5 files changed, 5768 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/5750.txt b/5750.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2af17b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/5750.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5752 @@
+Project Gutenberg's St. George and St. Michael Vol. I, by George MacDonald
+#12 in our series by George MacDonald
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: St. George and St. Michael Vol. I
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5750]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 23, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
+and the Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL
+
+BY GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES
+
+VOL. I.
+
+LONDON
+
+1876
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. DOROTHY AND RICHARD.
+
+CHAPTER II. RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.
+
+CHAPTER III. THE WITCH.
+
+CHAPTER IV. A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.
+
+CHAPTER V. ANIMADVERSIONS.
+
+CHAPTER VI. PREPARATIONS.
+
+CHAPTER VII. REFLECTIONS.
+
+CHAPTER VIII. AN ADVENTURE.
+
+CHAPTER IX. LOVE AND WAR.
+
+CHAPTER X. DOROTHY'S REFUGE.
+
+CHAPTER XI. RAGLAN CASTLE.
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE TWO MARQUISES.
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.
+
+CHAPTER XIV. SEVERAL PEOPLE.
+
+CHAPTER XV. HUSBAND AND WIFE.
+
+CHAPTER XVI. DOROTHY'S INITIATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DOROTHY AND RICHARD.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the
+lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the
+slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung
+trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape
+beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in
+the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers
+bordering the little lawn, or the honeysuckle covering the wide
+porch, from which the slow rain dropped ceaselessly upon the
+pebble-paving below, could not give--steepy slopes, hedge-divided
+into small fields, some green and dotted with red cattle, others
+crowded with shocks of bedraggled and drooping corn, which looked
+suffering and patient.
+
+The room to which the window having this prospect belonged was large
+and low, with a dark floor of uncarpeted oak. It opened immediately
+upon the porch, and although a good fire of logs blazed on the
+hearth, was chilly to the sense of the old man, who, with his feet
+on the skin of a fallow-deer, sat gazing sadly into the flames,
+which shone rosy through the thin hands spread out before them. At
+the opposite corner of the great low-arched chimney sat a lady past
+the prime of life, but still beautiful, though the beauty was all
+but merged in the loveliness that rises from the heart to the face
+of such as have taken the greatest step in life--that is, as the
+old proverb says, the step out of doors. She was plainly yet rather
+richly dressed, in garments of an old-fashioned and well-preserved
+look. Her hair was cut short above her forehead, and frizzed out in
+bunches of little curls on each side. On her head was a covering of
+dark stuff, like a nun's veil, which fell behind and on her
+shoulders. Close round her neck was a string of amber beads, that
+gave a soft harmonious light to her complexion. Her dark eyes looked
+as if they found repose there, so quietly did they rest on the face
+of the old man, who was plainly a clergyman. It was a small, pale,
+thin, delicately and symmetrically formed face, yet not the less a
+strong one, with endurance on the somewhat sad brow, and force in
+the closed lips, while a good conscience looked clear out of the
+grey eyes.
+
+They had been talking about the fast-gathering tide of opinion
+which, driven on by the wind of words, had already begun to beat so
+furiously against the moles and ramparts of Church and kingdom. The
+execution of lord Strafford was news that had not yet begun to 'hiss
+the speaker.'
+
+'It is indeed an evil time,' said the old man. 'The world has seldom
+seen its like.'
+
+'But tell me, master Herbert,' said the lady, 'why comes it in this
+our day? For our sins or for the sins of our fathers?'
+
+'Be it far from me to presume to set forth the ways of Providence!'
+returned her guest. 'I meddle not, like some that should be wiser,
+with the calling of the prophet. It is enough for me to know that
+ever and again the pride of man will gather to "a mighty and a
+fearful head," and, like a swollen mill-pond overfed of rains, burst
+the banks that confine it, whether they be the laws of the land or
+the ordinances of the church, usurping on the fruitful meadows, the
+hope of life for man and beast. Alas!' he went on, with a new
+suggestion from the image he had been using, 'if the beginning of
+strife be as the letting out of water, what shall be the end of that
+strife whose beginning is the letting out of blood?'
+
+'Think you then, good sir, that thus it has always been? that such
+times of fierce ungodly tempest must ever follow upon seasons of
+peace and comfort?--even as your cousin of holy memory, in his
+verses concerning the church militant, writes:
+
+"Thus also sin and darkness follow still The church and sun, with
+all their power and skill."'
+
+'Truly it seems so. But I thank God the days of my pilgrimage are
+nearly numbered. To judge by the tokens the wise man gives us, the
+mourners are already going about my streets. The almond-tree
+flourisheth at least.'
+
+He smiled as he spoke, laying his hand on his grey head.
+
+'But think of those whom we must leave behind us, master Herbert.
+How will it fare with them?' said the lady in troubled tone, and
+glancing in the direction of the window.
+
+In the window sat a girl, gazing from it with the look of a child
+who had uttered all her incantations, and could imagine no abatement
+in the steady rain-pour.
+
+'We shall leave behind us strong hearts and sound heads too,' said
+Mr. Herbert. 'And I bethink me there will be none stronger or
+sounder than those of your young cousins, my late pupils, of whom I
+hear brave things from Oxford, and in whose affection my spirit
+constantly rejoices.'
+
+'You will be glad to hear such good news of your relatives,
+Dorothy,' said the lady, addressing her daughter.
+
+Even as she said the words, the setting sun broke through the mass
+of grey cloud, and poured over the earth a level flood of radiance,
+in which the red wheat glowed, and the drops that hung on every ear
+flashed like diamonds. The girl's hair caught it as she turned her
+face to answer her mother, and an aureole of brown-tinted gold
+gleamed for a moment about her head.
+
+'I am glad that you are pleased, madam, but you know I have never
+seen them--or heard of them, except from master Herbert, who has,
+indeed, often spoke rare things of them.'
+
+'Mistress Dorothy will still know the reason why,' said the
+clergyman, smiling, and the two resumed their conversation. But the
+girl rose, and, turning again to the window, stood for a moment rapt
+in the transfiguration passing upon the world. The vault of grey was
+utterly shattered, but, gathering glory from ruin, was hurrying in
+rosy masses away from under the loftier vault of blue. The ordered
+shocks upon twenty fields sent their long purple shadows across the
+flush; and the evening wind, like the sighing that follows departed
+tears, was shaking the jewels from their feathery tops. The
+sunflowers and hollyhocks no longer cowered under the tyranny of the
+rain, but bowed beneath the weight of the gems that adorned them. A
+flame burned as upon an altar on the top of every tree, and the very
+pools that lay on the distant road had their message of light to
+give to the hopeless earth. As she gazed, another hue than that of
+the sunset, yet rosy too, gradually flushed the face of the maiden.
+She turned suddenly from the window, and left the room, shaking a
+shower of diamonds from the honeysuckle as she passed out through
+the porch upon the gravel walk.
+
+Possibly her elders found her departure a relief, for although they
+took no notice of it, their talk became more confidential, and was
+soon mingled with many names both of rank and note, with a
+familiarity which to a stranger might have seemed out of keeping
+with the humbler character of their surroundings.
+
+But when Dorothy Vaughan had passed a corner of the house to another
+garden more ancient in aspect, and in some things quaint even to
+grotesqueness, she was in front of a portion of the house which
+indicated a far statelier past--closed and done with, like the rooms
+within those shuttered windows. The inhabited wing she had left
+looked like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land; nor did
+this appearance greatly belie the present position of the family.
+For generations it had been slowly descending in the scale of
+worldly account, and the small portion of the house occupied by the
+widow and daughter of sir Ringwood Vaughan was larger than their
+means could match with correspondent outlay. Such, however, was the
+character of lady Vaughan, that, although she mingled little with
+the great families in the neighbourhood, she was so much respected,
+that she would have been a welcome visitor to most of them.
+
+The reverend Mr. Matthew Herbert was a clergyman from the Welsh
+border, a man of some note and influence, who had been the personal
+friend both of his late relative George Herbert and of the famous
+Dr. Donne. Strongly attached to the English church, and recoiling
+with disgust from the practices of the puritans--as much, perhaps,
+from refinement of taste as abhorrence of schism--he had never yet
+fallen into such a passion for episcopacy as to feel any cordiality
+towards the schemes of the archbishop. To those who knew him his
+silence concerning it was a louder protest against the policy of
+Laud than the fiercest denunciations of the puritans. Once only had
+he been heard to utter himself unguardedly in respect of the
+primate, and that was amongst friends, and after the second glass
+permitted of his cousin George. 'Tut! laud me no Laud,' he said. 'A
+skipping bishop is worse than a skipping king.' Once also he had
+been overheard murmuring to himself by way of consolement, 'Bishops
+pass; the church remains.' He had been a great friend of the late
+sir Ringwood; and although the distance from his parish was too
+great to be travelled often, he seldom let a year go by without
+paying a visit to his friend's widow and daughter.
+
+Turning her back on the cenotaph of their former greatness, Dorothy
+dived into a long pleached alley, careless of the drip from
+overhead, and hurrying through it came to a circular patch of thin
+grass, rounded by a lofty hedge of yew-trees, in the midst of which
+stood what had once been a sun-dial. It mattered little, however,
+that only the stump of a gnomon was left, seeing the hedge around it
+had grown to such a height in relation to the diameter of the
+circle, that it was only for a very brief hour or so in the middle
+of a summer's day, when, of all periods, the passage of Time seems
+least to concern humanity, that it could have served to measure his
+march. The spot had, indeed, a time-forsaken look, as if it lay
+buried in the bosom of the past, and the present had forgotten it.
+
+Before emerging from the alley, she slackened her pace,
+half-stopped, and, stooping a little in her tucked-up skirt, threw a
+bird-like glance around the opener space; then stepping into it, she
+looked up to the little disc of sky, across which the clouds, their
+roses already withered, sailed dim and grey once more, while behind
+them the stars were beginning to recall their half-forgotten message
+from regions unknown to men. A moment, and she went up to the dial,
+stood there for another moment, and was on the point of turning to
+leave the spot, when, as if with one great bound, a youth stood
+between her and the entrance of the alley.
+
+'Ah ha, mistress Dorothy, you do not escape me so!' he cried,
+spreading out his arms as if to turn back some runaway creature.
+
+But mistress Dorothy was startled, and mistress Dorothy did not
+choose to be startled, and therefore mistress Dorothy was dignified,
+if not angry.
+
+'I do not like such behaviour, Richard,' she said. 'It ill suits
+with the time. Why did you hide behind the hedge, and then leap
+forth so rudely?'
+
+'I thought you saw me,' answered the youth. 'Pardon my heedlessness,
+Dorothy. I hope I have not startled you too much.'
+
+As he spoke he stooped over the hand he had caught, and would have
+carried it to his lips, but the girl, half-pettishly, snatched it
+away, and, with a strange mixture of dignity, sadness, and annoyance
+in her tone, said--
+
+'There has been something too much of this, Richard, and I begin to
+be ashamed of it.'
+
+'Ashamed!' echoed the youth. 'Of what? There is nothing but me to be
+ashamed of, and what can I have done since yesterday?'
+
+'No, Richard; I am not ashamed of you, but I am ashamed of--of--this
+way of meeting--and--and----'
+
+'Surely that is strange, when we can no more remember the day in
+which we have not met than that in which we met first! No, dear
+Dorothy----'
+
+'It is not our meeting, Richard; and if you would but think as
+honestly as you speak, you would not require to lay upon me the
+burden of explanation. It is this foolish way we have got into of
+late--kissing hands--and--and--always meeting by the old sun-dial,
+or in some other over-quiet spot. Why do you not come to the house?
+My mother would give you the same welcome as any time these
+last--how many years, Richard?'
+
+'Are you quite sure of that, Dorothy?'
+
+'Well--I did fancy she spoke with something more of ceremony the
+last time you met. But, consider, she has seen so much less of you
+of late. Yet I am sure she has all but a mother's love in her heart
+towards you. For your mother was dear to her as her own soul.'
+
+'I would it were so, Dorothy! For then, perhaps, your mother would
+not shrink from being my mother too. When we are married, Dorothy--'
+
+'Married!' exclaimed the girl. 'What of marrying, indeed!' And she
+turned sideways from him with an indignant motion. 'Richard,' she
+went on, after a marked and yet but momentary pause, for the youth
+had not had time to say a word, 'it has been very wrong in me to
+meet you after this fashion. I know it now, for see what such things
+lead to! If you knew it, you have done me wrong.'
+
+'Dearest Dorothy!' exclaimed the youth, taking her hand again, of
+which this time she seemed hardly aware, 'did you not know from the
+very vanished first that I loved you with all my heart, and that to
+tell you so would have been to tell the sun that he shines warm at
+noon in midsummer? And I did think you had a little--something for
+me, Dorothy, your old playmate, that you did not give to every other
+acquaintance. Think of the houses we have built and the caves we
+have dug together--of our rabbits, and urchins, and pigeons, and
+peacocks!'
+
+'We are children no longer,' returned Dorothy. 'To behave as if we
+were would be to keep our eyes shut after we are awake. I like you,
+Richard, you know; but why this--where is the use of all this--new
+sort of thing? Come up with me to the house, where master Herbert is
+now talking to my mother in the large parlour. The good man will be
+glad to see you.'
+
+'I doubt it, Dorothy. He and my father, as I am given to understand,
+think so differently in respect of affairs now pending betwixt the
+parliament and the king, that--'
+
+'It were more becoming, Richard, if the door of your lips opened to
+the king first, and let the parliament follow.'
+
+'Well said!' returned the youth with a smile. 'But let it be my
+excuse that I speak as I am wont to hear.'
+
+The girl's hand had lain quiet in that of the youth, but now it
+started from it like a scared bird. She stepped two paces back, and
+drew herself up.
+
+'And you, Richard?' she said, interrogatively.
+
+'What would you ask, Dorothy?' returned the youth, taking a step
+nearer, to which she responded by another backward ere she replied.
+
+'I would know whom you choose to serve--whether God or Satan;
+whether you are of those who would set at nought the laws of the
+land----'
+
+'Insist on their fulfilment, they say, by king as well as people'
+interrupted Richard.
+
+'They would tear their mother in pieces----'
+
+'Their mother!' repeated Richard, bewildered.
+
+'Their mother, the church,' explained Dorothy.
+
+'Oh!' said Richard. 'Nay, they would but cast out of her the wolves
+in sheep's clothing that devour the lambs.'
+
+The girl was silent. Anger glowed on her forehead and flashed from
+her grey eyes. She stood one moment, then turned to leave him, but
+half turned again to say scornfully--
+
+'I must go at once to my mother! I knew not I had left her with such
+a wolf as master Herbert is like to prove!'
+
+'Master Herbert is no bishop, Dorothy!'
+
+'The bishops, then, are the wolves, master Heywood?' said the girl,
+with growing indignation.
+
+'Dear Dorothy, I am but repeating what I hear. For my own part, I
+know little of these matters. And what are they to us if we love one
+another?'
+
+'I tell you I am a child no longer,' flamed Dorothy.
+
+'You were seventeen last St. George's Day, and I shall be nineteen
+next St. Michael's.'
+
+'St. George for merry England!' cried Dorothy.
+
+'St. Michael for the Truth!' cried Richard.
+
+'So be it. Good-bye, then,' said the girl, going.
+
+'What DO you mean, Dorothy?' said Richard; and she stood to hear,
+but with her back towards him, and, as it were, hovering midway in a
+pace. 'Did not St. Michael also slay his dragon? Why should the
+knights part company? Believe me, Dorothy, I care more for a smile
+from you than for all the bishops in the church, or all the
+presbyters out of it.'
+
+'You take needless pains to prove yourself a foolish boy, Richard;
+and if I go not to my mother at once, I fear I shall learn to
+despise you--which I would not willingly.'
+
+'Despise me! Do you take me for a coward then, Dorothy?'
+
+'I say not that. I doubt not, for the matter of swords and pistols,
+you are much like other male creatures; but I protest I could never
+love a man who preferred my company to the service of his king.'
+
+She glided into the alley and sped along its vaulted twilight, her
+white dress gleaming and clouding by fits as she went.
+
+The youth stood for a moment petrified, then started to overtake
+her, but stood stock-still at the entrance of the alley, and
+followed her only with his eyes as she went.
+
+When Dorothy reached the house, she did not run up to her room that
+she might weep unseen. She was still too much annoyed with Richard
+to regret having taken such leave of him. She only swallowed down a
+little balloonful of sobs, and went straight into the parlour, where
+her mother and Mr. Herbert still sat, and resumed her seat in the
+bay window. Her heightened colour, an occasional toss of her head
+backwards, like that with which a horse seeks ease from the bearing-
+rein, generally followed by a renewal of the attempt to swallow
+something of upward tendency, were the only signs of her
+discomposure, and none of them were observed by her mother or her
+guest. Could she have known, however, what feelings had already
+begun to rouse themselves in the mind of him whose boyishness was an
+offence to her, she would have found it more difficult to keep such
+composure.
+
+Dorothy's was a face whose forms were already so decided that,
+should no softening influences from the central regions gain the
+ascendancy, beyond a doubt age must render it hard and unlovely. In
+all the roundness and freshness of girlhood, it was handsome rather
+than beautiful, beautiful rather than lovely. And yet it was
+strongly attractive, for it bore clear indication of a nature to be
+trusted. If her grey eyes were a little cold, they were honest eyes,
+with a rare look of steadfastness; and if her lips were a little too
+closely pressed, it was clearly from any cause rather than bad
+temper. Neither head, hands, nor feet were small, but they were fine
+in form and movement; and for the rest of her person, tall and
+strong as Richard was, Dorothy looked further advanced in the
+journey of life than he.
+
+She needed hardly, however, have treated his indifference to the
+politics of the time with so much severity, seeing her own
+acquaintance with and interest in them dated from that same
+afternoon, during which, from lack of other employment, and the
+weariness of a long morning of slow, dismal rain, she had been
+listening to Mr. Herbert as he dwelt feelingly on the arrogance of
+puritan encroachment, and the grossness of presbyterian insolence
+both to kingly prerogative and episcopal authority, and drew a
+touching picture of the irritant thwartings and pitiful insults to
+which the gentle monarch was exposed in his attempts to support the
+dignity of his divine office, and to cast its protecting skirt over
+the defenceless church; and if it was with less sympathy that he
+spoke of the fears which haunted the captive metropolitan, Dorothy
+at least could detect no hidden sarcasm in the tone in which he
+expressed his hope that Laud's devotion to the beauty of holiness
+might not result in the dignity of martyrdom, as might well be
+feared by those who were assured that the whole guilt of Strafford
+lay in his return to his duty, and his subsequent devotion to the
+interests of his royal master: to all this the girl had listened,
+and her still sufficiently uncertain knowledge of the affairs of the
+nation had, ere the talk was over, blossomed in a vague sense of
+partizanship. It was chiefly her desire after the communion of
+sympathy with Richard that had led her into the mistake of such a
+hasty disclosure of her new feelings.
+
+But her following words had touched him--whether to fine issues or
+not remained yet poised on the knife-edge of the balancing will. His
+first emotion partook of anger. As soon as she was out of sight a
+spell seemed broken, and words came.
+
+'A boy, indeed, mistress Dorothy!' he said. 'If ever it come to what
+certain persons prophesy, you may wish me in truth, and that for the
+sake of your precious bishops, the boy you call me now. Yes, you are
+right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so!
+Boy indeed I am--or have been--without a thought in my head but of
+her. The sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the
+winnowing fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me
+take a side, though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I
+shall take the side that seems to me the right one, were all the
+fair Dorothies of the universe on the other. In very truth I should
+be somewhat sorry to find the king and the bishops in the right,
+lest my lady should flatter herself and despise me that I had chosen
+after her showing, forsooth! This is master Herbert's doing, for
+never before did I hear her speak after such fashion.'
+
+While he thus spoke with himself, he stood, like the genius of the
+spot, a still dusky figure on the edge of the night, into which his
+dress of brown velvet, rich and sombre at once in the sunlight, all
+but merged. Nearly for the first time in his life he was
+experiencing the difficulty of making up his mind, not, however,
+upon any of the important questions, his inattention to which had
+exposed him to such sudden and unexpected severity, but merely as to
+whether he should seek her again in the company of her mother and
+Mr. Herbert, or return home. The result of his deliberation,
+springing partly, no doubt, from anger, but that of no very virulent
+type, was, that he turned his back on the alley, passed through a
+small opening in the yew hedge, crossed a neglected corner of
+woodland, by ways better known to him than to any one else, and came
+out upon the main road leading to the gates of his father's park.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.
+
+
+
+
+
+Richard Heywood, as to bodily fashion, was a tall and already
+powerful youth. The clear brown of his complexion spoke of plentiful
+sunshine and air. A merry sparkle in the depths of his hazel eyes
+relieved the shadows of rather notably heavy lids, themselves
+heavily overbrowed--with a suggestion of character which had not
+yet asserted itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his
+nose, although of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than
+clearness of line or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness
+along with a definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had
+not yet begun to compress and straighten out. His chin was at least
+large enough not to contradict the promise of his face; his
+shoulders were square, and his chest and limbs well developed:
+altogether it was at present a fair tabernacle--of whatever sort the
+indwelling divinity might yet turn out, fashioning it further after
+his own nature.
+
+His father and he were the only male descendants of an old Monmouthshire
+family, of neither Welsh nor Norman, but as pure Saxon blood as might be
+had within the clip of the ocean. Roger, the father, had once only or
+twice in his lifetime been heard boast, in humorous fashion, that
+although but a simple squire, he could, on this side the fog of
+tradition, which nearer or further shrouds all origin, count a longer
+descent than any of the titled families in the county, not excluding the
+earl of Worcester himself. His character also would have gone far to
+support any assertion he might have chosen to make as to the purity of
+his strain. A notable immobility of nature--his friends called it
+firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others
+might think of him; a certain sternness of manner--an unreadiness, as it
+were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with
+which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him,
+when he seemed always to give heed to the looks rather than the words of
+him who spoke; these peculiarities had combined to produce a certain awe
+of him in his inferiors, and a dislike, not unavowed, in his equals.
+With his superiors he came seldom in contact, and to them his behaviour
+was still more distant and unbending. But, although from these causes he
+was far from being a favourite in the county, he was a man of such known
+and acknowledged probity that, until of late, when party spirit ran high
+and drew almost everybody, whether of consequence or not, to one side or
+the other, there was nobody who would not have trusted Roger Heywood to
+the uttermost. Even now, foes as well as friends acknowledged that he
+was to be depended upon; while his own son looked up to him with a
+reverence that in some measure overshadowed his affection. Such a
+character as this had necessarily been slow in formation, and the
+opinions which had been modified by it and had reacted upon it, had been
+as unalterably as deliberately adopted. But affairs had approached a
+crisis between king and parliament before one of his friends knew that
+there were in his mind any opinions upon them in process of
+formation--so reserved and monosyllabic had been his share in any
+conversation upon topics which had for a long time been growing every
+hour of more and more absorbing interest to all men either of
+consequence, intelligence, property, or adventure. At last, however, it
+had become clear, to the great annoyance of not a few amongst his
+neighbours, that Heywood's leanings were to the parliament. But he had
+never yet sought to influence his son in regard to the great questions
+at issue.
+
+His house was one of those ancient dwellings which have grown under
+the hands to fit the wants of successive generations, and look as if
+they had never been other than old; two-storied at most, and
+many-gabled, with marvellous accretions and projections, the haunts
+of yet more wonderful shadows. There, in a room he called his study,
+shabby and small, containing a library more notable for quality and
+selection than size, Richard the next morning sought and found him.
+
+'Father!' he said, entering with some haste after the usual request
+for admission.
+
+'I am here, my son,' answered Roger, without lifting his eyes from
+the small folio in which he was reading.
+
+'I want to know, father, whether, when men differ, a man is bound to
+take a side.'
+
+'Nay, Richard, but a man is bound NOT to take a side save upon
+reasons well considered and found good.'
+
+'It may be, father, if you had seen fit to send me to Oxford, I
+should have been better able to judge now.'
+
+'I had my reasons, son Richard. Readier, perhaps, you might have
+been, but fitter--no. Tell me what points you have in question.'
+
+'That I can hardly say, sir. I only know there are points at issue
+betwixt king and parliament which men appear to consider of
+mightiest consequence. Will you tell me, father, why you have never
+instructed me in these affairs of church and state? I trust it is
+not because you count me unworthy of your confidence.'
+
+'Far from it, my son. My silence hath respect to thy hearing and to
+the judgment yet unawakened in thee. Who would lay in the arms of a
+child that which must crush him to the earth? Years did I take to
+meditate ere I resolved, and I know not yet if thou hast in thee the
+power of meditation.'
+
+'At least, father, I could try to understand, if you would unfold
+your mind.'
+
+'When you know what the matters at issue are, my son,--that is, when
+you are able to ask me questions worthy of answer, I shall be ready
+to answer thee, so far as my judgment will reach.'
+
+'I thank you, father, In the meantime I am as one who knocks, and
+the door is not opened unto him.'
+
+'Rather art thou as one who loiters on the door-step, and lifts up
+neither ring nor voice.'
+
+'Surely, sir, I must first know the news.'
+
+'Thou hast ears; keep them open. But at least you know, my son, that
+on the twelfth day of May last my lord of Strafford lost his head.'
+
+'Who took it from him, sir? King or parliament?'
+
+'Even that might be made a question; but I answer, the High Court of
+Parliament, my son.'
+
+'Was the judgment a right one or a wrong, sir? Did he deserve the
+doom?'
+
+'Ah, there you put a question indeed! Many men say RIGHT, and many
+men say WRONG. One man, I doubt me much, was wrong in the share HE
+bore therein.'
+
+'Who was he, sir?'
+
+'Nay, nay, I will not forestall thine own judgment. But, in good
+sooth, I might be more ready to speak my mind, were it not that I
+greatly doubt some of those who cry loudest for liberty. I fear that
+had they once the power, they would be the first to trample her
+under foot. Liberty with some men means MY liberty to do, and THINE
+to suffer. But all in good time, my son! The dawn is nigh.'
+
+'You will tell me at least, father, what is the bone of contention?'
+
+'My son, where there is contention, a bone shall not fail. It is but
+a leg-bone now; it will be a rib to-morrow, and by and by doubtless
+it will be the skull itself.'
+
+'If you care for none of these things, sir, will not master
+Flowerdew have a hard name for you? I know not what it means, but it
+sounds of the gallows,' said Richard, looking rather doubtful as to
+how his father might take it.
+
+'Possibly, my son, I care more for the contention than the bone, for
+while thieves quarrel honest men go their own ways. But what
+ignorance I have kept thee in, and yet left thee to bear the
+reproach of a puritan!' said the father, smiling grimly. 'Thou
+meanest master Flowerdew would call me a Gallio, and thou takest the
+Roman proconsul for a gallows-bird! Verily thou art not destined to
+prolong the renown of thy race for letters. I marvel what thy cousin
+Thomas would say to the darkness of thy ignorance.'
+
+'See what comes of not sending me to Oxford, sir: I know not who is
+my cousin Thomas.'
+
+'A man both of learning and wisdom, my son, though I fear me his
+diet is too strong for the stomach of this degenerate age, while the
+dressing of his dishes is, on the other hand, too cunningly devised
+for their liking. But it is no marvel thou shouldest be ignorant of
+him, being as yet no reader of books. Neither is he a close kinsman,
+being of the Lincolnshire branch of the Heywoods.'
+
+'Now I know whom you mean, sir; but I thought he was a writer of
+stage plays, and such things as on all sides I hear called foolish,
+and mummery.'
+
+'There be among those who call themselves the godly, who will endure
+no mummery but of their own inventing. Cousin Thomas hath written a
+multitude of plays, but that he studied at Cambridge, and to good
+purpose, this book, which I was reading when you entered, bears good
+witness.'
+
+'What is the book, father?'
+
+'Stay, I will read thee a portion. The greater part is of learning
+rather than wisdom--the gathered opinions of the wise and good
+concerning things both high and strange; but I will read thee some
+verses bearing his own mind, which is indeed worthy to be set down
+with theirs.'
+
+He read that wonderful poem ending the second Book of the Hierarchy,
+and having finished it looked at his son.
+
+'I do not understand it, sir,' said Richard.
+
+'I did not expect you would,' returned his father. 'Here, take the
+book, and read for thyself. If light should dawn upon the page, as
+thou readest, perhaps thou wilt understand what I now say--that I
+care but little for the bones concerning which king and parliament
+contend, but I do care that men--thou and I, my son--should be free
+to walk in any path whereon it may please God to draw us. Take the
+book, my son, and read again. But read no farther save with caution,
+for it dealeth with many things wherein old Thomas is too readily
+satisfied with hearsay for testimony.'
