path: root/74255-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74255 ***
[Transcriber's note: The source book had variant page headers.  These
have been changed to Sidenotes, positioned at the paragraph that
seemed most pertinent.]





[Frontispiece: RUMSEY'S GUILT REVEALED TO THE KING--_Page_ 272]



  Traitor or Patriot?

  A Tale of the Rye-House Plot



  BY

  MARY C. ROWSELL

  Author of "Thorndyke Manor" "The Pedlar and his Dog"
  "Fisherman Grim" &c.



  _ILLUSTRATED BY C. O. MURRAY
  AND C. J. STANILAND_



  BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
  LONDON GLASGOW DUBLIN BOMBAY




PREFACE.

This story is for the most part a romantic rendering of a very
obscure episode in the story of the reign of Charles the Second.  It
does not pretend to more historical accuracy than belongs to other
romances which are spun from a thread of fact on a spool of fiction,
but it may be mentioned that the scenes and the actors are mostly
real, and it should be remembered that the story of the Rye-house
Plot (1683) as told in authentic records is strangely vague.  That
there was a plot--that the King's house at Newmarket was burnt, or at
least that part of it containing the royal apartments was on
fire--and that Charles escaped, are the certain points of the story.
The details are left very much to imagination, and as fancy is free,
"one story is good till another is told."




  CONTENTS.


  CHAP.

  I. "Queen Ruth"
  II. How a Mysterious Coal Barge came to the "King's Arms"
  III. Maudlin Sweetapple
  IV. The Old Rye House
  V. How Master Rumbold told Lawrence Lee what
     the very Air might not hear
  VI. Something in the Water
  VII. Mistress Sheppard does not care for her Guests
  VIII. Moonrakers
  IX. In the Malt-yard
  X. The Meeting on the Foot-bridge
  XI. "He Died for his King"
  XII. Mother Goose's Tales
  XIII. The Sliding Panel
  XIV. In the Warder's Room
  XV. The Plot Thickens
  XVI. A Little Difference of Opinion
  XVII. "Dead Men tell no Tales"
  XVIII. "God Save the King!"
  XIX. "Stars and Garters"
  XX. "A Friend in Need,"
  XXI. "A Friend Indeed"
  XXII. Our Sovereign Lord the King
  XXIII. "Did you not Know?" she said
  XXIV. Lawrence Sleeps on it
  XXV. Supper at the "Silver Leopard"
  XXVI. "Fire! Fire!"
  XXVII. "In the Night all Cats are Gray"
  XXVIII. Father and Daughter
  XXIX. A Welcome Home
  XXX. A Traveller from Newmarket
  XXXI. Rumsey meets his Match
  XXXII. "So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
         What's yet behind, that's meet you all should
         know"




ILLUSTRATIONS.


Rumsey's Guilt revealed to the King ... _Frontispiece_

Ruth and Lawrence succour Sheriff Goodenough

Lawrence Lee encounters Mr. Flippet

Lawrence Lee saves the King




TRAITOR OR PATRIOT?

A TALE OF THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT.



CHAPTER I.

"QUEEN RUTH."

May-day!  None of your raw, drizzling, windy, nineteenth-century
May-days, when folks, chilled to their marrow-bones, draw their old
cloaks and coats about them and beg for a cozy blaze in place of the
smart new "ornament for the fire-stove." No; a right-down,
unmistakable, fine old English first of May, with a fine old English
sun, gradually assuming roseate hues, and setting the heavens in a
glow as he slopes westward behind the trees of Epping Forest, casting
long shadows athwart the smooth-shaven grass-plot which carpets the
forecourt of a fine old many-gabled Hertfordshire farm-house; while
his dying brilliancy gilds the broken summits of the ruined
gate-house overshadowing it, and illumines the fresh tints of the
cowslips, and earliest summer flower-garlands, festooned with many a
gay ribbon-knot about a May-pole towering to the cloudless sky.
Around this a group of young folks are merrily footing it to the tune
of "Phillida flouts me," which the fifers and fiddlers, mounted on a
table beneath the big spreading yew-tree, are braying out with a will.

[Sidenote: Spring-tide.]

And the Queen of the May?  Well, there she is; that--.  But no; what
differs more than taste on these points? and you must decide for
yourself concerning the value of her claims on beauty.  To you it may
seem that many of those bright eyes, and laughing lips, and all the
rest of it, rival the charms of Queen Ruth, Young Mistress Ruth
Rumbold, the only child of Master Richard Rumbold of the Rye House,
whose embattled gate-tower roof just shows yonder through the trees,
with its gilded vane gleaming in the setting sun-rays.  But then you
do not know Ruth as all these good people have known her for fifteen
years turned last Martlemas-tide, when she was left a motherless
three months old babe to the care of Nurse Maudlin--Maudlin
Sweetapple.  Therefore it is hardly possible for you to conceive how
entirely she has won the affection, even of creatures commonly
reported to be destitute of it; such as Gammer Grip, the miserly old
hunks who lives in the tumble-down hut over against the crossways,
and of Growler and Grab, the Nether Hall watch-dogs and terrors of
the neighbourhood.

[Sidenote: The maltster's daughter.]

So possibly it has come to pass, that love has clothed little
Mistress Ruth about with a beauty strangers might not be able to see.
For you, the gray eyes so frankly meeting yours from beneath their
long dark lashes and the well-defined brows might be too grave and
thoughtful, though indeed, quite to decide, you should wait till she
speaks.  The tip of that little nose, to please your classical
notions, ought not possibly to assert its right of way as it does, in
just the slightest of upward directions.  Neither is her mouth of the
"button-hole" or "two-cherries-on-one-stalk" order; though it is a
handsome, sweet-tempered mouth enough, with its resolute yet mobile
curves when the red lips part to speak or to smile.  Then again, her
hair is neither sunny nor raven-black, as it behoves heroines' hair
to be; but then she did not look to be a heroine, this Hertfordshire
maltster's daughter.  Nor was it of the tawny red the fine ladies of
those Merry Monarch days delighted to dye their locks; but just of an
ordinary middling shade of brown, with the faint ripple of a natural
curl on her white forehead, and something of the sort which defied
the silken snood, and saucily insisted on straying at pleasure about
the nape of her slender neck.  As to her hands, they were as well
moulded and serviceable a little pair as you might wish to see; and
if they were a trifle browner than modish maidens might have
considered altogether the thing, the sun, and the churn, and the
delicious home-made bread, and such like things, were possibly
responsible; but an ocean of milk of roses itself, could not have
been so soft and sweet as their touch, if you needed help from them
in any pain or trouble befalling you.

Doubtless as pretty a pair of feet as hers were to be found in the
shire; but if Cinderella's own were smaller--IF they were--they could
not have been prettier; and let her wear what she might, those
partial people who knew her, declared that Ruth Rumbold's clothes
always became her.  Be that as it may, very certain it is that that
kirtle of flowered chintz looped above the pink-and-white striped
tiffany petticoat marvellously becomes her trim figure, and matches
bravely with the red and snow white hawthorn wreath crowning her
shapely head; and never, declare her loving lieges, was fairer Queen
of May than this Queen Ruth.

[Sidenote: The master of Nether Hall.]

Her Majesty's partner in the dance now being so spiritedly carried
on, is the lord of those May-day revels, Lawrence Lee, the young
master of the Nether Hall farm.  The natural order of the festivities
would assign him the distinction; but in this particular instance it
is no empty one.  Left to his choosing, he would in every probability
have invited Ruth, queen or no queen, to dance with him, for the two
were fast friends; and such they had been since first Madam Lee,
Lawrence's mother, had gone with her own five-year-old boy toddling
beside her, across the fields to the Rye House; and there, taking the
motherless baby Ruth in her kind arms, she had tenderly kissed the
winsome face; and the little boy saw with wondering awe how some
tears were left shining, bright as dewdrops on daisy flowers, upon
the placid sleeping eyelids as she laid the little creature down
again in its cradle.  "We must love her dearly, for she has no
mother," murmured Madam Lee; and so faithfully had Lawrence backed up
her proposition from that day forward, that his affection had gone on
growing with his own inches; and if he loved Ruth when he paddled, a
barefooted urchin, along with the ducks about the reedy shallows of
the moat, inveigling her to the like unlawful courses, she was every
whit as dear to him now that he stood a good five feet eleven in his
buff boots.

As handsome a young fellow as you were likely to meet on a long
summer day's journey, with his lithe figure, dark eyes, and crisp
locks, was this young master, now in fact and in right, of the Nether
Hall farm and its broad acres, since he became turned of twenty-one
last Shrovetide, as for quite two years before he had been to all
intents and purposes; for his farming genius was inborn, and he was
never happier than when he was busy among his barns and his hayfields.

[Sidenote: A secret.]

Possibly Lawrence Lee carries his liking for hard work so far, that
holiday-making bores him.  At all events, let him succeed as he may
in cheating his guests generally into admiration of his high spirits,
his efforts at gaiety are so exaggerated and fitful that Ruth is not
for an instant to be imposed upon by them.  And when at last the
dance is done, and the syllabub is being handed round, and the two
stroll away into the hornbeam maze, which brings you, if you are
acquainted with its mysteries, to the field-path leading straight to
the river's brink, the good folks would stare to see--or can it be
the leafy shadows which so heavily darken those two young faces?
Nay; the shadows are from within, as if black care were busy at their
hearts.  Yet with a difference; for while Lawrence's brow is brooding
and abstracted, Ruth's eyes are full of wistful anxiety; and with her
little hand tight in his clasp the two silently thread the maze,
until suddenly the fiddles and fifes strike up afresh; and this time
their tune is "Begone Dull Care."

"Let us go back," said Lawrence, breaking from his moody silence into
a laugh of forced merriment, "and enjoy ourselves while we can.
Come, Ruth, one more dance," and he seized her by both hands.

"No," she answered.  "I must go, Lawrence; and at once.  It will be
almost dark now before I am home, and father will be angry."

[Sidenote: On the River Lea.]

Lee's brow fell again; but he only said, "As you will;" and they
walked on till they reached the river's brink, where a small boat,
newly painted, and decked with ribbon-tied cowslip and daisy posies,
lay moored to a stout stake.

Lawrence's customary mode of transplanting Ruth from dry land to his
little craft, was to catch her light figure in his stalwart arms and
seat her in the stern "before she knew where she was," as she would
say with terrific frowns.  To-night, however, he soberly--did she
fancy it was even a trifle absently?--assisted her in with his right
hand.  That this new order of things had not escaped her notice, some
look in her face made him uncomfortably conscious.

"Is your majesty well placed?" he asked, affecting to laugh as he
took the sculls and paddled out into mid-stream.

"We should be so," she replied with mock gravity, drawing up the
rudder cords.  "Thanks to your lordship's ceremony in seating us."

"That," returned he, breaking into a smile of unfeigned amusement at
her lofty air, "is no more than what is due to your majesty's supreme
rank from your majesty's most loyal subject."

"We find that good hearing," said Queen Ruth, "since we are convinced
that my Lord Lawrence Lee always feels in his heart what his speech
professes."

[Sidenote: A troubled heart.]

Her words were jestingly uttered; but the young man bit his lip hard;
and his cheek grew white, as if some sharp sudden pain had stung him.

"Lawrence!" cried Ruth, starting and bending forward, "what is the
matter?  You are ill."

"Not I, dear heart," replied he, sweeping one hand hurriedly across
his face.

"You are so pale," she insisted.

"Tired," laconically said he, vigorously plying his oars.  "With that
last measure, you know," he added in explanatory tones, as she opened
her eyes rather contemptuously.

"For my part," she said, "I am not so delicate, and could have danced
on till daylight again.  Though in that case, 'tis clear, I should
have had to be beholden to another partner," she added, with saucy
composure.

"Not while I had a leg to stand on," briskly returned he.  "But the
fact is--well, I must be getting old, eh Ruth?"

"A whole quarter of a century.  In four years more," interrupted she,
with a ringing laugh.

"And that is ever so far on towards the half of a lifetime," he
murmured thoughtfully to himself, "even supposing one is let live it
through in peace.  Well," he added, in a louder key, "'tis certain
age brings a peck of cares, Ruth."

"Tell me some of yours," said she coaxingly, "so that I may share the
burden of them.  Shall I not?" she pleaded on in gentle earnest tones.

"Heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated the young man.  "Heaven forbid
you should ever do that, child!  There must come never a cloud to
darken little Ruth's days."

[Sidenote: Cross-purposes.]

"And yet I think mine can scarce be all sunshine if yours are--mind!
mind!  There you go!  Running right into the mudbank!"

"Then must my steerswoman be to blame," laughed he.  "Pull to the
right, Ruth."

"I hate secrets," she pouted, doing as he directed.

"There are some things," rejoined the superior creature, "girls can't
understand."

"Then, to be sure, I think they cannot be good for boys--we crave
your lordship's pardon--MEN we should have said;" and Ruth hemmed a
little correcting cough--"to meddle with; And--  There you are again.
All in the osier tangle now!"

"Confound it! and whose fault but yours?" he cried petulantly.
"Didn't I bid you keep to the right?"

"And how am I to see what I'm doing, pray, if you will bob your head
about in that fashion?" retorted she, irately knitting her brows.
"Lawrence, dear, what's your mighty secret?" she added, in
honey-sweet tones.

"Who said I had one?" flashed he.  "How stupid and disagreeable you
are to-night, Ruth!  What is it you want?"

"Only for you to be nice again.  Dear, nice, happy, old Lawrence."

[Sidenote: Stillness but not peace.]

"Nice! happy! psha! bah! hang it!  A fellow's nowhere with you girls
if he isn't always up in the seventh heaven!" grunted Lawrence, and
then he rowed on in sulky silence between the low-lying meadow banks,
where the quiet oxen stood plunged knee-deep in the fresh young
buttercup-studded grass, lazily sniffing in the fragrant evening air,
all translucent with the greenish golden tints of mingled young
moon-beams, and the last rays of the setting sun.  Save the low
chirp, chirp, twee of the birds settling to their nests among the
pollard willows, and the ripple of the water about the boat's prow,
not a sound broke the stillness, till a somewhat sharp bend of the
river brought them in sight of a wooden bridge, overshadowed to its
right by a thicket of tall beeches and brushwood; while leftwards, a
narrow road threaded on across it to a second bridge, spanning
another stream that gleamed gray and still as glass between straight
high-lying banks scarcely twenty yards beyond; and so winding on,
over a waste of level common land, till it was lost in distance.

Dimly discernible through the copse to the right of the first bridge
were the walls of a quaintly-timbered, many-gabled, two-storied
house, whose latticed casements and trellised porch gleamed in the
night's soft radiance; whilst a huge sign, bearing the royal arms,
swung in its carved oaken framework, which projected from between the
windows of the upper storey, right across the narrow road above the
lofty wall of red brick which ran facing the inn for some distance.

[Sidenote: Master Rumbold on the watch]

Close down on a tiny landing-stage, by the nearer bridge's foot, a
man stood watching the approach of the boat with his one available
eye.  The other, blurred and blemished apparently past all service,
aggravated the naturally stern and sinister expression of features
passable and even handsome, to which his puritanical pot-hat,
leathern-belted, black, close-fitting doublet and plain white linen
collar lent no relief.  Neither did the knitting of his sombre brows
relax, but rather gathered more heavily, as Lee made fast the boat
and Ruth sprang lightly to the bank.




CHAPTER II.

HOW A MYSTERIOUS COAL BARGE CAME TO THE "KING'S ARMS."

"You are late, girl," he said gloomily.

"Nay, father," answered Ruth, glancing from his face towards the
still brilliant westward horizon.  "'Tis not yet seven o'clock."

"Tush!" he rejoined impatiently.  "I'll have no more of these
gaddings.  And hark you, young mistress, no more of these vanities
neither;" and he looked as he spoke, in angry contempt at her dainty
skirts.  "In with you at once and lay them away.  Or better still,
cast them into the kitchen fire.  And as for this," he went on,
roughly clutching at her hawthorn wreath, and dragging it from her
head, he flung it into the water, "Let that settle it."

[Sidenote: A gloomy end to May-day.]

Tears of grief and indignation sparkled into Ruth's eyes, as she
watched the beautiful flowers whirled by the eddying tide into deep
water; but by a strong effort she restrained herself, and only said
in tones of gentle reproach, "'Twas my crown, father.  They made me
Queen of May."

"Queen! crown! forsooth! did they so?" he said, with a bitter smile.
"How is it the very stones do not cry out against this restoring in
our unhappy country of these mummings and pagan holidays?  Is it not
enough to be having queens--ay, and kings--of flesh and blood
wantoning it at Whitehall, but we must be seeing modest maidens aping
their antics, and behaving in this fashion?"

"Nay, Master Rumbold," said Lee, "our people desired to do Ruth an
honour; and I think you should be proud."

"I should be prouder," returned Rumbold, turning irefully on the
young man, "to see her in her winding-sheet, a pale white--Marry! and
let me look at your face now, Mistress," he went on, snatching her
roughly by the chin.  "Ha! red as your gaudy flowers there!  So!  I
guessed as much.  And there has been romping, has there?"

"Nay, father; just a little turn or two at Hoodman Blind, and Hunt
the Slipper."

"What next?" said Rumbold groaningly, and turning up his eye.

"And--and a measure," faltered the truthful Ruth.

"Dancing!" and now the stern eye glared.

"Only round--round the Maypole, father."

Rumbold's lips parted with a jerk, as if he was about to break into
still sharper rebuke; but as his eye caught the expression of
Lawrence's face he contented himself with reiterating his dismissal.

