Garters; though indeed as she alighted from the flinty road on to the elastic grass of the course, she carried herself so bravely, that none of the critical eyes she was now encountering could have guessed she had been an hour out of her stall. Who knows but that she was conscious that her laurels were at stake; for already, though it was barely six o'clock, the course was dotted with knots of gentlemen and trainers, and a host of hangers-on and loungers engaged in keen discussion of the pros and cons of their ventures, or watching the jockeys as they breathed their magnificent barbs and racers in a morning gallop.

The horseman.

"Who be he, I wunner?" enviously growled a mounted jockey as Lee dashed past. "Happen you caught sight of his colours, my lord?"

"Black," laughingly replied the gentleman thus addressed, a handsome man richly attired in a becoming morning suit. "By my faith, black as the very mischief's self, for aught I could see besides. Black as Old Nick and his nag. Eh, Master Alworth, was it not so?"

"Nay," replied the somewhat elderly, grizzled, beperiwigged gentleman to whom the other had appealed, as he leaned with one hand on his silver-knobbed ebony stick, and shaded his eyes with the other, to gaze after the strange horse and his rider. "Black to a certainty. But in my poor judgment the animal was such a Pegasus of grace and vigour, and his rider's countenance looked such a goodly one, that if ever our patron George of England wore a suit of sables."

"And bestrode a black charger?" gaily interrupted the other.

"Even so," bowed the elder man, with a twinkle in his kindly brown eyes; "why, I should have guessed him to be our champion saint in the flesh."

"Hastening to deliver his country from the evil-doers," said the nobleman.

"'Twould be a miracle indeed if he could do that," soberly answered Mr. Alworth, "or he a Quixote of Quixotes to dream of it."

"More like he is come to match his Rosinante's paces with our Fleetfoot's here," rattled on the other, as he toyed with the nose of the beautiful racer against whose shoulder he was leaning. "By the way," he went on, addressing the jockey in charge of it, "which day is settled for the match with Woodcock?"

"Monday se'nnight, my lord," answered the man.

"Does the king stay so long?" asked Alworth, looking up in some surprise.

"Pleasure!"

"Long!" groaningly echoed the younger gentleman. "'Tis all too short for us poor Cambridgeshire squires, let me tell you, Master Alworth. When the court's back again in London, we may as soon be the cabbages in our own kitchen-gardens, for any pleasure there is in life."

A moralist.

"Pleasure!" groaningly echoed Master Alworth, as he turned and faced slowly about towards the town. "Pleasure! Pleasure! 'Tis the watchword always, and a melancholy one it has grown to be in my ears, since it no longer pairs off with duty; as though one should surfeit always on honey, and eat no bread, and poor England is sickening sorely of it Pray heaven she be not finding any plague of quack doctors to try their remedies on her;" and with a sigh Mr. Alworth pursued his way.

CHAPTER XX.

"A FRIEND IN NEED."

Lawrence Lee had meanwhile reached the town. Hardly, however, was he well into the High Street before he was forced to rein up, impeded at every step by the dense throng, crowding as far ahead as eye could reach. Epping Fair was a small thing by comparison with this motley medley of bawling wagoners, shrill-tongued farmers' wives haggling over their butter and eggs, screaming children, chattering apprentices banging about the shutters of their booths, barking sheep-dogs, chasing their terrified charges back into the ranks, braying donkies, clattering of pack-horses stumbling beneath their burdens over the cobble-stones, and all to the tune of the several church bells and clocks clanging out six. The unaccustomed senses of Lawrence Lee lost their balance for a moment, and he closed his eyes to assist their recovery, but opened them again in a twinkling at the sound of a voice demanding in not too honeyed accents where he was "shoving to?"

"It's you that's shoving," retorted Lee, looking down wrathfully at the speaker, whose uplifted elbow was raised insultingly near Stars and Garters' nose; and lifting his whip, but letting it fall again as he perceived what for the first moment he imagined to be an old man. A second glance, however, showed him that the shambling gait, pasty-coloured cheeks, puckered features, and lacklustre eyes helped to the composition of an individual of somewhere about his own number of years.

Tit for tat.

"I'll teach you and your jade to trample down gentlemen in the street," growled on this young old personage.

"Come, come!" laughed Lee good-humouredly, "I didn't mean to do anything of the sort. You're not hurt, are you?"

"No thanks to you if I'm not," sourly returned the other.

"Oh, come now. Did you get out of bed left leg foremost?" again laughed Lee.

"Right or left," ingenuously yawned the other, whom a game of basset had detained from between the blankets far into the small hours; "if they've been in bed at all, it's as much as they have."