+
+Richard took the small folio and carried it to his own chamber,
+where he read and partly understood the poem. But he was not ripe
+enough either in philosophy or religion for such meditations. Having
+executed his task, for as such he regarded it, he turned to look
+through the strange mixture of wisdom and credulity composing the
+volume. One tale after another, of witch, and demon, and magician,
+firmly believed and honestly recorded by his worthy relative, drew
+him on, until he sat forgetful of everything but the world of
+marvels before him--to none of which, however, did he accord a
+wider credence than sprung from the interest of the moment. He was
+roused by a noise of quarrel in the farmyard, towards which his
+window looked, and, laying aside reading, hastened out to learn the
+cause.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE WITCH.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was a bright Autumn morning. A dry wind had been blowing all
+night through the shocks, and already some of the farmers had begun
+to carry to their barns the sheaves which had stood hopelessly
+dripping the day before. Ere Richard reached the yard, he saw, over
+the top of the wall, the first load of wheat-sheaves from the
+harvest-field, standing at the door of the barn, and high-uplifted
+thereon the figure of Faithful Stopchase, one of the men, a
+well-known frequenter of puritan assemblies all the country round,
+who was holding forth, and that with much freedom, in tones that
+sounded very like vituperation, if not malediction, against some one
+invisible. He soon found that the object of his wrath was a certain
+Welshwoman, named Rees, by her neighbours considered objectionable
+on the ground of witchcraft, against whom this much could with truth
+be urged, that she was so far from thinking it disreputable, that
+she took no pains to repudiate the imputation of it. Her dress, had
+it been judged by eyes of our day, would have been against her, but
+it was only old-fashioned, not even antiquated: common in Queen
+Elizabeth's time, it lingered still in remote country places--a gown
+of dark stuff, made with a long waist and short skirt over a huge
+farthingale; a ruff which stuck up and out, high and far, from her
+throat; and a conical Welsh hat invading the heavens. Stopchase,
+having descried her in the yard, had taken the opportunity of
+breaking out upon her in language as far removed from that of
+conventional politeness as his puritanical principles would permit.
+Doubtless he considered it a rebuking of Satan, but forgot that,
+although one of the godly, he could hardly on that ground lay claim
+to larger privilege in the use of bad language than the archangel
+Michael. For the old woman, although too prudent to reply, she
+scorned to flee, and stood regarding him fixedly. Richard sought to
+interfere and check the torrent of abuse, but it had already
+gathered so much head, that the man seemed even unaware of his
+attempt. Presently, however, he began to quail in the midst of his
+storming. The green eyes of the old woman, fixed upon him, seemed to
+be slowly fascinating him. At length, in the very midst of a volley
+of scriptural epithets, he fell suddenly silent, turned from her,
+and, with the fork on which he had been leaning, began to pitch the
+sheaves into the barn. The moment he turned his back, Goody Rees
+turned hers, and walked slowly away.
+
+She had scarcely reached the yard gate, however, before the cow-boy,
+a delighted spectator and auditor of the affair, had loosed the
+fierce watch-dog, which flew after her. Fortunately Richard saw what
+took place, but the animal, which was generally chained up, did not
+heed his recall, and the poor woman had already felt his teeth, when
+Richard got him by the throat. She looked pale and frightened, but
+kept her composure wonderfully, and when Richard, who was prejudiced
+in her favour from having once heard Dorothy speak friendlily to
+her, expressed his great annoyance that she should have been so
+insulted on his father's premises, received his apologies with
+dignity and good faith. He dragged the dog back, rechained him, and
+was in the act of administering sound and righteous chastisement to
+the cow-boy, when Stopchase staggered, tumbled off the cart, and
+falling upon his head, lay motionless. Richard hurried to him, and
+finding his neck twisted and his head bent to one side, concluded he
+was killed. The woman who had accompanied him from the field stood
+for a moment uttering loud cries, then, suddenly bethinking herself,
+sped after the witch. Richard was soon satisfied he could do nothing
+for him.
+
+Presently the woman came running back, followed at a more leisurely
+pace by Goody Rees, whose countenance was grave, and, even to the
+twitch about her mouth, inscrutable. She walked up to where the man
+lay, looked at him for a moment or two as if considering his case,
+then sat down on the ground beside him, and requested Richard to
+move him so that his head should lie on her lap. This done, she laid
+hold of it, with a hand on each ear, and pulled at his neck, at the
+same time turning his head in the right direction. There came a
+snap, and the neck was straight. She then began to stroke it with
+gentle yet firm hand. In a few moments he began to breathe. As soon
+as she saw his chest move, she called for a wisp of hay, and having
+shaped it a little, drew herself from under his head, substituting
+the hay. Then rising without a word she walked from the yard.
+Stopchase lay for a while, gradually coming to himself, then
+scrambled all at once to his feet, and staggered to his pitchfork,
+which lay where it had fallen. 'It is of the mercy of the Lord that
+I fell not upon the prongs of the pitchfork,' he said, as he slowly
+stooped and lifted it. He had no notion that he had lain more than a
+few seconds; and of the return of Goody Rees and her ministrations
+he knew nothing; while such an awe of herself and her influences had
+she left behind her, that neither the woman nor the cow-boy ventured
+to allude to her, and even Richard, influenced partly, no doubt, by
+late reading, was more inclined to think than speak about her. For
+the man himself, little knowing how close death had come to him, but
+inwardly reproached because of his passionate outbreak, he firmly
+believed that he had had a narrow escape from the net of the great
+fowler, whose decoy the old woman was, commissioned not only to
+cause his bodily death, but to work in him first such a frame of
+mind as should render his soul the lawful prey of the enemy.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The same afternoon, as it happened, a little company of rustics, who
+had just issued from the low hatch-door of the village inn, stood
+for a moment under the sign of the Crown and Mitre, which swung
+huskily creaking from the bough of an ancient thorn tree, then
+passed on to the road, and took their way together.
+
+'Hope you then,' said one of them, as continuing their previous
+conversation, 'that we shall escape unhurt? It is a parlous
+business. Not as one of us is afeard as I knows on. But the old
+earl, he do have a most unregenerate temper, and you had better look
+to't, my masters.'
+
+'I tell thee, master Upstill, it's not the old earl as I'm afeard
+on, but the young lord. For thou knows as well as ere a one it be
+not without cause that men do call him a wizard, for a wizard he be,
+and that of the worst sort.'
+
+'We shall be out again afore sundown, shannot we?' said another.
+'That I trust.'
+
+'Up to the which hour the High Court of Parliament assembled will
+have power to protect its own--eh, John Croning?'
+
+'Nay, that I cannot tell. It be a parlous job, and for mine own
+part, whether for the love I bear to the truth, or the hatred I
+cherish toward the scarlet Antichrist, with her seven tails--'
+
+'Tush, tush, John! Seven heads, man, and ten horns. Those are the
+numbers master Flowerdew read.'
+
+'Nay, I know not for your horns; but for the rest I say seven tails.
+Did not honest master Flowerdew set forth unto us last meeting that
+the scarlet woman sat upon seven hills--eh? Have with you there,
+master Sycamore!'
+
+'Well, for the sake of sound argument, I grant you. But we ha'got to
+do with no heads nor no tails, neither--save and except as you may
+say the sting is in the tail; and then, or I greatly mistake, it's
+not seven times seven as will serve to count the stings, come of the
+tails what may.'
+
+'Very true,' said another; 'it be the stings and not the tails we
+want news of. But think you his lordship will yield them up without
+gainsaying to us the messengers of the High Parliament now
+assembled?'
+
+'For mine own part,' said John Croning, 'though I fear it come of
+the old Adam yet left in me, I do count it a sorrowful thing that
+the earl should be such a vile recusant. He never fails with a
+friendly word, or it may be a jest--a foolish jest--but honest, for
+any one gentle or simple he may meet. More than once has he boarded
+me in that fashion. What do you think he said to me, now, one day as
+I was a mowin' of the grass in the court, close by the white horse
+that spout up the water high as a house from his nose-drills? Says
+he to me--for he come down the grand staircase, and steps out and
+spies me at the work with my old scythe, and come across to me, and
+says he, "Why, Thomas," says he, not knowin' of my name, "Why,
+Thomas," says he, "you look like old Time himself a mowing of us all
+down," says he. "For sure, my lord," says I, "your lordship reads it
+aright, for all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the
+flower of the field." He look humble at that, for, great man as he
+be, his earthly tabernacle, though more than sizeable, is but a
+frail one, and that he do know. And says he, "Where did you read
+that, Thomas?" "I am not a larned man, please your lordship," says
+I, "and I cannot honestly say I read it nowheres, but I heerd the
+words from a book your lordship have had news of: they do call it
+the Holy Bible. But they tell me that they of your lordship's
+persuasion like it not." "You are very much mistaken there, Thomas,"
+says he. "I read my Bible most days, only not the English Bible,
+which is full of errors, but the Latin, which is all as God gave
+it," says he. And thereby I had not where to answer withal.'
+
+'I fear you proved a poor champion of the truth, master Croning.'
+
+'Confess now, Cast-down Upstill, had he not both sun and wind of
+me--standing, so to say, on his own hearth-stone? Had it not been
+so, I could have called hard names with the best of you, though that
+is by rights the gift of the preachers of the truth. See how the
+good master Flowerdew excelleth therein, sprinkling them abroad from
+the watering-pot of the gospel. Verily, when my mind is too feeble
+to grasp his argument, my memory lays fast hold upon the hard names,
+and while I hold by them, I have it all in a nutshell.'
+
+Fortified occasionally by a pottle of ale, and keeping their spirits
+constantly stirred by much talking, they had been all day occupied
+in searching the Catholic houses of the neighbourhood for arms. What
+authority they had for it never came to be clearly understood.
+Plainly they believed themselves possessed of all that was needful,
+or such men would never have dared it. As it was, they prosecuted it
+with such a bold front, that not until they were gone did it occur
+to some, who had yielded what arms they possessed, to question
+whether they had done wisely in acknowledging such fellows as
+parliamentary officials without demanding their warrant. Their day's
+gleanings up to this point--of swords and pikes, guns and pistols,
+they had left in charge of the host of the inn whence they had just
+issued, and were now bent on crowning their day's triumph with a
+supreme act of daring--the renown of which they enlarged in their
+own imaginations, while undermining the courage needful for its
+performance, by enhancing its terrors as they went.
+
+At length two lofty hexagonal towers appeared, and the consciousness
+that the final test of their resolution drew nigh took immediate
+form in a fluttering at the heart, which, however, gave no outward
+sign but that of silence; and indeed they were still too full of the
+importance of unaccustomed authority to fear any contempt for it on
+the part of others.
+
+It happened that at this moment Raglan Castle was full of
+merry-making upon occasion of the marriage of one of lady Herbert's
+waiting-gentlewomen to an officer of the household; and in these
+festivities the earl of Worcester and all his guests were taking a
+part.
+
+Among the numerous members of the household was one who, from being
+a turnspit, had risen, chiefly in virtue of an immovably lugubrious
+expression of countenance, to be the earl's fool. From this
+peculiarity his fellow-servants had given him the nickname of The
+Hangman; but the man himself had chosen the role of a puritan
+parson, as affording the best ground-work for the display of a
+humour suitable to the expression of countenance with which his
+mother had endowed him. That mother was Goody Rees, concerning whom,
+as already hinted, strange things were whispered. In the earlier
+part of his career the fool had not unfrequently found his mother's
+reputation a sufficient shelter from persecution; and indeed there
+might have been reason to suppose that it was for her son's sake she
+encouraged her own evil repute, a distinction involving considerable
+risk, seeing the time had not yet arrived when the disbelief in such
+powers was sufficiently advanced for the safety of those reported to
+possess them. In her turn, however, she ran a risk somewhat less
+than ordinary from the fact that her boy was a domestic in the
+family of one whose eldest son, the heir to the earldom, lay under a
+similar suspicion; for not a few of the household were far from
+satisfied that lord Herbert's known occupations in the Yellow Tower
+were not principally ostensible, and that he and his man had nothing
+to do with the black art, or some other of the many regions of
+occult science in which the ambition after unlawful power may
+hopefully exercise itself.
+
+Upon occasion of a family fete, merriment was in those days carried
+further, on the part of both masters and servants, than in the
+greatly altered relations and conditions of the present day would be
+desirable, or, indeed, possible. In this instance, the fun broke out
+in the arranging of a mock marriage between Thomas Rees, commonly
+called Tom Fool, and a young girl who served under the cook. Half
+the jest lay in the contrast between the long face of the
+bridegroom, both congenitally and wilfully miserable, and that of
+the bride, broad as a harvest moon, and rosy almost to purple. The
+bridegroom never smiled, and spoke with his jaws rather than his
+lips; while the bride seldom uttered a syllable without grinning
+from ear to ear, and displaying a marvellous appointment of huge and
+brilliant teeth. Entering solemnly into the joke, Tom expressed
+himself willing to marry the girl, but represented, as an
+insurmountable difficulty, that he had no clothes for the occasion.
+Thereupon the earl, drawing from his pocket his bunch of keys,
+directed him to go and take what he liked from his wardrobe. Now the
+earl was a man of large circumference, and the fool as lank in
+person as in countenance.
+
+Tom took the keys and was some time gone, during which many
+conjectures were hazarded as to the style in which he would choose
+to appear. When he re-entered the great hall, where the company was
+assembled, the roar of laughter which followed his appearance made
+the glass of its great cupola ring again. For not merely was he
+dressed in the earl's beaver hat and satin cloak, splendid with
+plush and gold and silver lace, but he had indued a corresponding
+suit of his clothes as well, even to his silk stockings, garters,
+and roses, and with the help of many pillows and other such farcing,
+so filled the garments which otherwise had hung upon him like a
+shawl from a peg, and made of himself such a 'sweet creature of
+bombast' that, with ludicrous unlikeness of countenance, he bore in
+figure no distant resemblance to the earl himself.
+
+Meantime lady Elizabeth had been busy with the scullery-maid, whom
+she had attired in a splendid brocade of her grandmother's, with all
+suitable belongings of ruff, high collar, and lace wings, such as
+Queen Elizabeth is represented with in Oliver's portrait. Upon her
+appearance, a few minutes after Tom's, the laughter broke out
+afresh, in redoubled peals, and the merriment was at its height,
+when the warder of one of the gates entered and whispered in his
+master's ear the arrival of the bumpkins, and their mission
+announced, he informed his lordship, with all the importance and
+dignity they knew how to assume. The earl burst into a fresh laugh.
+But presently it quavered a little and ceased, while over the
+amusement still beaming on his countenance gathered a slight shade
+of anxiety, for who could tell what tempest such a mere whirling of
+straws might not forerun?
+
+A few words of the warder's had reached Tom where he stood a little
+aside, his solemn countenance radiating disapproval of the
+tumultuous folly around him. He took three strides towards the earl.
+
+'Wherein lieth the new jest?' he asked, with dignity.
+
+'A set of country louts, my lord,' answered the earl, 'are at the
+gate, affirming the right of search in this your lordship's house of
+Raglan.'
+
+'For what?'
+
+'Arms, my lord.'
+
+'And wherefore? On what ground?'
+
+'On the ground that your lordship is a vile recusant--a papist, and
+therefore a traitor, no doubt, although they use not the word,' said
+the earl.
+
+'I shall be round with them,' said Tom, embracing the assumed
+proportions in front of him, and turning to the door.
+
+Ere the earl had time to conceive his intent, he had hurried from
+the hall, followed by fresh shouts of laughter. For he had forgotten
+to stuff himself behind, and, when the company caught sight of his
+back as he strode out, the tenuity of the foundation for such a
+'huge hill of flesh' was absurd as Falstaff's ha'p'orth of bread to
+the 'intolerable deal of sack.'
+
+But the next moment the earl had caught the intended joke, and
+although a trifle concerned about the affair, was of too
+mirth-loving a nature to interfere with Tom's project, the result of
+which would doubtless be highly satisfactory--at least to those not
+primarily concerned. He instantly called for silence, and explained
+to the assembly what he believed to be Tom Fool's intent, and as
+there was nothing to be seen from the hall, the windows of which
+were at a great height from the floor, and Tom's scheme would be
+fatally imperilled by the visible presence of spectators, from some
+at least of whom gravity of demeanour could not be expected, gave
+hasty instructions to several of his sons and daughters to disperse
+the company to upper windows having a view of one or the other
+court, for no one could tell where the fool's humour might find its
+principal arena. The next moment, in the plain dress of rough
+brownish cloth, which he always wore except upon state occasions, he
+followed the fool to the gate, where he found him talking through
+the wicket-grating to the rustics, who, having passed drawbridge and
+portcullises, of which neither the former had been raised nor the
+latter lowered for many years, now stood on the other side of the
+gate demanding admittance. In the parley, Tom Fool was imitating his
+master's voice and every one of the peculiarities of his speech to
+perfection, addressing them with extreme courtesy, as if he took
+them for gentlemen of no ordinary consideration,--a point in his
+conception of his part which he never forgot throughout the whole
+business. To the dismay of his master he was even more than
+admitting, almost boasting, that there was an enormous quantity of
+weapons in the castle--sufficient at least to arm ten thousand
+horsemen!--a prodigious statement, for, at the uttermost, there was
+not more than the tenth part of that amount--still a somewhat larger
+provision no doubt than the intruders had expected to find! The
+pseudo-earl went on to say that the armoury consisted of one strong
+room only, the door of which was so cunningly concealed and secured
+that no one but himself knew where it was, or if found could open
+it. But such he said was his respect to the will of the most august
+parliament, that he would himself conduct them to the said armoury,
+and deliver over upon the spot into their safe custody the whole
+mass of weapons to carry away with them. And thereupon he proceeded
+to open the gate.
+
+By this time the door of the neighbouring guard-room was crowded
+with the heads of eager listeners, but the presence of the earl kept
+them quiet, and at a sign from him they drew back ere the men
+entered. The earl himself took a position where he would be covered
+by the opening wicket.
+
+Tom received them into bodily presence with the notification that,
+having suspected their object, he had sent all his people out of the
+way, in order to avoid the least danger of a broil. Bowing to them
+with the utmost politeness as they entered, he requested them to
+step forward into the court while he closed the wicket behind them,
+but took the opportunity of whispering to one of the men just inside
+the door of the guardhouse, who, the moment Tom had led the rustics
+away, approached the earl, and told him what he had said.
+
+'What can the rascal mean?' said the earl to himself; but he told
+the man to carry the fool's message exactly as he had received it,
+and quietly followed Tom and his companions, some of whom,
+conceiving fresh importance from the overstrained politeness with
+which they had been received, were now attempting a transformation
+of their usual loundering gait into a martial stride, with the
+result of a foolish strut, very unlike the dignified progress of the
+sham earl, whose weak back roused in them no suspicion, and who had
+taken care they should not see his face. Across the paved court, and
+through the hall to the inner court, Tom led them, and the earl
+followed.
+
+The twilight was falling. The hall was empty of life, and filled
+with a sombre dusk, echoing to every step as they passed through it.
+They did not see the flash of eyes and glimmer of smiles from the
+minstrel's gallery, and the solitude, size, and gloom had, even on
+their dull natures, a palpable influence. The whole castle seemed
+deserted as they followed the false earl across the second
+court--with the true one stealing after them like a knave--little
+imagining that bright eyes were watching them from the curtains of
+every window like stars from the clear spaces and cloudy edges of
+heaven. To the north-west corner of the court he led them, and
+through a sculptured doorway up the straight wide ascent of stone
+called the grand staircase. At the top he turned to the right, along
+a dim corridor, from which he entered a suite of bedrooms and
+dressing-rooms, over whose black floors he led the trampling
+hob-nailed shoes without pity either for their polish or the labour
+of the housemaids in restoring it.
+
+In this way he reached the stair in the bell-tower, ascending which
+he brought them into a narrow dark passage ending again in a
+downward stair, at the foot of which they found themselves in the
+long picture-gallery, having entered it in the recess of one of its
+large windows. At the other end of the gallery he crossed into the
+dining-room, then through an ante-chamber entered the drawing-room,
+where the ladies, apprised of their approach, kept still behind
+curtains and high chairs, until they had passed through, on their
+way to cross the archway of the main entrance, and through the
+library gain the region of household economy and cookery. Thither I
+will not drag my reader after them. Indeed the earl, who had been
+dogging them like a Fate, ever emerging on their track but never
+beheld, had already began to pay his part of the penalty of the joke
+in fatigue, for he was not only unwieldy in person, but far from
+robust, being very subject to gout. He owed his good spirits to a
+noble nature, and not to animal well-being. When they crossed from
+the picture-gallery to the dining-room, he went down the stair
+between, and into the oak-parlour adjoining the great hall. There he
+threw himself into an easy chair which always stood for him in the
+great bay window, looking over the moat to the huge keep of the
+castle, and commanding through its western light the stone bridge
+which crossed it. There he lay back at his ease, and, instructed by
+the message Tom had committed to the serjeant of the guard, waited
+the result.
+
+As for his double, he went stalking on in front of his victims,
+never turning to show his face; he knew they would follow, were it
+but for the fear of being left alone. Close behind him they kept,
+scarce daring to whisper from growing awe of the vast place. The
+fumes of the beer had by this time evaporated, and the heavy
+obscurity which pervaded the whole building enhanced their growing
+apprehensions. On and on the fool led them, up and down, going and
+returning, but ever in new tracks, for the marvellous old place was
+interminably burrowed with connecting passages and communications of
+every sort--some of them the merest ducts which had to be all but
+crept through, and which would have certainly arrested the progress
+of the earl had he followed so far: no one about the place
+understood its "crenkles" so well as Tom. For the greater part of an
+hour he led them thus, until, having been on their legs the whole
+day, they were thoroughly wearied as well as awe-struck. At length,
+in a gloomy chamber, where one could not see the face of another,
+the pseudo-earl turned full upon them, and said in his most solemn
+tones:--
+
+'Arrived thus far, my masters, it is borne in upon me with rebuke,
+that before undertaking to guide you to the armoury, I should have
+acquainted you with the strange fact that at times I am myself
+unable to find the place of which we are in search; and I begin to
+fear it is so now, and that we are at this moment the sport of a
+certain member of my family of whom it may be your worships have
+heard things not more strange than true. Against his machinations I
+am powerless. All that is left us is to go to him and entreat him to
+unsay his spells.'
+
+A confused murmur of objections arose.
+
+'Then your worships will remain here while I go to the Yellow Tower,
+and come to you again?' said the mock earl, making as if he would
+leave them.
+
+But they crowded round him with earnest refusals to be abandoned;
+for in their very souls they felt the fact that they were upon
+enchanted ground--and in the dark.
+
+'Then follow me,' he said, and conducted them into the open air of
+the inner court, almost opposite the archway in its buildings
+leading to the stone bridge, whose gothic structure bestrid the moat
+of the keep.
+
+For Raglan Castle had this peculiarity, that its keep was surrounded
+by a moat of its own, separating it from the rest of the castle, so
+that, save by bridge, no one within any more than without the walls
+could reach it. On to the bridge Tom led the way, followed by his
+dupes--now full in the view of the earl where he sat in his parlour
+window. When they had reached the centre of it, however, and
+glancing up at the awful bulk of stone towering above them, its
+walls strangely dented and furrowed, so as to such as they, might
+well suggest frightful means to wicked ends, they stood stock-still,
+refusing to go a step further; while their chief speaker, Upstill,
+emboldened by anger, fear, and the meek behaviour of the supposed
+earl, broke out in a torrent of arrogance, wherein his intention was
+to brandish the terrors of the High Parliament over the heads of his
+lordship of Worcester and all recusants. He had not got far,
+however, before a shrill whistle pierced the air, and the next
+instant arose a chaos of horrible, appalling, and harrowing noises,
+'such a roaring,' in the words of their own report of the matter to
+the reverend master Flowerdew, 'as if the mouth of hell had been
+wide open, and all the devils conjured up'--doubtless they meant by
+the arts of the wizard whose dwelling was that same tower of fearful
+fame before which they now stood. The skin-contracting chill of
+terror uplifted their hair. The mystery that enveloped the origin of
+the sounds gave them an unearthliness which froze the very fountains
+of their life, and rendered them incapable even of motion. They
+stared at each other with a ghastly observance, which descried no
+comfort, only like images of horror. 'Man's hand is not able to
+taste' how long they might have thus stood, nor 'his tongue to
+conceive' what the consequences might have been, had not a more
+healthy terror presently supervened. Across the tumult of sounds,
+like a fiercer flash through the flames of a furnace, shot a
+hideous, long-drawn yell, and the same instant came a man running at
+full speed through the archway from the court, casting
+terror-stricken glances behind him, and shouting with a voice
+half-choked to a shriek--
+
+'Look to yourselves, my masters; the lions are got loose!'
+
+All the world knew that ever since King James had set the fashion by
+taking so much pleasure in the lions at the Tower, strange beasts
+had been kept in the castle of Raglan.
+
+The new terror broke the spell of the old, and the parliamentary
+commissioners fled. But which was the way from the castle? Which the
+path to the lions' den? In an agony of horrible dread, they rushed
+hither and thither about the court, where now the white horse, as
+steady as marble, should be when first they crossed it, was, to
+their excited vision, prancing wildly about the great basin from
+whose charmed circle he could not break, foaming, at the mouth, and
+casting huge water-jets from his nostrils into the perturbed air;
+while from the surface of the moat a great column of water shot up
+nearly as high as the citadel, whose return into the moat was like a
+tempest, and with all the elemental tumult was mingled the howling
+of wild beasts. The doors of the hall and the gates to the bowling
+green being shut, the poor wretches could not find their way out of
+the court, but ran from door to door like madmen, only to find all
+closed against them. From every window around the court--from the
+apartments of the waiting gentlewomen, from the picture-gallery,
+from the officers' rooms, eager and merry eyes looked down on the
+spot, themselves unseen and unsuspected, for all voices were hushed,
+and for anything the bumpkins heard or saw they might have been in a
+place deserted of men, and possessed only by evil spirits, whose
+pranks were now tormenting them. At last Upstill, who had fallen on
+the bridge at his first start, and had ever since been rushing about
+with a limp and a leap alternated, managed to open the door of the
+hall, and its eastern door having been left open, shot across and
+into the outer court, where he made for the gate, followed at varied
+distance by the rest of the routed commissioners of search, as each
+had discovered the way his forerunner fled. With trembling hands
+Upstill raised the latch of the wicket, and to his delight found it
+unlocked. He darted through, passed the twin portcullises, and was
+presently thundering over the draw-bridge, which, trembling under
+his heavy steps, seemed on the point of rising to heave him back
+into the jaws of the lion, or, worse still, the clutches of the
+enchanter. Not one looked behind him, not even when, having passed
+through the white stone gate, also purposely left open for their
+escape, and rattled down the multitude of steps that told how deep
+was the moat they had just crossed, where the last of them nearly
+broke his neck by rolling almost from top to bottom, they reached
+the outermost, the brick gate, and so left the awful region of
+enchantment and feline fury commingled. Not until the castle was out
+of sight, and their leader had sunk senseless on the turf by the
+roadside, did they dare a backward look. The moment he came to
+himself they started again for home, at what poor speed they could
+make, and reached the Crown and Mitre in sad plight, where, however,
+they found some compensation in the pleasure of setting forth their
+adventures--with the heroic manner in which, although vanquished by
+the irresistible force of enchantment, they had yet brought off
+their forces without the loss of a single man. Their story spread
+over the country, enlarged and embellished at every fresh stage in
+its progress.
+
+When the tale reached mother Rees, it filled her with fresh awe of
+the great magician, the renowned lord Herbert. She little thought
+the whole affair was a jest of her own son's. Firmly believing in
+all kinds of magic and witchcraft, but as innocent of conscious
+dealing with the powers of ill as the whitest-winged angel betwixt
+earth's garret and heaven's threshold, she owed her evil repute
+amongst her neighbours to a rare therapeutic faculty, accompanied by
+a keen sympathetic instinct, which greatly sharpened her powers of
+observation in the quest after what was amiss; while her touch was
+so delicate, so informed with present mind, and came therefore into
+such rapport with any living organism, the secret of whose suffering
+it sought to discover, that sprained muscles, dislocated joints, and
+broken bones seemed at its soft approach to re-arrange their
+disturbed parts, and yield to the power of her composing will as to
+a re-ordering harmony. Add to this, that she understood more of the
+virtues of some herbs than any doctor in the parish, which, in the
+condition of general practice at the time, is not perhaps to say
+much, and that she firmly believed in the might of certain charms,
+and occasionally used them--and I have given reason enough why,
+while regarded by all with disapprobation--she should be by many
+both courted and feared. For her own part she had a leaning to the
+puritans, chiefly from respect to the memory of a good-hearted,
+weak, but intellectually gifted, and, therefore, admired husband;
+but the ridicule of her yet more gifted son had a good deal shaken
+this predilection, so that she now spent what powers of
+discrimination and choice she possessed solely upon persons,
+heedless of principles in themselves, and regarding them only in
+their vital results. Hence, it was a matter of absolute indifference
+to her which of the parties now dividing the country was in the
+right, or which should lose, which win, provided no personal evil
+befel the men or women for whom she cherished a preference. Like
+many another, she was hardly aware of the jurisdiction of
+conscience, save in respect of immediate personal relations.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANIMADVERSIONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+From the time when the conversation recorded had in some measure
+dispelled the fog between them, Roger and Richard Heywood drew
+rapidly nearer to each other. The father had been but waiting until
+his son should begin to ask him questions, for watchfulness of
+himself and others had taught him how useless information is to
+those who have not first desired it, how poor in influence, how soon
+forgotten; and now that the fitting condition had presented itself,
+he was ready: with less of reserve than in the relation between them
+was common amongst the puritans, he began to pour his very soul into
+that of his son. All his influence went with that party which,
+holding that the natural flow of the reformation of the church from
+popery had stagnated in episcopacy, consisted chiefly of those who,
+in demanding the overthrow of that form of church government, sought
+to substitute for it what they called presbyterianism; but Mr.