"Good night, father," said Ruth, lifting her face to his, but Rumbold
did not, or affected not to see.  He was standing absorbed in
watching the approach of a big black coal-laden barge which now hove
lumbering in sight through the middle span of the bridge.

[Sidenote: The queen's crown goes down.]

As the boat cleared into open stream again her huge black bows came
athwart the poor drowning May garland, and swirled it deep down under
water.

Whether the unfortunate wreath's destruction afforded Rumbold special
pleasure, or that some other cause originated the grim smile slowly
breaking on his gloomy lips, who shall say?  The look at all events
roused Lee's ire, and he said in tones of indignant reproach, which
he seemed at small pains to conceal, "Your daughter bids you
good-night, Master Rumbold."

The maltster started from his abstraction, and imprinting a cold kiss
on Ruth's upturned brow, waved her away with a gesture of impatience,
and resumed his contemplation of the barge.

Now, in Ruth's eyes coal-laden barges were things as ugly almost as
they were common up and down their little silver Lea; and the rapt
interest her father appeared to be taking in this one and particular
specimen of its class, attracted her wonder and curiosity.

To her the boat seemed only more than a usually hideous one, by
reason of its cruel destruction of her May crown; and partly in
search of sympathy, partly in good-night, she stole a glance at
Lawrence Lee.  Alack!  He had seemingly forgotten her very existence,
so absorbed was he also in following the course of the barge.  "And
this," thought Ruth, swallowing back a rising lump in her throat, was
"the end of the delightfullest day she had ever spent!"  Truly, as
once she had read somewhere in some dusty fusty old book, "a merry
going out makes a mournful coming in," and she turned with lagging
and sorrowful step up the grassy slope, pausing, however, within a
few yards of the road, which was fringed with a thick growth of
bracken and bramble, to cast one more wistful glance at Lawrence, and
to see whether the odious barge had taken itself out of sight.

Nothing of the sort.  There stood the young man with folded arms, and
brows gloomily knit, watching the boat, which was now turning from
midstream.  A minute more, and it floated up to a standstill
alongside of the water steps, near the bottom of the inn garden.

[Sidenote: Mysterious visitors.]

The willow boughs interlace and hang so heavily over the white wooden
paling which skirts the garden by the water's edge, and cast such
bewildering shadows in the now fast gathering darkness, that Ruth
cannot be certain of the precise number of figures all wearing
broad-brimmed slouch hats and long black cloaks, which rise, as she
looks, from the depths of the barge, and springing in hot haste to
the bank, as quickly disappear in the direction of the inn yard.

Two--three--five--seven, and Ruth, despite her chagrins, was
beginning to smile at the vision she has conjured up of Mistress
Sheppard's face when she should see this concourse of barge-men,
coal-heavers, or whatever they might be, besieging her kitchen door.
"A scurvy lot, quotha!" could not Ruth hear her grumbling over it all
as plain as if she really spoke?  "A scurvy lot!  Each of them, of
course, looking for his cup of her home-brewed cider for their
invaluable aid of landing a few coals."

Suddenly the lean, thread-paper body of Mistress Sheppard's husband
showed among the gooseberry bushes, describing, as it neared the
steps, the acute angles which always marked his fashion of welcoming
distinguished guests to his hostelry.

[Sidenote: Strange cargo.]

"Here!" at the same moment said a voice from the barge in low tones,
but of which every syllable was audible to Ruth through the utter
silence around.  "Lend a hand, can't you?" and then rose up another
figure, habited like the rest, but with the folds of his mantle flung
far back over his shoulders, leaving his arms free to encompass a
load covered with a large piece of tarry canvas.  This man's burden,
judging by his swaying gait, must have been of no light weight,
"They're not feathers," he growled, as he laboured with it to the
broad top of the barge's sides.

"All right!" eagerly said the voice of Rumbold as he advanced to the
steps.  "Come along in, quick, Colonel.  We'll unload presently."

"That's as you please," returned the other.  "But by your leave we'll
be having these under cover at once.  They were tempered Venice way;
and your own pretty daughter wouldn't get so much harm from the night
dews, as they would.  By the by,--little Mistress Ruth, she is safe
indoors and abed?"

"Ay," sullenly grunted Rumbold.  "That's my affair, I doubt, Colonel
Rumsey."

"No offence," returned the other.  "I just ventured to ask the
question, because I had a notion that I caught a glimpse of young
Farmer Lee's brown jerkin among the yew trunks yonder as we were
clearing the bridge."

"And what if you did?  Isn't he one of us?" said the maltster,
casting a careless glance round.

[Sidenote: A startling accident.]

"True," answered Rumsey, in rather lagging tones.  "He's a necessary
evil, as you explained, for the use his premises may be to us; but
I'd as lief he'd been out of the bargain if't had been possible.
He's but a stripling; and old heads are the only ones for our sort of
work, depend upon't.  There's what one may call a kind of
touch-and-go slipperiness"--  The rest of what the speaker might be
having to say was lost in a deafening clash of steel, while he
himself disappeared totally from Ruth's range of sight, in what
seemed a flash of blue lightning.

"Lookye, Colonel!" said Rumbold, when, after a brief interval, he had
succeeded, with Master Sheppard's aid, in hauling Rumsey to his feet
again and landing him safe on the top of the steps.  "Half an inch
more and you'd have been under water."

"'Twas those confounded nettles," growled the discomfited Rumsey,
rubbing himself all over, and glaring vindictively behind him at the
dank weed tangle all crushed into greenish mud under his heavy
weight, while Rumbold and Sheppard busied themselves in hastily
collecting the scattered contents of the fallen load.  "Have you got
them all?"

"Ay, ay," answered Rumbold.  "Come along, Colonel.  They're waiting
for us."

"There were twelve," said Rumsey.

"Well, well, we can make another search presently," impatiently
returned Rumbold.  "There's no fear.  The place hereabouts is
haunted, the credulous yokels will tell you; and they'd sooner die
than set foot in it after nightfall.  So come.  Have with you, Master
Sheppard."

And followed by Sheppard the two walked towards the house.

[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee hesitates.]

And Lawrence?  What has been his share in this unexpected scene?
Hardly that of an amazed spectator, Ruth thinks, while she watches
the hurried, half-stealthy nod of recognition bestowed on him by the
new-comer, as the three men pass within a few yards of the spot where
he is standing.  Gloomily the young man returns their greeting, but
he remains motionless as any stone statue, making no attempt to join
them; and when they have disappeared he casts a wistful glance at his
own little craft, where she lies moored in a fall flood of moonlight,
and sighing so heavily that Ruth can hear the sound of it ever so
distinctly in the silence, for not so much as a leaf is stirring now
Then he turns, and, taking the narrow footpath leading to the front
porch of the inn, is lost in its shadows.

[Sidenote: The postern gate.]

Ruth rose from her hiding-place, listening intently.  All quiet at
last; and gathering the tiffany skirts close about her, she sped like
a lapwing through the brushwood towards a little postern-gate in the
red wall, and tapped at it softly.




CHAPTER III.

MAUDLIN SWEETAPPLE.

"Marry! and so here you be at last, child!" said a half-glad,
half-chiding, cracked, treble voice, as a brown withered hand
unfastened the door from within.  "Have you seen your father?"

"Let me come in, Maudlin, dear.  Quick!" was all Ruth's response as
she hurriedly slipped inside; and then, carefully closing the
postern, she seized Maudlin by the elbow, and dragged her along the
gravel path till they stood under a groined arch, in whose recesses
two stout nail-studded oaken doors faced each other.

Pushing open the one to the right, which stood ajar and yielded at
once to her touch, Ruth lifted a curtain of tapestry hanging on its
inner side, and entered a spacious oak-wainscoted chamber, whose
handsome but old-fashioned and well-worn furniture showed dimly in
the light of the log-fire burning on the hearth.

"Yes," she said, at last answering the old woman's question.  "He was
down by the bridge."

"That's well," said Maudlin, heaving a sigh of relief, as she sank
into a big comfortable armed chair beside the hearth, "for he seemed
main put about that you tarried so late.  Tho', as I said to him:
'Tis but once in our lives we're young, Master Rumbold,' I said.  And
have you had a good time of it, dear heart?  Marry! you've been as
blithe as a cricket, I'll warrant; and Master Lee, did he row thee
along home in his boat, lady-bird?"

"Of course he did," replied Ruth, stooping down over the hearth, and
busying herself with mending the fire with the stray bits of
smouldering log.

"Of course he did," mimicked Maudlin, her little bead-black eyes
twinkling merrily.  "Marry, come up!  Hark at that now!  And left
Madam Lee, poor lady, to entertain her company as she might!  That's
what comes o being Queen o' May.  Heigho!  When douce King Jamie, as
his own Scots folk used to call him, sat on his gold throne," went on
Maudlin, spreading her withered hands out in the brightening blaze
and looking hard into it, "they made May Queen o' me.  Well, well,
and Master Lawrence is gone home again now--eh, child?"

"No," said Ruth, with a slight start.  "Oh, yes--I mean no--I
mean--that is, how should I know?"

"How should you know?" echoed Maudlin testily; "because you've got
eyes and ears, I suppose.  Is the child gone silly?"

"It's you're silly," retorted Ruth crossly, "asking such stupid
questions;" and then she, too, set to staring moodily into the fire.

"Fretty!" inwardly commented the old nurse, as she stole a cornerwise
glance at Ruth's pale face.  "Fretty as any teazle burr.  And 'tisn't
once in a six month she's that, poor dear.  Tired out; that's what
'tis.  As tired out, I'll warrant, with her bit o' pleasurin' as ever
our old Dobbin is with his plough work, and as ready as he is for his
feed o'--What'll you like for supper, lady-bird?"

"Nothing."

"Eh, naught's a sorry supper indeed.  Naught?  when there's syllabub
sweet as your own Colley's milk can make it; and the hot-spiced
cake"--

"Ah! how you do plague!  I'm not a bit hungry.  It's been eat, eat,
eat, all day down at the Hall," said Ruth, still half cross, and yet
half apologizing for her most unusual shortcoming.

"Madam Lee is main an' hospitable, to be sure," said Maudlin, "and
likes folks, rich and poor, to be havin' their fill.  God bless her!"

"Ay," nodded Ruth, and a faint smile of pleasure flitted across her
grave face.

"And poor old Maudlin," slyly went on the old nurse, "would a'most be
finding it in her heart to be jealous of her, if she wasn't quite
sure--"

"Only she is," smiled Ruth, turning and twining her arms round her
friend's neck.  Then she drew down the old face, as brown and
shrivelled as any russet apple, and kissed it.  "She knows that I
love her best in all the wide, wide world."

"Ay, ay, for sure.  Does she now?" contentedly laughed the old woman.
"Well, well, Maudlin'll do to count with maybe.  But this junketing's
done thee no good, Ruth," she went on, considering the upturned face
with real anxiety.  "You're pale as pale, child."

"Tired just a bit," answered Ruth, again striving to evade Maudlin's
gaze.  "Maudlin, dear, Master Sheppard was taking in sea-coal."

"Ay.  Yesterday forenoon.  I know."

"Nay, to-night.  Just now, as I came by."

"Just now!  What nonsense is the child's tongue talking?  Sea-coal
again, quotha?  when Mistress Sheppard was ratin' of him fast as any
mill-clapper but this very morning only in my hearing, for having
more sea-coal in than the 'King's Arms' can use this side o'
Yule-tide, if all the king's horses, and all the king's men, and the
king himself into the bargain, should come an' put up.  An' main and
put about is Mistress Sheppard with his craze, as she calls it.
'Just like men,' says she.  'An' no wonder,' says I, 'for sarteny
there's no denyin' you may have too much o' the best o' God's gifts.
And what with Sheppard's sea-coal extravagance, and what with his
oysters--"

"Oysters!" exclaimed Ruth.

"Ay.  Nasty slippy things.  Two big boatloads o' them's landed within
this se'nnight.  'Travellers,' says Master Sheppard, ''ll swallow as
many as you please to set afore 'em.' 'Maybe.  Worse taste theirs,'
says Mistress Sheppard.  'But they won't eat the shells, I reckon;
and three parts on 'em's just empty shells, she was tellin' of me;
and as she says, says she, 'a groat a year paid for 'em quarterly 'd
be a main sight more'n they're worth.' No, no, ladybird, you must ha'
mistook.  Like as not 'twas only the barge comin' to a standstill by
the gate.  Got stuck in the mud.  The water thereabouts doesn't lie
as thick as a six-pence."

"Will father be in soon, did he say, Maudlin?"

"He bid us not wait up for him; and to lock all but the postern-gate
hard an' fast.  He might be late, he said, havin' business to settle
across at the 'King's Arms' with some dealers."

"In what?"

"Lord!  how inquisitive the child is to-night.  In grain, I reckon."

"From where?"

"Bless us!  Ay, from Ware, for aught I know.  Come, Ruth, an' you
won't touch bit nor sup, let's to bed," and Maudlin rose yawning from
her chair, and crossed with the aid of her stout silver-headed staff
to the foot of a broad oaken staircase at the other end of the
apartment.  "Ho, you!  Barnaby lad.  A light here!" she cried in
shrill tones, rapping the end of her stick vigorously on the bare
polished floor.  "A light here, I say!  Plague seize Sleepyhead!" she
grumbled on, when no response was forthcoming; "Snorin' away in his
owl's roost a'ready, I'll dare swear.  Barnaby!  Barnaby!"

"Nay," said Ruth, pointing up the staircase, to where the moonbeams
streaming in through the criss-cross mullioned panes, flooded all the
length of a long gallery to almost the clearness of day, "We want no
light but that;" and followed at a more sober pace by Maudlin, she
tripped up the stairs towards a door opening into a circular stone
chamber, whose vaulted roof was supported in its centre by a huge
pillar of roughly-hewn stone, graced about its base with rusty iron
rings, and remnants of chain, whilst a concourse of plethoric-looking
sacks lay stacked about the floor, which was of grayish flags seamed
and worn as if by the ceaseless tread of feet, especially round the
pillar.

Icy chill the air struck in this place; and with no little shivering
and shuddering old Maudlin hurried on through it as fast as her
rheumatic twinges permitted.  "'Tis a cruel shame!" she muttered, and
the observation was by no means a novel one in her mouth, "that you
can't get snug between the sheets without first catchin' your death
o' cold; and havin' your wits all terrified out o' you with passin'
through that gruesome den."  Not, however, till she was well clear of
the vaulted chamber, and had gained the corridor beyond, did Maudlin
indulge in the latter part of her running commentary.  "Marry!  I
come goose-flesh from top to toe when I think of all the poor souls
those walls have seen die an' rot."

"Nay," said Ruth, "but that was only the Debtors' Prison, where the
poor creatures were kept when they couldn't pay their rents and their
tithes to the great lords and barons who used to live here.  The
state prison--"

"Lord forgive us!" shuddered Maudlin, "and state that poor skeleton
Master Lockit says they found there was in, you may depend.  Every
bone rheumatics and lumbago, I doubt Ugh!  Yes, I know.  It lies down
below water-mark, and opens into the underway that runs to Nether
Hall."

"Ah! nonsense, Maudlin," laughed Ruth.  "That's an old wives' tale."

"And what if it be, quotha?" bridled Maudlin.  "What if it be?
Aren't old wives' tales as good as young maids' tittle-tattle?  I
tell thee, child, as sure as we stand here there's a clear way
beneath us; though it may have as many twists and crinkum crankums, I
grant ye, as a half-scotched adder--all the mile and a half to Nether
Hall.  But him that's a mind for tryin' o't, 'll find himself when
he's done, in the cellar beneath the ruined tower that's nearest the
Hall, an' turnin', as one may call it, head to tail about, he'll be
back again by the moat dungeon-door, down just under our feet Unless
he likes to stop short by the deep black hole in the wall, which
Master Lockit has it--and, as times go, he's a fair truthbider,
though his tales are a'most as long as our cat's--Master Lockit has
it, opens up into your father's sleeping chamber.  But hark ye, Ruth,
now don't you be telling young Lee about all that, mind; or he'll be
for tryin' of it There's not a venturesomer harebrain than he in all
the shire, let him once set his mind to a thing."

"I doubt," carelessly smiled Ruth, "he knows the fine tale well
enough."

"Tale!  Tale again!  Well, well, and he's pleased to think it so
'tisn't Maudlin 'd have him taught better.  More by token that
there's death in it."

"Death!" echoed Ruth, her smiles fading.

"Choked," answered Maudlin, slowly nodding her head up and down,
"with smoke-damp that'd stifle all the breath out of your body before
you were six yards in."

It was Ruth's turn to shudder.  "Well, what does it matter?" she
said, when having closed and bolted the door of the little bedchamber
they had now entered she put her arms round Maudlin's neck and kissed
her, "while there's our darling little river and Lawrence's boat.  By
the way, Maudlin, he's christened her the 'Queen Ruth!'"

"Has he now?" delightedly smiled Maudlin.  "That's main pretty of
him.  Though I doubt Master Rumbold'll be none so pleased.  Red rags
at a bull's much the same as talk about kings an' queens to him.
He's all for lord protectors and cattle o' that colour.  But never
you fear, sweetheart; there'll be none o' them ever set up while
Lawrence Lee's above ground, and he'd send all the lord protectors
ever hatched flyin' before they set foot within a hundred miles o'
Hoddesdon.  He's like his father before him, rest his soul; and all
for King Charles."

"You think so?" said Ruth brightly.