Lawrence Lee's case was in degree a similar one; and his own weary sensations made him feel some sort of indulgence for this individual's sulky humour. "Oh, that accounts for it," he said to himself.

"Accounts for what?" fired back the other, catching the sotto voce comment.

"For your being so polite—and—and—"

"Well," fumed the other, "people who have any manners never stop gawking in the middle of their remarks. It an't good breeding."

"Isn't it now? Well, for your looking so fresh and spruce then, I took you for a scarecrow."

"And I take you for a clodpole," glared back his new acquaintance with an affected laugh, "to whom 'twill be a real charity to give twopence a week to learn manners."

Crooked answers.

"That begins at home; keep it for your own necessities, my friend. You see I know how to be generous. But if you're really so amiably disposed towards me—"

"Go about your business."

"That I shall be able to do, when I have gone miles enough to find some one with a tongue in his head, civil enough to direct me to the king's palace."

The other opened his dull eyes in a preternaturally wide-awake manner, and bestowed a scrutinizing stare on Lawrence. "What may you want there?"

"Folks with an ounce of manners never meet question with question. It isn't good breeding—not in the part I come from."

"And where—"

"Where do I come from? That's a question whose answer will improve by keeping. So out of the way, friend, if you can't direct me."

"Can't!" hysterically giggled the other. "Ho! Come, I like that Ho, ho! Ha, ha! That's rich. Don't you know who I am, friend?"

"Haven't a notion," said Lawrence, looking away from him up and down the street, and anxiously surveying its snug but unpalatial-looking houses.

"How do you conceive, I wonder, how I come by these, my good fellow?" he went on, pointing downwards.

"Padded a bit, aren't they?" said Lawrence, driven to utter the passing comparison he had already unconsciously instituted in his own mind, between the remarkable symmetry and plumpness of the pair of silken-clad calves, and the meagre upper proportions of their proprietor.

A grand personage.

"Psha! Bah! These, I mean;" and then Lawrence perceiving that not the legs, but the pair of fine blue cloth breeches covering them, were the indicated objects, said, honestly enough, he doubted not, nay, he was sure they were, by many a long mile, the very finest small-clothes he had ever seen, and must have cost a pretty penny.

"Out of His Majesty's own purse," replied the other, waxing sweet-tempered as any cat rubbed under the chin, and elevating his insignificant nose, as he buttoned on the coat he had carried inside-out over his arm, and which Lawrence now perceived to be of the same cerulean hue and glittering embroideries as the nether garments. "Now," he went on, falling well back on to the heels of his resetted shoes, and strutting forward a few paces. "Now do you know who I am?"

"I haven't the ghost of a notion, I tell you," said Lawrence, watching the exhibition with absent impatient eyes, into which, however, a gleam of hopeful intelligence began to dawn; "but think I know what you are. One of the king's lackey fellows."

The lackey.

"Sirrah!"

"For sure!" and Lawrence slapped his knee, and his face grew full of animation. "How came I not to recognize the cut of you sooner, when I've seen any number of you hanging as thick as thieves scores of times—about the King's Arms, swilling down its cider—"

"To which King's Arms do you refer, my good fellow?" lisped the lackey. "There's hundreds of 'em scattered over the country."

"Opposite Master Rumbold's."

"Never heard of the fellow," said the lackey, airily stroking his little chin. "Hang me now if I have. Shouldn't be able to tell him from Adam, renounce me now if I should. Rumbold? Rumbold?"

"Of the Rye House."

"Never so much as heard of the place," said the lackey, and slowly shaking his head with the action and beatifically vacuous smile of a Chinese image.

"That shows how little you know the king, then, for he knows it well enough," contemptuously returned Lawrence, "as well as he does one of his palaces. 'Twas a palace too itself, once upon a time; and 'tis big enough for the squinniest eyes to see."

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" screeched the other. "Hear the clodhopper—all his geese are swans. I apprehend you'll be for telling me next that your Rye House is as fine an edifice as this;" and he languidly extended his hand in the direction of the house beneath whose walls they stood.

"This!" echoed Lawrence, laughing merrily. "This dog-hole of a place hold a candle to our old Rye House! Come," and briskly twitching Stars and Garters by the rein, he was about to push on, "how much farther to the king's palace?"

Mr. Alworth.

"Under this archway and across the yard," said a voice immediately behind him.

Lawrence's face fell blankly. If he had not quite anticipated walls of gold and columns of ivory, he had conceived of something statelier than this mean, patched-up-looking house. "I thank you, sir," he contrived, however, to say at last, turning to the speaker and lifting his cap deferentially, as he perceived him to be an elderly man, somewhat tall and still fairly robust, in an iron-gray periwig, and with a genial glance in his keen gray eyes, overshadowed by brows still thick and dark. The Mr. Alworth, in fact, whose acquaintance we have already made upon the heath.