+Heywood belonged to another division of it which, although less
+influential at present, was destined to come by and by to the front,
+in the strength of the conviction that to stop with presbyterianism
+was merely to change the name of the swamp--a party whose
+distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which
+indeed, degenerating into a passion among its inferior members,
+broke out, upon occasion, in the wildest vagaries of speech and
+doctrine, but on the other hand justified itself in its leaders,
+chief amongst whom were Milton and Cromwell, inasmuch as they
+accorded to the consciences of others the freedom they demanded for
+their own--the love of liberty with them not meaning merely the love
+of enjoying freedom, but that respect for the thing itself which
+renders a man incapable of violating it in another.
+
+Roger Heywood was, in fact, already a pupil of Milton, whose
+anonymous pamphlet of 'Reformation touching Church Discipline' had
+already reached him, and opened with him the way for all his
+following works.
+
+Richard, with whom my story has really to do, but for the
+understanding of whom it is necessary that the character and mental
+position of his father should in some measure be set forth, proved
+an apt pupil, and was soon possessed with such a passion for justice
+and liberty, as embodied in the political doctrines now presented
+for his acceptance, that it was impossible for him to understand how
+any honest man could be of a different mind. No youth, indeed, of
+simple and noble nature, as yet unmarred by any dominant phase of
+selfishness, could have failed to catch fire from the enthusiasm of
+such a father, an enthusiasm glowing yet restrained, wherein party
+spirit had a less share than principle--which, in relation to such a
+time, is to say much. Richard's heart swelled within him at the
+vistas of grandeur opened by his father's words, and swelled yet
+higher when he read to him passages from the pamphlet to which I
+have referred. It seemed to him, as to most young people under
+mental excitement, that he had but to tell the facts of the case to
+draw all men to his side, enlisting them in the army destined to
+sweep every form of tyranny, and especially spiritual usurpation and
+arrogance, from the face of the earth.
+
+Being one who took everybody at the spoken word, Richard never
+thought of seeking Dorothy again at their former place of meeting.
+Nor, in the new enthusiasm born in him, did his thoughts for a good
+many days turn to her so often, or dwell so much upon her, as to
+cause any keen sense of their separation. The flood of new thoughts
+and feelings had transported him beyond the ignorant present. In
+truth, also, he was a little angry with Dorothy for showing a
+foolish preference for the church party, so plainly in the wrong was
+it! And what could SHE know about the question by his indifference
+to which she had been so scandalised, but to which he had been
+indifferent only until rightly informed thereon! If he had ever
+given her just cause to think him childish, certainly she should
+never apply the word to him again! If he could but see her, he would
+soon convince her--indeed he MUST see her--for the truth was not
+his to keep, but to share! It was his duty to acquaint her with the
+fact that the parliament was the army of God, fighting the great red
+dragon, one of whose seven heads was prelacy, the horn upon it the
+king, and Laud its crown. He wanted a stroll--he would take the path
+through the woods and the shrubbery to the old sun-dial. She would
+not be there, of course, but he would walk up the pleached alley and
+call at the house.
+
+Reasoning thus within himself one day, he rose and went. But, as he
+approached the wood, Dorothy's great mastiff, which she had reared
+from a pup with her own hand, came leaping out to welcome him, and
+he was prepared to find her not far off.
+
+When he entered the yew-circle, there she stood leaning on the dial,
+as if, like old Time, she too had gone to sleep there, and was
+dreaming ancient dreams over again. She did not move at the first
+sounds of his approach; and when at length, as he stood silent by
+her side, she lifted her head, but without looking at him, he saw
+the traces of tears on her cheeks. The heart of the youth smote him.
+
+'Weeping, Dorothy?' he said.
+
+'Yes,' she answered simply.
+
+'I trust I am not the cause of your trouble, Dorothy?'
+
+'You!' returned the girl quickly, and the colour rushed to her pale
+cheeks. 'No, indeed. How should you trouble me? My mother is ill.'
+
+Considering his age, Richard was not much given to vanity, and it
+was something better that prevented him from feeling pleased at
+being thus exonerated: she looked so sweet and sad that the love
+which new interests had placed in abeyance returned in full tide.
+Even when a child, he had scarcely ever seen her in tears; it was to
+him a new aspect of her being.
+
+'Dear Dorothy!' he said, 'I am very much grieved to learn this of
+your beautiful mother.'
+
+'She IS beautiful,' responded the girl, and her voice was softer
+than he had ever heard it before; 'but she will die, and I shall be
+left alone.'
+
+'No, Dorothy! that you shall never be,' exclaimed Richard, with a
+confidence bordering on presumption.
+
+'Master Herbert is with her now,' resumed Dorothy, heedless of his
+words.
+
+'You do not mean her life is even now in danger?' said Richard, in a
+tone of sudden awe.
+
+'I hope not, but, indeed, I cannot tell. I left master Herbert
+comforting her with the assurance that she was taken away from the
+evil to come. "And I trust, madam," the dear old man went on to say,
+"that my departure will not long be delayed, for darkness will cover
+the earth, and gross darkness the people." Those were his very
+words.'
+
+'Nay, nay!' said Richard, hastily; 'the good man is deceived; the
+people that sit in darkness shall see a great light.'
+
+The girl looked at him with strange interrogation.
+
+'Do not be angry, sweet Dorothy,' Richard went on. 'Old men may
+mistake as well as youths. As for the realm of England, the sun of
+righteousness will speedily arise thereon, for the dawn draws nigh;
+and master Herbert may be just as far deceived concerning your
+mother's condition, for she has been but sickly for a long time, and
+yet has survived many winters.'
+
+Dorothy looked at him still, and was silent. At length she spoke,
+and her words came slowly and with weight.
+
+'And what prophet's mantle, if I may make so bold, has fallen upon
+Richard Heywood, that the word in his mouth should outweigh that of
+an aged servant of the church? Can it be that the great light of
+which he speaks is Richard Heywood himself?'
+
+'As master Herbert is a good man and a servant of God,' said
+Richard, coldly, stung by her sarcasm, but not choosing to reply to
+it, 'his word weighs mightily; but as a servant of the church his
+word is no weightier than my father's, who is also a minister of the
+true tabernacle, that wherein all who are kings over themselves are
+priests unto God--though truly he pretends to no prophecy beyond the
+understanding of the signs of the times.'
+
+Dorothy saw that a wonderful change, such as had been incredible
+upon any but the witness of her own eyes and ears, had passed on her
+old playmate. He was in truth a boy no longer. Their relative
+position was no more what she had been of late accustomed to
+consider it. But with the change a gulf had begun to yawn between
+them.
+
+'Alas, Richard!' she said, mistaking what he meant by the signs of
+the times, 'those who arrogate the gift of the Holy Ghost, while
+their sole inspiration is the presumption of their own hearts and an
+overweening contempt of authority, may well mistake signs of their
+own causing for signs from heaven. I but repeat the very words of
+good master Herbert.'
+
+'I thought such swelling words hardly sounded like your own,
+Dorothy. But tell me, why should the persuasion of man or woman hang
+upon the words of a fellow-mortal? Is not the gift of the Spirit
+free to each who asks it? And are we not told that each must be
+fully persuaded in his own mind?'
+
+'Nay, Richard, now I have thee! Hang you not by the word of your
+father, who is one, and despise the authority of the true church,
+which is many?'
+
+'The true church were indeed an authority, but where shall we find
+it? Anyhow, the true church is one thing, and prelatical episcopacy
+another. But I have yet to learn what authority even the true church
+could have over a man's conscience.'
+
+'You need to be reminded, Richard, that the Lord of the church gave
+power to his apostles to bind or loose.'
+
+'I do not need to be so reminded, Dorothy, but I do not need to be
+shown first that that power was over men's consciences; and second,
+that it was transmitted to others by the apostles waiving the
+question as to the doubtful ordination of English prelates.'
+
+Fire flashed from Dorothy's eyes.
+
+'Richard Heywood,' she said, 'the demon of spiritual pride has
+already entered into you, and blown you up with a self-sufficiency
+which I never saw in you before, or I would never, never have
+companied with you, as I am now ashamed to think I have done so
+long, even to the danger of my soul's health.'
+
+'In that case I may comfort myself, mistress Dorothy Vaughan,' said
+Richard, 'that you will no longer count me a boy! But do you then no
+longer desire that I should take one part OR the other and show
+myself a man? Am I man enough yet for the woman thou art, Dorothy?
+--But, Dorothy,' he added, with sudden change of tone, for she had
+in anger turned to leave him, 'I love you dearly, and I am truly
+sorry if I have spoken so as to offend you. I came hither eager to
+share with you the great things I have learned since you left me
+with just contempt a fortnight ago.'
+
+'Then it is I whose foolish words have cast you into the seat of the
+scorner! Alas! alas! my poor Richard! Never, never more, while you
+thus rebel against authority and revile sacred things, will I hold
+counsel with you.'
+
+And again she turned to go.
+
+'Dorothy!' cried the youth, turning pale with agony to find on the
+brink of what an abyss of loss his zeal had set him, 'wilt thou,
+then, never speak to me more, and I love thee as the daylight?'
+
+'Never more till thou repent and turn. I will but give thee one
+piece of counsel, and then leave thee--if for ever, that rests with
+thee. There has lately appeared, like the frog out of the mouth of
+the dragon, a certain tractate or treatise, small in bulk, but large
+with the wind of evil doctrine. Doubtless it will reach your
+father's house ere long, if it be not, as is more likely, already
+there, for it is the vile work of one they call a puritan, though
+where even the writer can vainly imagine the purity of such work to
+lie, let the pamphlet itself raise the question. Read the evil
+thing--or, I will not say read it, but glance the eye over it. It is
+styled "Animadversions upon--." Truly, I cannot recall the
+long-drawn title. It is filled, even as a toad with poison, so full
+of evil and scurrilous sayings against good men, rating and abusing
+them as the very off-scouring of the earth, that you cannot yet be
+so far gone in evil as not to be reclaimed by seeing whither such
+men and their inspiration would lead you. Farewell, Richard.'
+
+With the words, and without a look, Dorothy, who had been standing
+sideways in act to go, swept up the pleached alley, her step so
+stately and her head so high that Richard, slowly as she walked
+away, dared not follow her, but stood 'like one forbid.' When she
+had vanished, and the light shone in full at the far end, he gave a
+great sigh and turned away, and the old dial was forsaken.
+
+The scrap of title Dorothy had given was enough to enable Richard to
+recognise the pamphlet as one a copy of which his father had
+received only a few days before, and over the reading of which they
+had again and again laughed unrestrainedly. As he walked home he
+sought in vain to recall anything in it deserving of such
+reprobation as Dorothy had branded it withal. Had it been written on
+the other side no search would have been necessary, for party spirit
+(from which how could such a youth be free, when the greatest men of
+his time were deeply tainted?), while it blinds the eyes in one
+direction, makes them doubly keen in another. As it was, the abuse
+in the pamphlet referred to, appeared to him only warrantable
+indignation; and, the arrogance of an imperfect love leading him to
+utter desertion of his newly-adopted principles, he scorned as
+presumptuous that exercise of her own judgment on the part of
+Dorothy which had led to their separation, bitterly resenting the
+change in his playmate, who, now an angry woman, had decreed his
+degradation from the commonest privileges of friendship, until such
+time as he should abjure his convictions, become a renegade to the
+truth, and abandon the hope of resulting freedom which the strife of
+parties held out--an act of tyranny the reflection upon which raised
+such a swelling in his throat as he had never felt but once before,
+when a favourite foal got staked in trying to clear a fence. Having
+neither friend nor sister to whom to confess that he was in
+trouble--have confided it he could not in any case, seeing it
+involved blame of the woman his love for whom now first, when on the
+point of losing her for ever, threatened to overmaster him--he
+wandered to the stables, which he found empty of men and nearly so
+of horses, half-involuntarily sought the stall of the mare his
+father had given him on his last birthday, laid his head on the neck
+bent round to greet him, and sighed a sore response to her soft,
+low, tremulous whinny.
+
+As he stood thus, overcome by the bitter sense of wrong from the one
+he loved best in the world, something darkened the stable-door, and
+a voice he knew reached his ear. Mistaking the head she saw across
+an empty stall for that of one of the farm-servants, Goody Rees was
+calling aloud to know if he wanted a charm for the toothache.
+
+Richard looked up.
+
+'And what may your charm be, mistress Rees?' he asked.
+
+'Aha! is it thou, young master?' returned the woman. 'Thou wilt
+marvel to see me about the place so soon again, but verily desired
+to know how that godly man, Faithful Stopchase, found himself after
+his fall.'
+
+'Nay, mistress Rees, make no apology for coming amongst thy friends.
+I warrant thee against further rudeness of man or beast. I have
+taken them to task, and truly I will break his head who wags tongue
+against thee. As for Stopchase, he does well enough in all except
+owing thee thanks which he declines to pay. But for thy charm, good
+mistress Rees, what is it--tell me ?'
+
+She took a step inside the door, sent her small eyes peering first
+into every corner her sight could reach, and then said:
+
+'Are we alone--we two, master Richard?'
+
+'There's a cat in the next stall, mistress: if she can hear, she
+can't speak.'
+
+'Don't be too sure of that, master Richard. Be there no one else?'
+
+'Not a body; soul there may be--who knows?'
+
+'I know there is none. I will tell thee my charm, or what else I may
+that thou would wish to know; for he is a true gentleman who will
+help a woman because she is a woman, be she as old and ugly as Goody
+Rees herself. Hearken, my pretty sir: it is the tooth of a corpse,
+drawn after he hath lain a se'en-night in the mould: wilt buy, my
+master? Or did not I see thee now asking comfort from thy horse for
+the--'
+
+She paused a moment, peered narrowly at him from under lowered
+eyebrows, and went on:
+
+'--heartache, eh, master Richard? Old eyes can see through velvet
+doublets.'
+
+'All the world knows yours can see farther than other people's,'
+returned Richard. 'Heaven knows whence they have their sharpness.
+But suppose it were a heartache now, have you got e'er a charm to
+cure that?'
+
+'The best of all charms, my young master, is a kiss from the maiden;
+and what would thou give me for the spell that should set her by thy
+side at the old dial, under a warm harvest moon, all the long hours
+'twixt midnight and the crowing of the black cock--eh, my master?
+What wilt thou give me?'
+
+'Not a brass farthing, if she came not of her own good will,'
+murmured Richard, turning towards his mare. 'But come, mistress
+Rees, you know you couldn't do it, even if you were the black witch
+the neighbours would have you--though I, for my part, will not hear
+a word against you--never since you set my poor old dog upon his
+legs again--though to be sure he will die one of these days, and
+that no one can help--dogs have such short lives, poor fools!'
+
+'Thou knows not what old mother Rees can do. Tell me, young master,
+did she ever say and not do--eh, now?'
+
+'You said you would cure my dog, and you did,' answered Richard.
+
+'And I say now, if thou will, I will set thee and her together by
+the old dial to-morrow night, and it shall be a warm and moonlit
+night on purpose for ye, an ye will.'
+
+'It were to no good purpose, mistress Rees, for we parted this
+day--and that for ever, I much fear me,' said Richard with a deep
+sigh, but getting some little comfort even out of a witch's
+sympathy.
+
+'Tut, tut, tut! Lovers' quarrels! Who knows not what they mean?
+Crying and kissing--crying and kissing--that's what they mean. Come
+now--what did thou and she quarrel about?'
+
+The old woman, if not a witch, at least looked very like one, with
+her two hands resting on the wide round ledge of her farthingale,
+her head thrown back, and from under her peaked hat that pointed
+away behind, her two greenish eyes peering with a half-coaxing, yet
+sharp and probing gaze into those of the youth.
+
+But how could he make a confidante of one like her? What could she
+understand of such questions as had raised the wall of partition
+betwixt him and Dorothy? Unwilling to offend her, however, he
+hesitated to give her offer a plain refusal, and turning away in
+silence, affected to have caught sight of something suspicious about
+his mare's near hock.
+
+'I see, I see!' said the old woman grimly, but not ill-naturedly,
+and nodded her head, so that her hat described great arcs across the
+sky; 'thou art ashamed to confess that thou lovest thy father's
+whims more than thy lady's favours. Well, well! Such lovers are
+hardly for my trouble!'
+
+But here came the voice of Mr. Heywood, calling his groom. She
+started, glanced around her as if seeking a covert, then peered from
+the door, and glided noiselessly out.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PREPARATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+Great was the merriment in Raglan Castle over the discomfiture of
+the bumpkins, and many were the compliments Tom received in parlour,
+nursery, kitchen, guard-room, everywhere, on the success of his
+hastily-formed scheme for the chastisement of their presumption. The
+household had looked for a merry time on the occasion of the
+wedding, but had not expected such a full cup of delight as had been
+pressed out for them betwixt the self-importance of the overweening
+yokels and the inventive faculties of Tom Fool. All the evening, one
+standing in any open spot of the castle might have heard, now on the
+one, now on the other side, renewed bursts of merriment ripple the
+air; but as the still autumn night crept on, the intervals between
+grew longer and longer, until at length all sounds ceased, and
+silence took up her ancient reign, broken only by the occasional
+stamp of a horse or howl of a watch-dog.
+
+But the earl, who, from simplicity of nature and peace of conscience
+combined, was perhaps better fitted for the enjoyment of the joke,
+in a time when such ludifications were not yet considered unsuitable
+to the dignity of the highest position, than any other member of his
+household, had, through it all, showed a countenance in which,
+although eyes, lips, and voice shared in the laughter, there yet
+lurked a thoughtful doubt concerning the result. For he knew that,
+in some shape or other, and that certainly not the true one, the
+affair would be spread over the country, where now prejudice against
+the Catholics was strong and dangerous in proportion to the unreason
+of those who cherished it. Now, also, it was becoming pretty plain
+that except the king yielded every prerogative, and became the
+puppet which the mingled pride and apprehension of the Parliament
+would have him, their differences must ere long be referred to the
+arbitration of the sword, in which case there was no shadow of doubt
+in the mind of the earl as to the part befitting a peer of the
+realm. The king was a protestant, but no less the king; and not this
+man, but his parents, had sinned in forsaking the church--of which
+sin their offspring had now to bear the penalty, reaping the
+whirlwind sprung from the stormy seeds by them sown. For what were
+the puritans but the lawfully-begotten children of the so called
+reformation, whose spirit they inherited, and in whose footsteps
+they so closely followed? In the midst of such reflections, dawned
+slowly in the mind of the devout old man the enchanting hope that
+perhaps he might be made the messenger of God to lead back to the
+true fold the wandering feet of his king. But, fail or speed in any
+result, so long as his castle held together, it should stand for the
+king. Faithful catholic as he was, the brave old man was English to
+the backbone.
+
+And there was no time to lose. This visit of search, let it have
+originated how it might, and be as despicable in itself as it was
+ludicrous in its result, showed but too clearly how strong the
+current of popular feeling was setting against all the mounds of
+social distinction, and not kingly prerogative alone. What
+preparations might be needful, must be prudent.
+
+That same night, then, long after the rest of the household had
+retired, three men took advantage of a fine half-moon to make a
+circuit of the castle, first along the counterscarp of the moat, and
+next along all accessible portions of the walls and battlements.
+They halted often, and, with much observation of the defences, held
+earnest talk together, sometimes eagerly contending rather than
+disputing, but far more often mutually suggesting and agreeing. At
+length one of them, whom the others called Caspar, retired, and the
+earl was left with his son Edward, lord Herbert, the only person in
+the castle who had gone to neither window nor door to delight
+himself with the discomfiture of the parliamentary commissioners.
+
+They entered the long picture gallery, faintly lighted from its
+large windows to the court, but chiefly from the oriel which formed
+the northern end of it, where they now sat down, the earl being, for
+the second time that night, weary. Behind them was a long dim line
+of portraits, broken only by the great chimney-piece supported by
+human figures, all of carved stone, and before them, nearly as dim,
+was the moon-massed landscape--a lovely view of the woodland,
+pasture, and red tilth to the northward of the castle.
+
+They sat silent for a while, and the younger said:
+
+'I fear you are fatigued, my lord. It is late for you to be out of
+bed; nature is mortal.'
+
+'Thou sayest well; nature is mortal, my son. But therein lies the
+comfort--it cannot last. It were hard to say whether of the two
+houses stands the more in need of the hand of the maker.'
+
+'Were it not for villanous saltpetre, my lord, the castle would hold
+out well enough.'
+
+'And were it not for villanous gout, which is a traitor within it, I
+see not why this other should not hold out as long. Be sure,
+Herbert, I shall not render the keep for the taking of the
+outworks.'
+
+'I fear,' said his son, wishing to change the subject, 'this part
+where we now are is the most liable to hurt from artillery.'
+
+'Yes, but the ground in front is not such as they would readiest
+plant it upon,' said the earl. 'Do not let us forecast evil, only
+prepare for it.'
+
+'We shall do our best, my lord--with your lordship's good counsel to
+guide us.'
+
+'You shall lack nothing, Herbert, that either counsel or purse of
+mine may reach unto.'
+
+'I thank your lordship, for much depends upon both. And so I fear
+will his majesty find--if it conies to the worst.'
+
+A brief pause followed.
+
+'Thinkest thou not, Herbert,' said the earl, slowly and
+thoughtfully, 'it ill suits that a subject should have and to spare,
+and his liege go begging?'
+
+'My father is pleased to say so.'
+
+'I am but evil pleased to say so. Bethink thee, son--what man can be
+pleased to part with his money? And while my king is poor, I must be
+rich for him. Thou wilt not accuse me, Herbert, after I am gone to
+the rest, that I wasted thy substance, lad?'
+
+'So long as you still keep wherewithal to give, I shall be content,
+my lord.'
+
+'Well, time will show. I but tell thee what runneth in my mind, for
+thou and I, Herbert, have bosomed no secrets. I will to bed. We must
+go the round again to-morrow--with the sun to hold as a candle.'
+
+The next day the same party made a similar circuit three times--in
+the morning, at noon, and in the evening--that the full light might
+uncover what the shadows had hid, and that the shadows might show
+what a perpendicular light could not reveal. There is all the
+difference as to discovery whether a thing is lying under the shadow
+of another, or casting one of its own.
+
+After this came a review of the outer fortifications--if, indeed,
+they were worthy of the name--enclosing the gardens, the old tilting
+yard, now used as a bowling-green, the home-farmyard, and other such
+outlying portions under the stewardship of sir Ralph Blackstone and
+the governorship of Charles Somerset, the earl's youngest son. It
+was here that the most was wanted; and the next few days were
+chiefly spent in surveying these works, and drawing plans for their
+extension, strengthening, and connection--especially about the
+stables, armourer's shop, and smithy, where the building of new
+defences was almost immediately set on foot.
+
+A thorough examination of the machinery of the various portcullises
+and drawbridges followed; next an overhauling of the bolts, chains,
+and other defences of the gates. Then came an inspection of the
+ordnance, from cannons down to drakes, through a gradation of names
+as uncouth to our ears, and as unknown to the artillery descended
+from them, as many of the Christian names of the puritans are to
+their descendants of the present day. At length, to conclude the
+inspection, lord Herbert and the master of the armoury held
+consultation with the head armourer, and the mighty accumulation of
+weapons of all sorts was passed under the most rigid scrutiny; many
+of them were sent to the forge, and others carried to the
+ground-floor of the keep.
+
+Presently, things began to look busy in a quiet way about the place.
+Men were at work blasting the rocks in a quarry not far off, whence
+laden carts went creeping to the castle; but this was oftener in the
+night. Some of them drove into the paved court, for here and there a
+buttress was wanted inside, and of the battlements not a few were
+weather-beaten and out of repair. These the earl would have let
+alone, on the ground that they were no longer more than ornamental,
+and therefore had better be repaired AFTER the siege, if such should
+befall, for the big guns would knock them about like cards; but
+Caspar reminded him that every time the ball from a cannon,
+culvering, or saker missed the parapet, it remained a sufficient bar
+to the bullet that might equally avail to carry off the defenceless
+gunner. The earl, however, although he yielded, maintained that the
+flying of the wall when struck was a more than counterbalancing
+danger.
+
+The stock of provisions began to increase. The dry larder, which lay
+under the court, between the kitchen and buttery, was by degrees
+filled with gammons and flitches of bacon, well dried and smoked.
+Wheat, barley, oats, and pease were stored in the granary, and
+potatoes in a pit dug in the orchard.
+
+Strange faces in the guard-room caused wonderings and questions
+amongst the women. The stables began to fill with horses, and 'more
+man' to go about the farmyard and outhouses.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+REFLECTIONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+Left alone with Lady, his mare, Richard could not help
+brooding--rather than pondering--over what the old woman had said.
+Not that for a moment he contemplated as a possibility the
+acceptance of the witch's offer. To come himself into any such close
+relations with her as that would imply, was in repulsiveness second
+only to the idea of subjecting Dorothy to her influences. For
+something to occupy his hands, that his mind might be restless at
+will, he gave his mare a careful currying, then an extra feed of
+oats, and then a gallop; after which it was time to go to bed.
+
+I doubt if anything but the consciousness of crime will keep healthy
+youth awake, and as such consciousness is generally far from it,
+youth seldom counts the watches of the night. Richard soon fell fast
+asleep, and dreamed that his patron saint--alas for his
+protestantism!--appeared to him, handed him a lance headed with a
+single flashing diamond, and told him to go and therewith kill the
+dragon. But just as he was asking the way to the dragon's den, that
+he might perform his behest, the saint vanished, and feeling the
+lance melting away in his grasp, he gradually woke to find it gone.
+
+After a long talk with his father in the study, he was left to his
+own resources for the remainder of the day; and as it passed and the
+night drew on, the offer of the witch kept growing upon his
+imagination, and his longing to see Dorothy became stronger and
+stronger, until at last it was almost too intense to be borne. He
+had never before known such a possession, and was more than half
+inclined to attribute it to the arts of mother Rees.
+
+His father was busy in his study below, writing letters--an
+employment which now occupied much of his time; and Richard sat
+alone in a chamber in the upper part of one of the many gables of
+the house, which he had occupied longer than he could remember. Its
+one small projecting lozenge-paned window looked towards Dorothy's
+home. Some years ago he had been able to see her window, from it
+through a gap in the trees, by favour of which, indeed, they had
+indulged in a system of communications by means of coloured
+flags--so satisfactory that Dorothy not only pressed into the
+service all the old frocks she could find, but got into trouble by
+cutting up one almost new for the enlargement of the somewhat
+limited scope of their telegraphy. In this window he now sat,
+sending his soul through the darkness, milky with the clouded light
+of half an old moon, towards the ancient sun-dial, where Time stood
+so still that sometimes Richard had known an hour there pass in a
+moment.
+
+Never until now had he felt enmity in space: it had been hitherto
+rather as a bridge to bear him to Dorothy than a gulf to divide him
+from her presence; but now, through the interpenetrative power of
+feeling, their alienation had affected all around as well as within
+him, and space appeared as a solid enemy, and darkness as an
+unfriendly enchantress, each doing what it could to separate betwixt
+him and the being to whom his soul was drawn as--no, there was no AS
+for such drawing. No opposition of mere circumstances could have
+created the feeling; it was the sense of an inward separation taking
+form outwardly. For Richard was now but too well convinced that he
+had no power of persuasion equal to the task of making Dorothy see
+things as he saw them. The dividing influence of imperfect opposing
+goods is potent as that of warring good and evil, with this
+important difference, that the former is but for a season, and will
+one day bind as strongly as it parted, while the latter is
+essential, absolute, impassible, eternal.
+
+To Dorothy, Richard seemed guilty of overweening arrogance and its
+attendant, presumption; she could not see the form ethereal to which
+he bowed. To Richard, Dorothy appeared the dupe of superstition; he
+could not see the god that dwelt within the idol. To Dorothy,
+Richard seemed to be one who gave the holy name of truth to nothing
+but the offspring of his own vain fancy. To Richard, Dorothy
+appeared one who so little loved the truth that she was ready to
+accept anything presented to her as such, by those who themselves
+loved the word more than the spirit, and the chrysalis of safety
+better than the wings of power. But it is only for a time that any
+good can to the good appear evil, and at this very moment, Nature,
+who in her blindness is stronger to bind than the farthest-seeing
+intellect to loose, was urging him into her presence; and the heart
+of Dorothy, notwithstanding her initiative in the separation, was
+leaning as lovingly, as sadly after the youth she had left alone
+with the defaced sun-dial, the symbol of Time's weariness. Had they,
+however, been permitted to meet as they would, the natural result of
+ever-renewed dissension would have been a thorough separation in
+heart, no heavenly twilights of loneliness giving time for the love
+which grows like the grass to recover from the scorching heat of
+intellectual jar and friction.