"Ay; that's my own blithe ladybird at last," cheerily cried the old
woman.  "Sunshine makes pretty maids' eyes sweeter than 'clouds, let
me tell thee.  And for the red roses instead o' white ones--hark!"
went on the housekeeper, as the gate tower-clock chimed eight.
"There's a long spell o' beauty sleep to be got yet.  So have with
thee.  Say thy prayers, and then shut fast thine eyes, and I'll
answer for it we'll be having all the red roses back the morn."

And then returning Ruth's embrace, Maudlin dismissed the young girl
to her chamber, which lay immediately beyond.




CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD RYE HOUSE.

When the Rye House was built, or at least its gate-tower wing of
which we are now speaking, and which was as old as the time of King
Henry the Sixth, probably no dwelling of any importance, with the
exception of Nether Hall, a still more ancient baronial structure,
stood within miles of it.

Strong as rocks were its fortified outer walls; and in many parts its
interior walls were three feet thick.  This was the case with the old
"Debtors' Prison," lying at the older wing's extreme end, and forming
the angle connecting it with the new wing, which dated only from the
time of Queen Elizabeth.  In this debtors' prison Master Rumbold, as
we have seen, now stored his malt.  The wall separating Maudlin
Sweetapple's little sleeping chamber from the more spacious one
occupied by Ruth, was of at least equal strength and solidity with
the walls of this storing room; but while in the one case the surface
showed the bare hewn stone, polished only by the hand of time,
panellings carved in many a quaint device, and reaching half-way to
the flat oak-timbered ceiling, lined the "Lady's Bower," as time
beyond all count, Ruth's room had been called.

[Sidenote: Ruth's bower.]

Here she held sway undisputed; spending in it hours of her lonely
days when her father was absent from home, as of late she noted he so
frequently had been.  So she sat strumming on the broken and
half-stringless virginal, or spelling out the crabbed type of several
worm-eaten books, chiefly poems--long winded, wordy things enough.
Still she cared for them in a fashion; and one volume, whose
title-page set forth that its contents were from the pen of one
William Shakespeare, a play-actor, took her mightily.  Line after
line she would tell you of many of the long speeches and odd sayings
it contained; though she kept her studies to herself, for Maudlin had
not very much of a turn for book-learning, and Master Rumbold always
said, if it had not been for the Bible, and that godly person Mr.
Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, child of his should not have been taught to
read at all.  Then as to writing, he was near never speaking one word
more to Madam Lee after one fine day when he made the frightful
discovery that she had been teaching the little girl so successfully
to make pot-hooks and hangers, that long before Lawrence was out of
the alphabet Ruth had been writing on her own responsibility, and in
unmistakeable fair round hand: "Fear God.  Honour the King."  Wroth
indeed was Master Rumbold over the "fine surprise" thus prepared for
him by instructress and pupil.  The knowledge, however, could not be
unlearned; and such a penwoman as Ruth remained till the day of her
death you might go a hundred miles and not find.

And so with her wheel and her tapestry-frame for her father's
company, and her graver accomplishments for the solitude of the
Lady's Bower, Ruth contrived to live as happily as any princess.
Solitude is, however, no term to connect with the spot where the
birds sang their sweet music the livelong day amid the beechen
branches which swept the panes of the old painted oriel window, and
the wind sighed gently in the long summer evenings through the ivy
trails and creepers which Ruth trained about its carved
stone-cornices, or in his rougher moods snarled and blustered, like
the tyrant he can be, round the ancient house.  But in Ruth's eyes
the broad look-out from that window always wore a beauty, and with
all her fifteen years' experience she had not been able to determine
whether that expanse of lowly undulating meadow-land and winding
waters looked loveliest in its spring and summer garb of green,
tented over with cloudless blue, or in autumn's grays and russets, or
clad in its pure white winter snow robe; nor even whether golden
sunlight, or the moon's silvery sheen, as to-night she stood gazing
on it, pleased her best.

[Sidenote: Rumbold's chamber.]

Master Rumbold himself slept on the ground-storey, in a room
immediately beneath his stored malt-sacks.  This chamber, tradition
said, contained in its stone flooring a trap-door opening upon a
ladder which conducted into the fearsome dungeons underground, where
prisoners used to be thrust, bidding hope and the blessed air and
daylight farewell for ever.  The subject was, however, one rarely
touched upon in the maltster's presence by those who best knew his
humours; for he would either smile in bitter contempt, or--and indeed
that more generally happened--frown angrily; and, let his mood be the
one or the other, always turned the conversation at last with some
half-uttered remark that so might it, or might it not be, and that he
had simply occupied the room ever since he had been master of the
place, because it commanded a watch on both wings of the house.  The
quaintly timbered walls of the new wing contained the malting-house;
while its gabled roof stretching up stiff as cat's ears, afforded
sleeping accommodation for the domestic servants and the few
workpeople living on the premises.

[Sidenote: The malting house.]

The handsome guest-chamber, or keeping-room as it was called, was not
reserved merely for high days and holidays, for Richard Rumbold had
no liking for such vain settings apart of time; but was used as the
general sitting-room, and extended from end to end of the
ground-storey.  Its three windows fronted the great square
smooth-shaven grass-plot, which by tradition and courtesy was called
"the pleasaunce."  In the middle stood one solemn big yew-tree,
clipped, beehive-shape, and surmounted by a leafy monstrosity which
Maudlin said was meant for a peacock.  Never a flower, however, save
the poor little buttercups and daisies, whose heads were chopped off
in a twinkling, if they did venture to peer forth, ever starred that
dreary pleasaunce, for the maltster said he had other uses for his
money than to be wasting it on gaudy nonsenses like flowers.

But returning now to the old wing, let us peep in for a moment on old
Adam Lockit, the gatehouse keeper, in his sanctum deep hidden in the
recesses of the vaulted archway piercing the tower, and giving on its
outer side upon the drawbridge, which was still let down at dawn, and
drawn up at sunset, by the massive old iron chains working through
the wall.

[Sidenote: Barnaby Diggles.]

Not a snugger corner in the whole establishment than this of Master
Lockit's.  Within the last year or so, since he has not been so young
as he used to be, and the dragging at those heavy chains has come to
be a bit of a pull upon him, though he is a hale enough man for his
threescore and ten, he has condescended to accept the assistance of a
lad, employed originally as a Jack-of-all trades in the malting-yard,
but promoted to the dignity of domestic factotum by reason of sundry
excellent qualities.  Foremost among these stand unimpeachable
honesty and placid temper.  A characteristic less distinguishing
Barnaby Diggles, for so the lad was named, was animal courage.  He
was, in other words, an arrant coward; in the matter at all events of
hobgoblins and things of the sort.  He was, however, but just turned
of sixteen; and time as yet had never tried his mettle with any real
and substantial danger.  Meanwhile, nothing so much charmed him as
having his imagination tortured with ghost stories by the village
gossips; unless, indeed, it was to sit and incline his ears to the
hundred and one yarns of all countries and ages that Adam Lockit
loved at least as much to spin.

[Sidenote: The gatehouse room.]

When Barnaby is not to be found after his day's work for love nor
money, you are safe to run him to earth in the gatehouse room.  A
Sindbad's valley it is to him, a Hassan's cave, with all its
treasures of crossbows and battle-axes, and catapult relics; its bits
of chain-armour, its battered helmets, stags' antlers, and
hunting-horns, for all and each of which Adam had his story to tell,
as vividly as if he had been honoured by the personal acquaintance of
Joan of Arc and William Rufus, or gone a buck-hunting in Hainault
Forest with the merry monks of Waltham or bluff King Hal.

What gruesome tales too, Master Lockit, sitting of bitter winter
nights in his warm ingle neuk.  could tell you between the whiffs of
his pipe, about yonder spiral staircase, "There, just behind you,"
which goes winding up past the nail-studded iron clamped door,
shutting in the old wing's upper storey.  Ever so high, aloft to the
tower roof, with the spiked vane atop of its tall twisted chimney.
"But he was speakin' mainly," he was, Adam would say, "of where it
went round an' round, an' down an' down to what was just wine and
wood cellars now, but 'twas no such honest end as that they were
scooped out for hunnerds and hunnerds, if so be 'twarn't thousands o'
years agone.  And Master Rumbold might say what he pleased, an' deny
it you as he liked, 'twere just for all the world a honeycomb o'
cells an' passages, openin' right an' left into dungeons, till you
come out by the weir, over against the ruins o' Nether Hall."

"Go on! go on!" Barnaby would gasp, writhing in ecstasy at the
recital.  "Slidikins!  I'm all goose-flesh from top to toe!  Master
Lockit, go on!"

[Sidenote: Master Lockit's word pictures.]

"More idiot you," Adam would rejoin, puffing away with immeasurable
but secret content in the effect produced by his word picture of
their hidden surroundings.  "What is it to the likes of us?  An't
such things all done with now?  I'm speakin', I am, of the good old
times when royal kings an' queens theirselves wasn't safe on their
gold thrones, for blows in the dark."

"Happen it might come again," Barnaby would murmur, staring with
hopeful rounded eyes into the blazing logs; but when the old belfry
clock overhead boomed its warning to bed, Master Diggles stumbling
half blind with terror to his sleeping-room in the gabled roof, was a
sight not easily to be forgotten.

That same iron-clamped door atop of the tower staircase opened--if
indeed one may so speak of a door which so rarely was put to its
use--into a chamber called the Warder's Room.  Not having been
inhabited for a generation or two, it was of course reputed to be
haunted by a "White Woman," and that was no more than truth and fact;
for many an hour Ruth spent in it, weaving romances out of her own
brain, for the mail-clad knights and wimpled ladies whose pictured
forms gleamed dimly from the rich oak wainscoted walls, and the
designs and quaint devices of their panellings which accorded with
those on the walls of Ruth's room, lying immediately beyond.

[Sidenote: Ruth romancing.]

Ruth had a theory that this suite of rooms on the upper storey of the
gatehouse wing had in olden times been occupied by the lord and lady
of the ancient mansion; and the notion was probably a correct one,
since in no part of the place were traces of such magnificence to be
seen as here.  Fragments of painted glass glowed in the mullioned
windows, showing scraps of monstrous griffin-like heads and scaly
tails, and enscrolled letters, of which only one word in one of the
upper lights of Ruth's window remained entire--"Loyaulté."

Time and wear had so polished the wood of this chamber's
richly-parqueted floor that its smooth surface reflected, like some
quiet pool, the tall-backed chairs of tawny and gilt Cordovan
leather, ranged stiffly against the walls, and about the long narrow
oaken table covered with its faded velvet drapery; and the massive
proportions of the huge carved oaken chest, capacious enough to shut
in one of the mailed knights, or even portly brown-frocked Abbot
Benedict Ogard of Waltham Abbey himself, who smiled, come fair
weather come foul, come day come night, so unctuously down on you
from his recess beside the loftily-coped fireplace.

Ruth could very well recall the time when the lower portion of the
walls of this room had been hung with Flemish tapestry, embroidered
with subjects from the Old Testament and early Grecian lore.  One
winter, however, when King Frost intruded so tyrannically in-doors
that people shivered in their beds, Maudlin Sweetapple had stripped
down the greater part of this tapestry to make curtains for Ruth's
room.  If in cutting away the tattered and hopelessly unmendable
parts of it, she had patched the stuff together again in such fashion
as to leave Solomon in all his glory turning a summersault on the
extreme tip of Jonah's whale's nose, and Goliath's gory head frowned
grimly from the neck of the Trojan horse, did it not all serve every
whit as well for keeping the wind away?

[Sidenote: The warder's room.]

No doubt the situation of the Warder's Room, cut off as it was so
completely from the rest of the house, had first obtained it its
ghostly renown; one not likely to dwindle, by the knowledge that its
outer door giving on the staircase was always kept locked.  This,
however, was no more than an ordinary precaution; since the room
stood literally in the very portal of the whole house, though time
had brought its changes, and various small doors in the new wing now
admitted by the wicket the maltster's few visitors and his workpeople
to the malt-yard.

[Sidenote: A grim greeting.]

The master of the house himself did not set foot inside the Warder's
Room twice in a year; and when on that May morning, before starting
for Nether Hall, Ruth entered it, according to her daily custom, to
let a little fresh air and sunshine into its grim silence, she had
been startled at perceiving her father standing with folded arms and
sombre brows near the hearth, gazing into its cold blackness as if
lost in moody thought.  On becoming conscious of her presence,
however, he had roused up from his abstraction, and with a hurried
and absent "Good morrow, child," he turned and went out, locking the
door behind him.




CHAPTER V.

  HOW MASTER RUMBOLD TOLD LAWRENCE LEE
  WHAT THE VERY AIR MIGHT NOT HEAR.

This recollection of the morning, troubles Ruth strangely now, as she
sits in the broad window-seat of her own room, her eyes fixed indeed
on the fair moon-lit scene before her, but for once seeing nothing of
its beauty.  Vague fears and suspicions and dread of coming evil
weigh down her heart, as one by one she threads together the
incidents of this May-day, which was to have been such a golden one.
It is all in vain that she laughingly tells herself her father has
every right to perambulate his own premises.  All in vain she argues
that Lawrence Lee may be as sulky as a bear with a sore head, if it
gives him any pleasure; and no concern of hers.  Certainly not.  All
the same too, of course, it is to her if a legion of coal-barges come
their way, so long as it is not she who stands in Master Sheppard's
shoes.

For her part, however, Ruth could not consider the landlady of the
"King's Arms" at all a bad sort.  On the contrary, she entertained a
great liking for her.  Folks were fond of saying that Mistress
Sheppard had a shrewish tongue; but Ruth had never felt its edge.
The good woman was as foolish as everybody else in the matter of
spoiling the little mistress of the Rye House; and though she would
as soon tell a prince of the blood a piece of her mind, as she would
the stable-boy of her own establishment, if she saw fit, she would
have vowed the old dun-cow to be white as milk, if it could have
afforded Ruth any satisfaction; or declared that Master Richard
Rumbold was the most urbane and delightful gentleman in all the
country, though no love, to put it mildly, was lost between her and
her opposite neighbour.

[Sidenote: The hostess of the "King's Arms."]

One reason for this among divers others, was their difference of
opinion concerning the sign of her hostelry.  What easier, the
maltster always insisted, than to change it from the "King's Arms" to
the "Commonwealth Arms?" or some such reasonable name?  There could
be no offence, he argued, to anybody in that.  But Mistress Sheppard
maintained there was, and much offence too.  She would stand by and
see no such senseless choppings and changings.  There had never been
anything common about the place, since place it was; and shouldn't be
while she was above ground.  And what did the man want of such
notions?  And Master Sheppard, if he could have answered that
question, as perhaps he might, maintained a discreet silence, as
indeed is the only safe course when one finds one's self betwixt two
stools, as his lot in life placed him; for he was never certain
whether he stood more in awe of his wife or of Master Rumbold.  Once,
it is true, he ventured so far as to hint to her, that for the good
of the house, and the sake of peace, it might be well to think over
Master Rumbold's suggestion, and that he, Sheppard, was agreeable, if
so be--but having got thus far he was pulled up by Mistress Sheppard,
who said she "was not agreeable; that those who didn't like the sign
might spare their custom, and the good o' the house'd be none the
worse for lack o' their company."  And so the sign remained true to
its colours, and an eyesore and a thorn in the flesh to roundhead
Master Rumbold.

[Sidenote: Smouldering fires.]

Differences between neighbours were, however, unfortunately common
enough in those troubled times; for troubled they were.  It is true
that the old quarrel between the king and the parliament, which had
brought Charles the First to his sad death at Whitehall, had been
patched up very neatly more than twenty years ago now, when his son,
King Charles the Second, had been restored to the throne; but the
feelings of the people were like smouldering fires, and ready as ever
to break out in discontent.  The country, moreover, was divided, not
now, as then, into those who did approve of its being governed by a
king and those who did not; but there were many loyal enough
sober-minded folks, and holding quite varying forms of religious
belief, who were sorely disappointed with the manner in which the
king, whom they had helped to restore with so much expense of
precious lives and of money, governed; or, more properly, neglected
to govern.  Yes, a careless "Merry Monarch"--all very well to call
him so--but your merry men and women are frequently cruelly selfish
ones, and contrive to bring tears into other people's eyes every time
they are pleased to laugh.

Then, too, there were many who dreaded the day when Charles's
brother, the Duke of York, should succeed him on the throne.  There
seemed hardly any doubt that he had adopted the Roman Catholic form
of belief; and a strong impression prevailed that Charles was also
greatly inclined to do the same.

[Sidenote: The Merry Monarch.]

How far this was true can, perhaps, never be fairly determined.  The
king's pleasures always interested him vastly more than religious
questions of any kind, and the fears of those who dreaded to see
England fall back under popish rule were probably exaggerated.  It is
very certain that these ideas were fed by dangerous men, who for
their own selfish ends spread alarms of popish plots and conspiracies
which existed nowhere but in their own mischievous brains; and many
harmless peace-abiding Roman Catholics were hunted to prison and
death, solely for the crime of being faithful to the creed they had
been reared in.  These did not, however, remain entirely unavenged,
for the love of fair play and of justice triumphed in the end; and
the wretches who had persecuted their fellow-men under the pretence
of religion were many of them severely punished, and few pitied them.

The father of Lawrence Lee had died, fighting for King Charles the
First on Worcester field; while Richard Rumbold had lost his eye in
the selfsame struggle, serving the Parliamentary forces.

[Sidenote: A dark desire.]