"And if," continued Lawrence, "you will add to your obligation by telling me how I may come to speak with the king—"

"Ho!" chuckled the lackey; "renounce me if ever I heard the like of that!"

"I am no courtier," answered Mr. Alworth, suppressing the lackey's outbreak by a look; "but I am acquainted with many that are," he went on with a flicker of a smile; "and I often hear them say that His Majesty is not difficult of access, provided you have, of course, some letter of commendation."

"Not the ghost of one," said Lee with another blank stare.

"Ha! ha!" grinned the lackey in vast enjoyment of Lawrence's discomfiture. "A pretty fellow! What do you say to that, Mr. Alworth?"

"Silence, Mr. Flippet," said Alworth sternly. "You should have provided yourself, my friend," he went on, turning again to Lee. "You have doubtless influential neighbours—"

"Oh, yes!" said Lawrence, scratching his curls.

"Standing well at court?" continued Mr. Alworth.

"Well, I don't know so much about that. H'm, h'm—the fact is," stammered on Lawrence, "I—you see, I came off in—in just a bit of a hurry."

"And the more haste the less speed. You will know that, when those brown locks of yours have got a silver streak or two among them. Well, I don't know what's to be done," he added cogitatively.

How to see the King.

"Go back where he came from, like a bad penny," interjected the hugely delighted Flippet, but in a key too low to catch the ear of Alworth, of whom he stood in wholesome awe. That personage having, as he believed, and not without good cause, power to mar or to advance his fortunes by reason of his intimate acquaintance with many whose time was passed about the presence of the king. And Mr. Flippet was fond of his place, in spite of his complaints concerning its arduous and fatiguing duties. These consisted in the daily washing and combing of a couple of little dogs, respectively named Azor and Médor, two prime favourites among the posse of snubby-nosed, silky-coated, fringy-pawed, lilliputian spaniels which his majesty loved to have about him. As to the daily airing necessary for their health, the king himself was their nurse; and the toilets of the little creatures completed, Mr. Flippet was lord of his time, of which the portion not devoted to slumber, eating and drinking, and the basset-table, he spent in dawdling about.

"I fear there is nothing for it," said Mr. Alworth after a brief speculative silence, "but for you to return home, and obtain such a letter of introduction. 'Tis a case, I doubt, where, as the old saying has it, 'the longest way round is the shortest way there.':

"Go back!" cried Lee in dismay. "Thirty miles if 'tis a yard. Sir! sir! and 'tis a matter of life and death!"

"That's what they all say when they want to be fleecing the king or you; an't it, Master Alworth?" sneered the lackey.

Flippet's duties.

The remark was, however, lost on Alworth, who was absorbed in the study of Lawrence's countenance; but turning his eyes on Flippet at last, he said: "Mr. Flippet, you are a person of considerable influence with the gentlemen of the bed-chamber—according to your own account."

Brought to book.

"Oh, Mr. Alworth!" blushingly rejoined Flippet, "you're too kind to say so; renounce me if you're not."

"Denounce you, you mean sir!" sternly said Alworth. "And that, let me tell you, is what I had more than half a mind for, when I heard those two wretched little dogs yelping in the stable yonder to the tune of a switch, as I passed some two hours since."

"Oh, Mr. Alworth!" yelped Flippet in his turn, and falling on his knees, regardless of the puddles; "you'll never tell of me, Mr. Alworth. 'Twould be a hanging matter for me, if it came to his majesty's ears. Oh! Mr. Alworth, the lazy, pampered little beasts put me out of patience, and I—I—"

"If all the pampered animals were treated by their deservings, some would come worse off than Azor and Médor. Get up, you foolish fellow. You cowardly pretence of a man, chastising two poor helpless little dogs. Don't let me hear of it again."

"You shall not, Mr. Alworth," whined Flippet, inwardly resolved that next time he had occasion to "correct" his charges, it should be with closed windows and stuffed keyholes. "You shall not! Oh! don't tell of me this once," he went on in an agony of entreaty, "and I'll—I'll stand on my head to do you a service."

"You'll serve me better," smiled Alworth, "by keeping it where it is, and giving your brains a chance of devising some means of bringing this young man before the king, without an instant's delay."

"I—I—" gasped Flippet. "Oh! yes, to be sure; only, you see—"

"Yes or no," said Alworth inflexibly.

"Anything to oblige you—" began the unfortunate lackey.

A friend not at court.