+
+The waning moon at length peered warily from behind a bank of cloud,
+and her dim light melting through the darkness filled the night with
+a dream of the day. Richard was no more of a poet or dreamer of
+dreams than is any honest youth so long as love holds the bandage of
+custom away from his eyes. The poets are they who all their life
+long contrive to see over or through the bandage; but they would, I
+doubt, have but few readers, had not nature decreed that all youths
+and maidens shall, for a period, be it long or short, become aware
+that they too are of the race of the singers--shall, in the journey
+of their life, at least pass through the zone of song: some of them
+recognise it as the region of truth, and continue to believe in it
+still when it seems to have vanished from around them; others scoff
+as it disappears, and curse themselves for dupes. Through this zone
+Richard was now passing. Hence the moon wore to him a sorrowful
+face, and he felt a vague sympathy in her regard, that of one who
+was herself in trouble, half the light of her lord's countenance
+withdrawn. For science had not for him interfered with the shows of
+things by a partial revelation of their realities. He had not
+learned that the face of the moon is the face of a corpse-world;
+that the sadness upon it is the sadness of utter loss; that her
+light has in it no dissolved smile, is but the reflex from a
+lifeless mirror; that of all the orbs we know best she can have
+least to do with lovers' longings and losses, she alone having no
+love left in her--the cold cinder of a quenched world. Not an
+out-burnt cinder, though! she needs but to be cast again into the
+furnace of the sun.
+
+As it was, Richard had gazed at her hardly for a minute when he
+found the tears running down his face, and starting up, ashamed of
+the unmanly weakness, hardly knew what he was doing before he found
+himself in the open air. From the hall clock came the first stroke
+of twelve as he closed the door behind him. It was the hour at which
+mother Rees had offered him a meeting with Dorothy; but it was
+assuredly with no expectation of seeing her that he turned his steps
+towards her dwelling.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+AN ADVENTURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+When he reached the spot at which he usually turned off by a gap in
+the hedge to NEEDLE his way through the unpathed wood, he yielded
+to the impulses of memory and habit, and sought the yew-circle,
+where for some moments he stood by the dumb, disfeatured stone,
+which seemed to slumber in the moonlight, a monument slowly
+vanishing from above a vanished grave. Indeed it might well have
+been the grave of buried Time, for what fitter monument could he
+have than a mutilated sun-dial, what better enclosure than such a
+hedge of yews, and more suitable light than that of the dying moon?
+Or was it but that the heart of the youth, receiving these things as
+into a concave mirror, reprojected them into space, all shadowy with
+its own ghostliness and gloom? Close by the dial, like the dark way
+into regions where time is not, yawned the mouth of the pleached
+alley. Beyond that was her window, on which the moon must now be
+shining. He entered the alley, and walked softly towards the house.
+Suddenly, down the dark tunnel came rushing upon him Dorothy's
+mastiff, with a noise as of twenty soft feet, and a growl as if his
+throat had been full of teeth--changing to a boisterous welcome
+when he discovered who the stranger was. Fearful of disturbing the
+household, Richard soon quieted the dog, which was in the habit of
+obeying him almost as readily as his mistress, and, fearful of
+disturbing sleepers or watchers, approached the house like a thief.
+To gain a sight of Dorothy's window he had to pass that of the
+parlour, and then the porch, which he did on the grass, that his
+steps might be noiseless. But here the dog started from his heel,
+and bounded into the porch, leading after him the eyes of Richard,
+who thereupon saw what would have else remained undiscovered--two
+figures, namely, standing in its deep shadow. Judging it his part,
+as a friend of the family, to see who, at so late an hour, and so
+near the house, seemed thus to avoid discovery, Richard drew nearer,
+and the next moment saw that the door was open behind them, and that
+they were Dorothy and a young man.
+
+'The gates will be shut,' said Dorothy.
+
+'It is no matter; old Eccles will open to me at any hour,' was the
+answer.
+
+'Still it were well you went without delay,' said Dorothy; and her
+voice trembled a little, for she had caught sight of Richard.
+
+Now not only are anger and stupidity near of kin, but when a man
+whose mental movements are naturally deliberate, is suddenly
+spurred, he is in great danger of acting like a fool, and Richard
+did act like a fool. He strode up to the entrance of the porch, and
+said,
+
+'Do you not hear the lady, sir? She tells you to go.'
+
+A voice as cool and self-possessed as the other was hasty and
+perturbed, replied,
+
+'I am much in the wrong, sir, if the lady do not turn the command
+upon yourself. Until you have obeyed it, she may perhaps see reason
+for withdrawing it in respect of me.'
+
+Richard stepped into the porch, but Dorothy glided between them, and
+gently pushed him out.
+
+'Richard Heywood!' she said.
+
+'Whew!' interjected the stranger, softly.
+
+'You can claim no right,' she went on, 'to be here at this hour.
+Pray go; you will disturb my mother.'
+
+'Who is this man, then, whose right seems acknowledged?' asked
+Richard, in ill-suppressed fury.
+
+'When you address me like a gentleman, such as I used to believe
+you--'
+
+'May I presume to ask when you ceased to regard me as a gentleman,
+mistress Dorothy?'
+
+'As soon as I found that you had learned to despise law and
+religion,' answered the girl. 'Such a one will hardly succeed in
+acting the part of a gentleman, even had he the blood of the
+Somersets in his veins.'
+
+'I thank you, mistress Dorothy,' said the stranger, 'and will profit
+by the plain hint. Once more tell me to go, and I will obey.'
+
+'He must go first,' returned Dorothy.
+
+Richard had been standing as if stunned, but now with an effort
+recovered himself.
+
+'I will wait for you,' he said, and turned away.
+
+'For whom, sir?' asked Dorothy, indignantly.
+
+'You have refused me the gentleman's name,' answered Richard:
+'perhaps I may have the good fortune to persuade himself to be more
+obliging.'
+
+'I shall not keep you waiting long,' said the young man
+significantly, as Richard walked away.
+
+To do Richard justice, and greatly he needs it, I must make the
+remark that such had been the intimacy betwixt him and Dorothy, that
+he might well imagine himself acquainted with all the friends of her
+house. But the intimacy had been confined to the children; the heads
+of the two houses, although good neighbours, had not been drawn
+towards each other, and their mutual respect had not ripened into
+friendship. Hence many of the family and social relations of each
+were unknown to the other; and indeed both families led such a
+retired life that the children knew little of their own relatives
+even, and seldom spoke of any.
+
+Lady Scudamore, the mother of the stranger, was first cousin to lady
+Vaughan. They had been very intimate as girls, but had not met for
+years--hardly since the former married sir John, the son of one of
+King James's carpet-knights. Hearing of her cousin's illness, she
+had come to visit her at last, under the escort of her son. Taken
+with his new cousin, the youth had lingered and lingered; and in
+fact Dorothy had been unable to get rid of him before an hour
+strange for leave-taking in such a quiet and yet hospitable
+neighbourhood.
+
+Richard took his stand on the side of the public road opposite the
+gate; but just ere Scudamore came, which was hardly a minute after,
+a cloud crept over the moon, and, as he happened to stand in a line
+with the bole of a tree, Scudamore did not catch sight of him. When
+he turned to walk along the road, Richard thought he avoided him,
+and, making a great stride or two after him, called aloud--
+
+'Stop, sir, stop. You forget your appointments over easily, I
+think.'
+
+'Oh, you ARE there!' said the youth, turning.
+
+'I am glad you acknowledge my presence,' said Richard, not the
+better pleased with his new acquaintance that his speech and
+behaviour had an easy tone of superiority, which, if indefinably
+felt by the home-bred lad, was not therefore to be willingly
+accorded. His easy carriage, his light step, his still shoulders and
+lithe spine, indicated both birth and training.
+
+'Just the night for a serenade,' he went on, heedless of Richard's
+remark, '--bright, but not too bright; cloudy, but not too cloudy.'
+
+'Sir!' said Richard, amazed at his coolness.
+
+'Oh, you want to quarrel with me!' returned the youth. 'But it takes
+two to fight as well as to kiss, and I will not make one to-night. I
+know who you are well enough, and have no quarrel with you, except
+indeed it be true--as indeed it must, for Dorothy tells me so--that
+you have turned roundhead as well as your father.'
+
+'What right have you to speak so familiarly of mistress Dorothy?'
+said Richard.
+
+'It occurs to me,' replied Scudamore, airily, 'that I had better ask
+you by what right you haunt her house at midnight. But I would not
+willingly cross you in cold blood. I wish you good a night, and
+better luck next time you go courting.'
+
+The moon swam from behind a cloud, and her over ripe and fading
+light seemed to the eyes of Richard to gather upon the figure before
+him and there revive. The youth had on a doublet of some reddish
+colour, ill brought out by the moonlight, but its silver lace and
+the rapier hilt inlaid with silver shone the keener against it. A
+short cloak hung from his left shoulder, trimmed also with silver
+lace, and a little cataract of silver fringe fell from the edges of
+his short trousers into the wide tops of his boots, which were
+adorned with ruffles. He wore a large collar of lace, and cuffs of
+the same were folded back from his bare hands. A broad-brimmed
+beaver hat, its silver band fastened with a jewel holding a plume of
+willowy feathers, completed his attire, which he wore with just the
+slightest of a jaunty air. It was hardly the dress for a walk at
+midnight, but he had come in his mother's carriage, and had to go
+home without it.
+
+Alas now for Richard's share in the freedom to which he had of late
+imagined himself devoted! No sooner had the words last spoken
+entered his ears than he was but a driven slave ready to rush into
+any quarrel with the man who spoke them. Ere he had gone three paces
+he had stepped in front of him.
+
+'Whatever rights mistress Dorothy may have given you,' he said, 'she
+had none to transfer in respect of my father. What do you mean by
+calling him a roundhead?'
+
+'Why, is he not one?' asked the youth, simply, keeping his ground,
+in spite of the unpleasant proximity of Richard's person. 'I am
+sorry to have wronged him, but I mistook him for a ringleader of the
+same name. I heartily beg your pardon.'
+
+'You did not mistake,' said Richard stupidly.
+
+'Then I did him no wrong,' rejoined the youth, and once more would
+have gone his way.
+
+But Richard, angrier than ever at finding he had given him such an
+easy advantage, moved with his movement, and kept rudely in front of
+him, provoking a quarrel--in clownish fashion, it must be confessed.
+
+'By heaven,' said Scudamore, 'if Dorothy had not begged me not to
+fight with you--,' and as he spoke he slipped suddenly past his
+antagonist, and walked swiftly away. Richard plunged after him, and
+seized him roughly by the shoulder. Instantaneously he wheeled on
+the very foot whence he was taking the next stride, and as he turned
+his rapier gleamed in the moonlight. The same moment it left his
+hand, he scarce knew how, and flew across the hedge. Richard, who
+was unarmed, had seized the blade, and, almost by one and the same
+movement of his wrist, wrenched the hilt from the grasp of his
+adversary, and flung the thing from him. Then closing with the
+cavalier, slighter and less skilled in such encounters, the
+roundhead almost instantly threw him upon the turf that bordered the
+road.
+
+'Take that for drawing on an unarmed man,' he said.
+
+No reply came. The youth lay stunned.
+
+Then compassion woke in the heart of the angry Richard, and he
+hastened to his help. Ere he reached him, however, he made an
+attempt to rise, but only to stagger and fall again.
+
+'Curse you for a roundhead!' he cried; 'you've twisted some of my
+tackle. I can't stand.'
+
+'I'm sorry,' returned Richard, 'but why did you bare bilbo on a
+naked man? A right malignant you are !'
+
+'Did I?' returned Scudamore. 'You laid hands on me so suddenly! I
+ask your pardon.'
+
+Accepting the offered aid of Richard, he rose; but his right knee
+was so much hurt that he could not walk a step without great pain.
+Full of regret for the suffering he had caused, Richard lifted him
+in his arms, and seated him on a low wall of earth, which was all
+that here inclosed lady Vaughan's shrubbery; then, breaking through
+the hedge on the opposite side of the way, presently returned with
+the rapier, and handed it to him. Scudamore accepted it courteously,
+with difficulty replaced it in its sheath, rose, and once more
+attempted to walk, but gave a groan, and would have fallen had not
+Richard caught him.
+
+'The devil is in it!' he cried, with more annoyance than anger. 'If
+I am not in my place at my lord's breakfast to-morrow, there will be
+questioning. That I had leave to accompany my mother makes the
+mischief. If I had stole away, it would be another matter. It will
+be hard to bear rebuke, and no frolic.'
+
+'Come home with me,' said Richard. 'My father will do his best to
+atone for the wrong done by his son.'
+
+'Set foot across the threshold of a roundhead fanatic! In the way of
+hospitality! Not if the choice lay betwixt that and my coffin!'
+cried the cavalier.
+
+'Then let me carry you back to lady Vaughan's,' said Richard, with a
+torturing pang of jealousy, which only his sense of right, now
+thoroughly roused, enabled him to defy.
+
+'I dare not. I should terrify my mother, and perhaps kill my
+cousin.'
+
+'Your mother! your cousin!' cried Richard.
+
+'Yes,' returned Scudamore; 'my mother is there, on a visit to her
+cousin lady Vaughan.'
+
+'Alas, I am more to blame than I knew!' said Richard.
+
+'No,' Scudamore went on, heedless of Richard's lamentation. 'I must
+crawl back to Raglan as I may. If I get there before the morning, I
+shall be able to show reason why I should not wait upon my lord at
+his breakfast.'
+
+'You belong to the earl's household, then?' said Richard.
+
+'Yes; and I fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything
+else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would
+he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a
+squire at least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned my spurs; but
+his lordship will never be content without me to hand him his
+buttered egg at breakfast, and fill his cup at dinner with his
+favourite claret. And so I am neither more nor less than a page,
+which rhymes with my age better than suits it. But the earl has a
+will of his own. He is a master worth serving though. And there is
+my lady Elizabeth and my lady Mary--not to mention my lord
+Herbert!--But,' he concluded, rubbing his injured knee with both
+hands, 'why do I prate of them to a roundhead?'
+
+'Why indeed?' returned Richard. 'Are they not, the earl and all his
+people, traitors, and that of the worst? Are they not the enemies of
+the truth--worshippers of idols, bowing the knee to a woman, and
+kissing the very toes of an old man so in love with ignorance, that
+he tortures the philosopher who tells him the truth about the world
+and its motions?'
+
+'Go on, master Roundhead! I can chastise you, and that you know.
+This cursed knee--'
+
+'I will stand unarmed within your thrust, and never budge a foot,'
+said Richard. 'But no,' he added, 'I dare not, lest I should further
+injure one I have wronged already. Let there be a truce between us.'
+
+'I am no papist,' returned Scudamore. 'I speak only as one of the
+earl's household--true men all. For them I cast the word in your
+teeth, you roundhead traitor! For myself I am of the English
+church.'
+
+'It is but the wolf and the wolf's cub,' said. Richard. 'Prelatical
+episcopacy is but the old harlot veiled, or rather, forsooth, her
+bloody scarlet blackened in the sulphur fumes of her coming
+desolation.'
+
+'Curse on, roundhead,' sighed the youth; 'I must crawl home.'
+
+Once more he rose and made an effort to walk. But it was of no use:
+walk he could not.
+
+'I must wait till the morning,' he said, 'when some Christian
+waggoner may be passing. Leave me in peace.'
+
+'Nay, I am no such boor!' said Richard. 'Do you think you could
+ride?'
+
+'I could try.'
+
+'I will bring you the best mare in Gwent. But tell me your name,
+that I may know with whom I have the honour of a feud.'
+
+'My name is Roland Scudamore,' answered the youth. 'Yours I know
+already, and round-head as you are, you have some smatch of honour
+in you.'
+
+With an air of condescension he held out his hand, which his
+adversary, oppressed with a sense of the injury he had done him, did
+not refuse.
+
+Richard hurried home, and to the stable, where he saddled his mare.
+But his father, who was still in his study, heard the sound of her
+hoofs in the paved yard, and met him as he led her out on the road,
+with an inquiry as to his destination at such an hour. Richard told
+him that he had had a quarrel with a certain young fellow of the
+name of Scudamore, a page of the earl of Worcester, whom he had met
+at lady Vaughan's: and recounted the result.
+
+'Was your quarrel a just one, my son?'
+
+'No sir. I was in the wrong.'
+
+'Then you are so far in the right now. And you are going to help him
+home?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Have you confessed yourself in the wrong?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Then go, my son, but beware of private quarrel in such a season of
+strife. This youth and thyself may meet some day in mortal conflict
+on the battle-field; and for my part--I know not how it may be with
+another--in such a case I would rather slay my friend than my
+enemy.'
+
+Enlightened by the inward experience of the moment, Richard was able
+to understand and respond to the feeling. How different a sudden
+action flashed off the surface of a man's nature may be from that
+which, had time been given, would have unfolded itself from its
+depths!
+
+Bare-headed, Roger Heywood walked beside his son as he led the mare
+to the spot where Scudamore perforce awaited his return. They found
+him stretched on the roadside, plucking handfuls of grass, and
+digging up the turf with his fingers, thus, and thus alone,
+betraying that he suffered. Mr. Heywood at first refrained from any
+offer of hospitality, believing he would be more inclined to accept
+it after he had proved the difficulty of riding, in which case a
+previous refusal might stand in the way. But although a slight groan
+escaped as they lifted him to the saddle, he gathered up the reins
+at once, and sat erect while they shortened the stirrup-leathers.
+Lady seemed to know what was required of her, and stood as still as
+a vaulting horse until Richard took the bridle to lead her away.
+
+'I see!' said Scudamore; 'you can't trust me with your horse!'
+
+'Not so, sir,' answered Mr. Heywood. 'We cannot trust the horse with
+you. It is quite impossible for you to ride so far alone. If you
+will go, you must submit to the attendance of my son, on which I am
+sorry to think you have so good a claim. But will you not yet change
+your mind and be our guest--for the night at least? We will send a
+messenger to the castle at earliest dawn.'
+
+Scudamore declined the invitation, but with perfect courtesy, for
+there was that about Roger Heywood which rendered it impossible for
+any man who was himself a gentleman, whatever his judgment of him
+might be, to show him disrespect. And the moment the mare began to
+move, he felt no further inclination to object to Richard's company
+at her head, for he perceived that, should she prove in the least
+troublesome, it would be impossible for him to keep his seat. He did
+not suffer so much, however, as to lose all his good spirits, or
+fail in his part of a conversation composed chiefly of what we now
+call chaff, both of them for a time avoiding all such topics as
+might lead to dispute, the one from a sense of wrong already done,
+the other from a vague feeling that he was under the protection of
+the foregone injury.
+
+'Have you known my cousin Dorothy long?' asked Scudamore.
+
+'Longer than I can remember,' answered Richard.
+
+'Then you must be more like brother and sister than lovers.'
+
+'That, I fear, is her feeling,' replied Richard, honestly.
+
+'You need not think of me as a rival,' said Scudamore. 'I never saw
+the young woman in my life before, and although anything of yours,
+being a roundhead's, is fair game--'
+
+'Your humble servant, sir Cavalier!' interjected Richard. 'Pray use
+your pleasure.'
+
+'I tell you plainly,' Scudamore went on, without heeding the
+interruption, 'though I admire my cousin, as I do any young woman,
+if she be but a shade beyond the passable--'
+
+'The ape! The coxcomb!' said Richard to himself.
+
+'I am not, therefore, dying for her love; and I give you this one
+honest warning that, though I would rather see mistress Dorothy in
+her winding-sheet than dame to a roundhead, I should be--yes, I MAY
+be a more dangerous rival in respect of your mare, than of any lady
+YOU are likely to set eyes upon.'
+
+'What do you mean?' said Richard gruffly.
+
+'I mean that, the king having at length resolved to be more of a
+monarch and less of a saint--'
+
+'A saint!' echoed Richard, but the echo was rather a loud one, for
+it startled his mare and shook her rider.
+
+'Don't shout like that!' cried the cavalier, with an oath. 'Saint or
+sinner, I care not. He is my king, and I am his soldier. But with
+this knee you have given me, I shall be fitter for garrison than
+field-duty--damn it.'
+
+'You do not mean that his majesty has declared open war against the
+parliament?' exclaimed Richard.
+
+'Faithless puritan, I do,' answered Scudamore. 'His majesty has at
+length--with reluctance, I am sorry to hear--taken up arms against
+his rebellious subjects. Land will be cheap by-and-by.'
+
+'Many such rumours have reached us,' returned Richard, quietly. 'The
+king spares no threats; but for blows--well!'
+
+'Insolent fanatic!' shouted Vaughan, 'I tell you his majesty is on
+his way from Scotland with an army of savages; and London has
+declared for the king.'
+
+Richard and his mare simultaneously quickened their pace.
+
+'Then it is time you were in bed, Mr Scudamore, for my mare and I
+will be wanted,' he cried. 'God be praised! I thank you for the good
+news. It makes me young again to hear it.'
+
+'What the devil do you mean by jerking this cursed knee of mine so?'
+shouted Scudamore. 'Faith, you were young enough in all conscience
+already, you fool! You want to keep me in bed, as well as send me
+there! Well out of the way, you think! But I give you honest warning
+to look after your mare, for I vow I have fallen in love with her.
+She's worth three, at least, of your mistress Dorothies.'
+
+'You talk like a Dutch boor,' said Richard.
+
+'Saith an English lout,' retorted Scudamore. 'But, all things being
+lawful in love and war, not to mention hate and rebellion, this
+mare, if I am blessed with a chance, shall be--well, shall be
+translated.'
+
+'You mean from Redware to Raglan.'
+
+'Where she shall be entertained in a manner worthy of her, which is
+saying no little, if all her paces and points be equal to her walk
+and her crest.'
+
+'I trust you will be more pitiful to my poor Lady,' said Richard,
+quietly. 'If all they say be true, Raglan stables are no place for a
+mare of her breeding.'
+
+'What do you mean, roundhead?'
+
+'Folk say your stables at Raglan are like other some Raglan
+matters--of the infernal sort.'
+
+Scudamore was silent for a moment.
+
+'Whether the stables be under the pavement or over the leads,' he
+returned at last, 'there are not a few in them as good as she--of
+which I hope to satisfy my Lady some day,' he added, patting the
+mare's neck.
+
+'Wert thou not hurt already, I would pitch thee out of the saddle,'
+said Richard.
+
+'Were I not hurt in the knee, thou couldst not,' said Scudamore.
+
+'I need not lay hand upon thee. Wert thou as sound in limb as thou
+art in wind, thou wouldst feel thyself on the road ere thou knewest
+thou hadst taken leave of the saddle--did I but give the mare the
+sign she knows.'
+
+'By God's grace,' said the cavalier, 'she shall be mine, and teach
+me the trick of it.'
+
+Richard answered only with a grim laugh, and again, but more gently
+this time, quickened the mare's pace. Little more had passed between
+them when the six-sided towers of Raglan rose on their view.
+
+Richard had, from childhood, been familiar with their aspect,
+especially that of the huge one called the Yellow Tower, but he had
+never yet been within the walls that encircled them. At any time
+during his life, almost up to the present hour, he might have
+entered without question, for the gates were seldom closed and never
+locked, the portcullises, sheathed in the wall above, hung moveless
+in their rusty chains, and the drawbridges spanned the moat from
+scarp to counterscarp, as if from the first their beams had rested
+there in solid masonry. And still, during the day, there was little
+sign of change, beyond an indefinable presence of busier life, even
+in the hush of the hot autumnal noon. But at night the drawbridges
+rose and the portcullises descended--each with its own peculiar
+creak, and jar, and scrape, setting the young rooks cawing in reply
+from every pinnacle and tree-top--never later than the last moment
+when the warder could see anything larger than a cat on the brow of
+the road this side the village. For who could tell when, or with
+what force at their command, the parliament might claim possession?
+And now another of the frequent reports had arrived, that the king
+had at length resorted to arms. It was altogether necessary for such
+as occupied a stronghold, unless willing to yield it to the first
+who demanded entrance, to keep watch and ward.
+
+Admitted at the great brick gate, the outermost of all, and turning
+aside from the steps leading up to the white stone gate and main
+entrance beyond, with its drawbridge and double portcullis, Richard,
+by his companion's directions, led his mare to the left, and,
+rounding the moat of the citadel, sought the western gate of the
+castle, which seemed to shelter itself under the great bulk of the
+Yellow Tower, the cannon upon more than one of whose bastions
+closely commanded it, and made up for its inferiority in defence of
+its own.
+
+Scudamore had scarcely called, ere the warder, who had been waked by
+the sound of the horse's feet, began to set the machinery of the
+portcullis in motion.
+
+'What! wounded already, master Scudamore!' he cried, as they rode
+under the archway.
+
+'Yes, Eccles,' answered Scudamore, '--wounded and taken prisoner,
+and brought home for ransom!'
+
+As they spoke, Richard made use of his eyes, with a vague notion
+that some knowledge of the place might one day or other be of
+service, but it was little he could see. The moon was almost down,
+and her low light, prolific of shadows, shone straight in through
+the lifted portcullis, but in the gateway where they stood, there
+was nothing for her to show but the groined vault, the massy walls,
+and the huge iron-studded gate beyond.
+
+'Curse you for a roundhead!' cried Scudamore, in the wrath
+engendered of a fierce twinge, as Heywood sought to help his lamed
+leg over the saddle.
+
+'Dismount on this side then,' said Richard, regardless of the
+insult.
+
+But the warder had caught the word.
+
+'Roundhead!' he exclaimed.
+
+Scudamore did not answer until he found himself safe on his feet,
+and by that time he had recovered his good manners.
+
+'This is young Mr. Heywood of Redware,' he said, and moved towards
+the wicket, leaning on Richard's arm.
+
+But the old warder stepped in front, and stood between them and the
+gate.
+
+'Not a damned roundhead of the pack shall set foot across this
+door-sill, so long as I hold the gate,' he cried, with a fierce
+gesture of the right arm. And therewith he set his back to the
+wicket.
+
+'Tut, tut, Eccles !' returned Scudamore impatiently. 'Good words are
+worth much, and cost little.'
+
+'If the old dog bark, he gives counsel,' rejoined Eccles, immovable.
+
+Heywood was amused, and stood silent, waiting the result. He had no
+particular wish to enter, and yet would have liked to see what could
+be seen of the court.
+
+'Where the doorkeeper is a churl, what will folk say of the master
+of the house?' said Scudamore.
+
+'They may say as they list; it will neither hurt him nor me,' said
+Eccles.
+
+'Make haste, my good fellow, and let us through,' pleaded Scudamore.
+'By Saint George! but my leg is in great pain. I fear the knee-cap
+is broken, in which case I shall not trouble thee much for a week of
+months.'
+
+As he spoke, he stood leaning on Richard's arm, and behind them
+stood Lady, still as a horse of bronze.
+
+'I will but drop the portcullis,' said the warder, 'and then I will
+carry thee to thy room in my arms. But not a cursed roundhead shall
+enter here, I swear.'
+
+'Let us through at once,' said Scudamore, trying the imperative.
+
+'Not if the earl himself gave the order,' persisted the man.
+
+'Ho! ho! what is that you say? Let the gentlemen through,' cried a
+voice from somewhere.
+
+The warder opened the wicket immediately, stepped inside, and held
+it open while they entered, nor uttered another word. But as soon as
+Richard had got Scudamore clear of the threshold, to which he lent
+not a helping finger, he stepped quietly out again, closed the
+wicket behind him, and taking Lady by the bridle, led her back over
+the bridge towards the bowling-green.
+
+Scudamore had just time to whisper to Heywood, 'It is my master, the
+earl himself,' when the voice came again.
+
+'What! wounded, Rowland? How is this? And who have you there?'
+
+But that moment Richard heard the sound of his mare's hoofs on the
+bridge, and leaving Scudamore to answer for them both, bounded back
+to the wicket, darted through, and called her by name. Instantly she
+stood stock still, notwithstanding a vicious kick in the ribs from
+Eccles, not unseen of Heywood. Enraged at the fellow's insolence, he
+dealt him a sudden blow that stretched him at the mare's feet,
+vaulted into the saddle, and had reached the outer gate before he
+had recovered himself. The sleepy porter had just let him through,
+when the warder's signal to let no one out reached him. Richard
+turned with a laugh.
+
+'When next you catch a roundhead,' he said, 'keep him;' and giving
+Lady the rein, galloped off, leaving the porter staring after him
+through the bars like a half-roused wild beast.
+
+Not doubting the rumour of open hostilities, the warder's design had
+been to secure the mare, and pretend she had run away, for a good
+horse was now more precious than ever.