Rumbold hated the Stuart race; and when he used to hear Madam Lee
teaching her little Lawrence to flourish his chubby hands and cry,
"God save the king!" an ugly sneer would begin to gather about his
lips, though he would hold them fast shut, for the Nether Hall folks
were prosperous and well-to-do; and the maltster, if he could avoid
it, never quarrelled with money.  It was, besides, no easy matter to
pick a dispute with this young Lee, who troubled his head so vastly
little about the affairs of the nation, and whose whole mind was
taken up in the management of his farm.

As to his heart, it was divided between his mother and his old
playmate and constant friend Ruth; and though Ruth's play-days were
fast ebbing away, and the old games were now frowned upon by her as
silly and rompish, Lawrence cared for her every whit as much as ever;
and Rumbold perceiving this, thought he saw in it a turn for the
serving of his own purposes.  And when one day, about the time of
this story's opening, the maltster being in one of his gloomier
moods, which, indeed, had grown so strangely frequent that he was
rarely out of them, chanced to launch forth into one of his tirades
against the king and his government, and said that "sooner than see
daughter of his, wife of a man who loved a Stuart, be that Stuart
Charles or James, or Tom, Dick, or Hal, he would see her in her
coffin."

[Sidenote: An angry altercation.]

"Love!" replied Lee, turning a little pale as the maltster spoke, "is
a strong word, Master Rumbold."

"Your father loved the first Charles Stuart," said Rumbold with
knitted brows.

"Ay, to the death!" sighed the young man; "but I'll warrant 'tis
little enough his present majesty remembers that."

Rumbold looked up quickly, and the dull glitter of his eye brightened
into a glance of searching scrutiny as he fixed it on Lawrence.  "An
ungrateful race always, these Stuarts," he said with a shrug.

"Nay, I say not that," rejoined Lee.  "Your poor bedesman may know
every scratch and mark upon his little scraped-up hoard; but can your
rich trader tell you one from another of his coffered guineas?  And
king's friends are so.  Countless as the grain I sow in my fields."

"To be as soon scattered to the winds, and trod under foot," growled
Rumbold.  "Put not your trust in princes."

"I'd as lief trust one," smiled Lawrence, who knew his Bible too, "as
any other child of man."

"You speak idly, as a parrot chatters," said Rumbold in displeased
tones; "and, in truth, I have long taken you for a--"

He paused with a jerk.  The word on his lips was scarcely one
calculated to win over the young man to his ideas, and he substituted
the milder epithet of "featherbrain."

"I thank you for your compliment, Master Rumbold," said Lawrence
swelling a little, and glancing silently, but proudly, round on his
neat barns and ricks, among which they chanced to be standing.  "I
flattered myself my brains were none so empty."

"Psha!" returned Rumbold; "a man may be a Mr. Worldly Wise, and still
a fool and a beggar touching the treasure that waxeth not old.  Think
you that the storing of barns and the breeding of fat oxen will bring
a man peace at the last?"

"It may help to it, I doubt," answered the young proprietor, "if it
so be that that man uses bounteously the wealth his barns and his
cattle bring him.  Not hoarding it greedily, but sharing it with
those who need it.  Then heaven, I take it, is like to bless our
store."

The maltster wagged his head impatiently.

[Sidenote: Lawrence speaks out.]

"Though in sooth," went on Lawrence, "I require not you to remind me,
Master Rumbold, that though a man bestow all his goods to feed the
poor, and hath not real charity, he is sounding brass indeed; and
Heaven, that seeks pure gold only, will have none of him.  I know, of
course, as well as you do, that a clear conscience--"

"And what," interrupted Rumbold, wincing involuntarily as Lee uttered
these last words, and gazing gloomily into the muddy duck-pool at his
feet, "what may be your notion of that?"

"Of a clear conscience?" lightly laughed Lawrence.  "Why, first and
last, at all events, that its owner never do his neighbour any wrong."

[Sidenote: A wrangle.]

"And who is my neighbour?" muttered Rumbold, as if speaking to
himself, and still keeping his eye moodily fixed on the turgid water.
"Answer me that, Lawrence Lee."

"Who is not?" replied Lee, repressing a yawn, but with a cheery
smile.  "I take it, we're neighbours all.  Everything that breathes;
from old Shock here"--and he bestowed a friendly pull on the grizzled
ears of the sheep dog, who stood poking his cold nose into his
master's hand--"up to the king himself.  What's the matter, Master
Rumbold?" for the maltster started and bit his nether lip, as if in
some sudden pain.

"Nothing, boy," he said.  "What should be?"

"The king himself--God bless him!" continued Lee, waxing unusually
eloquent, for ordinarily he was not a man of many words.  "And that
if we do--"

"Do, do!" cried Rumbold, wincing again.  "The old story.  Always with
your sort.  And faith may go to the wall.  Well, if we do what
forsooth?" he added, not without curiosity.

"Nay, if it please you better," answered Lawrence good-humouredly,
"for it is all one;--if we _don't_ do harm, and work no evil against
any man:"--

"Upon him who doeth evil, evil must be done," said Rumbold in deep
melancholy tones.

"That," returned Lawrence, recoiling a pace and gazing in perplexity
at his companion, "that was not the teaching, Master Rumbold, of Him
who died for all men.  I doubt 'tis the same as if one should say,
Evil must be done that good may come."

"Ay," muttered Rumbold, folding his arms upon his breast and setting
his lips firmly, "it must."

"Why?  Fie, now, fie!" laughed Lawrence, fixing his eyes with
something of uneasy curiosity in their clear, dark depths, on
Rumbold's face.  "That, they say, is the Jesuits' watchword.  Who
would have thought to hear it from the lips of godly Master Rumbold?"

"You mock me," returned Rumbold; "I am the worst of sinners."

"Nay, nay, but I trust not," said Lee, getting really uncomfortable.

"You mock me, I say," reiterated Rumbold.

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Lee.  "It is rather that you mock me; for
by my faith I do not understand you to-night, Master Rumbold."

[Sidenote: The whisper of a conspirator.]

"Listen," hoarsely said Rumbold, turning suddenly on Lee, and
gripping him by the elbow; "you shall understand.  I will explain,
but not here," he went on, dropping his voice to a whisper, and
casting a far-seeing, cautious glance round.  "Not here: there may be
eavesdroppers.  Hark! what's that?"

"Only the beasts munching their supper in the stables," said Lee.
"They will tell no tales."

"The very air must not hear," said Rumbold.

"Why, if it is so particular as all that, then," rejoined Lawrence,
still half jestingly, but growing less and less light about his
heart, "come this way."  And pushing open a wicket, he conducted his
companion along a rather miry slip of by-road towards the apple
orchard, which stretched behind and around the ruined gatehouse,
whose jagged outlines were beginning to stand out grim and gaunt in
the sickly rays of the moon.  Wading through the long grass so
thickly carpeting the ground up to the tower, that its base was
completely hidden, Lee conducted Rumbold to the top of a small flight
of broken stone steps, so lost in an overgrowth of ivy trails and
brambles as to be invisible to stranger eyes; but Lee, with a thrust
of his hand, parted the leafy screen, and signed to Rumbold to follow
him down the steps, which led to a low, iron-clamped and heavily
padlocked door deeply sunken in the wall of the tower's foundations.

[Sidenote: A secret vault.]

"'Tis a well-screened spot, is it not?" said Lee, answering Rumbold's
inquiring glances.

"Well secured," said the cautious Rumbold, who had not much opinion
of mere unaided twigs as safeguards, and seemed more disposed to
admire the huge iron padlock adorning its latch.  "What do you store
here?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"The place--except for a few bones, which may have been man's or
sheep's for aught I know, or ever gave a thought to--is full of
emptiness."

"Yet you keep it as sealed as if it shut in untold riches."

"As for the matter of that, it does, too, in a roundabout sort of
way," said Lawrence smiling and colouring a little.  "Or it may do
so; for 'tis said--though I will not answer for the truth of it, that
if you follow your nose far enough, the way it leads, you will find
yourself in the vaults under your own gatehouse.  Our houses--yours
and mine--Master Rumbold, were built in queer times; when a man could
not call his life his own.  And when he dared not show his face above
ground, slipped away as he could under it."

[Sidenote: In darkness.]

"And a fig then for his pursuers," said Rumbold, as he stepped into
the vault, whose darkness was only lightened by the moon-rays feebly
struggling in through the grating of a loophole high up in its walls.
"A fig for them, hey?"

"As you say," said Lawrence, faintly echoing the low laugh of his
companion, which reverberated far away, in mocking unearthly
discords, as though challenging the pair to explore the place's
long-forgotten intricacies.  "I doubt they must have been as
successful as if they sought needles in a bottle of hay."

"Shut the door!" said Rumbold.

Lawrence obeyed, and what further Richard Rumbold had to say was
heard by no eavesdroppers save the slug and reptile creatures who had
long made the place their own.

[Sidenote: A change for the worse.]

Some hours later the door opened again, and one of the two men
reappeared.  Peering first cautiously right and left, he locked the
door behind him and stole hurriedly up the steps.  The figure of this
man is assuredly that of Lawrence Lee, but strangely unlike his light
bright step is that stumbling, swaying gait; and can that ashen white
face, those eyes startled and staring, as if they had met some
fearful thing, indeed be his?  And where is Rumbold?




CHAPTER VI.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER.

One thing only was quite certain, that the maltster was to be seen
next morning at the usual hour among his men.  As for Lawrence Lee,
whatever Rumbold had confided to him remained a secret as far as the
nature of it was concerned.  To hide, however, from Ruth that
something was amiss with him was a more difficult task, and he had
failed in it.

During these last weeks, moreover, the Rye House had grown into a
very prison of dulness.  Rumbold, always a sombre and taciturn man,
had come to be like a stone statue moving about the place, never
speaking but when absolutely compelled.

The recollection of all this, and of the events of the past day,
crowd bewilderingly now upon Ruth's mind, as she sits, with her chin
resting upon her hand, gazing out into the night, from which the
young May moon is slowly fading.  Only a few stars cheer the
surrounding darkness, excepting yonder where the yellow lamp-light
streams through the close-drawn curtains of the guest-parlour window
of the King's Arms.

[Sidenote: A cure for care.]

Many a summer evening, when Mistress Sheppard's guests tarried as
late as this, Ruth could remember catching the echoes of merry
laughter and snatches of songs from that window; but though the night
was warm as a July one, not a sound was to be heard save the low
hooting of the owls and the gurgling of the water in the moat.

She stretched her head from the window, to listen for the familiar
sound of her father's heavy footfall up the wicket-path.

How late he stayed!

And Lawrence?  had he gone home yet in his boat?  Surely.  And
yet--ah! well.  What was it all to her?  Why vex her head about it?
Why not go to sleep and forget her fancies?  Fancy! were those dark
cloaked figures fancy forsooth?  Like some evil dreams, indeed, they
haunted her mind.  And that flash of cruel steel blue light?  No
fancy that.  But what concern could it be of Ruth's?  Why, a turn of
her wheel would dispel it all.  There is no remedy like a little bit
of diligent work for troublesome thoughts, or even sad ones.  How
provoking that the stupid thing had not a shred of flax in it!  There
it stood in its corner, a beautiful wheel of ebony inlaid with ivory,
her father's gift last birthday, but like a fair body without a soul,
destitute of the flax.  How she could have worked away by the light
of the stars which were so brilliant that lamp-light would be an
utter superfluity--if only the flax had been to hand!

[Sidenote: Out in the moonlight.]

Unluckily it all lay locked away, a splendid store, in the big oak
linen press, atop of the keeping-room staircase; and just the least
bit in the world of extra courage was indispensable for traversing
those silent passages at this hour.  And yet after all, a very little
bit, for Ruth was no coward.  The chief difficulty was to avoid
disturbing Maudlin.  It would be such a shame to do that.  The old
woman lay so comfortable--leagues away in the land of dreams.  Ruth
could see that, as she peeped at her through the half-open door.  So
soundly sleeping that she gathered courage, and stepped tiptoe across
the floor, out into the corridors beyond, till she could see the
sacks away at its furthermost end in the storeroom, all huddled
together like hunchbacks under the dim starlight, or--like those
cloaked men who had got out of the barge! and then Ruth shivered.
But that was little to be wondered at, for the air of the store-room
struck icy cold as she stole on--on into the corridor where the linen
press stood.

Close beside it a small lattice afforded a glimpse of the river just
beyond the bridge.  There lay the barge!  Still moored up alongside
the bank; a huge black blot upon the silvery water.

And the "Queen Ruth?"  Nay--as if it was likely to be there now.
Why, her pretty little cat Tab had as much to do with the big
elephant who lumbered by in the show yesterday, as the merry,
graceful, little "Queen Ruth" could have with yonder ugly boat?  And
yet, and yet--ah! what a consolation it is to make sure of anything!
to crush out one's absurd fancies--dead, past all coming to life
again!  And how temptingly easy in this case!  Quite as easy anyhow,
as to be standing there, dreaming and talking about it.  Only just to
steal down by the stairs and through the keeping-room, where the
still smouldering fire cast a few dull gleams, and so out by the
narrow path to the wicket.  Then but a step--but softly, creep low
for thy life, Ruth--in the high wall's shadow, and drag the cloak,
snatched in haste from a peg, close and well about thy face and
shoulders.  And what if Rumbold should be returning now?  But there
is never a sound save the flapping of the bats' wings, that beat in
her face, and bring her heart into her mouth.

[Sidenote: Ruth goes exploring.]

She was so near now to the gilded patch of light upon the black road
before the inn parlour window, that had the pane been open, she must
beyond all question have caught the voices of those within.  But
though just for one instant she paused, pressing her hand upon her
beating heart to listen, not so much as an echo reached her; and she
hurried on, towards the parapet of the bridge, where it wound down
lower and lower to the little landing-stage--and leaned over.

Still tied to the stake lay the "Queen Ruth."  The swift stream from
the bridge gently swaying her bows, and her gay cowslip posies and
ribbon knots fluttering in the breeze now fast springing up.

Ruth's heart sank.  Past all doubt then, here was Lawrence hanging
about, when he should have been back at Nether Hall an age ago.
This, surely, was no night to be loitering with--with a parcel of
coal-heavers; and Ruth shuddered.  Pray Heaven their calling was such
an honest one.

There she stood gazing with puzzled bent brows upon the barge, lying
motionless and black as a funeral bier on the sluggish water,
gleaming leaden gray in the sickly starlight.

[Sidenote: footsteps on the bridge.]

Slowly and sadly Ruth prepared to retrace her steps.  Doubts and
uncertainty would, after all, she thought, have been preferable to
this sight, which did but strengthen her suspicions of she knew not
what.  Supposing--Hark!  A shuffling of footsteps, and the sound of
voices.  It must be the inn party dispersing, and exchanging their
good-nights.  And Ruth turns to fly back to the wicket.

Too late.  The tramp of feet was close upon her, heavy and measured,
but it was approaching from the other side of the bridge; and Ruth
dropped upon her knees, cowering down under cover of her cloak
beneath the sheltering wall of the parapet, till she looked all one
with a heap of dry rubbish of leaves and old straw swept up close
beside her.  In another instant these tramps will have passed on.
For tramps doubtless they are, bound for Newmarket.  Respectable
travellers would of course, at this late hour, have put up for the
night at Hoddesdon.  What even if they should be footpads! and poor
Ruth thinks longingly now of her comfortable little bedchamber.  What
guineas, if she owned them, would she give to find herself safe back
in it!  Hush!  Hush!  Already the span of the near bridge is
resounding hollowly with their tread!  Suddenly the sound ceases.
The party has clearly come to a halt, and close upon her
hiding-place; for though they speak in subdued and almost stealthy
tones, every syllable is audible to her.

[Sidenote: The conspirators.]

"There it is," said one voice.

"Ay," muttered another.  "Roight enough.  Let's be gettin' for'ard."

"Wait!" peremptorily commanded a third voice in soldier-like tones.
"Don't let us make any mistake."

"Oons!" impatiently grunted the second speaker; "I tell you, colonel,
'tis the spot, if I knows it, and I were born here.  Yonder stands
the Rye House 'telle'e, and yonder to to'ther side o' the road--"

"Road!" interrupted the military voice rather contemptuously, "you
call it a road?  Why 'tis scarce broad enough for a couple of
broad-shouldered loons like you to walk abreast.  Road forsooth!"

"King's highway, then," laughed the first speaker, whose accent was
refined but disagreeably sarcastic.

A low chorus of laughter greeted this remark.

"That he'll be lying low enough upon," went on the first speaker,
"before Oak Apple Day.  And is yonder gabled house the King's Arms,
friend?"

"Ay it be, my Lord Howard."

[Sidenote: Something in the water.]

"Forward then.  Come, Walcot, if you've done mooning.  What ails you,
man?  Staring at the water as if you saw your own double in it!"

"Do you see that?" hurriedly returned the soldier.

"See what?" and then ensued a sound of shuffling and scraping, as if
the whole party was crowding to the side of the bridge.

"Why yes, for sure we does," said the native of the place, and whom
Ruth recognized by his voice to be a workman in the malt-yard named
Barber.  "I doubt if each on us had but one eye apiece, like the
measter's, we could see the moon a shoinin' on the stream."

Ruth breathed again.

"But there is no moon.  'Tis gone."

"Starlight, then."

"That is too faint to cast any such reflections," objected Colonel
Walcot.  "And see how it flashes: there! close up against the steps,
as bright and sharp as forked lightning."

"Or a silver serpent," put in another voice.