"Very good," nodded Alworth. "'Tis but a small enough favour. But for my own part, I have never so much as seen his majesty face to face; and should have to be beholden to some of my friends for introduction to him myself, though we are near enough neighbours, and have had some business together. But my name, sir," he went on, turning again to Lee, "is but plain Richard Alworth. To be heard of across the way yonder, over against the parish church, at the sign of the 'Silver Leopard.'"

"And my name," said Lawrence, "is Lee—Lawrence Lee."

"Of the Nether Hall Farm, by Hoddesdon?" cried Alworth, a sudden light dispelling all the little clouds of mystification in the keen eyes transfixing Lawrence.

"The same," nodded Lee, as he dismounted from his horse; "at your service."

"The son of my good old friend and comrade!" and now tears glistened up into the eyes. "The loyalest heart that ever beat," he went on, seizing the hand of Lawrence. "We fought side by side on Worcester Field; and he was struck down. Heaven does so often take the best early back to itself. Well, well, he died worthily—as a man may be proud to die—for King and Country. You look your father's son," he went on, scanning the young man keenly; "every inch of you. But I must not detain you now; and Mr. Flippet here is, I can see, dying to acquit himself of his little obligation. So fare you well, Master Lee, till you favour me with your company at supper to-night. Nay, come, come; but I'll take no denial. Don't forget the 'Silver Leopard.' Anybody will direct you. I'm well known. Your servant, my lord," he went on, acknowledging the salutation of a gaily-dressed gallant, who thereupon linked his arm familiarly into that of Alworth, and led him away engaged in earnest conversation.

The power of the purse.

"Ay, there they go," muttered Flippet; "hand-in-glove, of course, like he is with 'em all. That's what it is to have your pockets well lined," continued Flippet, thrusting his hands into his own highly-decorated, but, thanks to the past night's little amusements, absolutely empty ones.

"A wealthy man?" said Lawrence.

"That's not the word for it," enviously replied Flippet. "No courtier? No. I'll warrant Richard Alworth, the goldsmith, wouldn't change his mouse-coloured broadcloth for all their fine feathers. But he's a good sort I don't say anything against him. Leastways he would be a good sort if he wasn't such a confounded, pig-headed, obstinate old—"

Stopped in time.

"Come, Mr. Flippet, when you're ready," interrupted Lee.

CHAPTER XXI.

"A FRIEND INDEED."

Passing beneath the archway, where Lawrence Lee delivered Stars and Garters into the charge of a groom, who advanced to receive her in obedience to a lofty gesture from Mr. Flippet, the two crossed the courtyard, which was handsomely paved with octagon-shaped black and white marble flags, and decorated with orange-trees set in huge painted china tubs, and statuary emblematic of the amusement which the king came hither to pursue.

Not by the main door, whose low double flight of winding steps was protected by a rail of cast iron, wrought into grotesque shapes of centaurs and winged horses, but by a little side postern, half hidden in one of the irregular angles of the building, Lee and his companion gained a dark vestibule; ascending thence by a narrow break-neck flight of stone stairs to a corridor above. Pursuing its tortuous turns, it brought them in sight of a fair-sized gallery, whose gaily gilded balustrades and painted walls catching the pale yellow rays of the morning sun, presented a garish, confusing picture to the somewhat wearied senses of Lee. It would, indeed, have been a hard matter to find a resting-place for the eyes amidst the ever moving throng of richly dressed figures, conspicuous among which were numbers who were clad like his companion in silver-laced blue livery. These deftly threaded their way to and fro, bearing salvers of burnished silver loaded with cut-glass silver-gilt flagons, and brilliantly painted coffee and chocolate pots of oriental china. Pressing on after Flippet, or to speak with absolute correctness, dragging Flippet onward, Lee soon found himself in the very thick of the chattering, giggling, simpering crowd of fine ladies and gentlemen who were bidding their good-morrows to each other, and exchanging sweet compliments.

An awkward fix.

"A nice trim he's in," dismally grumbled Flippet to himself, as he marked the disgustful stares and supercilious smiles of this butterfly bevy, at the stranger's mud-bespattered attire, and the terror and alarm with which they snatched their skirts and ruffles from possibility of contact with it. "A sweet trim truly for an audience! It's all mighty fine for Master Alworth to say, 'Flippet do that,' and 'Flippet do this,' as if I was any fetching and carrying poodle dog; but—" and the gaze of silent despair he was bestowing on the rich blood-red Genoa velvet curtains which now stayed their progress, was more eloquent than words.

No one knew better than himself that the brazen gates of an ogre's castle could more easily be broken through, and a couple of dragons sooner mollified, than that pair of suave-looking six-foot-high personages, habited in blue and silver, and wielding slender white wands in their delicate hands; for did not they guard the sacred way conducting straight to the private apartments of the king?

An awkward introduction.