+
+The earl's study was over the gate, and as he suffered much from
+gout and slept ill, he not unfrequently sought refuge in the
+night-watches with his friends Chaucer, Gower, and Shakspere.
+
+Richard drew rein at the last point whence the castle would have
+been visible in the daytime. All he saw was a moving light. The
+walls whence it shone were one day to be as the shell around the
+kernel of his destiny.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LOVE AND WAR.
+
+
+
+
+
+When Richard reached home and recounted the escape he had had, an
+imprecation, the first he had ever heard him utter, broke from his
+father's lips. With the indiscrimination of party spirit, he looked
+upon the warder's insolence and attempted robbery as the spirit and
+behaviour of his master, the earl being in fact as little capable of
+such conduct as Mr. Heywood himself.
+
+Immediately after their early breakfast the next morning, he led his
+son to a chamber in the roof, of the very existence of which he had
+been ignorant, and there discovered to him good store of such armour
+of both kinds as was then in use, which for some years past he had
+been quietly collecting in view of the time--which, in the light of
+the last rumour, seemed to have at length arrived--when strength
+would have to decide the antagonism of opposed claims. Probably also
+it was in view of this time, seen from afar in silent approach,
+that, from the very moment when he took his education into his own
+hands, he had paid thorough attention to Richard's bodily as well as
+mental accomplishment, encouraging him in all manly sports, such as
+wrestling, boxing, and riding to hounds, with the more martial
+training of sword-exercises, with and without the target, and
+shooting with the carbine and the new-fashioned flint-lock pistols.
+
+The rest of the morning Richard spent in choosing a headpiece, and
+mail plates for breast, back, neck, shoulders, arms, and thighs. The
+next thing was to set the village tailor at work upon a coat of that
+thick strong leather, dressed soft and pliant, which they called
+buff, to wear under his armour. After that came the proper equipment
+of Lady, and that of the twenty men whom his father expected to
+provide from amongst his own tenants, and for whom he had already a
+full provision of clothing and armour; they had to be determined on,
+conferred with, and fitted, one by one, so as to avoid drawing
+attention to the proceeding. Hence both Mr. Heywood and Richard had
+enough to do, and the more that Faithful Stopchase, on whom was
+their chief dependence, had not yet recovered sufficiently from the
+effects of his fall to be equal to the same exertion as formerly--of
+which he was the more impatient that he firmly believed he had been
+a special object of Satanic assault, because of the present value of
+his counsels, and the coming weight of his deeds on the side of the
+well-affected. Thus occupied, the weeks passed into months.
+
+During this time Richard called again and again upon Dorothy,
+ostensibly to inquire after her mother. Only once, however, did she
+appear, when she gave him to understand she was so fully occupied,
+that, although obliged by his attention, he must not expect to see
+her again.
+
+'But I will be honest, Richard,' she added, 'and let you know
+plainly that, were it otherwise in respect of my mother, I yet
+should not see you, for you and I have parted company, and are
+already so far asunder on different roads that I must bid you
+farewell at once while yet we can hear each other speak.'
+
+There was no anger, only a cold sadness in her tone and manner,
+while her bearing was stately as towards one with whom she had never
+had intimacy. Even her sadness seemed to Richard to have respect to
+the hopeless condition of her mother's health, and not at all to the
+changed relation between him and her.
+
+'I trust, at least, mistress Dorothy,' he said, with some
+bitterness, 'you will grant me the justice that what I do, I do with
+a good conscience. After all that has been betwixt us I ask for no
+more.'
+
+'What more could the best of men ask for?'
+
+'I, who am far from making any claim to rank with such--'
+
+'I am glad to know it,' interjected Dorothy.
+
+'--am yet capable of hoping that an eye at once keener and kinder
+than yours may see conscience at the very root of the actions which
+you, Dorothy, will doubtless most condemn.'
+
+Was this the boy she had despised for indifference?
+
+'Was it conscience drove you to sprain my cousin Rowland's knee?'
+she asked.
+
+Richard was silent for a moment. The sting was too cruel.
+
+'Pray hesitate not to say so, if such be your conviction,' added
+Dorothy.
+
+'No,' replied Richard, recovering himself. 'I trust it is not such a
+serious matter as you say; but any how it was not conscience but
+jealousy and anger that drove me to that wrong.'
+
+'Did you see the action such at the time?'
+
+'No, surely; else I would not have been guilty of that for which I
+am truly sorry now.'
+
+'Then, perhaps, the day will come when, looking back on what you do
+now, you will regard it with the like disapprobation.--God grant it
+may!' she added, with a deep sigh.
+
+'That can hardly be, mistress Dorothy. I am, in the matters to which
+you refer, under the influence of no passion, no jealousy, no self-
+seeking, no--'
+
+'Perhaps a deeper search might discover in you each and all of the
+bosom-sins you so stoutly abjure,' interrupted Dorothy. 'But it is
+needless for you to defend yourself to me; I am not your judge.'
+
+'So much the better for me!' returned Richard; 'I should else have
+an unjust as well as severe one. I, on my part, hope the day may
+come when you will find something to repent of in such harshness
+towards an old friend whom you choose to think in the wrong.'
+
+'Richard Heywood, God is my witness it is no choice of mine. I have
+no choice: what else is there to think? I know well enough what you
+and your father are about. But there is nothing save my own
+conscience and my mother's love I would not part with to be able to
+believe you honourably right in your own eyes--not in mine--God
+forbid! That can never be--not until fair is foul and foul is fair.'
+
+So saying, she held out her hand.
+
+'God be between thee and me, Dorothy!' said Richard, with solemnity,
+as he took it in his.
+
+He spoke with a voice that seemed to him far away and not his own.
+Until now he had never realized the idea of a final separation
+between him and Dorothy; and even now, he could hardly believe she
+was in earnest, but felt, rather, like a child whose nurse threatens
+to forsake him on the dark road, and who begins to weep only from
+the pitiful imagination of the thing, and not any actual fear of her
+carrying the threat into execution. The idea of retaining her love
+by ceasing to act on his convictions--the very possibility of
+it--had never crossed the horizon of his thoughts. Had it come to
+him as the merest intellectual notion, he would have perceived at
+once, of such a loyal stock did he come, and so loyal had he himself
+been to truth all his days, that to act upon her convictions instead
+of his own would have been to widen a gulf at least measurable, to
+one infinite and impassable.
+
+She withdrew the hand which had solemnly pressed his, and left the
+room. For a moment he stood gazing after her. Even in that moment,
+the vague fear that she would not come again grew to a plain
+conviction, and forcibly repressing the misery that rose in bodily
+presence from his heart to his throat, he left the house, hurried
+down the pleached alley to the old sun-dial, threw himself on the
+grass under the yews, and wept and longed for war.
+
+But war was not to be just yet. Autumn withered and sank into
+winter. The rain came down on the stubble, and the red cattle waded
+through red mire to and from their pasture; the skies grew pale
+above, and the earth grew bare beneath; the winds grew sharp and
+seemed unfriendly; the brooks ran foaming to the rivers, and the
+rivers ran roaring to the ocean. Then the earth dried a little, and
+the frost came, and swelled and hardened it; the snow fell and lay,
+vanished and came again. But even out of the depth of winter,
+quivered airs and hints of spring, until at last the mighty weakling
+was born. And all this time rumour beat the alarum of war, and men
+were growing harder and more determined on both sides--some from
+self-opinion, some from party spirit, some from prejudice,
+antipathy, animosity, some from sense of duty, mingled more and less
+with the alloys of impulse and advantage. But he who was most
+earnest on the one side was least aware that he who was most earnest
+on the other was honest as himself. To confess uprightness in one of
+the opposite party, seemed to most men to involve treachery to their
+own; or if they were driven to the confession, it was too often
+followed with an attempt at discrediting the noblest of human
+qualities.
+
+The hearts of the two young people fared very much as the earth
+under the altered skies of winter, and behaved much as the divided
+nation. A sense of wrong endured kept both from feeling at first the
+full sorrow of their separation; and by the time that the tide of
+memory had flowed back and covered the rock of offence, they had got
+a little used to the dulness of a day from which its brightest hour
+had been blotted. Dorothy learned very soon to think of Richard as a
+prodigal brother beyond seas, and when they chanced to meet, which
+was but seldom, he was to her as a sad ghost in a dream. To Richard,
+on the other hand, she looked a lovely but scarce worshipful
+celestial, with merely might enough to hold his heart, swelling with
+a sense of wrong, in her hand, and squeeze it very hard. His
+consolation was that he suffered for the truth's sake, for to
+decline action upon such insight as he had had, was a thing as
+impossible as to alter the relations between the parts of a sphere.
+Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens
+of the church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about
+the paled yard of obedience, picking up the barley of righteousness;
+Richard longed for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her sons
+together--to a war whose battles should never cease until men were
+free to worship God after the light he had lighted within them, and
+the dragon of priestly authority should breathe out his last fiery
+breath, no more to drive the feebler brethren to seek refuge in the
+house of hypocrisy.
+
+At home Dorothy was under few influences except those of her mother,
+and, through his letters, of Mr. Matthew Herbert. Upon the former a
+lovely spiritual repose had long since descended. Her anxieties were
+only for her daughter, her hopes only for the world beyond the
+grave. The latter was a man of peace, who, having found in the
+ordinances of his church everything to aid and nothing to retard his
+spiritual development, had no conception of the nature of the
+puritanical opposition to its government and rites. Through neither
+could Dorothy come to any true idea of the questions which agitated
+the politics of both church and state. To her, the king was a kind
+of demigod, and every priest a fountain of truth. Her religion was
+the sedate and dutiful acceptance of obedient innocence, a thing of
+small account indeed where it is rooted only in sentiment and
+customary preference, but of inestimable value in such cases as
+hers, where action followed upon acceptance.
+
+Richard, again, was under the quickening masterdom of a well-stored,
+active mind, a strong will, a judgment that sought to keep its
+balance even, and whose descended scale never rebounded, a
+conscience which, through all the mists of human judgment, eyed ever
+the blotted glimmer of some light beyond; and all these elements of
+power were gathered in his own father, in whom the customary
+sternness of the puritan parent had at length blossomed in
+confidence, a phase of love which, to such a mind as Richard's, was
+even more enchanting than tenderness. To be trusted by such a
+father, to feel his mind and soul present with him, acknowledging
+him a fit associate in great hopes and noble aims, was surely and
+ought to be, whatever the sentimentalist may say, some comfort for
+any sorrow a youth is capable of, such being in general only too
+lightly remediable. I wonder if any mere youth ever suffered, from a
+disappointment in love, half the sense of cureless pain which, with
+one protracted pang, gnaws at the heart of the avaricious old man
+who has dropt a sovereign into his draw-well.
+
+But the relation of Dorothy and Richard, although ordinary in
+outward appearance, was of no common kind; and while these two thus
+fell apart from each other in their outer life, each judging the
+other insensible to the call of highest rectitude, neither of them
+knew how much his or her heart was confident of the other's
+integrity. In respect of them, the lovely simile, in Christabel, of
+the parted cliffs, may be carried a little farther, for, under the
+dreary sea flowing between them, the rock was one still. Such a
+faith may sometimes, perhaps often does, lie in the heart like a
+seed buried beyond the reach of the sun, thoroughly alive though
+giving no sign: to grow too soon might be to die. Things had indeed
+gone farther with Dorothy and Richard, but the lobes of their loves
+had never been fairly exposed to the sun and wind ere the swollen
+clods of winter again covered them.
+
+Once, in the cold noon of a lovely day of frost, when the lightest
+step crackled with the breaking of multitudinous crystals, when the
+trees were fringed with furry white, and the old spider-webs
+glimmered like filigrane of fairy silver, they met on a lonely
+country-road. The sun shone red through depths of half-frozen
+vapour, and tinged the whiteness of death with a faint warmth of
+feeling and hope. Along the rough lane Richard walked reading what
+looked like a letter, but was a copy his father had procured of a
+poem still only in manuscript--the Lycidas of Milton. In the glow to
+which the alternating hot and cold winds of enthusiasm and
+bereavement had fanned the fiery particle within him, Richard was
+not only able to understand and enjoy the thought of which the poem
+was built, but was borne aloft on its sad yet hopeful melodies as
+upon wings of an upsoaring seraph. The flow of his feeling suddenly
+broken by an almost fierce desire to share with Dorothy the
+tenderness of the magic music of the stately monody, and then, ere
+the answering waves of her emotion had subsided, to whisper to her
+that the marvellous spell came from the heart of the same wonderful
+man from whose brain had issued, like Pallas from Jove's,--
+what?--Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against
+Smectymnus, the pamphlet which had so roused all the abhorrence her
+nature was capable of--he lifted his head and saw her but a few
+paces from him. Dorothy caught a glimpse of a countenance radiant
+with feeling, and eyes flashing through a watery film of delight;
+her own eyes fell; she said, 'Good morning, Richard!' and passed him
+without deflecting an inch. The bird of song folded its wings and
+called in its shining; the sun lost half his red beams; the
+sprinkled seed pearls vanished, and ashes covered the earth; he
+folded the paper, laid it in the breast of his doublet, and walked
+home through the glittering meadows with a fresh hurt in his heart.
+
+Dorothy's time and thoughts were all but occupied with the nursing
+of her mother, who, contrary to the expectation of her friends,
+outlived the winter, and revived as the spring drew on. She read
+much to her. Some of the best books had drifted into the house and
+settled there, but, although English printing was now nearly two
+centuries old, they were not many. We must not therefore imagine,
+however, that the two ladies were ill supplied with spiritual
+pabulum. There are few houses of the present day in which, though
+there be ten times as many books, there is so much strong food; if
+there was any lack, it was rather of diluents. Amongst those she
+read were Queen Elizabeth's Homilies, Hooker's Politie, Donne's
+Sermons, and George Herbert's Temple, to the dying lady only less
+dear than her New Testament.
+
+But even with this last, it was only through sympathy with her
+mother that Dorothy could come into any contact. The gems of the
+mind, which alone could catch and reflect such light, lay as yet
+under the soil, and much ploughing and breaking of the clods was
+needful ere they could come largely to the surface. But happily for
+Dorothy, there were amongst the books a few of those precious little
+quartos of Shakspere, the first three books of the Faerie Queene,
+and the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, then much read, if we may
+judge from the fact that, although it was not published till after
+the death of Sidney, the eighth edition of it had now been nearly
+ten years in lady Vaughan's possession.
+
+Then there was in the drawing-room an old spinnet, sadly out of
+tune, on which she would yet, in spite of the occasional jar and
+shudder of respondent nerves, now and then play at a sitting all the
+little music she had learned, and with whose help she had sometimes
+even tried to find out an air for words that had taken her fancy.
+
+Also, she had the house to look after, the live stock to see to, her
+dog to play with and teach, a few sad thoughts and memories to
+discipline, a call now and then from a neighbour, or a longer visit
+from some old friend of her mother's to receive, and the few
+cottagers on all that was left of the estate of Wyfern to care for;
+so that her time was tolerably filled up, and she felt little need
+of anything more to occupy at least her hours and days.
+
+Meanwhile, through all nature's changes, through calm and tempest,
+rain and snow, through dull refusing winter, and the first passing
+visits of open-handed spring, the hearts of men were awaiting the
+outburst of the thunder, the blue peaks of whose cloud-built cells
+had long been visible on the horizon of the future. Every now and
+then they would start and listen, and ask each other was it the
+first growl of the storm, or but the rumbling of the wheels of the
+government. To the dwellers in Raglan Castle it seemed at least a
+stormy sign--of which the news reached them in the dull November
+weather--that the parliament had set a guard upon Worcester House in
+the Strand, and searched it for persons suspected of high
+treason--lord Herbert, doubtless, first of all, the direction and
+strength of whose political drift, suspicious from the first because
+of his religious persuasion, could hardly be any longer doubtful to
+the most liberal of its members.
+
+The news of the terrible insurrection of the catholics in Ireland
+followed.
+
+Richard kept his armour bright, his mare in good fettle, himself and
+his men in thorough exercise, read and talked with his father, and
+waited, sometimes with patience, sometimes without.
+
+At length, in the early spring, the king withdrew to York, and a
+body-guard of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood gathered around
+him. Richard renewed the flints of his carbine and pistols.
+
+In April, the king, refused entrance into the town of Hull,
+proclaimed the governor a traitor. The parliament declared the
+proclamation a breach of its privileges. Richard got new girths.
+
+The summer passed in various disputes. Towards its close the
+governor of Portsmouth declined to act upon a commission to organize
+the new levies of the parliament, and administered instead thereof
+an oath of allegiance to the garrison and inhabitants. Thereupon the
+place was besieged by Essex; the king proclaimed him a traitor, and
+the parliament retorted by declaring the royal proclamation a libel.
+Richard had his mare new-shod.
+
+On a certain day in August, the royal standard, with the motto,
+'Give to Caesar his due,' was set up at Nottingham. Richard mounted
+his mare, and taking leave of his father, led Stopchase and nineteen
+men more, all fairly mounted, to offer his services to the
+parliament, as represented by the earl of Essex.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DOROTHY'S REFUGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+With the decay of summer, lady Vaughan began again to sink, and
+became at length so weak that Dorothy rarely left her room. The
+departure of Richard Heywood to join the rebels affected her deeply.
+The report of the utter rout of the parliamentary forces at
+Edgehill, lighted up her face for the last time with a glimmer of
+earthly gladness, which the very different news that followed
+speedily extinguished; and after that she declined more rapidly.
+Mrs. Rees told Dorothy that she would yield to the first frost. But
+she lingered many weeks. One morning she signed to her daughter to
+come nearer that she might speak to her.
+
+'Dorothy,' she whispered, 'I wish much to see good Mr. Herbert.
+Prithee send for him. I know it is an evil time for him to travel,
+being an old man and feeble, but he will do his endeavour to come to
+me, I know, if but for my husband's sake, whom he loved like a
+brother. I cannot die in peace without first taking counsel with him
+how best to provide for the safety of my little ewe-lamb until these
+storms are overblown. Alas! alas! I did look to Richard Heywood--'
+
+She could say no more.
+
+'Do not take thought about the morrow for me any more than you would
+for yourself, madam,' said Dorothy. 'You know master Herbert says
+the one is as the other.'
+
+She kissed her mother's hand as she spoke, then hastened from the
+room, and despatched a messenger to Llangattock.
+
+Before the worthy man arrived, lady Vaughan was speechless. By signs
+and looks, definite enough, and more eloquent than words, she
+committed Dorothy to his protection, and died.
+
+Dorothy behaved with much calmness. She would not, in her mother's
+absence, act so as would have grieved her presence. Little passed
+between her and Mr. Herbert until the funeral was over. Then they
+talked of the future. Her guardian wished much to leave everything
+in charge of the old bailiff, and take her with him to Llangattock;
+but he hesitated a little because of the bad state of the roads in
+winter, much because of their danger in the troubled condition of
+affairs, and most of all because of the uncertain, indeed perilous
+position of the Episcopalian clergy, who might soon find themselves
+without a roof to shelter them. Fearing nothing for himself, he must
+yet, in arranging for Dorothy, contemplate the worst of threatening
+possibilities; and one thing was pretty certain, that matters must
+grow far worse before they could even begin to mend.
+
+But they had more time for deliberation given them than they would
+willingly have taken. Mr. Herbert had caught cold while reading the
+funeral service, and was compelled to delay his return. The cold
+settled into a sort of low fever, and for many weeks he lay
+helpless. During this time the sudden affair at Brentford took
+place, after which the king, having lost by it far more than he had
+gained, withdrew to Oxford, anxious to re-open the treaty which the
+battle had closed.
+
+The country was now in a sad state. Whichever party was uppermost in
+any district, sought to ruin all of the opposite faction. Robbery
+and plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies
+or the route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere
+marauders, taking up the cry of the faction that happened in any
+neighbourhood to have the ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed
+travellers, and were guilty of all sorts of violence. Hence it had
+become as perilous to stay at home in an unfortified house as to
+travel; and many were the terrors which during the winter tried the
+courage of the girl, and checked the recovery of the old man. At
+length one morning, after a midnight alarm, Mr. Herbert thus
+addressed Dorothy, as she waited upon him with his breakfast:
+
+'It fears me much, my dear Dorothy, that the time will be long ere
+any but fortified places will be safe abodes. It is a question in my
+mind whether it would not be better to seek refuge for you--. But
+stay; let me suggest my proposal, rather than startle you with it in
+sudden form complete. You are related to the Somersets, are you
+not?'
+
+'Yes--distantly.'
+
+'Is the relationship recognized by them?'
+
+'I cannot tell, sir. I do not even distinctly know what the
+relationship is. And assuredly, sir, you mean not to propose that I
+should seek safety from bodily peril with a household which is, to
+say the least, so unfriendly to the doctrines you and my blessed
+mother have always taught me! You cannot, or indeed, must you not
+have forgotten that they are papists?'
+
+Dorothy had been educated in such a fear of the catholics, and such
+a profound disapproval of those of their doctrines rejected by the
+reformers of the church of England, as was only surpassed in
+intensity by her absolute abhorrence of the assumptions and
+negations of the puritans. These indeed roused in her a certain
+sense of disgust which she had never felt in respect of what were
+considered by her teachers the most erroneous doctrines of the
+catholics. But Mr. Herbert, although his prejudices were nearly as
+strong, and his opinions, if not more indigenous at least far better
+acclimatised than hers, had yet reaped this advantage of a longer
+life, that he was better able to atone his dislike of certain
+opinions with personal regard for those who held them, and therefore
+did not, like Dorothy, recoil from the idea of obligation to one of
+a different creed--provided always that creed was catholicism and
+not puritanism. For to the church of England, the catholics, in the
+presence of her more rampant foes, appeared harmless enough now.
+
+He believed that the honourable feelings of lord Worcester and his
+family would be hostile to any attempt to proselytize his ward. But
+as far as she was herself concerned, he trusted more to the strength
+of her prejudices than the rectitude of her convictions, honest as
+the girl was, to prevent her from being over-influenced by the
+change of spiritual atmosphere; for in proportion to the simplicity
+of her goodness must be her capacity for recognizing the goodness of
+others, catholics or not, and for being wrought upon by the virtue
+that went out from them. His hope was, that England would have again
+become the abode of peace, long ere any risk to her spiritual
+well-being should have been incurred by this mode of securing her
+bodily safety and comfort.
+
+But there was another fact, in the absence of which he would have
+had far more hesitation in seeking for his ewe-lamb the protection
+of sheep, the guardians of whose spiritual fold had but too often
+proved wolves in sheep-dogs' clothing: within the last few days the
+news had reached him that an old friend named Bayly, a true man, a
+priest of the English church and a doctor of divinity, had taken up
+his abode in Raglan castle as one of the household--chaplain
+indeed, as report would have it, though that was hard of belief,
+save indeed it were for the sake of the protestants within its
+walls. However that might be, there was a true shepherd to whose
+care to entrust his lamb; and it was mainly on the strength of this
+consideration that he had concluded to make his proposal to
+Dorothy--namely, that she should seek shelter within the walls of
+Raglan castle until the storm should be so far over-blown, as to
+admit either of her going to Llangattock or returning to her own
+home. He now discussed the matter with her in full, and,
+notwithstanding her very natural repugnance to the scheme, such was
+Dorothy's confidence in her friend that she was easily persuaded of
+its wisdom. What the more inclined her to yield was, that Mr.
+Heywood had written her a letter, hardly the less unwelcome for the
+kindness of its tone, in which he offered her the shelter and
+hospitality of Redware 'until better days.'
+
+'Better days!' exclaimed Dorothy with contempt. 'If such days as he
+would count better should ever arrive, his house is the last place
+where I would have them find me!'
+
+She wrote a polite but cold refusal, and rejoiced in the hope that
+he would soon hear of her having sought and found refuge in Raglan
+with the friends of the king.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Herbert had opened communication with Dr. Bayly, had
+satisfied himself that he was still a true son of the church, and
+had solicited his friendly mediation towards the receiving of
+mistress Dorothy Vaughan into the family of the marquis of
+Worcester, to the dignity of which title the earl had now been
+raised--the parliament, to be sure, declining to acknowledge the
+patent conferred by his majesty, but that was of no consequence in
+the estimation of those chiefly concerned.
+
+On a certain spring morning, then, the snow still lying in the
+hollows of the hills, Thomas Bayly came to Wyfern to see his old
+friend Matthew Herbert. He was a courteous little man, with a
+courtesy librating on a knife-edge of deflection towards
+obsequiousness on the one hand and condescension on the other, for
+neither of which, however, was his friend Herbert an object. His eye
+was keen, and his forehead good, but his carriage inclined to the
+pompous, and his speech to the formal, ornate, and prolix. The shape
+of his mouth was honest, but the closure of the lips indicated
+self-importance. The greeting between them was simple and genuine,
+and ere they parted, Bayly had promised to do his best in
+representing the matter to the marquis, his daughter-in-law, lady
+Margaret, the wife of lord Herbert, and his daughter, lady Anne,
+who, although the most rigid catholic in the house, was already the
+doctor's special friend.
+
+It would have been greatly unlike the marquis or any of his family
+to refuse such a prayer. Had not their house been for centuries the
+abode of hospitality, the embodiment of shelter? On the mere
+representation of Dr. Bayly, and the fact of the relationship,
+which, although distant, was well enough known, within two days
+mistress Dorothy Vaughan received an invitation to enter the family
+of the marquis, as one of the gentlewomen of lady Margaret's suite.
+It was of course gratefully accepted, and as soon as Mr. Herbert
+thought himself sufficiently recovered to encounter the fatigues of
+travelling, he urged on the somewhat laggard preparations of
+Dorothy, that he might himself see her safely housed on his way to
+Llangattock, whither he was most anxious to return.
+
+It was a lovely spring morning when they set out together on
+horseback for Raglan. The sun looked down like a young father upon
+his earth-mothered children, peeping out of their beds to greet him
+after the long winter night. The rooks were too busy to caw,
+dibbling deep in the soft red earth with their great beaks. The red
+cattle, flaked with white, spotted the clear fresh green of the
+meadows. The bare trees had a kind of glory about them, like old men
+waiting for their youth, which might come suddenly. A few slow
+clouds were drifting across the pale sky. A gentle wind was blowing
+over the wet fields, but when a cloud swept before the sun, it blew
+cold. The roads were bad, but their horses were used to such, and
+picked their way with the easy carefulness of experience. The winter
+might yet return for a season, but this day was of the spring and
+its promises. Earth and air, field and sky were full of peace. But
+the heart of England was troubled--troubled with passions both good
+and evil--with righteous indignation and unholy scorn, with the love
+of liberty and the joy of license, with ambition and aspiration.
+
+No honest heart could yield long to the comforting of the fair
+world, knowing that some of her fairest fields would soon be
+crimsoned afresh with the blood of her children. But Dorothy's
+sadness was not all for her country in general. Had she put the
+question honestly to her heart, she must have confessed that even
+the loss of her mother had less to do with a certain weight upon it,
+which the loveliness of the spring day seemed to render heavier,
+than the rarely absent feeling rather than thought, that the
+playmate of her childhood, and the offered lover of her youth, had
+thrown himself with all the energy of dawning manhood into the
+quarrel of the lawless and self-glorifying. Nor was she altogether
+free from a sense of blame in the matter. Had she been less
+imperative in her mood and bearing, more ready to give than to
+require sympathy,--but ah! she could not change the past, and the
+present was calling upon her.
+
+At length the towers of Raglan appeared, and a pang of apprehension
+shot through her bosom. She was approaching the unknown. Like one on
+the verge of a second-sight, her history seemed for a moment about
+to reveal itself--where it lay, like a bird in its egg, within those
+massive walls, warded by those huge ascending towers. Brought up in
+a retirement that some would have counted loneliness, and although
+used to all gentle and refined ways, yet familiar with homeliness
+and simplicity of mode and ministration, she could not help feeling
+awed at the prospect of entering such a zone of rank and stateliness
+and observance as the household of the marquis, who lived like a
+prince in expenditure, attendance, and ceremony. She knew little of
+the fashions of the day, and, like many modest young people, was
+afraid she might be guilty of some solecism which would make her
+appear ill-bred, or at least awkward. Since her mother left her, she
+had become aware of a timidity to which she had hitherto been a
+stranger. 'Ah!' she said to herself, 'if only my mother were with
+me!'
+
+At length they reached the brick gate, were admitted within the
+outer wall, and following the course taken by Scudamore and Heywood,
+skirted the moat which enringed the huge blind citadel or keep, and
+arrived at the western gate. The portcullis rose to admit them, and
+they rode into the echoes of the vaulted gateway. Turning to
+congratulate Dorothy on their safe arrival, Mr. Herbert saw that she
+was pale and agitated.
+
+'What ails my child?' he said in a low voice, for the warder was
+near.
+
+'I feel as if entering a prison,' she replied, with a shiver.
+
+'Is thy God the God of the grange and not of the castle?' returned
+the old man.