"Or an eel," laughed Lord Howard; "come, colonel, let's push on."

"Nay, nay, bide a minute," cried another voice, which Ruth knew to
belong to the foreman of the malting-yard.  "The colonel's grace is
right.  There is summat lyin' in the stream.  And 'tis nayther fire
nor fish, and if I might be speakin' out my moind afore your
lordship's worship, I should say as 'tis for all the world like a
swoord, or one o' they skewer sort o' murdrous wepn's--"

"A rapier do you mean?" said Howard.

"Noa, noa, my lord, not just that, but a new sort o' blood-spillin'
invenshun that--"

"Save us!" shiveringly ejaculated the other maltster.  "What if so be
that 'tis a shadder, or some evil sperrit warnin' us of the
wickedness of our ways, afore it be too late."

"Coward! white-livered loon!" savagely hissed Lord Howard.  "What
have we to do with shadows, who fear neither man nor--"

"Oh, oh!  Hush, hush, my lord," interrupted a cringing unmelodious
voice, "ye speak unadvisedly."

"So do you, Master Ferguson," wrathfully cried my lord, "as you'll
find when we string up your lean crow's neck for you to Master
Sheppard's sign yonder, if you don't keep your cant till we ask for
it.  Come, quick march."

Then with stealthy, but quick and measured tramp, the whole party
passed on.

Cramped in every joint, for she had scarcely dared to draw breath,
much less to stir, Ruth ventured now to raise one corner of her
cloak, and peer after this strange company.

[Sidenote: Strange guests for the "King's Arms."]

One by one she saw their black figures disappear from the flood of
yellow light upon the road, within the deep porch of the inn.

Dizzy and bewildered with what she had just witnessed, she staggered
to her feet, clinging for support as she did so to the parapet.  Her
eyes, as she passed her hand across them to clear the mists that
blinded them, caught a dim confused gleam of the object which had
attracted the attention of the party.  Within barely a dozen paces of
where she stood, it lay; half way between the barge and the landing
stage, forking and zig-zagging just under the sluggish movement of
the water.

[Sidenote: The flash of the missing weapon.]

A sharp-pointed cruel-looking blade of some description; but though
Ruth, thanks to Master Lockit's instructions, could tell you a dagger
from a sword, and a rapier from either, a vast deal better than some
folks could, she was not able to give a name to this three-edged
knife, with its short dagger-shaped hilt of wood that stuck up
slantwise high and dry out of the water, among the white rush
stamens.  One like that she had never seen.  No great marvel,
however, if she had not, for the pattern was of quite recent French
devising, and hardly likely so soon to have found its way into a
peaceful little Hertfordshire hamlet, in the ordinary course of
events; but Ruth, as she bent over the water's edge with eyes fixed
on the thing, felt sure that something extraordinary was going on
about and around her.  Something too fearful to guess at.  Never a
doubt that this sword or spear, or whatever might be its hateful
name, was the thing which the man Rumsey had let slip from his bundle
on leaving the barge.  That like one viper of its poisonous brood,
the thing was but one of more of its kind, was equally clear.  But
come what might, thought Ruth, its own special and individual chances
of fulfilling the fearful end it was fashioned for, should not be
left it; and stealing down by the parapet, and along by the water's
edge till she reached the spot, she knelt and stretched forward her
hand, grown cold as death, but steady and straight to its purpose;
and seizing the hilt of the weapon, dragged it, dripping with the
diamond bright drops from the water, under her cloak.  [Sidenote:
Ruth strangely armed.] Then casting one keen glance round, and
upwards towards the inn, she sped along the bank, never stopping till
she reached the postern.




CHAPTER VII.

MISTRESS SHEPPARD DOES NOT CARE FOR HER GUESTS.

Mistress Sheppard was almost as perfect a specimen of a landlady, as
her establishment was a model of an inn; for who has not heard of
that famous King's Arms, within whose snug shelter Master Isaak
Walton loved to rest and sup, with a friendly gossip after his day's
angling in the waters of the "Silver Lea," which almost washed the
ancient hostelry's walls?

[Sidenote: The landlady of the inn.]

Decidedly, even to her very little tempers, Mistress Sheppard was a
model of her class.  When the world wagged to her liking, her plump
peony cheeks so dimpled over with smiling good-humour, and her voice,
albeit always a trifle shrill, was so kindly, that you experienced
some difficulty in bringing yourself to believe, what nevertheless
was true, that the face could look thunderously black, and the voice
set your teeth on edge with its vinegar sharpness.

In justice, however, it ought to be added that sunshine prevailed in
Mistress Sheppard's nature, and the storms threatened only when she
had what she called her "reasons" for them.  If Sheppard called them
"prejudices, unaccountable prejudices," he only did so when she was
safe out of earshot.

To his great vexation and discomfiture, the clouds hang very heavy on
his wife's brow to-night.  It is clear she does not like these guests
who have sought the inn's hospitality; and when the party arriving by
road, passes through into the parlour, she sits contemplating its
door, which is close shut by the one who last enters, in grim
meditative silence.

"I don't know whose looks I care for least among 'em," she muttered,
as at last she slowly turned to fill the tankards of ale they had
ordered.  "Eyes on a more hang-dog crew I never set.  With the brims
o' their hats as hollow as cabbage leaves, as if they was ashamed o'
their own ugly faces; as well they may be, and downright afeard to be
seein' what mine was like.  Why, I give you my word, there wasn't one
o' the lot looked my way, to give me so much as a civil good e'en, as
they passed.  That's manners for you!"

"Hush!" whispered Sheppard, imploringly, and casting nervous glances
towards the guest-parlour, as Mistress Sheppard's tones ran up the
gamut, till they ended in a shrill treble.  "Hush!  There's a dear
woman.  Walls have ears."

"And so much the better if they have; for then they'll be knowin' a
piece o' my mind."

"Ah, hush! hush!  If the gentlemen should overhear--"

"Gentlemen, quotha! gentlemen!--"

"Ay; there's a live lord among 'em."

"Live lord is there!  Then, beshrew me, if it's at court he learnt
his manners.  Our dame-school brats know 'em better.  Why his sacred
majesty--"

"Ah, hush! hush!" agonizedly entreated Sheppard.

[Sidenote: Lord Howard has his character.]

"What should I hush for?  His own sacred majesty, I say, always bids
me a 'God save you, Mistress Sheppard!' from his coach-door when his
coach pulls up here to change horses; and once--well I remember
it--his own royal fingers chucked me under the chin.  No, I don't say
you was by and saw him do't; but he did.  Well, well, what's your
fine lord's name?  Bless the man; can't you speak out? mumblin' as if
you hadn't got a tooth in your head!  Howard o' what?"

"Escrick.  Lord Howard of Escrick."

"M'ph!" murmured Mistress Sheppard, cogitatively tapping her plump
finger tips on the table.  "'Tis a good name, and a proud, is Howard.
But your whitest flock's got its black sheep, they say.  And now I
think on't, 'twas but t'other day--though I don't at this minute
recollect the hows and the wheres--somebody that was in here, was
tellin' of me that there wasn't a daring profligate among all the
quality like this same Howard of Escrick, an' not a shred o'
principle or honesty in him."

"An' what's all that to us?" said Sheppard, with a feeble attempt at
bravado, as he marshalled the tankards on his tray.  "The best thing
you can do, is to give me the bottle o' Canary he's ordered; an' be
quick about it.  There's a good woman.  Anyhow you've no call to
complain of his honesty; for hasn't he paid his reckonin' a'ready?
See if he hasn't."  And Sheppard triumphantly threw down a gold
piece.  "Now what do you take him for?"

"A knave!" said Mistress Sheppard, pocketing the gold, however, "or
else a fool; for he lacks credit, or wit, or both one and t'other who
settles for his goods afore he's got 'em.  There--there; be off with
thee.  Take em' what they want, and tell 'em the sooner they're all
off these premises the better I shall like 'em.  Bless the man!
What's come to thee, now?  Thy hands are shakin' like froze syllabub.
Spillin' the ale all over the tray.  Here--give it me; I'll carry it
in."

[Sidenote: Master Sheppard in a hurry.]

Sheppard, however, was too quick for her.  Ordinarily the less he
bestirred himself, and the more his bustling active-minded wife did
for him, even to the length of waiting personally on their guests,
the better pleased he was; but now he absolutely pounced upon the
tray, and carried it off at double quick trot, leaving Mistress
Sheppard to stand looking after him in open-mouthed amazement, as he
disappeared, closing the door of the guest-parlour carefully behind
him.

"Hark! what was that?"  Her ears, she thought, must have deceived
her, rarely as they were given to it.  Or did the lock of the door
click and the bolts scrape in their grooves as if stealthily moved?

Mistress Sheppard stepped tiptoe across to the door, and noiselessly
grasping its handle, she turned it and pushed at it, but to no
purpose.  "I like not that," she said to herself, when after a second
attempt she turned away, and resuming her post among her bottles and
cups, sat with knitted brows and eyes keenly riveted on the sturdy
old wainscoted walls opposite as if she would fain have penetrated to
the scene they hid.  "I like it not," and then she set her arms
akimbo, and gave a prolonged inquiring sniff.  "And never a suspicion
of tobacco neither," and deeper and deeper gathered the frowns.
"That bodes no good neither; for men must be ill at ease with
themselves indeed, before they forget to make chimneys o' their
mouths.  And not a sound," and she held her breath and listened
intently.  "Not a sound!"

Not one, truly, that could reach her; for that score or so of men,
seated about the large table placed across the room's upper end, all
spoke in half-whispering undertones, and ceased abruptly as Sheppard
entered with his tray.

[Sidenote: Locked and bolted.]

"Bolt the door!" commanded the man seated at the head of the table.

"I crave pardon, Master Rumbold," began Sheppard, looking with a
sickly smile from the speaker to the door, and back again to the
speaker; "but my--my wife--"

"Exactly," interrupted Rumbold.  "We don't need Mistress Sheppard's
assistance in this business.  It's bad enough already."

"Bolt the door!  Dost hear, fellow?" said a handsome and
richly-attired, but dissipated-looking man, with dark eyes and
black-brown locks, who was seated next the maltster.  "Bolt the door,
and don't be all night about it."

[Sidenote: One out of a baker's dozen.]

"Ah, good lack! good lack!" feebly ejaculated Sheppard, no longer
hesitating, and putting up the bolts as fast as his shaking fingers
would let him.  "Something gone wrong?  Did you say something was
gone wrong?" and he gazed in abject terror round the circle of gloomy
faces, looming amid the shadows cast by the one oil-lamp hanging from
the huge beam overhead, and which was all the light the room boasted.
"What will become of us all now?  I knew how 'twould be--I always
said it would--"

"Thanks to you," said the dark-eyed man, with a malicious smile.

"Me!"

"Ay.  My Lord Howard's right there," growled a stout thick-set man,
somewhat far advanced in middle age, who sat near the fireplace,
occupied in rubbing his shins with a tender hand.  "It's all your
infernal slippery banks we've to thank for it.  Why the mischief
can't you keep your garden banks in decent order?"

"Are you quite sure you don't mistake after all?" inquired Rumbold's
neighbour of the last speaker, glancing down as he spoke at the sheaf
of three-sided short blades spread out fan-wise upon the table.
"There are twelve here."

"Ay, but 'twas a baker's dozen, my lord," said another voice.
"Thirteen, so he says--"

"And I suppose I'm not a liar, Master Goodenough," cried the stout
soldier, glowering sullenly at the individual who had hazarded the
last observation.  "Nor a cowardly idiot neither, like some folks
here."  Then he set to rubbing again at his damaged limb.

"Oh! the gracious powers forbid!" laughed Lord Howard, lifting his
white jewelled hand, "we're all brave and honourable men here,
surely.  And vastly too clever to split like a bundle of twigs about
nothing at all."

"Nothing!"

"Ay, less than nothing; for by my faith, Master Rumsey, I should be
inclined to count this loss a fine omen.  Thirteen's an unlucky
number, so old wives say.  And twelve of the things is enough in all
conscience."

"And too many to my thinking," approvingly nodded Goodenough.

[Sidenote: Playing with edge tools.]

"Even if forced to extremes," continued Howard, "why, one of these
sharp little Frenchmen here," and he began handling one of the blades
as he spoke, and laid it lightly across his finger, "would do all the
business in a twinkling.  What say you, Master Rumbold?"

"That," answered Rumbold, breaking silence at last, "is not the
point."

"No, by my faith!  'Tis but the edge," cried Lord Howard, with a
grimace of sudden pain, and hastily throwing down the weapon, "the
foul fiend's own grindstone must have sharpened the confounded
blade!"  And dragging his gossamer-laced handkerchief from his
pocket, he wound it round his hand.

"Has it drawn blood, my lord?" timorously asked Goodenough, turning
pale, and craning his neck forward.

[Sidenote: A warning.]

"Ay, has it, Master Sheriff," replied Howard, holding up his hand,
and displaying its crimson-dyed cambric swathing, "and this helps but
little to staunch it.  Thanks, Master Lee," he went on, as Lawrence
Lee, approaching from an obscure corner, took the wounded hand in
his, and bound his own stout white linen handkerchief deftly about
it; "I had better not have been quite so quick to meddle with it.
Have a care what you are doing," he added, as Lee turned to replace
the blade beside the rest.  "Take warning by my fate."




CHAPTER VIII.

MOONRAKERS.

"I say," doggedly began Rumbold, and taking no more notice of Lord
Howard's mishap than if it had not occurred, "that this must be
found, and before morning, else it will betray us."

"Oh! we're betrayed!  We're betrayed!" shrieked Sheppard, at the top
of his small voice.

"Silence, idiot!" said Rumbold, turning on him sternly; "and it is
quite clear," he continued, "that it must be lying somewhere between
this house and the river, since Colonel Rumsey is certain that when
he stepped out of the boat he had it safe in the canvas bundle."

"I'll swear to that," said Rumsey.

"Now the garden has been thoroughly searched"--"Every inch of it,"
chorused half-a-dozen voices.

"And that being the case," said the tall soldier, advancing from the
hearth, where he had been standing gazing meditatively into the dying
embers, "perhaps you will find it worth your while to heed now what I
told you on the bridge.  You may search in the garden till you're all
blind.  I tell you the thing fell into the water.  Come, gentlemen,"
he went on, turning to those of the party who had accompanied him, "I
am not after all, you see, such a moonraker as you would have made me
out, when I told you I saw something shining in the water as we came
by."

"Truly you did say so, Colonel," humbly admitted those he addressed.

"Verily we should not have contemned his assurance," ejaculated the
snuffling tones of Master Ferguson, as he clasped his clawlike
fingers, and turned upwards the ferret eyes gleaming beneath a wig
almost concealing his mean little forehead; "for of a surety the hand
of Providence is with those who put their faith--"

"In the water.  Just beyond a little two-oared boat moored to a
landing-stage at the bridge foot."

[Sidenote: A searching party.]

"Verily, I think we may place our confidence and credence--" once
more began the snuffling tones; but they were interrupted by Lawrence
Lee.  "Never mind that now, Master Ferguson," he said.  "The best
thing to be done is to go to work and rescue this tell-tale knife
before any prying eyes have been beforehand with us."

"Ay, well said!" cried Lord Howard.  "Have with you, then, Master
Lee.  Come, friend," he went on, addressing Sheppard, "down with your
bolts again."

But Sheppard hesitated, casting appealing glances round.  "Why, what
ails the fellow now?" demanded Howard; "first he hesitates at putting
them up, and now he won't take them down!"

"Mistress Sheppard--my--my wife!" stammered the unfortunate man.
"She--that is, so please your lordship's worship's grace, she's such
a wide-awake--"

"What the mischief!  Isn't she a-bed yet?" laughed Howard.  "Come,
come, landlord, I'm afraid you rule your house sadly amiss."

"I--I don't rule it, my lord.  'Tis Miss--Mistress Sheppard
who--who--"

"He speaks true enough there, my lord," said Rumbold grimly.

"Yes, yes," gasped the poor man in tones of relief; "Master
Rumbold--he'll answer for me I speak nothing but the truth.  Mistress
Sheppard--she's always the last in the place to go to bed.  She
likes--that's what she says, my lord--likes to see all safe first.
And sure as a gun, she's posted outside there in the passage.
And--and if the whole--whole gang of us goes swarming out by the door
here, like bees out of a hive, she'll be following us to see what
we're after--and--and--"

"Quite true," nodded Rumbold; "and by midday the whole parish will be
twittering the tale."

[Sidenote: The wrong way out.]

"Oh, these women!" groaned Howard; "they must always be meddling.
Well, what's to be done, then?  Shall we go hunting in couples, or
one at a time?"

"'Tis not to be risked," said Sheppard, shaking his head.  "You see,
my lord--saving your lordship's presence and yours, gentlemen"--he
added, blinking his small eyes uneasily round on the circle of his
guests, who had risen to their feet, impatient to begin the search,
"Mistress Sheppard doesn't seem to have taken much of a fancy, so to
speak, to a man-jack of the lot of you.  Don't like the looks o' you,
she says.  And I'd sooner be a mouse within sight of our cat Tiger
than havin' Mistress Shep--Sheppard--"

"Smell a rat," rather ruefully laughed Howard.  "Well, what's the
remedy?"

"This," said Lee, who, having left the group collected near the door,
now stood beside a broad lattice, looking from a recess near the
hearth into the garden, and commanding a view of the bridge.  "It
gives upon the bowling-green, and then down by the slope to the
water.  Out with you!" and unhasping the lattice pane as he spoke, he
pushed it open.  "Only, for your lives, step softly, softly!" and he
placed his finger warningly on his lips.