"And what may be your business this morning, Mr. Flippet?" demanded one of these personages, "and who may be your friend?" he added, glaring at Lawrence Lee.

"I—I—" stammered the lackey. "He's no friend of mine. Renounce me if he is, and—and—it's no business of mine, I assure you, Mr. Usher, none whatever."

"Then don't meddle with it," laughed Mr. Usher, as he looked far over Mr. Flippet's head into the gallery's middle distance; "but mind your manners, and stand out of the way. And you too young gentleman," he went on addressing Lee. "Don't you see who's a coming?"

He emphasized these words with such a sudden lunge of his staff of office at the objects nearest to him, which happened to be the unfortunate Flippet's legs, that the lackey shifted aside in blind terror, and fell stumbling against Lee. Unprepared for the shock, Lawrence in his turn must, but for a dexterous twist which regulated his balance, have lain sprawling his length at the very feet of a lady, advancing towards the curtained way, accompanied by a group of some half dozen more ladies, who remained standing a pace or two in the rear of her, as she came to a forced halt.

The Queen.

Fortunately these awkward man[oe]uvres brought about no worse mishap than the brushing to the floor of a little book which the foremost lady had held lightly in her hand.

Crimsoning with shame to the roots of his dark curls, Lawrence stooped down, and picking up the book was about to present it to the lady, when he felt the skirts of his coat pulled from behind with such violence, that a second and still more deplorable misadventure must inevitably have occurred, had not the lady averted it with a peremptory, but still gracious gesture of her small ivory-white hand.

"Nay, gentlemen, you are unmannerly," she said, in tones of gentle remonstrance, and whose accents sounded strangely in the ears of the Hertfordshire farmer. "What is the meaning of this?" she went on, her dark eyes kindling with indignation and surprise, as they traversed the circle of ladies and gallants whom the disturbance had drawn to the spot "What is the meaning of it?" reiterated she, receiving the book from Lee's hands with a gracious inclination of her head. The onlookers simpered vacuously at each other.

"Your majesty—" began the Usher.

The Queen! In spite of the strange heart-beating sensation which then seized Lawrence, his curiosity, or more correctly interest, was still sufficiently his master, to permit of his bearing away in his memory the enduring picture of Catharine of Braganza, the not too happy wife of the merry careless Charles the Second.

Court ladies.

How was it that this middle-aged, olive-complexioned Portuguese lady, whose mouth would have been prettier had not her teeth projected somewhat too far, and whose chief beauty lay in her magnificent dark eyes, though indeed her small figure was slender and graceful enough—brought comely English Ruth Rumbold to his mind? Only so it did. Could it be some association which similarity of dress brings? True enough, Ruth's holiday gown and petticoat were but of tiffany, and her cobweb cambric neckerchief only hem-stitched neat as needle could do it; whereas the queen's petticoat was of finest silver gray taffety, bordered like its tawny brown brocade overskirt, with pinkish silken embroidery, and the broad fine linen collar covering her shoulders, and reaching close round her slender neck, was edged with magnificent Spanish lace. For the rest, Lawrence with his masculine ignorance of women's fallals could not have enlightened you at all; but had he presumed to ask the surrounding court ladies, they would have uttered little scornful shrieks, screwed up their red lips—rosy as salve could make them—tossed back their glossy straying ringlets, and told him that the queen was a starched old frump, who stuck to the odiously dowdy fashions of thirty years ago and more, when melancholy Charles the First was king. Yet perhaps after all, it was not the modest style of her dress, but something in the womanly sweet composure of her speech and bearing, that crowns all women, old and young, plain and beautiful, with a grace of its own; that reminded Lawrence Lee of his little love, won his allegiance to the king's wife, and sealed his determination to save the king, or die in the attempt; let this butterfly swarm sneer and simper as they pleased, and half draw their rapiers, as they were beginning to do, muttering: "Insolence," and "Upstart," and the rest of it; while the ladies giggled hysterically, and cried, "Malapert," and the usher continued to stammer on in dire confusion:—"You see—that is, your Majesty will compre—that is, of course apprehend—that is to say—ahem—understand that here is some plot—"

"A plot! A plot!"

"Ay, ay. Quite so," eagerly interrupted Lawrence, and casting grateful looks at the usher. "That is it—a plot. A vile, infamous plot—"

"Sirrah!" frowned the usher. "A plot between this fellow Flippet here," he went on, again addressing the queen. "Your Majesty knows him well,"—and he pointed his wand at the now trembling nurse of Azor and Médor, "and this stranger here, to thrust themselves into the presence of his Majesty."

"Wherefore?" demanded the queen; and the inquiry was caught up and echoed on every side.

"Heaven knows," groaned the usher, turning up his eyes.