+
+'But, sir,' said Dorothy, 'I have been accustomed to a liberty such
+as few have enjoyed, and these walls and towers--'
+
+'Heed not the look of things,' interrupted her guardian. 'Believe in
+the Will that with a thought can turn the shadow of death into the
+morning, give gladness for weeping, and the garment of praise for
+the spirit of heaviness.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+RAGLAN CASTLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+While he yet spoke, their horses, of their own accord, passed
+through the gate which Eccles had thrown wide to admit them, and
+carried them into the Fountain court. Here, indeed, was a change of
+aspect! All that Dorothy had hitherto contemplated was the side of
+the fortress which faced the world--frowning and defiant, although
+here and there on the point of breaking into a half smile, for the
+grim, suspicious, altogether repellent look of the old feudal castle
+had been gradually vanishing in the additions and alterations of
+more civilised times. But now they were in the heart of the
+building, and saw the face which the house of strength turned upon
+its own people. The spring sunshine filled half the court; over the
+rest lay the shadow of the huge keep, towering massive above the
+three-storied line of building which formed the side next it. Here
+was the true face of the Janus-building, full of eyes and mouths;
+for many bright windows looked down into the court, in some of which
+shone the smiling faces of children and ladies peeping out to see
+the visitors, whose arrival had been announced by the creaking
+chains of the portcullis; and by the doors issued and entered, here
+a lady in rich attire, there a gentlemen half in armour, and here
+again a serving man or maid. Nearly in the centre of the quadrangle,
+just outside the shadow of the keep, stood the giant horse, rearing
+in white marble, almost dazzling in the sunshine, from whose
+nostrils spouted the jets of water which gave its name to the court.
+Opposite the gate by which they entered was the little chapel, with
+its triple lancet windows, over which lay the picture-gallery with
+its large oriel lights. Far above their roof, ascended from behind
+that of the great hall, with its fine lantern window seated on the
+ridge. From the other court beyond the hall, that upon which the
+main entrance opened, came the sounds of heavy feet in intermittent
+but measured tread, the clanking of arms, and a returning voice of
+loud command: the troops of the garrison were being exercised on the
+slabs of the pitched court.
+
+From each of the many doors opening into the court they had entered,
+a path, paved with coloured tiles, led straight through the finest
+of turf to the marble fountain in the centre, into whose shadowed
+basin the falling water seemed to carry captive as into a prison the
+sunlight it caught above. Its music as it fell made a lovely but
+strange and sad contrast with the martial sounds from beyond.
+
+It was but a moment they had to note these things; eyes and ears
+gathered them all at once. Two of the warder's men already held
+their horses, while two other men, responsive to the warder's
+whistle, came running from the hall and helped them to dismount.
+Hardly had they reached the ground ere a man-servant came, who led
+the way to the left towards a porch of carved stone on the same side
+of the court. The door stood open, revealing a flight of stairs,
+rather steep, but wide and stately, going right up between two
+straight walls. At the top stood lady Margaret's gentleman usher,
+Mr. Harcourt by name, who received them with much courtesy, and
+conducting them to a small room on the left of the landing, went to
+announce their arrival to lady Margaret, to whose private parlour
+this was the antechamber. Returning in a moment, he led them into
+her presence.
+
+She received them with a frankness which almost belied the
+stateliness of her demeanour. Through the haze of that reserve which
+a consciousness of dignity, whether true or false, so often
+generates, the genial courtesy of her Irish nature, for she was an
+O'Brien, daughter of the earl of Thomond, shone clear, and justified
+her Celtic origin.
+
+'Welcome, cousin!' she said, holding out her hand while yet distant
+half the length of the room, across which, upborne on slow firm
+foot, she advanced with even, stately motion, 'And you also,
+reverend sir,' she went on, turning to Mr. Herbert. 'I am told we
+are indebted to you for this welcome addition to our family--how
+welcome none can tell but ladies shut up like ourselves.'
+
+Dorothy was already almost at her ease, and the old clergyman soon
+found lady Margaret so sensible and as well as courteous--prejudiced
+yet further in her favour, it must be confessed, by the pleasant
+pretence she made of claiming cousinship on the ground of the
+identity of her husband's title with his surname--that, ere he left
+the castle, liberal as he had believed himself, he was nevertheless
+astonished to find how much of friendship had in that brief space
+been engendered in his bosom towards a catholic lady whom he had
+never before seen.
+
+Since the time of Elizabeth, when the fear and repugnance of the
+nation had been so greatly and justly excited by the apparent
+probability of a marriage betwixt their queen and the detested
+Philip of Spain, a considerable alteration had been gradually
+wrought in the feelings of a large portion of it in respect of their
+catholic countrymen--a fact which gave strength to the position of
+the puritans in asserting the essential identity of episcopalian
+with catholic politics. Almost forty years had elapsed since the
+Gunpowder Plot; the queen was a catholic; the episcopalian party was
+itself at length endangered by the extension and development of the
+very principles on which they had themselves broken away from the
+church of Rome; and the catholics were friendly to the government of
+the king, under which their condition was one of comfort if not
+influence, while under that of the parliament they had every reason
+to anticipate a revival of persecution. Not a few of them doubtless
+cherished the hope that this revelation of the true spirit of
+dissent would result in driving the king and his party back into the
+bosom of the church.
+
+The king, on the other hand, while only too glad to receive what aid
+he might from the loyal families of the old religion, yet saw that
+much caution was necessary lest he should alienate the most earnest
+of his protestant friends by giving ground for the suspicion that he
+was inclined to purchase their co-operation by a return to the creed
+of his Scottish grand-mother, Mary Stuart, and his English
+great-great-grand-mother, Margaret Tudor.
+
+On the part of the clergy there had been for some time a
+considerable tendency, chiefly from the influence of Laud, to
+cultivate the same spirit which actuated the larger portion of the
+catholic priesthood; and although this had never led to retrograde
+movement in regard to their politics, the fact that both were
+accounted by a third party, and that far the most dangerous to
+either of the other two, as in spirit and object one and the same,
+naturally tended to produce a more indulgent regard of each other
+than had hitherto prevailed. And hence, in part, it was that it had
+become possible for episcopalian Dr. Bayly to be an inmate of Raglan
+Castle, and for good, protestant Matthew Herbert to seek refuge for
+his ward with good catholic lady Margaret.
+
+Eager to return to the duties of his parish, through his illness so
+long neglected, Mr. Herbert declined her ladyship's invitation to
+dinner, which, she assured him, consulting a watch that she wore in
+a ring on her little finger, must be all but ready, seeing it was
+now a quarter to eleven, and took his leave, accompanied by
+Dorothy's servant to bring back the horse--if indeed they should be
+fortunate enough to escape the requisition of both horses by one
+party or the other. At present, however, the king's affairs
+continued rather on the ascendant, and the name of the marquis in
+that country was as yet a tower of strength. Dorothy's horse was
+included in the hospitality shown his mistress, and taken to the
+stables--under the mid-day shadow of the Library Tower.
+
+As soon as the parson was gone, lady Margaret touched a small silver
+bell which hung in a stand on the table beside her.
+
+'Conduct mistress Dorothy Vaughan to her room, wait upon her there,
+and then attend her hither,' she said to the maid who answered it.
+'I would request a little not unneedful haste, cousin,' she went on,
+'for my lord of Worcester is very precise in all matters of
+household order, and likes ill to see any one enter the dining-room
+after he is seated. It is his desire that you should dine at his
+table to-day. After this I must place you with the rest of my
+ladies, who dine in the housekeeper's room.'
+
+'As you think proper, madam,' returned Dorothy, a little
+disappointed, but a little relieved also.
+
+'The bell will ring presently,' said lady Margaret, 'and a quarter
+of an hour thereafter we shall all be seated.'
+
+She was herself already dressed--in a pale-blue satin, with full
+skirt and close-fitting, long-peaked boddice, fastened in front by
+several double clasps set with rubies; her shoulders were bare, and
+her sleeves looped up with large round star-like studs, set with
+diamonds, so that her arms also were bare to the elbows. Round her
+neck was a short string of large pearls.
+
+'You take no long time to attire yourself, cousin,' said her
+ladyship, kindly, when Dorothy returned.
+
+'Little time was needed, madam,' answered Dorothy; 'for me there is
+but one colour. I fear I shall show but a dull bird amidst the gay
+plumage of Raglan. But I could have better adorned myself had not I
+heard the bell ere I had begun, and feared to lose your ladyship's
+company, and in very deed make my first appearance before my lord as
+a transgressor of the laws of his household.'
+
+'You did well, cousin Dorothy; for everything goes by law and order
+here. All is reason and rhyme too in this house. My lord's father,
+although one of the best and kindest of men, is, as I said, somewhat
+precise, and will, as he says himself, be king in his own kingdom--
+thinking doubtless of one who is not such. I should not talk thus
+with you, cousin, were you like some young ladies I know; but there
+is that about you which pleases me greatly, and which I take to
+indicate discretion. When first I came to the house, not having been
+accustomed to so severe a punctuality, I gave my lord no little
+annoyance; for, oftener than once or twice, I walked into his
+dining-room not only after grace had been said, but after the first
+course had been sent down to the hall-tables. My lord took his
+revenge in calling me the wild Irish-woman.'
+
+Here she laughed very sweetly.
+
+'The only one,' she resumed, 'who does here as he will, is my
+husband. Even lord Charles, who is governor of the castle, must be
+in his place to the moment; but for my husband--.'
+
+The bell rang a second time. Lady Margaret rose, and taking
+Dorothy's arm, led her from the room into a long dim-lighted
+corridor. Arrived at the end of it, where a second passage met it at
+right angles, she stopped at a door facing them.
+
+'I think we shall find my lord of Worcester here,' she said in a
+whisper, as she knocked and waited a response. 'He is not here,' she
+said. 'He expects me to call on him as I pass. We must make haste.'
+
+The second passage, in which were several curves and sharp turns,
+led them to a large room, nearly square, in which were two tables
+covered for about thirty. By the door and along the sides of the
+room were a good many gentlemen, some of them very plainly dressed,
+and others in gayer attire, amongst whom Dorothy, as they passed
+through, recognised her cousin Scudamore. Whether he saw and knew
+her she could not tell. Crossing a small antechamber they entered
+the drawing-room, where stood and sat talking a number of ladies and
+gentlemen, to some of whom lady Margaret spoke and presented her
+cousin, greeting others with a familiar nod or smile, and yet others
+with a stately courtesy. Then she said,
+
+'Ladies, I will lead the way to the dining-room. My lord marquis
+would the less willingly have us late that something detains
+himself.'
+
+Those who dined in the marquis's room followed her. Scarcely had she
+reached the upper end of the table when the marquis entered,
+followed by all his gentlemen, some of whom withdrew, their service
+over for the time, while others proceeded to wait upon him and his
+family, with any of the nobility who happened to be his guests at
+the first table.
+
+'I am the laggard to-day, my lady,' he said, cheerily, as he bore
+his heavy person up the room towards her. 'Ah!' he went on, as lady
+Margaret stepped forward to meet him, leading Dorothy by the hand,
+'who is this sober young damsel under my wild Irishwoman's wing? Our
+young cousin Vaughan, doubtless, whose praises my worthy Dr. Bayly
+has been sounding in my ears?'
+
+He held out his hand to Dorothy, and bade her welcome to Raglan.
+
+The marquis was a man of noble countenance, of the type we are ready
+to imagine peculiar to the great men of the time of queen Elizabeth.
+To this his unwieldy person did not correspond, although his
+movements were still far from being despoiled of that charm which
+naturally belonged to all that was his. Nor did his presence owe
+anything to his dress, which was of that long-haired coarse woollen
+stuff they called frieze, worn, probably, by not another nobleman in
+the country, and regarded as fitter for a yeoman. His eyes, though
+he was yet but sixty-five or so, were already hazy, and his voice
+was husky and a little broken--results of the constantly poor health
+and frequent suffering he had had for many years; but he carried it
+all 'with'--to quote the prince of courtesy, sir Philip
+Sydney--'with a right old man's grace, that will seem livelier than
+his age will afford him.'
+
+The moment he entered, the sewer in the antechamber at the other end
+of the room had given a signal to one waiting at the head of the
+stair leading down to the hall, and his lordship was hardly seated,
+ere--although the kitchen was at the corner of the pitched court
+diagonally opposite--he bore the first dish into the room, followed
+by his assistants, laden each with another.
+
+Lady Margaret made Dorothy sit down by her. A place on her other
+side was vacant.
+
+'Where is this truant husband of thine, my lady?' asked the marquis,
+as soon as Dr. Bayly had said grace. 'Know you whether he eats at
+all, or when, or where? It is now three days since he has filled his
+place at thy side, yet is he in the castle. Thou knowest, my lady, I
+deal not with him, who is so soon to sit in this chair, as with
+another, but I like it not. Know you what occupies him to day?'
+
+'I do not, my lord,' answered lady Margaret. 'I have had but one
+glimpse of him since the morning, and if he looks now as he looked
+then, I fear your lordship would be minded rather to drive him from
+your table than welcome him to a seat beside you.'
+
+As she spoke, lady Margaret caught a glimpse of a peculiar
+expression on Scudamore's face, where he stood behind his master's
+chair.
+
+'Your page, my lord,' she said, 'seems to know something of him: if
+it pleased you to put him to the question--'
+
+'Hey, Scudamore!' said the marquis without turning his head; 'what
+have you seen of my lord Herbert?'
+
+'As much as could be seen of him, my lord,' answered Scudamore. 'He
+was new from the powder-mill, and his face and hands were as he had
+been blown three times up the hall chimney.'
+
+'I would thou didst pay more heed to what is fitting, thou monkey,
+and knewest either place or time for thy foolish jests! It will be
+long ere thou soil one of thy white fingers for king or country,'
+said the marquis, neither angrily nor merrily. 'Get another flask of
+claret,' he added, 'and keep thy wit for thy mates, boy.'
+
+Dorothy cast one involuntary glance at her cousin. His face was red
+as fire, but, as it seemed to her, more with suppressed amusement
+than shame. She had not been much longer in the castle before she
+learned that, in the opinion of the household, the marquis did his
+best, or worst rather, to ruin young Scudamore by indulgence. The
+judgment, however, was partly the product of jealousy, although
+doubtless the marquis had in his case a little too much relaxed the
+bonds of discipline. The youth was bright and ready, and had as yet
+been found trustworthy; his wit was tolerable, and a certain gay
+naivete of speech and manner set off to the best advantage what
+there was of it; but his laughter was sometimes mischievous, and on
+the present occasion Dorothy could not rid herself of the suspicion
+that he was laughing in his sleeve at his master, which caused her
+to redden in her turn. Scudamore saw it, and had his own fancies
+concerning the phenomenon.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TWO MARQUISES.
+
+
+
+
+
+Dinner over, lady Margaret led Dorothy back to her parlour, and
+there proceeded to discover what accomplishments and capabilities
+she might possess. Finding she could embroider, play a little on the
+spinnet, sing a song, and read aloud both intelligibly and
+pleasantly, she came to the conclusion that the country-bred girl
+was an acquisition destined to grow greatly in value, should the day
+ever arrive--which heaven forbid!--when they would have to settle
+down to the monotony of a protracted siege. Remarking, at length,
+that she looked weary, she sent her away to be mistress of her time
+till supper, at half-past five.
+
+Weary in truth with her journey, but still more weary from the
+multitude and variety of objects, the talk, and the constant demand
+of the general strangeness upon her attention and one form or other
+of suitable response, Dorothy sought her chamber. But she scarcely
+remembered how to reach it. She knew it lay a floor higher, and
+easily found the stair up which she had followed her attendant, for
+it rose from the landing of the straight ascent by which she had
+entered the house. She could hardly go wrong either as to the
+passage at the top of it, leading back over the room she had just
+left below, but she could not tell which was her own door. Fearing
+to open the wrong one, she passed it and went on to the end of the
+corridor, which was very dimly lighted. There she came to an open
+door, through which she saw a small chamber, evidently not meant for
+habitation. She entered. A little light came in through a crossed
+loophole, sufficient to show her the bare walls, with the plaster
+sticking out between the stones, the huge beams above, and in the
+middle of the floor, opposite the loop-hole, a great arblast or
+crossbow, with its strange machinery. She had never seen one before,
+but she knew enough to guess at once what it was. Through the
+loophole came a sweet breath of spring air, and she saw trees
+bending in the wind, heard their faint far-off rustle, and saw the
+green fields shining in the sun.
+
+Partly from having been so much with Richard, her only playmate, who
+was of an ingenious and practical turn, a certain degree of interest
+in mechanical forms and modes had been developed in Dorothy,
+sufficient at least to render her unable to encounter such an
+implement without feeling a strong impulse to satisfy herself
+concerning its mechanism, its motion, and its action. Approaching it
+cautiously and curiously, as if it were a live thing, which might
+start up and fly from, or perhaps at her, for what she knew, she
+gazed at it for a few moments with eyes full of unuttered questions,
+then ventured to lay gentle hold upon what looked like a handle. To
+her dismay, a wheezy bang followed, which seemed to shake the tower.
+Whether she had discharged an arrow, or an iron bolt, or a stone, or
+indeed anything at all, she could not tell, for she had not got so
+far in her observations as to perceive even that the bow was bent.
+Her heart gave a scared flutter, and she started back, not merely
+terrified, but ashamed also that she should initiate her life in the
+castle with meddling and mischief, when a low gentle laugh behind
+her startled her yet more, and looking round with her heart in her
+throat, she perceived in the half-light of the place a man by the
+wall behind the arblast watching her. Her first impulse was to run,
+and the door was open; but she thought she owed an apology ere she
+retreated. What sort of person he was she could not tell, for there
+was not light enough to show a feature of his face.
+
+'I ask your pardon,' she said; 'I fear I have done mischief.'
+
+'Not the least,' returned the man, in a gentle voice, with a tone of
+amusement in it.
+
+'I had never seen a great cross-bow,' Dorothy went on, anxious to
+excuse her meddling. 'I thought this must be one, but I was so
+stupid as not to perceive it was bent, and that that was the--the
+handle--or do you call it the trigger?--by which you let it go.'
+
+The man, who had at first taken her for one of the maids, had by
+this time discovered from her tone and speech that she was a lady.
+
+'It is a clumsy old-fashioned thing,' he returned, 'but I shall not
+remove it until I can put something better in its place; and it
+would be a troublesome affair to get even a demiculverin up here,
+not to mention the bad neighbour it would be to the ladies'chambers.
+I was just making a small experiment with it on the force of
+springs. I believe I shall yet prove that much may be done with
+springs--more perhaps, and certainly at far less expense, than with
+gunpowder, which costs greatly, is very troublesome to make,
+occupies much space, and is always like an unstable, half-
+treacherous friend within the gates--to say nothing of the expense
+of cannon--ten times that of an engine of timber and springs. See
+what a strong chain your shot has broken! Shall I show you how the
+thing works?'
+
+He spoke in a gentle, even rapid voice, a little hesitating now and
+then, more, through the greater part of this long utterance, as if
+he were thinking to himself than addressing another. Neither his
+tone nor manner were those of an underling, but Dorothy's startled
+nerves had communicated their tremor to her modesty, and with a
+gentle 'No, sir, I thank you; I must be gone,' she hurried away.
+
+Daring now a little more for fear of worse, the first door she tried
+proved that of her own room, and it was with a considerable sense of
+relief, as well as with weariness and tremor, that she nestled
+herself into the high window-seat, and looked out into the
+quadrangle. The shadow of the citadel had gone to pay its afternoon
+visit to the other court, and that of the gateway was thrown upon
+the chapel, partly shrouding the white horse, whose watery music was
+now silent, but allowing one red ray, which entered by the iron
+grating above the solid gates, to fall on his head, and warm its
+cold whiteness with a tinge of delicate pink. The court was more
+still and silent than in the morning; only now and then would a
+figure pass from one door to another, along the side of the
+buildings, or by one of the tiled paths dividing the turf. A large
+peacock was slowly crossing the shadowed grass with a stately strut
+and rhythmic thrust of his green neck. The moment he came out into
+the sunlight, he spread his wheeled fan aloft, and slowly
+pirouetting, if the word can be allowed where two legs are needful,
+in the very acme of vanity, turned on all sides the quivering
+splendour of its hundred eyes, where blue and green burst in the
+ecstasy of their union into a vapour of gold, that the circle of the
+universe might see. And truly the bird's vanity had not misled his
+judgment: it was a sight to make the hearts of the angels throb out
+a dainty phrase or two more in the song of their thanksgiving. Some
+pigeons, white, and blue-grey, with a lovely mingling and interplay
+of metallic lustres on their feathery throats, but with none of that
+almost grotesque obtrusion of over-driven individuality of kind, in
+which the graciousness of common beauty is now sacrificed to the
+whim of the fashion the vulgar fancier initiates, picked up the
+crumbs under the windows of lady Margaret's nursery, or flew hither
+and thither among the roofs with wapping and whiffling wing.
+
+But still from the next court came many and various mingling noises.
+The sounds of drill had long ceased, but those of clanking hammers
+were heard the more clearly, now one, now two, now several together.
+The smaller, clearer one was that of the armourer, the others those
+of the great smithy, where the horse-shoes were made, the horses
+shod, the smaller pieces of ordnance repaired, locks and chains
+mended, bolts forged, and, in brief, every piece of metal about the
+castle, from the cook's skillet to the winches and chains of the
+drawbridges, set right, renewed, or replaced. The forges were far
+from where she sat, outside the farthest of the two courts, across
+which, and the great hall dividing them, the clink, clink, the
+clank, and the ringing clang, softened by distance and
+interposition, came musical to her ear. The armourer's hammer was
+the keener, the quicker, the less intermittent, and yet had the most
+variations of time and note, as he shifted the piece on his anvil,
+or changed breastplate for gorget, or greave for pauldron--or it
+might be sword for pike-head or halbert. Mingled with it came now
+and then the creak and squeak of the wooden wheel at the draw-well
+near the hall-door in the farther court, and the muffled splash of
+the bucket as it struck the water deep in the shaft. She even
+thought she could hear the drops dripping back from it as it slowly
+ascended, but that was fancy. Everywhere arose the auricular vapour,
+as it were, of action, undefined and indefinable, the hum of the
+human hive, compounded of all confluent noises--the chatter of the
+servants' hall and the nursery, the stamping of horses, the ringing
+of harness, the ripping of the chains of kenneled dogs, the hollow
+stamping of heavy boots, the lowing of cattle, with sounds besides
+so strange to the ears of Dorothy that they set her puzzling in vain
+to account for them; not to mention the chaff of the guard-rooms by
+the gates, and the scolding and clatter of the kitchen. This last,
+indeed, was audible only when the doors were open, for the walls of
+the kitchen, whether it was that the builders of it counted cookery
+second only to life, or that this had been judged, from the nature
+of the ground outside, the corner of all the enclosure most likely
+to be attacked, were far thicker than those of any of the other
+towers, with the one exception of the keep itself.
+
+As she sat listening to these multitudinous exhalations of life
+around her, yet with a feeling of loneliness and a dim sense of
+captivity, from the consciousness that huge surrounding walls rose
+between her and the green fields, of which, from earliest memory,
+she had been as free as the birds and beetles, a white rabbit,
+escaped from the arms of its owner, little Mary Somerset, lady
+Margaret's only child, a merry but delicate girl not yet three years
+old, suddenly darted like a flash of snow across the shadowy green,
+followed in hot haste a moment after by a fine-looking boy of
+thirteen and two younger girls, after whom toddled tiny Mary.
+Dorothy sat watching the pursuit, accompanied with sweet outcry and
+frolic laughter, when in a moment the sounds of their merriment
+changed to shrieks of terror, and she saw a huge mastiff come
+bounding she knew not whence, and rush straight at the rabbit,
+fierce and fast. When the little creature saw him, struck with
+terror it stopped dead, cowered on the sward, and was stock still.
+But Henry Somerset, who was but a few paces from it, reached it
+before the dog, and caught it up in his arms. The rush of the dog
+threw him down, and they rolled over and over, Henry holding fast
+the poor rabbit.
+
+By this time Dorothy was half-way down the stair: the moment she
+caught sight of the dog she had flown to the rescue. When she issued
+from the porch at the foot of the grand staircase, Henry was up
+again, and running for the house with the rabbit yet safe in his
+arms, pursued by the mastiff. Evidently the dog had not harmed
+him--but he might get angry. The next moment she saw, to her joy and
+dismay both at once, that it was her own dog.
+
+'Marquis! Marquis!' she cried, calling him by his name.
+
+He abandoned the pursuit at once, and went bounding to her. She took
+him by the back of the neck, and the displeasure manifest upon the
+countenance of his mistress made him cower at her feet, and wince
+from the open hand that threatened him. The same instant a lattice
+window over the gateway was flung open, and a voice said--
+
+'Here I am. Who called me?'
+
+Dorothy looked up. The children had vanished with their rescued
+darling. There was not a creature in the court but herself, and
+there was the marquis, leaning half out of the window, and looking
+about.
+
+'Who called me?' he repeated--angrily, Dorothy thought.
+
+All at once the meaning of it flashed upon her, and she was
+confounded--ready to sink with annoyance. But she was not one to
+hesitate when a thing HAD to be done. Keeping her hold of the dog's
+neck, for his collar was gone, she dragged him half-way towards the
+gate, then turning up to the marquis a face like a peony, replied--
+
+'I am the culprit, my lord.'
+
+'By St. George! you are a brave damsel, and there is no culpa that I
+know of, except on the part of that intruding cur.'
+
+'And the cur's mistress, my lord. But, indeed, he is no cur, but a
+true mastiff.'
+
+'What! is the animal thy property, fair cousin? He is more than I
+bargained for.'
+
+'He is mine, my lord, but I left him chained when I set out from
+Wyfern this morning. That he got loose I confess I am not
+astonished, neither that he tracked me hither, for he has the eyes
+of a gaze-hound, and the nose of a bloodhound; but it amazes me to
+find him in the castle.'
+
+'That must be inquired into,' said the marquis.
+
+'I am very sorry he has carried himself so ill, my lord. He has put
+me to great shame. But he hath more in him than mere brute, and
+understands when I beg you to pardon him. He misbehaved himself on
+purpose to be taken to me, for at home no one ever dares punish him
+but myself.'
+
+The marquis laughed.
+
+'If you are so completely his mistress then, why did you call on me
+for help?'
+
+'Pardon me, my lord; I did not so.'
+
+'Why, I heard thee call me two or three times!'
+
+'Alas, my lord! I called him Marquis when he was a pup. Everybody
+about Redware knows Marquis.'
+
+The animal cocked his ears and started each time his name was
+uttered, and yet seemed to understand well enough that ALL the talk
+was about him and his misdeeds.
+
+'Ah! ha!' said his lordship, with a twinkle in his eye, 'that begets
+complications. Two marquises in Raglan? Two kings in England! The
+thing cannot be. What is to be done?'
+
+'I must take him back, my lord! I cannot send him, for he would not
+go. I dread they will not be able to hold him chained; in which evil
+case I fear me I shall have to go, my lord, and take the perils of
+the time as they come.'
+
+'Not of necessity so, cousin, while you can choose between
+us;--although I freely grant that a marquis with four legs is to be
+preferred before a marquis with only two.--But what if you changed
+his name?'
+
+'I fear it could not be done, my lord. He has been Marquis all his
+life.'
+
+'And I have been marquis only six months! Clearly he hath the better
+right--. But there would be constant mistakes between us, for I
+cannot bring myself to lay aside the honour his majesty hath
+conferred upon me, "which would be worn now in its newest gloss, not
+cast aside so soon," as master Shakspere says. Besides, it would be
+a slight to his majesty, and that must not be thought of--not for
+all the dogs in parliament or out of it. No--it would breed factions
+in the castle too. No; one of us two must die.'
+
+'Then, indeed, I must go,' said Dorothy, her voice trembling as she
+spoke; for although the words of the marquis were merry, she yet
+feared for her friend.
+
+'Tut! tut! let the older marquis die: he has enjoyed the title; I
+have not. Give him to Tom Fool: he will drown him in the moat. He
+shall be buried with honour--under his rival's favourite apple-tree
+in the orchard. What more could dog desire?'
+
+'No, my lord,' answered Dorothy. 'Will you allow me to take my
+leave? If I only knew where to find my horse!'
+
+'What! would you saddle him yourself, cousin Vaughan?'
+
+'As well as e'er a knave in your lordship's stables. I am very sorry
+to displease you, but to my dog's death I cannot and will not
+consent. Pardon me, my lord.'
+
+The last words brought with them a stifled sob, for she scarcely
+doubted any more that he was in earnest.
+
+'It is assuredly not gratifying to a marquis of the king's making to
+have one of a damsel's dubbing take the precedence of him. I fear
+you are a roundhead and hold by the parliament. But no--that cannot
+be, for you are willing to forsake your new cousin for your old dog.
+Nay, alas! it is your old cousin for your young dog. Puritan!
+puritan! Well, it cannot be helped. But what! you would ride home
+alone! Evil men are swarming, child. This sultry weather brings them
+out like flies.'