[Sidenote: What has become of it?]

"This way," whispered Walcot, when, in less than three minutes' time,
the whole party, including the limping Rumsey, stood out upon the
velvet smooth turf On they crept, in single file, till they stood
upon the edge of the shelf of tall bracken, where, stooping down,
they dispersed along the bank close down by the water's brink.
"'Twas just hereabouts," said Walcot in a loud whisper.  "There!
there!  Stop a bit.  No.  Now I think on't, 'twas of course farther
along--close by the barge."

"Here!  I have it!" cried one in a voice of smothered but gleeful
triumph.  "Alack! it was but the battered handle of an old tin pot;"
and in dire vexation he dashed it down again.

For a good half-hour the search was continued, until, wet through
with their wadings and dabblings, some showed signs of giving in.
Others swore they would not budge till they had found the missing
thing.

"Then I take it we may as well part company at once," yawned Lord
Howard, "for it's washed away into mid-stream long before now, depend
on it.  Come, Master Lee, what say you?  I'll dare swear you know
something of the water's soundings hereabouts."

"I think 'tis likely enough, my lord," answered Lawrence, catching
Lord Howard's attack of yawning.

"Then let it lie, and be hanged to it!" and the nobleman sauntered
back up the slope.

One or two of the party now proposed to return to the inn and proceed
with the business which had brought them together; but Rumbold shook
his head.  "It is too late," he said: "three nights hence we will
meet again."

[Sidenote: An inhospitable landlord.]

"Oh! but not here," piteously entreated Sheppard.  "Not here, Master
Rumbold; don't say it's to be here.  I never should hear the last of
it; I shouldn't indeed!"

"Peace with thy craven tongue!" said the maltster with one of his
grim smiles.  "No, boys," he added, turning to the rest; "not here:
yonder at my own house, where last we met, in the Warder's Room."

And with a gesture of farewell he left them, while Lee betook himself
home in his boat.

The rest, not without bestowing a good many muttered left-hand
compliments on the fumble-footed Rumsey, separated in much the same
order as they had come,--some by the barge, which soon lost itself
among the mists of the river, others making their way on foot by the
Rye to Hoddesdon and the neighbourhood.

It was, however, with difficulty that Colonel Walcot's companions
could drag him from the bridge.

[Sidenote: All dark.]

"Come along, Colonel," urged one; "you see you were wrong after all.
There's not a thread of a gleam anywhere.  Eh! see, 'tis all as dark
as pitch."

"Ay," sighed Walcot, slowly moving on at last, "dark, dark enough."




CHAPTER IX.

IN THE MALT-YARD.

The postern was still on the latch when Ruth reached it.  Alas! she
had anticipated no less.  That it was locked, was no longer one of
her fears.  She would have sooner her father had detected her
midnight flitting now, and come upon her face to face.  Anything
sooner than that he should have been one of that terribly strange
company.  All, however, was still around and within.  Not even the
watch-dog uttered a sound, for he knew her step, and fawned at her
feet as she passed; and safe and unseen by other eye than his she
reached the end of the corridor, casting a glance as she stole across
the floor at Maudlin, who to all appearance had not stirred.

Safe at last in the shelter of her own room, Ruth sank breathless and
spent into a chair and, overcome by the fatigue and excitement of the
long day's pleasures and pains, she fell into what must have been a
sort of long fainting unconsciousness, or else it was real honest
sleep that stole upon her unawares.

All she ever knew of it was, that when she opened her eyes again the
sunbeams were flooding her room, and the gatehouse clock chiming.
Six it must have been, since outside in the malting-yard she could
hear the stir and voices of the men getting to their work.  Pressing
her chilled fingers upon her aching eyelids, she gazed round,
striving to collect her dazed senses; and the events of the past
night, as they came back to her mind, seemed like some bad dream.
She sat up and threw back the heavy cloak still covering her
shoulders with an impatient hand, as if she would have thrust the
ugly fancies away with it; but a sudden clash and clatter at her feet
recalled her thoroughly to herself, and she started up in dismay.

[Sidenote: Ruth's waking resolutions.]

It was caused by the falling of the steel blade which her sudden
movement had displaced from the folds of her cloak; there, glittering
dazzlingly bright in the sunshine, it lay upon the floor.

Spell-bound, Ruth gazed at it, much in the way that people are
forced, in spite of themselves, to stare at some poisonous
brilliant-eyed reptile crossing their path.  Yet this was not
altogether Ruth's case.  If anyone could have looked into her face
then they would have seen in it no vacant, helpless stare, but a
dawning, deep thoughtfulness, whose perplexity yielded gradually to
an expression of strong determination, as though she had come to a
decision on some knotty point she had been discussing with herself.

Only the clock, however, striking seven roused her from her
abstraction.  So late! and approaching the window she opened its
panes and let in the pure morning air.  Then she proceeded to make a
fresh toilette.  With a little sigh yesterday's gay tiffany was laid
aside, poor, crumpled, bedraggled stuff that it all looked now, and
she put on a gown of gray camlet, from beneath whose skirts, just
reaching to her ankles, peeped forth a pair of little feet, in a pair
of stout plain black leathern tagged shoes; just the very things for
rough country roads and boggy lanes.  The neat-fitting bodice was
finished by a kerchief of spotless lawn gathered close about her
neck, and though fashionable ladies would no doubt have vowed it an
odiously grand-mothery sort of thing, it was none so unbecoming.
Indeed as Ruth proceeded to fasten that black silk caped hood beneath
her little round chin, it was quite a matter of nice taste, whether
Queen Ruth, rosy as her regal robes and crown, and bright as her gay
dancing glances could make her, or this demure, pale little Ruth,
clad in sober gray, and with great wistful eyes, somewhat heavily
shadowed, indeed, with purple lines, were the prettier.

[Sidenote: A morning visit.]

Small doubt of Master Rumbold's opinion on the matter did there seem
to be, when ready equipped, even to a large basket upon her arm, she
stood before him with the black jack of ale, that always made his
breakfast.  "Now thou look'st thyself, Ruth," he said, his brooding
brow lightening as he gazed at her.  "Why dost thou sigh, child?" he
went on, taking the jack and putting it to his lips.

"Did I sigh, father?" and all unconsciously poor Ruth sighed again,
for never in her life had it seemed to her that she had felt less
herself.

"Ay, didst thou.  Well, well.  Thou'rt thy father's own daughter now:
kiss me then," he went on, setting down the empty jack and wiping his
lips.  "And where art thou bound for so early?" he added.

"Nether Hall, father."

"Nether Hall! why, 'tis but a round o' the clock that thou wert
there," he said, opening his one eye more in surprise than
displeasure.

"Madam Lee," began Ruth rather hesitatingly, and blushing, though she
scarcely knew why, for it was but pure and simple truth she was
speaking, "Madam Lee promised me a sitting of the white bantam hen's
eggs yesterday, if--if," and she glanced down at her basket, "I liked
to go and fetch them."

"And are the white bantam's eggs as big as the giant bird's in the
fairy tale, that you must be taking a basket for them half as big as
yourself?"

"Nay, father.  But Madam Lee promised me also some choice green
goose--goose--"

[Sidenote: The maltster in better humour.]

"'Tis Madam Lee is the goose to be spoiling thee so," smiled Rumbold
good-humouredly.  "She always is promising thee some fine thing or
another.  Well, well, go thy ways then, Ruth, for the green
gooseberries, and a pleasant walk, and if by hap thou shouldst chance
across Lawrence Lee,--and 'tis possible that, eh?"

"Yes, father."

[Sidenote: A proposed message.]

"Tell him to--but yet,--no.  Tell him naught; 'twill keep.  I shall
be seeing him shortly."  And then Rumbold turned in at a door of the
corn chambers.




CHAPTER X.

THE MEETING ON THE FOOT-BRIDGE.

Taking a short cut round by the moat, and crossing the stile above
the King's Arms, Ruth soon gained the river towing-path.

As the sights and sounds of the new day greeted her, she felt a
little cheered.  One must have been wretched indeed not to have found
an agreeable distraction in the blithe bird chorus overhead, and the
buzzing of the insects in the young grass studded with the early
summer flowers, whose brilliant hues mirrored themselves in the clear
water rippling up into tiny bays to her very feet.

What a bright merry world it was!  How hard to think that it had in
it any such thing as sorrow, or sin, or cruelty, or--and ere the
shadow of the sad word could flit across her thoughts, a butterfly
fell at her feet, and fluttering its poor bruised wings for a moment,
lay motionless on the flinty path.

It was quite dead; and Ruth bent down, and gently placing it on a
fresh young dock-leaf, laid it beneath a whitethorn bush, well hidden
from all tread of hob-nailed shoes and ruthless plough-boy fingers;
and leaving the soft west wind sweeping low through the sedge, to
sigh it a dirge, she pursued her way, till a turn of the path brought
her within sound of rushing water, and in a few minutes she reached a
rough foot-bridge composed of one plank with a hand-rail of
hazel-bough, which was thrown across a little rivulet, thickly
screened at its furthermost end by a copse of elder and hazel bushes.
Into this cool retreat a posse of old mother sheep had penetrated
with their lambs, and lay in soft white heaps down to the water's
very brink, not in the least put about at the apparition of Ruth, as
she came to a standstill in the middle of the bridge to watch the
pranks of the lambs with a half amused, half absent smile.

So absorbed was she, that the touch of a hand laid ever so gently on
her shoulder caused her to start with surprise.

"Lawrence!" she exclaimed, for he it was.

"Ay, Lawrence!" he answered; "and good-morrow to you, Ruth!  Were you
coming to the Hall?"

She nodded.

[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee prevaricates.]

"To be sure then," he went on, "some good angel brought me by the
copse, instead of going round by the weir, for in that case I should
have missed you."

"And where were you going?" asked she.

"Waltham," he replied, after a momentary hesitation.

"But this is not the way to Waltham."

"Nay, is it not?" he said, with well-assumed carelessness; "all the
same, I am right glad I came it, since I have met you upon it, Ruth
dear."

"That is fine talking," pouted Ruth; "but you're not telling me the
truth, Lawrence.  You weren't going to Waltham."

[Sidenote: Sharp words.]

"Wasn't I?" returned the young man, flushing a little.  "Well, look
here, my dear, people who ask no questions, hear no lies.  I doubt I
may go where I list, without Mistress Ruth Rumbold's leave," and then
he made a pretence of being about to stalk on; but the attempt was a
sorry failure, breaking down instantly as he saw the tears brimming
up into the eyes so persistently fixed on the silly lambs.  "Ruth,"
he whispered, as in a moment he was beside her again; and taking her
chin in his hands, he turned her face up to his, "come, let's kiss
and be friends.  Eh, shall we?  You know I'd not vex you for--for--a
king's ransom.  Indeed I did not mean to vex you, only--there, it was
so plaguy inquisitive of you, don't you know, to--there, never mind;
what have you got in this basket?" concluded he, turning the
conversation, like the wise diplomatist he thought himself.

"Now who's inquisitive, I wonder?" cried Ruth, folding her arms tight
down upon the lid of the basket, and breaking into a saucy smile,
which, however, faded in an instant.  "Lawrence, where were you
going?  Tell me, dear."

"If you'll tell me what you've got in that basket, perhaps I may,"
laughed he.  "Come, is it a bargain, Mistress Pry?"

"Yes, Mr. Pry."

"To Hoddesdon, then.  There, I hope you're happier for the
information."

"Not happier; no, Lawrence," she answered very slowly.  "Wait a bit
now," she went on, as he laid aggressive hands on the basket.  "To
Hoddesdon!  What for?"

"Oh, come now, that's not in the bond.  Why, nothing; nothing, little
woman, that you know anything about."

"But I want to know," insisted she, still valiantly protecting the
basket's most vulnerable points; "that's just it, I want to know."

"Then want must be your master," he said angrily.  "Little girls must
not know everything," he added, mending his rude speech, and seizing
basket, and Ruth, and all in his arms.

"I'm not a little girl any longer," she cried, struggling to free
herself, and digging her pink nails ever so hard into his bronzed
wrists, till he decided to loosen his hold.

"No, you're a little wild kitten, with the sharpest claws in the
world; that's what you are," he said; "but it won't do, I'm master."

[Sidenote: A bitter secret.]

"'Tis no good you're going to Hoddesdon for," she said bluntly,
looking up into his laughing eyes, "or you'd tell me when I ask you,
without all this silly nonsense.  You never kept a secret from me
before, Lawrence."

"Perhaps I never had one to keep."

"But now?"

"Hang it! you'd try a saint's temper," growled he, wrinkling his
brows into a most unsanctified frown, and letting her go with such a
sudden abruptness that she stumbled a little, and in the effort to
maintain her footing on the narrow plank the basket slipped from her
arm, and would have fallen into the water had not Lee caught it, with
a dexterous turn of his wrist.

"See now, Ruth," he said, as he restored it to her, his eye grown
radiant again in his pride at his clever legerdemain, "if you're not
at my mercy after all.  Might I not have been revenged for your
refusal, and helped myself to a peep into this mighty particular
basket, if I wasn't honour bright from top to toe?"

[Sidenote: The mysterious basket.]

"But you are, Lawrence, aren't you?" challenged she, with a strange
earnestness, that sent his eyes, which were gazing into hers, back to
the basket; "and evil be to him who evil thinks," she went on.
"And--"

"Oh, plague take it!" he interrupted impatiently; "what are you
driving at?  Now for the basket.  Come."

"You really care to see inside it?"

"Not a straw, my dear child," he said loftily.  "'Tis full of
emptiness, I daresay.  That's just what delights you girls more than
anything; teasing and tantalizing a fellow all about nothing."

"Ay, but there is something in it.  Something I was bringing to the
Hall on purpose to show you, and--and to ask your opinion about.  And
yet--and yet--" she went on wistfully, "I hope you won't be able
to--to give me one."

"Why, my dear girl," rejoined he with a superior smile, "how mighty
mysterious we are, to be sure!"

"'Tis a fearful-looking thing, let me tell you," she said, gingerly
raising one corner of her basket lid.

"Some queer fish, is it?--out of the river?" he asked eagerly, for he
was a mighty fisherman.

"Out of the river," nodded she.

"A pike of some sort perhaps."

"Yes, I should say, of some sort."

"You dear, splendid, diamond of a girl," ecstatically cried Lawrence,
"as I live 'tis a pike! can't I see it gleaming?" and he clutched at
the concealing hay--"a big silver pike!"

"No, a steel one," she said, as the weapon lay exposed in all its
nakedness, and steadily she lifted her eyes to his face.

[Sidenote: Found out.]

It had grown ashen white, and he staggered back for support against
the bridge rail.  "Ruth!" he gasped, as the handful of hay dropped
from his powerless fingers and floated away on the swirl of the
stream, "what is the meaning of this?"

"That you must tell me, Lawrence."

"Where did you find it?" he went on.

"In the river.  The river Lea.  Close by the water steps in Mistress
Sheppard's garden.  And when?  Last night, while you were in the
King's Arms, talking to those men.  The men," she went on in steady
tones, though he was biting his lip, and his pale face flushed
painfully, "who were there; instead of going straight home, as you
ought to have done--"

"Ought!" angrily interrupted he; "and who made you spy over me?"

"I wasn't spying.  I was only--taking a peep, just a little peep
at--at the boat."

"Boat?"

"The _Queen Ruth_," Lawrence dear.

"And since you set such store by honour bright and 'oughts,' and all
that sort of thing all at once, what business had you to be abroad
all in the dark when your father had bidden you go indoors?"

She coloured a little.  "I did go in," she answered after a moment's
silence.  "Only--only--"

"Only you came out again, that's all," he said with a low mocking
laugh.  "Ruth, Ruth! what possessed you to do such a thing?"

[Sidenote: Changed indeed.]

"I was ill at ease, Lawrence," she said, colouring deeper still.  "I
feared--nay, I do not know what I feared.  But I could not stay in
the house.  Its air stifled me.  I could not breathe.  I thought--I
fancied--nay, something has seemed so amiss with everything--with
father and you, Lawrence, with you for these long, long weeks past.
I have fancied--"

"Psha!  Fancies indeed!" he cried with an impatient twitch of his
lips, and turning from her, he stood and gazed with lack-lustre eyes
into the water.

"And you're not a bit like the old Lawrence.  And all day yesterday
you--never mind.  Lawrence, what do those dreadful men want here?"

[Sidenote: The bayonet.]

He turned his face and gazed broodingly into hers, following the
direction of her eyes as they fell again on the contents of the
basket.  "Bringing their horrid--what is the thing called?"

"A bayonet," he answered curtly.

"Their horrid bayonets here; and dropping them all over the place?"

"Well," he said with a faint smile, "they didn't do that purposely,
be sure.  'Twas an accident.  A stupid, infernal--"

"Oh, Lawrence!  Fie, now!  For shame, sir!" and Ruth's little hand
shut up his lips.

"An awkward little mistake, then," he went on, "of that
clod-hopping--never mind names, Ruth."

"Rumsey," said Ruth; "I heard father call him so--Colonel Rumsey."




CHAPTER XI.

"HE DIED FOR HIS KING."

"Hush!" whispered Lawrence, gripping her fast by the arm, and looking
hurriedly round.  "And--well, what more did you hear?  Tell me the
truth now."