"And not heaven only," cried the excited young man. "For 'tis a hellish conspiracy to murder the king—Madam—your Majesty"—he hurriedly continued, in a voice tremulous with agitation; and utterly unconscious of the sneers and uplifted hands of the by-standers, he threw himself at the queen's feet. "'Tis a matter of life and death to the king. I must see him. You who are all potent with him—"

"Listen to that now!" giggled the ladies.

"Entreat—implore him to grant me an audience," and he caught the queen's skirt.

"Come, come. This troublesome fellow is too insufferable," cried a young gentleman springing forward, and seizing Lee roughly by the shoulder.

The Queen listens.

"Hands off, my Lord of Grafton," sternly cried the queen, who saw, or thought she saw in all this pretended zeal, the veiled intention she only too frequently experienced, of setting her will at naught. The young nobleman slunk back, looking crestfallen and louring. "Go forward, sir," continued Catherine, waving back the rest, and motioning Lee to precede her along the corridor.

The curtain fell behind them, and Lee found himself alone with the queen and her ladies.

CHAPTER XXII

        Our sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relies on;
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.

The king's private apartments in his ramshackle, patched-together, wandering old hunting-lodge, presented a vastly different scene from the like sacred precincts by courtesy misnamed "private" at Whitehall. There up to his bed-rails all was buzz and bustle; here in Newmarket his love of ease, and his good-will and pleasure, were so far consulted and respected that the swarm of courtly hangers-on was kept at bay by those velvet hangings; and Lee heard not a sound in the corridor they had entered but the rustling of the ladies' gowns and the echo of his own footfall.

Pausing before a door about midway along the right-hand wall of the corridor, and which bore on its heavy ebony panels the gilded royal cognizance and initials, the queen pushed it open with her own hand, and, followed by her companions, entered the apartment beyond. It was an oblong chamber, sparsely lighted at its further end by a couple of tall windows, in whose deep recesses some half-dozen lackeys were yawningly watching what might be going on in the courtyard below. At sight, however, of the queen they hurried into rank, and proceeded to throw open with much ceremony another double door, which brought them into a room, or rather vestibule of circular form, panelled with looking-glass deeply sunken in heavy gilded scrollwork, and which reflected in ghastly distorted fashion the gaudy elephantine ugliness of the crimson silk and ormolu furniture of the latest French fashion, ranged formally round the windowless walls; for the light of heaven only found its way into this dreary apartment through the blue and orange-coloured panes of a skylight let into the centre of its painted domed roof.

The King's chambers.

Here the queen paused; and having with a gesture dismissed the lackeys, and desired her ladies to await her return, she passed on alone with Lawrence Lee into a long straight corridor, richly carpeted and lighted by bull's-eye windows of coloured glass not larger than those of a ship's cabin. The silence and tortuous ways of the place oppressed Lee's senses like a nightmare dream; and he began to think that a guide through its dim passages was not altogether a mere courtly superfluity, but rather a thing of absolute necessity. "I'd sooner undertake to be finding my way for the first time through our hornbeam maze at home than in and out of all these crinkum-crankums," thought he; "and if this be your King Charles's merry court, give me the Nether Hall kitchen."

Under the royal eye.

A silvery peal of merriment, that rippled like dancing water on the sonorous laughter of men's voices, dispelled Lee's too hastily formed conclusions. He glanced at the queen. Was it his fancy? or did a shadow momentarily darken the composure of her face as she lifted the gorgeously embroidered Indian silk hangings before which they now stood, and with a sign to Lee to keep close, stepped over the threshold of a low-ceiled but spacious chamber, whose wainscot of ebonized wood was enriched with paintings, and gilded carved reliefs of fruit and flowers entwining emblems of the chase. Here at all events was no lack of life; for the apartment was thronged with persons of both sexes, and all so engrossed in talk and merriment that they did not observe the entrance of the queen, until it was marked by the quick glance of one pair of eyes, which all the others had a trick of following, despite their seeming carelessness. The expression in the face of the owner of these eyes, who was seated near the fire which burned upon the hearth curiously built into one of the corners of the room, soon brought to their senses the merry company nearest the door; and, subsiding into a decorous gravity, they fell apart into a sort of double thickset hedgeway of feathers and furbelows reaching clear up to the stone-canopied fireplace, whose logs, burning brilliantly between the brazen dogs, cast their light upon the swarthy countenance of King Charles the Second, where he sat leaning carelessly back in a tall carved elbow-chair, attired in a hunting suit of darkest olive velvet.

"Your majesty is astir betimes this morning," he said, rising a little hurriedly, and addressing the queen in tones which were not wanting in courtesy, if they might be in cordiality. "You have been to church?" he added, glancing at the little book in her hand.