+
+'I shall not be alone, my lord. Marquis will take good care of me.'
+
+'Indeed, my lord marquis will pledge himself to nothing outside his
+own walls.'
+
+'I meant the dog, my lord.'
+
+'Ah! you see how awkward it is. However, as you will not choose
+between us--and to tell the truth, I am not yet quite prepared to
+die--we must needs encounter what is inevitable. I will send for
+one of the keepers to take him to the smithy, and get him a proper
+collar--one he can't slip like that he left at home--and a chain.'
+
+'I must go with him myself, my lord. They will never manage him
+else.'
+
+'What a demon you have brought into my peaceable house! Go with him,
+by all means. And mind you choose him a kennel yourself.--You do
+not desire him in your chamber, do you, mistress?'
+
+Dorothy secretly thought it would be the best place for him, but she
+was only too glad to have his life spared.
+
+'No, my lord, I thank you,' she said. '--I thank your lordship with
+all my heart.'
+
+The marquis disappeared from the window. Presently young Scudamore
+came into the court from the staircase by the gate, and crossed to
+the hall--in a few minutes returning with the keeper. The man would
+have taken the dog by the neck to lead him away, but a certain form
+of canine curse, not loud but deep, and a warning word from Dorothy,
+made him withdraw his hand.
+
+'Take care, Mr. Keeper,' she said, 'he is dangerous. I will go with
+him myself, if thou wilt show me whither.'
+
+'As it please you, mistress,' answered the keeper, and led the way
+across the court.
+
+'Have you not a word to throw at a poor cousin, mistress Dorothy?'
+said Rowland, when the man was a pace or two in advance.
+
+'No, Mr. Scudamore,' answered Dorothy; 'not until we have first
+spoken in my lord Worcester's or my lady Margaret's presence.'
+
+Scudamore fell behind, followed her a little way, and somewhere
+vanished.
+
+Dorothy followed the keeper across the hall, the size of which, its
+height especially, and the splendour of its windows of stained
+glass, almost awed her; then across the next court to the foot of
+the Library Tower forming the south-east corner of it, near the two
+towers flanking the main entrance. Here a stair led down, through
+the wall, to a lower level outside, where were the carpenters' and
+all other workshops, the forges, the stables, and the farmyard
+buildings.
+
+As it happened, when Dorothy entered the smithy, there was her own
+little horse being shod, and Marquis and he interchanged a whine and
+a whinny of salutation, while the men stared at the bright
+apparition of a young lady in their dingy regions. Having heard her
+business, the head-smith abandoned everything else to alter an iron
+collar, of which there were several lying about, to fit the mastiff,
+the presence of whose mistress proved entirely necessary. Dorothy
+had indeed to put it on him with her own hands, for at the sound of
+the chain attached to it he began to grow furious, growling
+fiercely. When the chain had been made fast with a staple driven
+into a strong kennel-post, and his mistress proceeded to take her
+leave of him, his growling changed to the most piteous whining; but
+when she actually left him there, he flew into a rage of indignant
+affection. After trying the strength of his chain, however, by three
+or four bounds, each so furious as to lay him sprawling on his back,
+he yielded to the inevitable, and sullenly crept into his kennel,
+while Dorothy walked back to the room which had already begun to
+seem to her a cell.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.
+
+
+
+
+
+Dorothy went straight to lady Margaret's parlour, and made her
+humble apology for the trouble and alarm her dog had occasioned.
+Lady Margaret assured her that the children were nothing the worse,
+not having been even much terrified, for the dog had not gone a
+hair's-breadth beyond rough play. Poor bunny was the only one
+concerned who had not yet recovered his equanimity. He did not seem
+positively hurt, she said, but as he would not eat the lovely clover
+under his nose where he lay in Molly's crib, it was clear that the
+circulation of his animal spirits had been too rudely checked.
+Thereupon Dorothy begged to be taken to the nursery, for, being
+familiar with all sorts of tame animals, she knew rabbits well. As
+she stood with the little creature in her arms, gently stroking its
+soft whiteness, the children gathered round her, and she bent
+herself to initiate a friendship with them, while doing her best to
+comfort and restore their favourite. Success in the latter object
+she found the readiest way to the former. Under the sweet galvanism
+of her stroking hand the rabbit was presently so much better that
+when she offered him a blade of the neglected clover, the
+equilateral triangle of his queer mouth was immediately set in
+motion, the trefoil vanished, and when he was once more placed in
+the crib he went on with his meal as if nothing had happened. The
+children were in ecstasies, and cousin Dorothy was from that moment
+popular and on the way to be something better.
+
+When supper time came, lady Margaret took her again to the
+dining-room, where there was much laughter over the story of the two
+marquises, lord Worcester driving the joke in twenty different
+directions, but so kindly that Dorothy, instead of being
+disconcerted or even discomposed thereby, found herself emboldened
+to take a share in the merriment. When the company rose, lady
+Margaret once more led her to her own room, where, working at her
+embroidery frame, she chatted with her pleasantly for some time.
+Dorothy would have been glad if she had set her work also, for she
+could ill brook doing nothing. Notwithstanding her quietness of
+demeanour, amounting at times to an appearance of immobility, her
+nature was really an active one, and it was hard for her to sit with
+her hands in her lap. Lady Margaret at length perceived her
+discomfort.
+
+'I fear, my child, I am wearying you,' she said.
+
+'It is only that I want something to do, madam,' said Dorothy.
+
+'I have nothing at hand for you to-night,' returned lady Margaret.
+'Suppose we go and find my lord;--I mean my own lord Herbert. I have
+not seen him since we broke fast together, and you have not seen him
+at all. I am afraid he must think of leaving home again soon, he
+seems so anxious to get something or other finished.'
+
+As she spoke, she pushed aside her frame, and telling Dorothy to go
+and fetch herself a cloak, went into the next room, whence she
+presently returned, wrapped in a hooded mantle. As soon as Dorothy
+came, she led her along the corridor to a small lobby whence a stair
+descended to the court, issuing close by the gate.
+
+'I shall never learn my way about,' said Dorothy. 'If it were only
+the staircases, they are more than my memory will hold.'
+
+Lady Margaret gave a merry little laugh.
+
+'Harry set himself to count them the other day,' she said. 'I do not
+remember how many he made out altogether, but I know he said there
+were at least thirty stone ones.'
+
+Dorothy's answer was an exclamation.
+
+But she was not in the mood to dwell upon the mere arithmetic of
+vastness. Invaded by the vision of the mighty structure, its aspect
+rendered yet more imposing by the time which now suited with it, she
+forgot lady Margaret's presence, and stood still to gaze.
+
+The twilight had deepened half-way into night. There was no moon,
+and in the dusk the huge masses of building rose full of mystery and
+awe. Above the rest, the great towers on all sides seemed by
+indwelling might to soar into the regions of air. The pile stood
+there, the epitome of the story of an ancient race, the precipitate
+from its vanished life--a hard core that had gathered in the
+vaporous mass of history--the all of solid that remained to witness
+of the past.
+
+She came again to herself with a start. Lady Margaret had stood
+quietly waiting for her mood to change. Dorothy apologised, but her
+mistress only smiled and said,
+
+'I am in no haste, child. I like to see another impressed as I was
+when first I stood just where you stand now. Come, then, I will show
+you something different.'
+
+She led the way along the southern side of the court until they came
+to the end of the chapel, opposite which an archway pierced the line
+of building, and revealed the mighty bulk of the citadel, the only
+portion of the castle, except the kitchen-tower, continuing
+impregnable to enlarged means of assault: gunpowder itself, as yet
+far from perfect in composition and make, and conditioned by clumsy,
+uncertain, and ill-adjustable artillery, was nearly powerless
+against walls more than ten feet in thickness.
+
+I have already mentioned that one peculiarity of Raglan was a
+distinct moat surrounding its keep. Immediately from the outer end
+of the archway, a Gothic bridge of stone led across this thirty-foot
+moat to a narrow walk which encompassed the tower. The walk was
+itself encompassed and divided from the moat by a wall with six
+turrets at equal distances, surmounted by battlements. At one time
+the sole entrance to the tower had been by a drawbridge dropping
+across the walk to the end of the stone bridge, from an arched door
+in the wall, whose threshold was some ten or twelve feet from the
+ground; but another entrance had since been made on the level of the
+walk, and by it the two ladies now entered. Passing the foot of a
+great stone staircase, they came to the door of what had, before the
+opening of the lower entrance, been a vaulted cellar, probably at
+one time a dungeon, at a later period a place of storage, but now
+put to a very different use, and wearing a stranger aspect than it
+could ever have borne at any past period of its story--a look indeed
+of mystery inexplicable.
+
+When Dorothy entered she found herself in a large place, the form of
+which she could ill distinguish in the dull light proceeding from
+the chinks about the closed doors of a huge furnace. The air was
+filled with gurglings and strange low groanings, as of some creature
+in dire pain. Dorothy had as good nerves as ever woman, yet she
+could not help some fright as she stood alone by the door and stared
+into the gloomy twilight into which her companion had advanced. As
+her eyes became used to the ruddy dusk, she could see better, but
+everywhere they lighted on shapes inexplicable, whose forms to the
+first questioning thought suggested instruments of torture; but
+cruel as some of them looked, they were almost too strange,
+contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the wood-cuts in a certain
+book she had been familiar with in childhood, commonly called Fox's
+Book of Martyrs, kept haunting her mind's eye--and were they not
+Papists into whose hands she had fallen? she said to herself, amused
+at the vagaries of her own involuntary suggestions.
+
+Among the rest, one thing specially caught her attention, both from
+its size and its complicated strangeness. It was a huge wheel
+standing near the wall, supported between two strong uprights--some
+twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, with about fifty spokes, from
+every one of which hung a large weight. Its grotesque and threatful
+character was greatly increased by the mingling of its one substance
+with its many shadows on the wall behind it. So intent was she upon
+it that she started when lady Margaret spoke.
+
+'Why, mistress Dorothy!' she said, 'you look as if you had wandered
+into St. Anthony's cave! Here is my lord Herbert to welcome his
+cousin.'
+
+Beside her stood a man rather under the middle stature, but as his
+back was to the furnace this was about all Dorothy could discover of
+his appearance, save that he was in the garb of a workman, with bare
+head and arms, and held in his hand a long iron rod ending in a
+hook.
+
+'Welcome, indeed, cousin Vaughan!' he said heartily, but without
+offering his hand, which in truth, although an honest, skilful, and
+well-fashioned hand, was at the present moment far from fit for a
+lady's touch.
+
+There was something in his voice not altogether strange to Dorothy,
+but she could not tell of whom or what it reminded her.
+
+'Are you come to take another lesson on the cross-bow?' he asked
+with a smile.
+
+Then she knew he was the same she had met in the looped chamber
+beside the arblast. An occasional slight halt, not impediment, in
+his speech, was what had remained on her memory. Did he always dwell
+only in the dusky borders of the light?
+
+Dorothy uttered a little 'Oh!' of surprise, but immediately
+recovering herself, said,
+
+'I am sorry I did not know it was you, my lord. I might by this time
+have been capable of discharging bolt or arrow with good aim in
+defence of the castle.'
+
+'It is not yet too late, I hope,' returned the workman-lord. 'I
+confess I was disappointed to find your curiosity went no further. I
+hoped I had at last found a lady capable of some interest in
+pursuits like mine. For my lady Margaret here, she cares not a straw
+for anything I do, and would rather have me keep my hands clean than
+discover the mechanism of the primum mobile!
+
+'Yes, in truth, Ned,' said his wife, 'I would rather have thee with
+fair hands in my sweet parlour, than toiling and moiling in this
+dirty dungeon, with no companion but that horrible fire-engine of
+thine, grunting and roaring all night long.'
+
+'Why, what do you make of Caspar Kaltoff, my lady?'
+
+'I make not much of him.'
+
+'You misjudge his goodfellowship then.'
+
+'Truly, I think not well of him: he always hath secrets with thee,
+and I like it not.'
+
+'That they are secrets is thine own fault, Peggy. How can I teach
+thee my secrets if thou wilt not open thine ears to hear them?'
+
+'I would your lordship would teach me!' said Dorothy. 'I might not
+be an apt pupil, but I should be both an eager and a humble one.'
+
+'By St. Patrick! mistress Dorothy, but you go straight to steal my
+husband's heart from me. "Humble," forsooth! and "eager" too! Nay!
+nay! If I have no part in his brain, I can the less yield his
+heart.'
+
+'What would be gladly learned would be gladly taught, cousin,' said
+lord Herbert.
+
+'There! there!' exclaimed lady Margaret; 'I knew it would be so. You
+discharge your poor dull apprentice the moment you find a clever
+one!'
+
+'And why not? I never was able to teach thee anything.'
+
+'Ah, Ned, there you are unkind indeed!' said lady Margaret, with
+something in her voice that suggested the water-springs were
+swelling.
+
+'My shamrock of four!' said her husband in the tenderest tone, 'I
+but jested with thee. How shouldst thou be my pupil in anything I
+can teach? I am yours in all that is noble and good. I did not mean
+to vex you, sweet heart.'
+
+''Tis gone again, Ned,' she answered, smiling. 'Give cousin Dorothy
+her first lesson.'
+
+'It shall be that, then, to which I sought in vain to make thee
+listen this very morning--a certain great saying of my lord of
+Verulam, mistress Dorothy. I had learnt it by heart that I might
+repeat it word for word to my lady, but she would none of it.'
+
+'May I not hear it, madam?' said Dorothy.
+
+'We will both hear it, Herbert, if you will pardon your foolish wife
+and admit her to grace.' And as she spoke she laid her hand on his
+sooty arm.
+
+He answered her only with a smile, but such a one as sufficed.
+
+'Listen then, ladies both,' he said. 'My lord of Verulam, having
+quoted the words of Solomon, "The glory of God is to conceal a
+thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out," adds thus, of
+his own thought concerning them,--"as if," says my lord, "according
+to the innocent play of children, the divine majesty took delight to
+hide his works, to the end to have them found out, and as if kings
+could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in
+that game, considering the great commandment of wits and means,
+whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from them."'
+
+'That was very well for my lord of--what did'st thou call him, Ned?'
+
+'Francis Bacon, lord Verulam,' returned Herbert, with a queer smile.
+
+'Very well for my lord of Veryflam!' resumed lady Margaret, with a
+mock, yet bewitching affectation of innocence and ignorance; 'but
+tell me had he?--nay, I am sure he had not a wild Irishwoman sitting
+breaking her heart in her bower all day long for his company. He
+could never else have had the heart to say it.--Mistress Dorothy,'
+she went on, 'take the counsel of a forsaken wife, and lay it to thy
+heart: never marry a man who loves lathes and pipes and wheels and
+water and fire, and I know not what. But do come in ere bed-time,
+Herbert, and I will sing thee the sweetest of English ditties, and
+make thee such a sack-posset as never could be made out of old
+Ireland any more than the song.'
+
+But her husband that moment sprang from her side, and shouting
+'Caspar! Caspar!' bounded to the furnace, reached up with his iron
+rod into the darkness over his head, caught something with the
+hooked end of it, and pulled hard. A man who from somewhere in the
+gloomy place had responded like a greyhound to his master's call,
+did the like on the other side. Instantly followed a fierce,
+protracted, sustained hiss, and in a moment the place was filled
+with a white cloud, whence issued still the hideous hiss, changing
+at length to a roar. Lady Margaret turned in terror, ran out of the
+keep, and fled across the bridge and through the archway before she
+slackened her pace. Dorothy followed, but more composedly, led by
+duty, not driven by terror, and indeed reluctantly forsaking a spot
+where was so much she did not understand.
+
+They had fled from the infant roar of the 'first stock-father' of
+steam-engines, whose cradle was that feudal keep, eight centuries
+old.
+
+That night Dorothy lay down weary enough. It seemed a month since she
+had been in her own bed at Wyfern, so many new and strange things had
+crowded into her house, hitherto so still. Every now and then the
+darkness heaved and rippled with some noise of the night. The stamping
+of horses, and the ringing of their halter chains, seemed very near her.
+She thought she heard the howl of Marquis from afar, and said to
+herself, 'The poor fellow cannot sleep! I must get my lord to let me
+have him in my chamber.' Then she listened a while to the sweet flow of
+the water from the mouth of the white horse, which in general went on
+all night long. Suddenly came an awful sound--like a howl also, but such
+as never left the throat of dog. Again and again at intervals it came,
+with others like it but not the same, torturing the dark with a dismal
+fear. Dorothy had never heard the cry of a wild beast, but the
+suggestion that these might be such cries, and the recollection that she
+had heard such beasts were in Raglan Castle, came together to her mind.
+She was so weary, however, that worse noises than these could hardly
+have kept her awake; not even her weariness could prevent them from
+following her into her dreams.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SEVERAL PEOPLE
+
+
+
+
+
+Lord Worcester had taken such a liking to Dorothy, partly at first
+because of the good store of merriment with which she and her
+mastiff had provided him, that he was disappointed when he found her
+place was not to be at his table but the housekeeper's. As he said
+himself, however, he did not meddle with women's matters, and indeed
+it would not do for lady Margaret to show her so much favour above
+her other women, of whom at least one was her superior in rank, and
+all were relatives as well as herself.
+
+Dorothy did not much relish their society, but she had not much of
+it except at meals, when, however, they always treated her as an
+interloper. Every day she saw more or less of lady Margaret, and
+found in her such sweetness, if not quite evenness of temper, as
+well as gaiety of disposition, that she learned to admire as well as
+love her. Sometimes she had her to read to her, sometimes to work
+with her, and almost every day she made her practise a little on the
+harpsichord. Hence she not only improved rapidly in performance, but
+grew capable of receiving more and more delight from music. There
+was a fine little organ in the chapel, on which blind young
+Delaware, the son of the marquis's master of the horse, used to play
+delightfully; and although she never entered the place, she would
+stand outside listening to his music for an hour at a time in the
+twilight, or sometimes even after dark. For as yet she indulged
+without question all the habits of her hitherto free life, as far as
+was possible within the castle walls, and the outermost of these
+were of great circuit, enclosing lawns, shrubberies, wildernesses,
+flower and kitchen gardens, orchards, great fish-ponds, little lakes
+with fountains, islands, and summer-houses--not to mention the
+farmyard, and indeed a little park, in which were some of the finest
+trees upon the estate.
+
+The gentlewomen with whom Dorothy was, by her position in the
+household, associated, were three in number. One was a rather
+elderly, rather plain, rather pious lady, who did not insist on her
+pretensions to either of the epithets. The second was a short,
+plump, round-faced, good-natured, smiling woman of sixty,--excelling
+in fasts and mortifications, which somehow seemed to agree with her
+body as well as her soul. The third was only two or three years
+older than Dorothy, and was pretty, except when she began to speak,
+and then for a moment there was a strange discord in her features.
+She took a dislike to Dorothy, as she said herself, the instant she
+cast her eyes upon her. She could not bear that prim, set face, she
+said. The country-bred heifer evidently thought herself superior to
+every one in the castle. She was persuaded the minx was a sly one,
+and would carry tales. So judged mistress Amanda Serafina Fuller,
+after her kind. Nor was it wonderful that, being such as she was,
+she should recoil with antipathy from one whose nature had a
+tendency to ripen over soon, and stunt its slow orbicular expansion
+to the premature and false completeness of a narrow and
+self-sufficing conscientiousness.
+
+Doubtless if Dorothy had shown any marked acknowledgment of the
+precedency of their rights--any eagerness to conciliate the
+aborigines of the circle, the ladies would have been more friendly
+inclined; but while capable of endless love and veneration, there
+was little of the conciliatory in her nature. Hence Mrs. Doughty
+looked upon her with a rather stately, indifference, my lady
+Broughton with a mild wish to save her poor, proud, protestant soul,
+and mistress Amanda Serafina said she hated her; but then ever since
+the Fall there has been a disproportion betwixt the feelings of
+young ladies and the language in which they represent them. Mrs.
+Doughty neglected her, and Dorothy did not know it; lady Broughton
+said solemn things to her, and she never saw the point of them; but
+when mistress Amanda half closed her eyes and looked at her in
+snake-Geraldine fashion, she met her with a full, wide-orbed,
+questioning gaze, before which Amanda's eyes dropped, and she sank
+full fathom five towards the abyss of real hatred.
+
+During the dinner hour, the three generally talked together in an
+impregnable manner--not that they were by any means bosom-friends,
+for two of them had never before united in anything except despising
+good, soft lady Broughton. When they were altogether in their
+mistress's presence, they behaved to Dorothy and to each other with
+studious politeness.
+
+The ladies Elizabeth and Anne, had their gentlewomen also, in all
+only three, however, who also ate at the housekeeper's table, but
+kept somewhat apart from the rest--yet were, in a distant way,
+friendly to Dorothy.
+
+But hers, as we have seen, was a nature far more capable of
+attaching itself to a few than of pleasing many; and her heart went
+out to lady Margaret, whom she would have come ere long to regard as
+a mother, had she not behaved to her more like an elder sister. Lady
+Margaret's own genuine behaviour had indeed little of the matronly
+in it; when her husband came into the room, she seemed to grow
+instantly younger, and her manner changed almost to that of a
+playful girl. It is true, Dorothy had been struck with the dignity
+of her manner amid all the frankness of her reception, but she soon
+found that, although her nature was full of all real dignities, that
+which belonged to her carriage never appeared in the society of
+those she loved, and was assumed only, like the thin shelter of a
+veil, in the presence of those whom she either knew or trusted less.
+Before her ladies, she never appeared without some
+restraint--manifest in a certain measuredness of movement, slowness
+of speech, and choice of phrase; but before a month was over,
+Dorothy was delighted to find that the reserve instantly vanished
+when she happened to be left alone with her.
+
+She took an early opportunity of informing her mistress of the
+relationship between herself and Scudamore, stating that she knew
+little or nothing of him, having seen him only once before she came
+to the castle. The youth on his part took the first fitting
+opportunity of addressing her in lady Margaret's presence, and soon
+they were known to be cousins all over the castle.
+
+With lady Margaret's help, Dorothy came to a tolerable understanding
+of Scudamore. Indeed her ladyship's judgment seemed but a
+development of her own feeling concerning him.
+
+'Rowland is not a bad fellow,' she said, 'but I cannot fully
+understand whence he comes in such grace with my lord Worcester. If
+it were my husband now, I should not marvel: he is so much occupied
+with things and engines, that he has as little time as natural
+inclination to doubt any one who will only speak largely enough to
+satisfy his idea. But my lord of Worcester knows well enough that
+seldom are two things more unlike than men and their words. Yet that
+is not what I mean to say of your cousin: he is no hypocrite--means
+not to be false, but has no rule of right in him so far as I can
+find. He is pleasant company; his gaiety, his quips, his readiness
+of retort, his courtesy and what not, make him a favourite; and my
+lord hath in a manner reared him, which goes to explain much. He is
+quick yet indolent, good-natured but selfish, generous but counting
+enjoyment the first thing,--though, to speak truth of him, I have
+never known him do a dishonourable action. But, in a word, the star
+of duty has not yet appeared above his horizon. Pardon me, Dorothy,
+if I am severe upon him. More or less I may misjudge him, but this
+is how I read him; and if you wonder that I should be able so to
+divide him, I have but to tell you that I should be unapt indeed if
+I had not yet learned of my husband to look into the heart of both
+men and things.'
+
+'But, madam,' Dorothy ventured to say, 'have you not even now told
+me that from very goodness my lord is easily betrayed?'
+
+'Well replied, my child! It is true, but only while he has had no
+reason to mistrust. Let him once perceive ground for dissatisfaction
+or suspicion, and his eye is keen as light itself to penetrate and
+unravel.'
+
+Such good qualities as lady Margaret accorded her cousin were of a
+sort more fitted to please a less sedate and sober-minded damsel
+than Dorothy, who was fashioned rather after the model of a puritan
+than a royalist maiden. Pleased with his address and his behaviour
+to herself as she could hardly fail to be, she yet felt a lingering
+mistrust of him, which sprang quite as much from the immediate
+impression as from her mistress's judgment of him, for it always
+gave her a sense of not coming near the real man in him. There is
+one thing a hypocrite even can never do, and that is, hide the
+natural signs of his hypocrisy; and Rowland, who was no hypocrite,
+only a man not half so honourable as he chose to take himself for,
+could not conceal his unreality from the eyes of his simple country
+cousin. Little, however, did Dorothy herself suspect whence she had
+the idea,--that it was her girlhood's converse with real, sturdy,
+honest, straight-forward, simple manhood, in the person of the
+youth of fiery temper, and obstinate, opinionated, sometimes even
+rude behaviour, whom she had chastised with terms of contemptuous
+rebuke, which had rendered her so soon capable of distinguishing
+between a profound and a shallow, a genuine and an unreal nature,
+even when the latter comprehended a certain power of fascination,
+active enough to be recognisable by most of the women in the castle.
+
+Concerning this matter, it will suffice to say that lord
+Worcester--who ruled his household with such authoritative wisdom
+that honest Dr. Bayly avers he never saw a better-ordered
+family--never saw a man drunk or heard an oath amongst his servants,
+all the time he was chaplain in the castle,--would have been
+scandalized to know the freedoms his favourite indulged himself in,
+and regarded as privileged familiarities.
+
+There was much coming and going of visitors--more now upon state
+business than matters of friendship or ceremony; and occasional
+solemn conferences were held in the marquis's private room, at which
+sometimes lord John, who was a personal friend of the king's, and
+sometimes lord Charles, the governor of the castle, with perhaps
+this or that officer of dignity in the household, would be present;
+but whoever was or was not present, lord Herbert when at home was
+always there, sometimes alone with his father and commissioners from
+the king. His absences, however, had grown frequent now that his
+majesty had appointed him general of South Wales, and he had
+considerable forces under his command--mostly raised by himself,
+and maintained at his own and his father's expense.
+
+It was some time after Dorothy had twice in one day met him
+darkling, before she saw him in the light, and was able to peruse
+his countenance, which she did carefully, with the mingled instinct
+and insight of curious and thoughtful girlhood. He had come home
+from a journey, changed his clothes, and had some food; and now he
+appeared in his wife's parlour--to sun himself a little, he said.
+When he entered, Dorothy, who was seated at her mistress's
+embroidery frame, while she was herself busy mending some Flanders
+lace, rose to leave the room. But he prayed her to be seated, saying
+gayly,
+
+'I would have you see, cousin, that I am no beast of prey that loves
+the darkness. I can endure the daylight. Come, my lady, have you
+nothing to amuse your soldier with? No good news to tell him? How is
+my little Molly?'
+
+During the conjugal talk that followed, his cousin had good
+opportunity of making her observations. First she saw a fair,
+well-proportioned forehead, with eyes whose remarkable clearness
+looked as if it owed itself to the mingling of manly confidence with
+feminine trustfulness. They were dark, not very large, but rather
+prominent, and full of light. His nose was a little aquiline, and
+perfectly formed. A soft obedient moustache, brushed thoroughly
+aside, revealed right generous lips, about which hovered a certain
+sweetness ever ready to break into the blossom of a smile. That and
+a small tuft below was all the hair he wore upon his face. Rare
+conjunction, the whole of the countenance was remarkable both for
+symmetry and expression--the latter mainly a bright intelligence;
+and if, strangely enough, the predominant sweetness and delicacy at
+first suggested genius unsupported by practical faculty, there was a
+plentifulness and strength in the chin which helped to correct the
+suggestion, and with the brightness and prominence of the eyes and
+the radiance of the whole, to give a brave, almost bold look to a
+face which could hardly fail to remind those who knew them of the
+lovely verses of Matthew Raydon, describing that of sir Philip
+Sidney:
+
+    A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
+      A full assurance given by lookes,
+    Continuall comfort in a face,
+      The lineaments of Gospell-bookes;
+    I trowe that countenance cannot lie
+    Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.
+
+Notwithstanding the disadvantages of the fashion, in the mechanical
+pursuits to which he had hitherto devoted his life, he wore, like
+Milton's Adam, his wavy hair down to his shoulders. In his youth, it
+had been thick and curling; now it was thinner and straighter, yet
+curled where it lay. His hands were small, with the taper fingers
+that indicate the artist, while his thumb was that of the artizan,
+square at the tip, with the first joint curved a good deal back.
+That they were hard and something discoloured was not for Dorothy to
+wonder at, when she remembered what she had both heard and seen of
+his occupations.
+
+I may here mention that what aided Dorothy much in the
+interpretation of lord Herbert's countenance and the understanding
+of his character--for it was not on this first observation of him
+that she could discover all I have now set down--and tended largely
+to the development of the immense reverence she conceived for him,
+was what she saw of his behaviour to his father one evening not long
+after, when, having been invited to the marquis's table, she sat
+nearly opposite him at supper. With a willing ear and ready smile
+for every one who addressed him, notably courteous where all were
+courteous, he gave chief observance, amounting to an almost tender
+homage, to his father. His thoughts seemed to wait upon him with a
+fearless devotion. He listened intently to all his jokes, and
+laughed at them heartily, evidently enjoying them even when they
+were not very good; spoke to him with profound though easy respect;
+made haste to hand him whatever he seemed to want, preventing
+Scudamore; and indeed conducted himself like a dutiful youth, rather
+than a man over forty. Their confident behaviour, wherein the
+authority of the one and the submission of the other were
+acknowledged with co-relative love, was beautiful to behold.