"Lawrence," she said, timorously following his glance, "I want to
tell it you.  But 'twas all such a confusion.  Just a word here and
there; yet, oh, Lawrence! such fearful ones; of their own evil ways,
and of--of killing--of killing!  Oh! shake your head if you like; but
they did, I tell you.  And then some one said something about--think,
Lawrence--about the king."

"Ay?"

"And of laying him low upon his own highway.  Think of it;" and Ruth
shivered in the bright sunshine.

"They were full, it seems, of their merry jests, these roystering
gentlemen," said Lee.

"Nay, I like not such jests; and I'd not have you joining in them,
nor my father neither," she said.

"Oh! but he's their arch-jester," cynically laughed Lawrence.  "We're
a merry company, we boys, my dear."

But there was little enough of mirth in the young man's face, as he
stood there gazing across the level meadows, and up at the sailing
clouds, and in fact everywhere excepting into the clear, earnest eyes
of his companion as she came near and laid her hand gently on his
arm.  "Lawrence, you bid me speak truth just now," she said, "and to
my best I did; for I would scorn to tell a lie, and least of all to
you.  But it is not so you are serving me, sir, your old, old friend
Ruth.  You are hiding something from me.  Oh! but you are.  Something
that troubles you; and that is not kind of you."

[Sidenote: Sad jesting.]

"Least said, soonest mended," he said, but in softened tones, and
gently withdrawing his arm from her grasp.  "There are things done in
this world not good for such as you are to be told about, Ruth dear.
Tell me," he added, pointing to the basket, "does your father know
anything of all this?"

"No; I lacked the courage to anger him when he looked so kindly on me
this morning; and besides, I--well, I thought first I would speak
with you about it, Lawrence."

"That is well," answered Lee; "and for thy life, Ruth, do not tell
him.  Do you understand--eh?  It would be betraying such--such
terrible tales of these eavesdroppings of yours, letting such naughty
cats out of bags.  Eh?  wouldn't it, now?  Do not tell a single soul;
do you hear, child?" and he gripped her by the arm till his fingers
left their marks on it.  "Promise.  'Tis of course but a mere
trifle," he went on with ill-feigned unconcern.  "Not worth our
wasting our breath upon.  But still, if I were in your place I'd tell
nobody.  Not a soul, dear heart!  Eh?"

"That is as it may be," demurely answered she.

"But I command!" he cried sternly.  "I forbid you to do it, do you
hear?  I'll have no conditions."

"Ay, but I will," she said, resolutely setting her lips.

"Ruth, child!  Ruth!" he said in the agony of his desperation; "you
don't know what you're saying.  'Tis playing with fire--with edged
tools."

"Ay, indeed," she said, with another glance at the bayonet.

"'Tis a matter of life and death."

"And yet this moment you called it a silly trifle," she said, lifting
her eyes reproachfully to his flushed face.

[Sidenote: Startling truths.]

"Death!  Do you want to drive me mad?" he cried through his clenching
teeth.  "I tell you, girl, if your foolish, gossiping tongue should
let slip one syllable of what you saw and overheard last night, it
would be a hanging matter for your father and for me."

"Lawrence, Lawrence!" gasped the terrified girl; "why? what for?"

"What for?" echoed he with heaving breast "Do you know what this
disobedience of yours has done?--undone, I mean.  Shall I tell you?"

"Lawrence! what, what?"

"The good of a whole nation.  That is what these gentlemen and your
father--"

"And you, Lawrence?" interrupted she.

[Sidenote: The shadow of a plot.]

"Ay, I suppose so;" and his voice fell slightly.  "That is what we
were plot--arranging."

"And to be hanged for doing so much good?  Oh! no, no.  His majesty
would never allow that," said Ruth with an incredulous shake of her
head.  "He is so generous, so kind!  Why do you shiver like that? and
how dare you shake your head?  I say the king is--"

"Hold your peace, child!  You don't know what you're talking about.
'Tis just Charles who has to be--to be got rid of."

"Got rid of?" gasped Ruth.  "How--what--"

"Nay, we have not got so far yet as that.  Maybe he'll have to be
shipped across channel, or--yes, put in some safe place."

"Prison?"

"Nay, now, you're such a downright one!" winced Lawrence petulantly.
"Well, prison, then, if you like.  Words break no bones."

"But deeds cut off heads!" sobbingly burst forth Ruth.  "That's how
they served our martyred king."

"Psha!  Martyred!" sneered Lawrence.

"First they put him in prison, and then they murdered him."

"Well, make your mind easy, child," said Lawrence.  "That's not the
plan this time anyhow.  'Tis quite a different sort of one."

"Then there is a pian?"

"Something of one; though hang me if I can make head or tail of it!"
he said wearily.  "They jangle over it so.  One's for this way, and
one for that."

"And you, Lawrence?"

"I serve but to count with, child.  Master Rumbold would have me in
it," he said with a shrug.

"And after some poor fashion he has you; but not your heart, I
doubt," said Ruth.

"Nay; perhaps I had not it to spare," he said, gazing down with
rather a sad smile at her sweet, attent face, which was brightening a
little; "and if I consented to be one of their lot, it was but to
keep friends with him."

[Sidenote: A little royalist.]

"'Twould have been more friendly of you to have been his enemy,"
sighed Ruth.  "Had he asked such a thing of me, I would have defied
him.  Ay, but I would, Lawrence.  Mayhap an 'I'll turn no such
traitor, Master Rumbold!' from you, Lawrence, would have saved him
from this falling back into the old terrible ways.  When I think,"
shudderingly went on Ruth, "that my father--my kind, loving father,
who calls me ladybird, and such sweet, merry names--was the same who
stood guard by King Charles's block, and looked on while his bleeding
head fell, it makes me dream such dreadful dreams that I start up
screaming in my sleep.  Lawrence, I would you had defied him."

"He would never have spoken to me again, Ruth, if I had," answered
the young man; "and he would have forbidden me ever to see you, or
speak to you again."

She was silent for a few moments.  "And better so," she said at last.

[Sidenote: A traitor or patriot?]

"You wouldn't mind, Ruth," he said bitterly.  "It wouldn't matter a
scrap to you if you never saw me again.  I know that;" and he turned
away.

"It would matter very much," she answered.  "I think my life--my
outside life--would feel like this little stream here, when the
winter comes, and the flowers and the sunshine are all gone--"

"Dear child!  Dear Ruth!"

"But," she went on, gently pushing away the hands he was stretching
out to her--"but still in my heart there would have been sunshine;
because I could have thought of Lawrence Lee as an honourable man,
and not as a traitor.  What would Madam Lee think of you, Lawrence,
if she knew this that I know?"

"Hush!" he murmured, closing his eyes and knitting his brows.

"And your father," she went on; "he was of no such poor flimsy stuff.
He died for his king; true to the death."

"He believed in him," said Lawrence.  "For my part--well, I speak as
I hear, Ruth.  His worst enemies never denied Charles the First had
his good points; but the best friends of Charles the Second say 'tis
difficult to find his; and as for his faults, he's as full of them
as--"

"As you are, or any other mortal man.  Come, tell me, you silly boy,
you, do you think that if these gentlemen--these fine 'friends' of
yours, who want to be rid, as you call it, of His Majesty--were
ruling England in his place, the country would fare happier?  For my
part," went on Ruth, when no response from Lawrence appeared to be
forthcoming, "I doubt my father would make a rare stern tyrant.  And
as for you, Lawrence--" but something in this notion suddenly upset
all Ruth's sober eloquence, and it rippled away in a peal of merry
laughter.

"I see nothing ludicrous in it," said Lawrence grimly.

"No indeed," said Ruth, regaining her gravity, "'tis no laughing
matter."

"Come, Ruth, if you have quite done your sermonizing, let us part
friends at least."

"That is at an end," she said, settling her disarranged hood, and,
drawing the handles of her basket well up to her elbow, she turned
her face homewards.

"But you were going to the Hall?" he said.

[Sidenote: Parting in sorrow.]

"I was," she replied; "but I cannot face Madam Lee and think what you
have become.  Fare you well, Lawrence!"

"Ah, silly child! what should you know about politics?  This comes,
now, of meddling in things you don't understand," he said fractiously

"'Tis not I who have meddled with them," she said; "and I would give
my gold and garnet brooch they had not come within a hundred miles of
Stanstead."

"Psha!  Go your foolish, obstinate ways, then, Ruth.  Stay, first
give me the basket."

"Give it you?  Well, well," she went on; "now I think of it, 'tis
yours, I suppose.  For old Diggory, your gardener, brought it over
last week full of early potatoes--a present for father from Madam
Lee.  So take it, if you'll be troubled with it;" and, first
extracting its contents, she handed it to Lee.

He dashed it furiously into the stream, sending the terrified sheep
stampeding in all directions.

"This is too much," he said; "'twas the weapon I meant."

"That is not mine to give; and were it mine a million times over, I
would not give it you.  The deadly hateful thing; unless--" and
taking it by its short handle, she laid its point to her heart.

"Mad girl!" he cried in agonizing amazement; "what would you do?
Give it me.  Do you hear?" and he started forward to seize it.

[Sidenote: Ruth's threat.]

"Mind, Lawrence," she said, waving him back, "dare to lay a finger on
it, and--"

"What--what--?"

"And I will tell all the world--that is to say, I will tell Mistress
Sheppard, and that will serve just as well, of everything I heard and
saw last night.  Say, Lawrence," and she half held the bayonet
towards him, "which way is to be?"

[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee in check.]

Without a word he turned from her, and strode wrathfully, and pale as
a ghost, away through the copse.




CHAPTER XII.

MOTHER GOOSE'S TALES.

Lovelier spring than this one now passing into early summer had not
been within living memory.  Never had the trees budded more green and
fresh-looking, and the roses and larkspurs shown more hurry to break
forth and mingle their fragrance with the breath of the soft sweet
air; and yet Ruth Rumbold's heart felt as wintry as if some load of
ice-bound earth weighed it down.

Poor old Maudlin wondered sorely what ailed her pet, that she went
about the place, doing her little household duties as carefully and
deftly indeed as she always did do them, but not to the tune of her
own sweet young voice, as her wont was.  No, the child had grown
silent as any stock and stone, and as grave--and that wasn't saying a
little neither--as the master himself; and then Maudlin set about
concocting a variety of messes and electuaries in the still-room with
a view to restoring the roses to the pale cheeks, and charming back
the lost music.  And then, after all her trouble, to think that Ruth
refused to swallow a mouthful of her medicaments, and vowed that
nothing ailed her--if only Maudlin would leave her to herself!

For three whole days this sort of thing has been going on; and
to-night, tired out with her ineffectual expostulations, the old
woman has gone off, not without dudgeon, to "get a mouthful of fresh
air," as she says.  And truly the atmosphere is heavy--as if a storm
were not so far off--and to indulge in a little interchange of ideas
in the gate-house parlour; for there you are always safe to pick up
the latest news stirring, trifling and important, just as you would
come upon it in the Mall or the Covent Garden coffee-houses.

[Sidenote: Ruth at her studies.]

And so Ruth is left to her musings; for though at the first glance
you might call them studies, since one book of the little heap piled
up on the broad ledge of the window where she is seated, lies open on
her lap, you have but to look again, to see she is not reading it.

As, however, the sound of a heavy step descending the stairs falls
upon her ear, she drops her eyes to the page, not even raising them
again when the maltster enters, and crossing slowly to her side,
stands gazing out absently into the rays of the setting sun, which
are luridly firing the yew-tree peacock into a blaze of red and
yellow.

Presently, however, he turned his eyes upon Ruth.  "Does not the book
please you?" he asked, pointing to the volume before her.  "I see,"
he went on, when she looked up, but made no answer, "that you have
not turned the page since you opened it haphazard when I bid you be
reading it half an hour ago.  Or is it that the picture of the
blessed martyrdom of Mistress Anne Askew so fascinates you?"

"'Tis a fearful thing!" said Ruth, shuddering, as she looked, for the
first time, if truth must be owned, at the pictured page.  "Poor
Mistress Askew!  She must have been a right brave lady."

"A bold Christian woman, rather," quickly corrected the maltster,
"who counted her life for nought beside the truth."

"Truth is indeed a pure noble thing to live for," acquiesced Ruth.

"And to die for.  Yes," said Rumbold; "that blessed work of Master
Fox's is indeed a mighty treasure-house of the scores who have shed
their blood for it."

"Ay," sighed Ruth, "'tis indeed a book of death, and ghastliness,
and--"

[Sidenote: A batch of books.]

"And wholesome teaching, and fitter far for thy recreation moments
than all this farrago of chap-book trash I found you head over ears
upon.  Where did you get it?"

"I bought it of the old packman who came to the gatehouse yesterday
morning; and a fine collection there was in his wallet," continued
Ruth, her eyes waxing bright.  "He had come straight by way of Bow
and Waltham, and on here across the Rye, from the 'Looking Glass,'
the big chap-bookseller's shop that stands on London Bridge, father,
dear, and he'd got _Reynard the Fox_, the sly wicked creature.
Father, what an odious hypocrite he was--eh?  And _Mother Bunch_, and
_Jack and the Giants_--

  "'Fe!  Fi!  Fo!  Fum!
  I smell the blood of an English--_mun_!
  Let him be alive, or let him be dead,
  I'll grind his bones--'"


"Tut! tut! tut!" frowned the maltster.

[Sidenote: The maltster hates romance.]

"To make my bread!" went on Ruth, absorbed in the vision of the
valiant little Cornishman's attack on the three-headed monster.
"Yes, and then there was _Tarlton's Jests_," she hurried on, all
unconscious of the deepening frowns of Rumbold, "and _Guy of
Warwick_, and--let me see, what came next?  Why, to be sure, 'twas
the _Blind Beggar's Daughter of Bethnal Green_--'Pretty Bessee,' you
know, father; and the history of the _Two Children in the Wood_, poor
pretty dears! with a picture running all along atop of the page,
showing all the sad woes they suffered, and ending up with the
hanging of the cruel uncle.  And then--well, I protest, there was
such a heap, that I cannot remember them half.  But I know he had
_John Barleycorn_, because--well, father, it made me think"--and a
merry smile rippled on Ruth's mobile lips--"of somebody we know, eh?
and how they squeezed the poor old fellow to death.  And then,"
chattered on Ruth, encouraged by the faint smile that dawned on the
maltster's stolid face, "then there was _The World Turned Upside
Down_.  Well, I had half a mind for that; but just then I came upon
this, and it looked the very best of all, and as I--"  Ruth hesitated
to explain that her resources had not reached to the purchase of all
the chap-books she had coveted, and the thrilling woodcuts of the one
she now held towards him had carried the day with her.  "Well, 'twill
divert you, I'm sure, father, dear."

It was _The Seven Champions of Christendom_!

"Seven dunderheads!" frowned Rumbold, turning the book's pages with a
contemptuous finger.  "Harkye, Ruth," he continued, in stern tones,
"not a groat more of pocket-money will I waste on you till you have
learned to spend it something more discreetly than on trash like
this.  I had rather see my money at the bottom of the moat than
frittered so.  Pah! dragons, forsooth, and fair captive ladies! and
knights-errant, and saints--beshrew them, all!  Mighty saints, I'll
warrant me they were.  Pagans in motley!  Saint David of Scotland.
If he set foot there now the presbytery would be for hanging him high
as Holyrood tower.  And Saint Patrick of Ireland, with his
superstitious shamrock symbol, and Saint George of England."

"Merry England, father," corrected Ruth.

[Sidenote: A burning shame.]

"Pah! pish! a seemly time this for England to be merry! when she
needs bow her head even to the dust for the weight of her sins!" and
he turned and threw the book angrily into the fire.  "That for your
chap-book saints!"

"Now," thought poor Ruth, "he would be as cruel to them, if they were
real flesh and blood men, as ever Bishop Bonner and Queen Mary were
to the poor Protestant martyrs;" and silently, for she dared not
trust herself to speak, she began to turn the pages of the volume on
her knee; but Rumbold took it from her.

"Read no more," he said, "till your spirit is better attuned to such
profitable instruction.  Lay it by till to-morrow," he went on, in
less harsh tones; "mayhap when you have slept on what you have read,
and digested it--"

"I doubt I shall not do that," despairingly answered Ruth, "for the
woodcuts alone would serve to give bolder hearts than mine a
nightmare."

[Sidenote: A soft place in his heart.]

"And yet," went on Rumbold, softening still more at the notion that
his favourite reading had impressed Ruth more strongly than he had at
first assumed, "I do not think yours is lacking in courage.  Your
father's daughter would dare much in a righteous cause were she
called upon to do it.  Eh, Ruth?"

She did not answer; but sat gazing dreamily at the fire as it reduced
the poor chap-book to a few filmy shreds.  "But now, little one,"
went on the maltster, "to your room.  Good-night!" and he bent and
kissed her forehead,

"Nay, father!" she rejoined, looking up in surprise; "not good-night
yet awhile.  'Tis hours too early."

"I like not thy trick of exaggerating," rebukefully said he.  "One
hour, and barely, for the clock has already struck seven--it may be
sooner--"

"Yes, indeed," briskly interrupted she, "and I am not for going to
sleep at sunset, with the little chits of sparrows--"

[Sidenote: Cross-questioning.]

"And magpies!  You grow pert, mistress.  Come!" sternly added
Rumbold, "I'll have no more of the May-day wantonness we wot of.  Do
as I bid you."

"But, father--"

"Do you hear me?" thundered the maltster.  "I desire to be alone.
That is--I need not your company."

"'Twill be so lonesome for you," said Ruth; "I think it would have
cheered you in this twilight time if--"

"I need it not, I tell you," quickly interrupted Rumbold.  "I
expect--visitors," and he coughed huskily.