The queen bowed her head. "'Tis the feast of my patron saint, Catharine, your majesty will remember," she said.

"Odds fish!" ejaculated Charles, vexedly cud gelling his brows, for he had in no wise remembered; and a flush of something like compunction crossed his swarthy features. "You have our hearty wishes, Catharine, for its many happy returns."

A lightless smile curved the queen's lips as she acknowledged with a deep inclination of her head the chorus of voices endorsing this tardy felicitation.

The King's breakfast.

"And now," continued Charles with a gesture of his hand towards the breakfast tables, glittering in their costly confusion, while his eyes travelled rather regretfully down over his long buff riding-boots, "does not your majesty propose to stay and breakfast with us? It is true—"

"That you have breakfasted," interrupted the queen with another faint smile. "Nay, I take it my absence will be more esteemed. Oh! no protests, gentlemen," she went on, lifting her hand as the polite chorus was repeated, "for I perceive, as to be sure I only anticipated, that you are all booted and spurred for your day's pleasure. And I had no intention of coming here to—to spoil it. But on my way from chapel this young gentleman—" and she made a motion towards Lawrence Lee—"a supplicant for a word with your majesty,—crossed it. And though some of your majesty's people would have denied him, his business—"

"Business!" groaned the king, sinking down again into his chair with a cavernous yawn.

"Was urgent, he said."

"We have no leisure for it;" and Charles's black brows knitted with angry impatience. "Let him carry it to Whitehall."

"He says," persisted Catharine, "that it concerns your majesty personally."

"Then its standing over can give the less offence. If we alone are concerned—"

Lawrence speaks out.

"We!" cried Lee, breaking to the front and sending all ceremony to the winds, and his bashfulness after it. "We! 'Tis there all the whole matter lies. 'Tis just because your majesty is 'We,' and never can be 'I.' The King is England, and England is the King!"

Charles's brow relaxed into an expression of amused curiosity at the earnestness of the speaker. "Your sentiments are loyal at all events," he said, as his dark eyes considered the young man's appearance from beneath their heavy lids. "Are we to feel assured that your heart is no traitor to them?"

Lee blushed. "'Tis my heart," he replied, "that bids me entreat your majesty to hear me."

"And a sweet heart I think it must be, by my faith, and your red cheeks," merrily laughed the king. "And a brave honest meaning one, I will not doubt. But we have seen too many shadows and mumbo-jumbos in our life, to be afraid of them. And," continued the king, glancing round at the company, all ready equipped for their expedition, "we are detaining these gentlemen, and the ladies too, from their pleasure."

"They could be spared," hopefully said Lee, who desired nothing better than to speak alone with the king.

Suspicion.

"But it is suspicious indeed—this!" cried a beautiful Frenchified-looking lady, coming close up beside Charles, and darting angry glances on the young farmer from her brilliant eyes. "His majesty loves not so well tête-à-têtes with persons of your condition," she added in haughty tones.

"He might hold them with less honest folks, madam," returned the queen still more haughtily. "And he asks not your leave, I doubt, to speak with his own English-born subjects."

"Come, come!" said the king, as the lady at his side poutingly drew a step back; "this grows troublesome. What is the bottom of your business with us, my good friend?"

"Treason!" curtly answered Lawrence.

"Soho! And assassination to follow—eh? The old parrot screech," he went on, as Lee nodded. "Some new plot to rid the world of our sacred presence. Is that it?"

"And of his Grace of York's, your majesty's august brother."

"Why, that of course," laughed Charles, casting a mischievous glance at a sombre-browed gentleman seated near his own chair; "for to a dead certainty no man in England would take my life to make thee king, James."

"Then," said the duke, accepting his brother's jest with a sullen smile, "if this young man is to be trusted—"

"Ay, ay, IF," chorused several of the impatient company. "There your grace hits the bull's-eye. IF."

"We are both doomed men," imperturbably concluded the duke. "And when," he added, addressing Lee, "is this to be?"

"Ten days hence. On your return from this place."

Charles wakes up.

"Ods-fish! So they would take us red hot in our pleasures, would they? The scurvy crew! and where, prithee?" demanded Charles.

"Near by Hoddesdon. Over against the Rye House."

"The Rye House! Is not that how they call the ancient moated place that looks upon Master Izaak Walton's favourite old hostelry on the banks of the Lea?"

"The same, your majesty."

"And belongs, if we mistake not, to one Rum—Rum—"

"—bold. Richard Rumbold, a maltster."