+
+When husband and wife had conferred for a while, the former
+stretched on a settee embroidered by the skilful hands of the
+latest-vanished countess, his mother, and the latter seated near him
+on a narrow tall-backed chair, mending her lace, there came a pause
+in their low-toned conversation, and his lordship looking up seemed
+anew to become aware of the presence of Dorothy.
+
+'Well, cousin,' he said, 'how have you fared since we half-saw each
+other a fortnight ago?'
+
+'I have fared well indeed, my lord, I thank you,' said Dorothy, 'as
+your lordship may judge, knowing whom I serve. In two short weeks my
+lady loads me with kindness enough to requite the loyalty of a
+life.'
+
+'Look you, cousin, that I should believe such laudation of any less
+than an angel?' said his lordship with mock gravity.
+
+'No, my lord,' answered Dorothy.
+
+There was a moment's pause; then lord Herbert laughed aloud.
+
+'Excellent well, mistress Dorothy!' he cried. 'Thank your cousin, my
+lady, for a compliment worthy of an Irishwoman.'
+
+'I thank you, Dorothy,' said her mistress; 'although, Irishwoman as
+I am, my lord hath put me out of love with compliments.'
+
+'When they are true and come unbidden, my lady,' said Dorothy.
+
+'What! are there such compliments, cousin?' said lord Herbert.
+
+'There are birds of Paradise, my lord, though rarely encountered.'
+
+'Birds of Paradise indeed! they alight not in this world. Birds of
+Paradise have no legs, they say.
+
+'They need them not, my lord. Once alighted, they fly no more.'
+
+'How is it then they alight so seldom?'
+
+'Because men shoo them away. One flew now from my heart to seek my
+lady's, but your lordship frighted it.'
+
+'And so it flew back to Paradise--eh, mistress Dorothy?' said lord
+Herbert, smiling archly.
+
+The supper bell rang, and instead of replying, Dorothy looked up for
+her dismissal.
+
+'Go to supper, my lady,' said lord Herbert. 'I have but just dined,
+and will see what Caspar is about.'
+
+'I want no supper but my Herbert,' returned lady Margaret. 'Thou
+wilt not go to that hateful workshop?'
+
+'I have so little time at home now--'
+
+'That you must spend it from your lady?--Go to supper, Dorothy.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HUSBAND AND WIFE
+
+
+
+
+
+'What an old-fashioned damsel it is!' said lord Herbert when Dorothy
+had left the room.
+
+'She has led a lonely life,' answered lady Margaret, 'and has read a
+many old-fashioned books.'
+
+'She seems a right companion for thee, Peggy, and I am glad of it,
+for I shall be much from thee--more and more, I fear, till this
+bitter weather be gone by.'
+
+'Alas, Ned! hast thou not been more than much from me already? Thou
+wilt certainly be killed, though thou hast not yet a scratch on thy
+blessed body. I would it were over and all well!'
+
+'So would I--and heartily, dear heart! In very truth I love fighting
+as little as thou. But it is a thing that hath to be done, though
+small honour will ever be mine therefrom, I greatly fear me. It is
+one of those affairs in which liking goes farther than goodwill, and
+as I say, I love it not, only to do my duty. Hence doubtless it
+comes that no luck attends me. God knows I fear nothing a man ought
+not to fear--he is my witness--but what good service of arms have I
+yet rendered my king? It is but thy face, Peggy, that draws the
+smile from me. My heart is heavy. See how my rascally Welsh yielded
+before Gloucester, when the rogue Waller stole a march upon
+them--and I must be from thence! Had I but been there instead of at
+Oxford, thinkest thou they would have laid down their arms nor
+struck a single blow? I like not killing, but I can kill, and I can
+be killed. Thou knowest, sweet wife, thy Ned would not run.'
+
+'Holy mother!' exclaimed lady Margaret.
+
+'But I have no good luck at fighting,' he went on. 'And how again at
+Monmouth, the hare-hearts with which I had thought to garrison the
+place fled at the bare advent of that same parliament beagle,
+Waller! By St. George! it were easier to make an engine that should
+mow down a thousand brave men with one sweep of a scythe-and I could
+make it-than to put courage into the heart of one runaway rascal. It
+makes me mad to think how they have disgraced me!'
+
+'But Monmouth is thine own again, Herbert!'
+
+'Yes-thanks to the love they bear my father, not to my generalship!
+Thy husband is a poor soldier, Peggy: he cannot make soldiers.'
+
+'Then why not leave the field to others, and labour at thy engines,
+love? If thou wilt, I tell thee what-I will doff my gown, and in
+wrapper and petticoat help thee, sweet. I will to it with bare arms
+like thine own.'
+
+'Thou wouldst like Una make a sunshine in the shady place, Margaret.
+But no. Poor soldier as I am, I will do my best, even where good
+fortune fails me, and glory awaits not my coming. Thou knowest that
+at fourteen days' warning I brought four thousand foot and eight
+hundred horse again to the siege of Gloucester. It would ill befit
+my father's son to spare what he can when he is pouring out his
+wealth like water at the feet of his king. No, wife; the king shall
+not find me wanting, for in serving my king, I serve my God; and if
+I should fail, it may hold that an honest failure comes nigh enough
+a victory to be set down in the chronicles of the high countries.
+But in truth it presses on me sorely, and I am troubled at heart
+that I should be so given over to failure.'
+
+'Never heed it, my lord. The sun comes out clear at last maugre all
+the region fogs.'
+
+'Thanks, sweet heart! Things do look up a little in the main, and if
+the king had but a dozen more such friends as my lord marquis, they
+would soon be well. Why, my dove of comfort, wouldst thou believe
+it?-I did this day, as I rode home to seek thy fair face, I did
+count up what sums he hath already spent for his liege; and indeed I
+could not recollect them all, but I summed up, of pounds already
+spent by him on his majesty's behalf, well towards a hundred and
+fifty thousand! And thou knowest the good man, that while he giveth
+generously like the great Giver, he giveth not carelessly, but hath
+respect to what he spendeth.'
+
+'Thy father, Ned, is loyalty and generosity incarnate. If thou be
+but half so good a husband as thy father is a subject, I am a happy
+woman.'
+
+'What! know'st thou not yet thy husband, Peggy?'
+
+'In good soberness, though, Ned, surely the saints in heaven will
+never let such devotion fail of its end.'
+
+'My father is but one, and the king's foes are many. So are his
+friends-but they are lukewarm compared to my father-the rich ones of
+them, I mean. Would to God I had not lost those seven great
+troop-horses that the pudding-fisted clothiers of Gloucester did
+rob me of! I need them sorely now. I bought them with mine own-or
+rather with thine, sweet heart. I had been saving up the money for a
+carcanet for thy fair neck.'
+
+'So my neck be fair in thine eyes, my lord, it may go bare and be
+well clad. I should, in sad earnest, be jealous of the pretty stones
+didst thou give my neck one look the more for their presence. Here!
+thou may'st sell these the next time thou goest London-wards.'
+
+As she spoke, she put up her hand to unclasp her necklace of large
+pearls, but he laid his hand upon it, saying,
+
+'Nay, Margaret, there is no need. My father is like the father in
+the parable: he hath enough and to spare. I did mean to have the
+money of him again, only as the vaunted horses never came, but were
+swallowed up of Gloucester, as Jonah of the whale, and have not yet
+been cast up again, I could not bring my tongue to ask him for it;
+and so thy neck is bare of emeralds, my dove.'
+
+    'Back and sides go bare, go bare,'
+
+sang lady Margaret with a merry laugh;
+
+    'Both foot and hand go cold;'
+
+here she paused for a moment, and looked down with a shining
+thoughtfulness; then sang out clear and loud, with bold alteration
+of bishop Stills' drinking song,
+
+    'But, heart, God send thee love enough,
+      Of the new that will never be old.'
+
+'Amen, my dove!'said lord Herbert.
+
+'Thou art in doleful dumps, Ned. If we had but a masque for thee, or
+a play, or even some jugglers with their balls!'
+
+'Puh, Peggy! thou art masque and play both in one; and for thy
+jugglers, I trust I can juggle better at my own hand than any troop
+of them from furthest India. Sing me a song, sweet heart.'
+
+'I will, my love,' answered lady Margaret.
+
+Rising, she went to the harpsichord, and sang, in sweet unaffected
+style, one of the songs of her native country, a merry ditty, with a
+breathing of sadness in the refrain of it, like a twilight wind in a
+bed of bulrushes.
+
+'Thanks, my love,' said lord Herbert, when she had finished. 'But I
+would I could tell its hidden purport; for I am one of those who
+think music none the worse for carrying with it an air of such sound
+as speaks to the brain as well as the heart.'
+
+Lady Margaret gave a playful sigh.
+
+'Thou hast one fault, my Edward--thou art a stranger to the tongue
+in which, through my old nurse's tales, I learned the language of
+love. I cannot call it my mother-tongue, but it is my love-tongue.
+Why, when thou art from me, I am loving thee in Irish all day long,
+and thou never knowest what my heart says to thee! It is a sad lack
+in thy all-completeness, dear heart. But, I bethink me, thy new
+cousin did sing a fair song in thy own tongue the other day, the
+which if thou canst understand one straw better than my Irish, I
+will learn it for thy sake, though truly it is Greek to me. I will
+send for her. Shall I?'
+
+As she spoke she rose and rang the bell on the table, and a little
+page, in waiting in the antechamber, appeared, whom she sent to
+desire the attendance of mistress Dorothy Vaughan.
+
+'Come, child,' said her mistress as she entered, 'I would have thee
+sing to my lord the song that wandering harper taught thee.'
+
+'Madam, I have learned of no wandering harper: your ladyship means
+mistress Amanda's Welsh song! shall I call her?' said Dorothy,
+disappointed.
+
+'I mean thee, and thy song, thou green linnet!' rejoined lady
+Margaret. 'What song was it of which I said to thee that the singer
+deserved, for his very song's sake, that whereof he made his moan?
+Whence thou hadst it, from harper or bagpiper, I care not.'
+
+'Excuse me, madam, but why should I sing that you love not to hear?'
+
+'It is not I would hear it, child, but I would have my lord hear it.
+I would fain prove to him that there are songs in plain English, as
+he calls it, that have as little import, even to an English ear, as
+the plain truth-speaking Irish ditties which he will not understand.
+I say "WILL not," because our bards tell us that Irish was the
+language of Adam and Eve while yet in Paradise, and therefore he
+could by instinct understand it an' he would, even as the chickens
+understand their mother-tongue.'
+
+'I will sing it at your desire, madam; but I fear the worse fault
+will lie in the singing.'
+
+She seated herself at the harpsichord, and sang the following song
+with much feeling and simplicity. The refrain of the song, if it may
+be so called, instead of closing each stanza, preluded it.
+
+    O fair, O sweet, when I do look on thee,
+    In whom all joys so well agree,
+    Heart and soul do sing in me.
+      This you hear is not my tongue,
+      Which once said what I conceived,
+      For it was of use bereaved,
+      With a cruel answer stung.
+        No, though tongue to roof be cleaved,
+        Fearing lest he chastis'd be,
+        Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+    O fair, O sweet, &c.
+      Just accord all music makes:
+      In thee just accord excelleth,
+      Where each part in such peace dwelleth,
+      One of other beauty takes.
+        Since then truth to all minds telleth
+        That in thee lives harmony,
+        Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+    O fair, O sweet, &c.
+      They that heaven have known, do say
+      That whoso that grace obtaineth
+      To see what fair sight there reigneth,
+      Forced is to sing alway;
+        So then, since that heaven remaineth
+        In thy face, I plainly see,
+        Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+    O fair, O sweet, &c.
+      Sweet, think not I am at ease,
+      For because my chief part singeth;
+      This song from death's sorrow springeth,
+      As to Swan in last disease;
+        For no dumbness nor death bringeth
+        Stay to true love's melody:
+        Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+'There!' cried lady Margaret, with a merry laugh. 'What says the
+English song to my English husband?'
+
+'It says much, Margaret,' returned lord Herbert, who had been
+listening intently; 'it tells me to love you for ever.-What poet is
+he who wrote the song, mistress Dorothy? He is not of our day-that I
+can tell but too plainly. It is a good song, and saith much.'
+
+'I found it near the end of the book called "The Countess of
+Pembroke's Arcadia,"' replied Dorothy.
+
+'And I knew it not! Methought I had read all that man of men ever
+wrote,' said lord Herbert. 'But I may have read it, and let it slip.
+But now that, by the help of the music and thy singing, cousin
+Dorothy, I am come to understand it, truly I shall forget it no
+more. Where got'st thou the music, pray?'
+
+'It says in the book it was fitted to a certain Spanish tune, the
+name of which I knew not, and yet know not how to pronounce; but I
+had the look of the words in my head, and when I came upon some
+Spanish songs in an old chest at home, and, turning them over, saw
+those words, I knew I had found the tune to sir Philip's verses.'
+
+'Tell me then, my lord, why you are pleased with the song,' said
+lady Margaret, very quietly.
+
+'Come, mistress Dorothy,' said lord Herbert, 'repeat the song to my
+lady, slowly, line by line, and she will want no exposition
+thereon.'
+
+When Dorothy had done as he requested, lady Margaret put her arm
+round her husband's neck, laid her cheek to his, and said,
+
+'I am a goose, Ned. It is a fair and sweet song. I thank you,
+Dorothy. You shall sing it to me another time when my lord is away,
+and I shall love to think my lord was ill content with me when I
+called it a foolish thing. But my Irish was a good song too, my
+lord.'
+
+'Thy singing of it proves it, sweet heart.--But come, my fair
+minstrel, thou hast earned a good guerdon: what shall I give thee in
+return for thy song?'
+
+'A boon, a boon, my lord!' cried Dorothy.
+
+'It is thine ere thou ask it,' returned his lordship, merrily
+following up the old-fashioned phrase with like formality.
+
+'I must then tell my lord what hath been in my foolish mind ever
+since my lady took me to the keep, and I saw his marvellous array of
+engines. I would glady understand them, my lord. Who can fail to
+delight in such inventions as bring about that which before seemed
+impossible?'
+
+Here came a little sigh with the thought of her old companion
+Richard, and the things they had together contrived. Already, on the
+mist of gathering time, a halo had begun to glimmer about his head,
+puritan, fanatic, blasphemer even, as she had called him.
+
+Lord Herbert marked the soundless sigh.
+
+'You shall not sigh in vain, mistress Dorothy,' he said, 'for
+anything I can give you. To one who loves inventions it is easy to
+explain them. I hoped you had a hankering that way when I saw you
+look so curiously at the cross-bow ere you discharged it.'
+
+'Was it then charged, my lord?'
+
+'Indeed, as it happened, it was. A great steel-headed arrow lay in
+the groove. I ought to have taken that away when I bent it. Some
+passing horseman may have carried it with him in the body of his
+plunging steed.'
+
+'Oh, my lord!' cried Dorothy, aghast.
+
+'Pray, do not be alarmed, cousin: I but jested. Had anything
+happened, we should have heard of it. It was not in the least
+likely. You will not be long in this house before you learn that we
+do not speak by the card here. We jest not a little. But in truth I
+was disappointed when I found your curiosity so easily allayed.'
+
+'Indeed, my lord, it was not allayed, and is still unsatisfied. But
+I had no thought who it was offered me the knowledge I craved. Had I
+known, I should never have refused the lesson so courteously
+offered. But I was a stranger in the castle, and I thought-I feared
+I'
+
+'You did even as prudence required, cousin Dorothy. A young maiden
+cannot be too chary of unbuckling her enchanted armour so long as
+the country is unknown to her. But it would be hard if she were to
+suffer for her modesty. You shall be welcome to my cave. I trust you
+will not find it as the cave of Trophonius to you. If I am not
+there-and it is not now as it has been, when you might have found me
+in it every day, and almost every hour of the day; but if I be not
+there, do not fear Caspar Kaltoff, who is a worthy man, and as my
+right hand to do the things my brain deviseth. I will speak to him
+of thee. He is full of trust and worthiness, and, although not of
+gentle blood, is sprung from a long race of artificers, the cloak of
+whose gathered skill seems to have fallen on him. He hath been in my
+service now for many years, but you will be the first lady, gentle
+cousin, who has ever in all that time wished us good speed in our
+endeavours. How few know,' he went on thoughtfully, after a pause,
+'what a joy lies in making things obey thoughts! in calling out of
+the mind, as from the vasty-deep, and setting in visible presence
+before the bodily eye, that which till then had neither local
+habitation nor name! Some such marvels I have to show--for marvels I
+must call them, although it is my voice they have obeyed to come;
+and I never lose sight of the marvel even while amusing myself with
+the merest toy of my own invention.'
+
+He paused, and Dorothy ventured to speak.
+
+'I thank you, my lord, with all my heart. When have I leave to visit
+those marvels?'
+
+'When you please. If I am not there, Caspar will be. If Caspar is
+not there, you will find the door open, for to enter that chamber
+without permission would be a breach of law such as not a soul in
+Raglan would dare be guilty of. And were it not so, there are few
+indeed in the place who would venture to set foot in it if I were
+absent, for it is not outside the castle walls only that I am looked
+upon as a magician. The armourer firmly believes that with a word
+uttered in my den there, I could make the weakest wall of the castle
+impregnable, but that it would be at too great a cost. If you come
+to-morrow morning you will find me almost certainly. But in case you
+should find neither of us--do not touch anything; be content with
+looking--for fear of mischance. Engines are as tickle to meddle with
+as incantations them selves.'
+
+'If I know myself, you may trust me, my lord,' said Dorothy, to
+which he replied with a smile of confidence.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+DOROTHY'S INITIATION.
+
+
+
+
+
+There was much about the castle itself to interest Dorothy. She had
+already begun the attempt to gather a clear notion of its many parts
+and their relations, but the knowledge of the building could not
+well advance more rapidly than her acquaintance with its inmates,
+for little was to be done from the outside alone, and she could not
+bear to be met in strange places by strange people. So that part of
+her education-I use the word advisedly, for to know all about the
+parts of an old building may do more for the education of minds of a
+certain stamp than the severest course of logic-must wait upon time
+and opportunity.
+
+Every day, often twice, sometimes thrice, she would visit the
+stable-yard, and have an interview first with the chained Marquis,
+and then with her little horse. After that she would seldom miss
+looking in at the armourer's shop, and spending a few minutes in
+watching him at his work, so that she was soon familiar with all
+sorts of armour favoured in the castle. The blacksmiths' and the
+carpenters' shops were also an attraction to her, and it was not
+long before she knew all the artisans about the place. There were
+the farm and poultry yards too, with which kinds of place she was
+familiar--especially with their animals and all their ways. The
+very wild beasts in their dens in the solid basement of the kitchen
+tower--a panther, two leopards, an ounce, and a toothless old lion
+had already begun to know her a little, for she never went near
+their cages without carrying them something to eat. For all these
+visits there was plenty of room, lady Margaret never requiring much
+of her time in the early part of the day, and finding the reports
+she brought of what was going on always amusing. And now the
+orchards and gardens would soon be inviting, for the heart of the
+world was already sending up its blood to dye the apple blossoms.
+
+But all the opportunities she yet had were less than was needful for
+the development of such a mind as Dorothy's, which, powerful in
+itself, needed to be roused, and was slow in its movements except
+when excited by a quick succession of objects, or the contact of a
+kindred but busier nature. It was lacking not only in generative,
+but in self-moving energy. Of self-sustaining force she had
+abundance.
+
+There was a really fine library in the castle, to which she had free
+access, and whence, now and then, lady Margaret would make her bring
+a book from which to read aloud, while she and her other ladies were
+at work; but books were not enough to rouse Dorothy, and when
+inclined to read she would return too exclusively to what she
+already knew, making little effort to extend her gleaning-ground.
+
+From this fragment of analysis it will be seen that the new resource
+thus opened to her might prove of more consequence than, great as
+were her expectations from it, she was yet able to anticipate. But
+infinitely greater good than any knowledge of his mechanical
+triumphs could bring her, was on its way to Dorothy along the path
+of growing acquaintance with the noble-minded inventor himself.
+
+The next morning, then, she was up before the sun, and, sitting at
+her window, awaited his arrival. The moment he shone upon the gilded
+cock of the bell tower, she rose and hastened out, eager to taste of
+the sweets promised her; stood a moment to gaze on the limpid stream
+ever flowing from the mouth of the white horse, and wonder whence
+that and the whale-spouts he so frequently sent aloft from his
+nostrils came; then passing through the archway and over the bridge,
+found herself at the magician's door. For a moment she hesitated:
+from within came such a tumult of hammering, that plainly it was of
+no use to knock, and she could not at once bring herself to enter
+unannounced and uninvited. But confidence in lord Herbert soon
+aroused her courage, and gently she opened the door and peeped in.
+There he stood, in a linen frock that reached from his neck to his
+knees, already hard at work at a small anvil on a bench, while
+Caspar was still harder at work at a huge anvil on the ground in
+front of a forge. This, with the mighty bellows attached to it,
+occupied one of the six sides of the room, and the great roaring,
+hissing thing that had so frightened lady Margaret, now silent and
+cold, occupied another. Neither of the men saw her. So she entered,
+closed the door, and approached lord Herbert, but he continued
+unaware of her presence until she spoke. Then he ceased his
+hammering, turned, and greeted her with his usual smile of sincerity
+absolute.
+
+'Are you always as true to your appointments, cousin?' he said, and
+resumed his hammering.
+
+'It was hardly an appointment, my lord, and yet here I am,' said
+Dorothy.
+
+'And you mean to infer that----?'
+
+'An appointment is no slight matter, my lord, or one that admits of
+breaking.'
+
+'Right,' returned his lordship, still hammering at the thin plate of
+whitish metal growing thinner and thinner under his blows. Dorothy
+glanced around her for a moment.
+
+'I would not be troublesome, my lord,' she said; 'but would you tell
+me in a few words what it is you make here?'
+
+'Had I three tongues, and thou three ears,' answered lord Herbert,
+'I could not. But look round thee, cousin, and when thou spiest the
+thing that draws thine eye more than another, ask me concerning
+that, and I will tell thee.'
+
+Hardly had Dorothy, in obedience, cast her eyes about the place, ere
+they lighted on the same huge wheel which had before chiefly
+attracted her notice.
+
+'What is that great wheel for, with such a number of weights hung to
+it?' she asked.
+
+'For a memorial,' replied lord Herbert, 'of the folly of the man who
+placeth his hopes in man. That wonderful engine; it is now nearly
+three years since I showed it to his blessed majesty in the Tower of
+London, also with him to the dukes of Richmond and Hamilton, and two
+extraordinary ambassadors besides, but of them all no man hath ever
+sought to look upon it again. It is a form of the Proteus-like
+perpetuum mobile-a most incredible thing if not seen.'
+
+He then proceeded to show her how, as every spoke passed the highest
+point, the weight attached to it immediately hung a foot farther
+from the centre of the wheel, and as every spoke passed the lowest
+point, its weight returned a foot nearer to the centre, thus causing
+the leverage to be greater always on one and the same side of the
+wheel. Few of my readers will regret so much as myself that I am
+unable to give them the constructive explanation his lordship gave
+Dorothy as to the shifting of the weights. Whether she understood it
+or not, I cannot tell either, but that is of less consequence.
+Before she left the workshop that morning, she had learned that a
+thousand knowledges are needed to build up the pyramid on whose top
+alone will the bird of knowledge lay her new egg.
+
+When he had finished his explanation, lord Herbert returned to his
+work, leaving Dorothy again to her own observations. And now she
+would gladly have questioned him about the huge mass of brick and
+iron, which, now standing silent, cold, and motionless as death, had
+that night seemed alive with the fierce energy of flame, and yet
+sorely driven, sighing, and groaning, and furiously hissing; but as
+it was not now at work, she thought it would be better to wait an
+opportunity when it should be in the agony of its wrestle with
+whatever unseen enemy it coped withal. She did not know that, the
+first of its race, it was not quite equal to the task the magician
+had imposed upon it, but that its descendants would at length become
+capable of doing a thousand times as much, with the swinging joy of
+conscious might, with the pant of the giant, not the groan of the
+overtasked stripling urging his last effort.
+
+She was standing by a chest, examining the strangely elaborate and
+mysterious-looking scutcheon of its lock, when his lordship's
+hammering ceased, and presently she found that he was by her side.
+
+'That escutcheon is the best thing of the kind I have yet made,' he
+said. 'A humour I have, never to be contented to produce any
+invention the second time, without appearing refined. The lock and
+key of this are in themselves a marvel, for the little triangle
+screwed key weighs no more than a shilling, and yet it bolts and
+unbolts an hundred bolts through fifty staples round about the
+chest, and as many more from both sides and ends, and at the self-
+same time shall fasten it to a place beyond a man's natural strength
+to take it away. But the best thing is the escutcheon; for the owner
+of it, though a woman, may with her own delicate hand vary the ways
+of coming to open the lock ten millions of times, beyond the
+knowledge of the smith that made it, or of me who invented it. If a
+stranger open it, it setteth an alarm agoing, which the stranger
+cannot stop from running out; and besides, though none should .be
+within hearing, yet it catcheth his hand, as a trap doth a fox; and
+though far from maiming him, yet it leaveth such a mark behind it,
+as will discover him if suspected; the escutcheon or lock plainly
+showing what moneys he hath taken out of the box to a farthing, and
+how many times opened since the owner hath been at it.'
+
+He then showed her how to set it, left the chest open, and gave her
+the key off his bunch that she might use it more easily. Ere she
+returned it, she had made herself mistress of the escutcheon as far
+as the mere working of it was concerned, as she proved to the
+satisfaction of the inventor.
+
+Her docility and quickness greatly pleased him. He opened a cabinet,
+and after a search in its drawers, took from it a little thing, in
+form and colour like a plum, which he gave her, telling her to eat
+it. She saw from his smile that there was something at the back of
+the playful request, and for a moment hesitated, but reading in his
+countenance that he wished her at least to make the attempt, she put
+it in her mouth.
+
+She was gagged. She could neither open nor shut her mouth a hair's
+breadth, could neither laugh, cry out, nor make any noise beyond an
+ugly one she would not make twice. The tears came into her eyes, for
+her position was ludicrous, and she imagined that his lordship was
+making game of her. A girl less serious or more merry would have
+been moved only to laughter.
+
+But lord Herbert hastened to relieve her. On the application of a
+tiny key, fixed with a joint in a finger-ring, the little steel
+bolts it had thrown out in every direction returned within the plum,
+and he drew it from her mouth.
+
+'You little fool!' he said, with indescribable sweetness, for he saw
+the tears in her eyes; 'did you think I would hurt you? '
+
+'No, my lord; but I did fear you were going to make game of me. I
+could not have borne Caspar to see me so.'
+
+'Alas, my poor child!' he rejoined, 'you have come to the wrong
+house if you cannot put up with a little chafing. There!' he added,
+putting the plum in her hand, 'it is an untoothsome thing, but the
+moment may come when you will find it useful enough to repay you for
+the annoyance of a smile that had in it ten times more friendship
+than merriment.'
+
+'I ask your pardon, my lord,' said Dorothy, by this time blushing
+deep with shame of her mistrust and over-sensitiveness, and on the
+point of crying downright. But his lordship smiled so kindly that
+she took heart and smiled again.
+
+He then showed her how to raise the key hid in the ring, and how to
+unlock the plum.
+
+'Do not try it on yourself,' he said, as he put the ring on her
+finger; 'you might find that awkward.'
+
+'Be sure I shall avoid it, my lord,' returned Dorothy.
+
+'And do not let any one know you have such a thing,' he said, 'or
+that there is a key in your ring.'
+
+'I will try not, my lord.'
+
+The breakfast bell rang.
+
+'If you will come again after supper,' he said, as he pulled off his
+linen frock, 'I will show you my fire-engine at work, and tell you
+all that is needful to the understanding thereof;--only you must
+not publish it to the world,' he added, 'for I mean to make much
+gain by my invention.'
+
+Dorothy promised, and they parted--lord Herbert for the marquis's
+parlour, Dorothy for the housekeeper's room, and Caspar for the
+third table in the great hall.
+
+After breakfast Dorothy practised with her plum until she could
+manage it with as much readiness as ease. She found that it was made
+of steel, and that the bolts it threw out upon the slightest
+pressure were so rounded and polished that they could not hurt,
+while nothing but the key would reduce them again within their
+former sheath.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of St. George and St. Michael Vol. I
+by George MacDonald
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL ***
+
+This file should be named 5750.txt or 5750.zip
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
+and the Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/5750.zip b/5750.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07594b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/5750.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad2cd24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #5750 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5750)