"Ay; a prick-eared, Puritan-looking, malignant of a fellow, your majesty," interposed a twinkling-eyed gentleman, "who owns 'one daughter, passing fair,' as the dull old person does in the dull old play we all went to sleep over, a week or two since. Yes, yes; I remember her charming face well, and how the old curmudgeon came and dragged her in, sans cérémonie, from the little postern in the big red wall, where she was standing as pretty a framed picture as Lely or Sir Godfrey might make, to see your majesty's coach pass by. I' faith! I recall her well."

"And your memory on such points is a proverb, my Lord of Dorset," laughed the king; "but in truth I remember myself thinking the picture so exquisite, that I intended asking who she was of the good hostess of the King's Arms, one Mistress—Mistress—"

A slip in a name.

"Sheppard," prompted Lee.

"Ay, Sheppard, to be sure. A murrain befall me for forgetting the name of one who always professes such loyalty. Professes, friend," added the king in a significant tone.

"'Tis but the expression of what her heart feels," replied Lawrence warmly. "Mistress Sheppard is as loyal as the sign that hangs before her door. Though for Master Sheppard—h'm, well, 'tis no matter," and Lawrence came to a dead halt.

"We like not half-told tales, friend," sternly said the duke. "What of this fellow Sheppard?"

"Nothing, I assure you, sir—my lord—your highness," floundered Lee. "Nothing. He is a man of straw, a poor weathercock of a creature a lamb could not fear."

"Then whom the plague are we to fear?" demanded Charles testily.

"Not the old gentleman, I suppose, who fathers the pretty daughter, and hasn't a thought beyond her, and his rye-sacks, and his homily books, if his face goes for anything. Faith! 'twas as sour looking as if't had risen out of his own yeast tubs!" cried the earl.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the company, who made a point of always greeting the very smallest sally of my Lord of Dorset's wit with shouts of laughter.

"Not he, friend?" said the king, who had not failed to remark Lee's silence and slightly confused downcasting of the eyelids during Lord Dorset's speech. "By the by," he went on, still scanning the young man's face and figure with a sort of indolent curiosity, "what may be your name? All this time we have not heard that. Who may you be?"

A reminder.

"Lawrence Lee, of the Nether Hall Farm by Hoddesdon," answered Lee proudly. "My father served your majesty's father well. Though, 'tis possible, your majesty may not recall his name."

Short memory on such points, even when such services touched still closer home, and had been rendered to himself, was far from uncommon in Charles. Notwithstanding, his dark eyes kindled genially as he continued to look at the young man, and the bantering smile grew softer. "And Nether Hall," he said, "neighbours the house of Master Rum—Rum—how the plague did the fellow come by such a heathenish name?"

"'Tis fortunate," said the irrepressible Earl of Dorset, "that so fair a damsel as his daughter is scarce like to wear it to the end of her days."

"Nay," said the king, holding up a rebukeful finger at the earl, as he noted Lee's flushing cheek, and the ill-pleased gnawing of his nether lip; "that quite clearly concerns not our deciding; for here we have, it seems, a question of treason, and this pretty Mistress—Mistress—"

Sorry jesting.

"Ruth," said Lee in a low tone; "Ruth is her Christian name."

"I' faith! and such a sweet one, too, that it covers all the sinning of her father's—"

Lee started. "I said not—"

"You interrupt," smiled the king; "'twould go hard indeed for us all if fair Mistress Ruth should prove traitress."

"Your majesty has not a loyaller heart in all your kingdom than Ruth Rumbold," said Lee, conquering down his agitation.

"Say you so?" merrily returned the king; "then with such fair ladies for our champions, how can we fear the blackest treason in all Hertforshire? Here we have valiant Mistress Sheppard on one side of the road, and the loyal Mistress of the Rye House on the other—"

"Nay, be serious, Charles," frowned the duke, out of all patience at his brother's levity.

"Pah! I cannot," as impatiently returned the king, taking as he spoke a pair of riding-gloves from the table, and beginning to draw them on. "These would-be scares sicken one. 'Tis like the shepherd crying wolf."

"And when the real one came at last—" began the duke.

The royal pleasure.

"Ods-fish, man. For pity's sake, let us have no more of this," interrupted the king. "The lad means honestly enough, no doubt. But he has been picking up some ale-house tale, and got a nightmare of it, depend on't. Stay you, my dear brother, if you will, to hear it out. And hark you, when 'tis ended, don't forget to see the lad falls to and picks up a good breakfast for his melancholy entertainment of your grace. Do you propose to accompany us this morning, Catharine?" he continued, turning to the queen.

"If your majesty commands," she answered, in slow almost hesitating tones, and as if her thoughts were elsewhere engaged.

"Nay, not command, Catharine," said the king; "but we do not forget it is your patron saint's day," he added, in tones that conveyed also a strong intimation of his will; "and it is our pleasure."