"Visitors!"

"Ay; that is to say," stammered Rumbold, "it--it is possible."

"Visitors! and nothing prepared for them to eat!" cried the little
housemistress aghast.

"They are not of the sort who set store by rich meats and costly
wine-bibbing.  They come--to confer with me, on--on important
questions."

"Is it the price of grain, father?  I heard Parson Alsides saying to
Master Lockit only this very morning that it was at a most ruinous
price--seventy shillings a quarter, he said; and that if the farmers
and the employers--such as you, father, dear, and Lawrence Lee, I
suppose, would but put their heads together to devise how it could be
cheapened for the poor, 'twould be, he said, a right blessed day's
work, and a vast deal better than the hatching of all sorts of plots,
and--"

"Eh! eh! eh!  Parson Alsides is a chattering old sycophant, who is
always prating for the pensions he gets out of the king's own privy
purse.  Though, mind you, child, I don't say I would not spare the
matter consideration when more serious concerns allow me leisure."

"I hoped you had done with those for ever, father," said Ruth
gravely; "'twas a serious concern, indeed, when poor King Charles was
killed, and you--"

"I! how now?" cried Rumbold, turning sharply upon her.  "What had I
to do with that?"

"What had you not, father?" said Ruth, in tones of sturdy reproach.
"Why, many's the time Maudlin has told me how you stood by and saw it
done."

[Sidenote: A bitter-sweet story.]

"And beshrew her chattering old tongue for her pains!  I'd have had
it cut out, had I caught her at her tales.  'Tis no fit one for your
ears, Ruth," he added, in sad slow tones.

"Indeed, father; I could always stop them with my fingers when she
begins about it; and yet still I must listen.  'Tis such a
bitter-sweet story--poor king!"

"And yet," went on Rumbold, changing his mood, "after all, why should
I be sorry to think that you know your father can look his duty in
the face."

"Oh, father!" she began reproachfully.

"Let be, child," he interrupted, turning away, and thrusting his
hands gloomily down into his pockets, "'Whatsoever thy hand findeth
to do,' saith the Scripture, 'do it with all thy might.'  'Tis
enough."

"Indeed, indeed enough," said Ruth, stealing beside him, "and you
will meddle no more in such things, eh, father?"

"And who told you I dreamed of doing so?" he demanded in unsteady and
excited tones.

"You must rest and be comfortable," went on Ruth, twining her arms
about his neck, and stroking his rugged face; "so snug here, isn't
it, in our beautiful old Rye House?  And you must be content to rest
now, and have your little Ruth take care of you, and sing--for you
say I have a tuneful voice, eh, dear--of the Land 'where the wicked
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest,' and the gentle
green pastures, and the godly hymns you taught me when I was a small
thing you could dandle on your knee.  Promise me, dear heart," she
went on coaxingly, when Rumbold's only answer was an attempt to shake
her off, "never to meddle more.  Let the bad cruel-hearted men make
their plots, for 'tis all their wits can reach to, I doubt.  But for
one like you, who can make such malt as is not to be found besides in
all Hertfordshire, oh, I'd stick to it."

[Sidenote: Rumbold's changes of mood.]

"And stick you to your churn and your wheel, Mistress Oracle," said
the maltster, fondly stroking her soft brown hair, "and discourse not
so glibly of what you do not understand a whit more than your own
frisky Tab there, who is tearing up your fine chap-books with her
claws.  What should kings, and such kittle cattle's doings be to you?"

[Sidenote: Words about majesty.]

"Nay, little enough," said Ruth, turning to rescue her precious
books, and taking the destructive Tab in her arms, "though in truth
sometimes I think I should like to see our King Charles," she went
on, dreamily twiddling the kitten's ears.

"Have you not seen him many a time, silly child?" said Rumbold.

"In a fashion, ay, yes, as he has ridden by yonder in his coach, and
his Grace of York too of course, but 'tis such a glimpse; just enough
to set one caring to look him face to face.  Have you ever done that,
father?"

"No--yes--I scarcely know," frowned Rumbold.

"'Tis a right kind merry face, isn't it?"

"I see no such things in it," growled Rumbold; "an ordinary swarthy
one enough to my thinking."

"Yet Goodman Speedwell, when he went up to London last year to sell
his pigs, said 'twas a rare and gracious one, and a pure fine sight
to see him playing with his little dogs in Saint James's Park, and
feeding the ducks in the canal with his own royal hands.  Oh, he must
be a pleasant-humoured gentleman!"

"He's just a mortal man, I take it, very mortal, and when he's
angered spares none, for all his fine forgetting and forgiving talk."

"There it is," said Ruth, "'tis scarce to be expected that he who has
been so wronged, should be so forgiving as the Bible would have us.
Nowadays, if a man sin against his brother, and kings are our
brothers, eh, father? in a fashion of speaking they are our elder
brothers, eh, father, dear?"

"Beshrew thee, child," impatiently frowned the maltster, "what has
come to you?"

"I say 'tis a stretch if that man shall be forgiven twice, that is
what I am thinking of; and those who plotted the killing of Charles
the First, and were pardoned, would scarce be let go a second time,
if--if--" she faltered, and coloured deeply.

"If what, mistress?" sternly challenged Rumbold.

"If they should harbour ill thoughts against Charles the Second."

It was the maltster's turn to look aside, as she lifted her appealing
eyes to his face.  "Come, come," he said, "a truce to this silly
chatter.  Good-night; and hark you, give me the key of the
communicating door between your chamber and the Warder's Room.  Have
it you about you?"

[Sidenote: The key of the warder's room.]

"Yes, father; here," and she disengaged one of the keys from the
bunch hanging at her girdle, and handed it to him, wonderingly.

"Very good," he said, taking it from her and pocketing it, "'tis your
own fault, for your carelessness, Ruth," he went on; "this morning
was the second time I found that door ajar.  If I find it so ever
again, I'll have it walled up.  For the present I'll hold the key in
my keeping."

"But, father," protested Ruth, "Adam Lockit--"

"Adam Lockit grows stupid and deaf, and Diggles is but one remove
from an idiot, and the arrantest coward breathing."

"Only about ghosts, father; you should see him lay about him with the
cudgels on double his size in flesh and blood.  And he's keen as any
hare for the slightest sound or stir."

[Sidenote: An abrumpt "good-night."]

"Humph!" said the maltster, "flibbertigibbets, all should be abed and
snoring by nine o' the clock.  So good-night, child, and pleasant
dreams." And with another kiss, Rumbold dismissed his daughter.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE SLIDING PANEL.

The Warder's Room was an excellent example of the famous rule that no
stronghold is stronger than its weakest part.  Its three outer walls,
the one namely terminating the wing, the blind one giving upon the
pleasaunce, and the one overlooking the moat, seemed stout enough to
defy the teeth of Old Time himself; but the partition wall dividing
it from Ruth's chamber beyond, was by comparison a mere piece of
pie-crust, though pie-crust of perhaps rather a tough sort, inasmuch
as its panellings were composed of oak of no mean thickness.

Here and there, however, whether simply from age, or whether the
water-rats infesting the moat below were answerable for any share in
the mischief, it was certain the wood showed signs of decay; and one
day when Ruth was dusting and polishing the richly carved panels, as
it was her pride to do, one large square of them fairly gave way, and
fell inwards behind the skirting board.

[Sidenote: A hiding place.]

Groping with both hands to recover it, Ruth found to her
astonishment, that, instead of coming, as she expected, into contact
with the corresponding panelling of the room beyond, they strayed off
into space, and on closer examination of the framework of the fallen
panel, she found that it was grooved.  Surely it looked vastly as if
she had come upon one of the sliding panels old Adam Lockit declared
the house was full of!  Very like it indeed, Ruth thought as she
kindled a light with her tinder-box, and stepping with it into the
pitch-dark cavity, looked round.

Barely high enough for her to stand upright in, it evidently extended
on each side of the opening, to the stone and brickwork supports of
the arched communicating door, of which as we have already seen
Richard Rumbold secured the key into his own keeping.  Thus the
opening formed a dark passage of nearly a couple of feet wide, and
six or seven feet long.

While she was occupied in these investigations a sudden hustling,
shuffling sound in the room beyond, ordinarily as still as the very
vaults of Stanstead Church, nearly startled her out of her senses.
The next instant, however, her own merry laugh at her own terrors
broke the echoes, for what was the disturbance but the scratching of
the rats, whom her tour of discovery had sent stampeding willy nilly,
like bad Bishop Hatto's long-tailed visitors:

  "From the right and the left, from behind and before,
  From within and without, from above and below."

Up by the chimney, down by the open windows plump into the moat.

[Sidenote: Ruth's secret.]

"Now," smiled Ruth to herself, in the dead silence that ensued, "now
I have a secret! and never a creature shall be told of it.  Not even
Maudlin, nor Lawrence--Lawrence indeed! certainly not!  A rare fine
place to hide in when next Lettice Larkspur and Dorothy Dingle come
to spend the day.  Why, if they'd search till midnight, they'd not
find me.  I should be shut in safe--," here a sneeze, caused by the
cloud of dust her movements had raised, interrupted her, "safe as the
'mistleto bough' bride.  Almost, that is to say," she went on,
brushing away the cobwebs festooning her skirts, as she stepped back
over the skirting-board, and kneeling down to replace the panel, she
discovered that by the merest touch of her finger she could work it
backwards and forwards in its grooves.  Not so hard to open as the
old oak chest was, certainly; though in every probability it had been
so once upon a time, before the dry-rot had shrivelled the wood in
its sockets, and the fragments of iron bolts, some strewing the
floor, some still hanging, had rusted and given way.  A pasteboard
sort of protection now the place would have been, though it was no
doubt safe enough in those war times of the Roses, when it was built.

And carefully indeed Ruth had kept her secret, though there were
times when it grew to be rather a burden to her.  When, for instance,
she lay in her bed and thought what dismal straits those poor people
must have been driven to, before they should have sought such a
refuge.

The very existence of the place is, however, forgotten now in this
other mystery that haunts her sleeping and waking.

She does not find it at all true, as she sits uncoiling her hair, and
absently brushing out its brown waves, that sharing her load of care
makes it lighter, as people are so fond of telling you that it does.
The weight, on the contrary, seems to have grown heavier, especially
within these last hours; and oblivious of everything beyond her
troubled reflections, she is only recalled to a sense of realities by
Maudlin Sweetapple's voice querulously clamouring for the lamp to be
extinguished.  "Beshrew the thing!" piped she; "how many more times
am I to shut my eyes, and open 'em again, to see all these ghosts
about the place?"

"Ghosts?" queried Ruth, escaping to Maudlin's door, and peeping
gingerly in.

[Sidenote: Shadows on the wall.]

"Ay, marry, ghosts; black-sheeted ghosts all over the walls," said
Maudlin, pointing to the restless shadows cast by the quivering flame
of Ruth's lamp.  "Look at 'em bobbin' about, and a draught to cut a
body's head off!  Have you got a pane open in there, child?"

Doubtless that explained the inconvenience; for Ruth had opened the
pane in order to catch the faintest sound that might disturb the
silence of the night.

"Then shut it," went on Maudlin, as Ruth owned to the fact, "shut it,
if you don't want your poor old nurse to catch her death o'
rheumatics.  A mighty fine sort of a night to be havin' casements
open, this!  What's gone, I wonder, of all yesterday's sunshine?
'Tis as cold as Candlemas.  Well they may say:--

  "'Cast ne'er a clout
  Till May be out.'

If--hark! what's that, child?"

"I heard nothing," answered Ruth, listening with all her ears,
"nothing but the rain," she added, as a smart sleety shower rattled
against the glass.

[Sidenote: The creak of the drawbridge.]

"So 'tis--at last.  There wasn't a joint of all my poor old bones
that didn't tell me that was comin'.  But 'twasn't that I heard.
'Twas--hush!  There 'tis again!  The clank o' the draw-bridge chains!
or I'll eat my head off."

"Don't make rash vows, you silly old dear!" rejoined Ruth, with an
uneasy little laugh.  "Wasn't the drawbridge let up at sunset, as it
always is?  What fancies you do take into your head, Maudlin!"

"Oh, ay; 'tis as full of 'em, I daresay, as an egg's full o' meat,"
grumbled on the old lady.  "'Tis only the young ones that are the
wise ones nowadays.  Good lack! good lack! and how they do like too
sittin' up disturbin' the rest o' them that's no mind for moonin' and
star-gazin'."

"There's neither moon nor star to be seen," said Ruth, glancing
towards the outside obscurity.  "'Tis a pitch-dark night."

"And ten, as I live, by the tower clock!  For shame on thee, Ruth,"
continued the old woman, as the strokes fell; "put out thy light this
instant, and grope to bed as thou canst; or I'll warrant we shall
never be hearin' the last o't from the master to-morrow.  His one
eye's sharper than a dozen folk's two, and if it did catch sight of a
gleam--What do you say?"

"I did not speak."

"I fancied I heard you mumblin' somethin'.  For the merciful powers'
sake put out the light, I say."

"Good-night, Maudlin," said Ruth, obeying the injunction at last, but
not without reluctance.

A smothered sound, which might have been a reciprocal good-night, but
still more resembled a snore, witnessed that the darkness had
speedily worked its slumberous effects on Maudlin.  Poor Ruth,
however, deprived of her lamp's companionship, and too wakeful for
bed, groped her way back to her old seat, and sat, every nerve
sharpened, to catch the faintest echo.

[Sidenote: A wild night.]

Save the driving rain, however, and the sweeping of the wind in low
sullen gusts round the walls, and its jerking of the tall vane on the
tower-top, till the thing complained direfully, not a sound was to be
heard.  A likely night, truly, for folks to choose to be abroad,
especially thereabouts, where there was scarce so much as a tree to
shelter you.  Anyhow it was plain these expected visitors of her
father's had not been so eager to be getting themselves dripping to
the skin; and the maltster had no doubt given them up ever so long
ago, and gone to bed.

Sidenote: The striking of the hour.]

With cramped limbs, but a lightened heart, Ruth rose and once more
approached to close the pane, which she had again unfastened, after
first noiselessly closing Maudlin's door.  Well, bed was after all no
such uncomfortable place, she thought, as the dank air blew in on her
face, "when the clock must be close on--hark! yes: ding-dang!
ding-dang! ding-dang!  Absolutely but wanting one hour--ding-dang--to
midnight!  Such an unearthly ding--terrible--dang."--




CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE WARDER'S ROOM.

Ding!  Like some guilt-stricken creature Ruth stood with her hands
upon the half-closed pane.

Lingeringly and drearily the sound died in a low angry growl of wind,
that came sweeping up muffled and sullen as some vexed human voice.
Hark!  hark!  surely that is a human voice!--voices!  And that?  No
steady drip-drip of the rain from the mullions of the casement, but
footsteps stealthily passing along the arched way below, and
beginning to ascend the stair winding to the Warder's Room!

Impossible!  Sure she must be growing more fanciful than old
Maudlin's self?  No, no; 'tis but the tiresome rats again, holding
their witches' sabbath?  What else can it be?

The sudden flash of a torch full across her window illumines the
pitchy blackness below; and then, as if hurled by some violent and
angry hand, the torch falls into the water and is extinguished.

[Sidenote: Ruth on the watch.]

Not quickly enough, however, to conceal from Ruth the gigantic
outlines of the drawbridge, gliding higher and closer, till it is
lost in the shadow of the wall, and at the same time the clank of its
chains, more felt than heard, with their dull familiar vibrating,
ceases.

Who can have been tampering with them?  Surely not Adam Lockit.
Rather than be unfaithful to his trust, and let down his bridge after
sunset, he would dispute every ounce of it with his life's blood.
But what about Barnaby?  Barnaby! and even at that moment Ruth cannot
forbear a smile at the bare notion of Master Diggles' Dutch courage
displaying its mettle within six hours of either side of midnight.
Even supposing he could have performed the miracle of stealing a
march on Lockit, and getting possession of the gatehouse keys.

No.  One alone, beside Adam Lockit, has the means of working those
chains--the master of the Rye House himself.

Spell-bound and breathless, Ruth stands listening to the stealthy but
heavy tramp tramp of those feet mounting the stone stair which leads
from the arched door in the wall of the gateway to the Warder's Room.

Soon the sounds cease; to be quickly broken again by hurried whispers
and the low hum of voices.  Muffled and indistinctly as they reach
her ear, the tones seem familiar to Ruth, and her heart stands still.
What--what if Lawrence--?

Hardly has his name escaped her pale parted lips before with swift
noiseless tread she has stolen to the wall, and falling on her knees
before the sliding panel, slips it back, and stepping into the
darkness beyond, crouches down.

Not an instant too soon, if movements so cautious and catlike as hers
could have betrayed her; and that was possible, judging by the
distinctness with which she on her part can catch every syllable that
is being uttered in the Warder's Room by the party of men gathering,
as she can plainly see through a long crack in the wood, about the
long table.

[Sidenote: A cold welcome.]

"All right, Master Hannibal," says a voice she does not know.  "We
wait your pleasure."

"Nay," objected another, which Ruth at once recognized for one of
those she had heard upon the bridge, "your commands, Master Rumbold."

"By my faith! there you speak by the book, colonel, like the good
soldier you are," shiveringly said a voice, whose delicate tones were
also not strange to Ruth.  "Pleasure's a fish that I for one should
be for angling after in other preserves than the slush and bog of the
Rye.  Hu! hu!" shuddered the speaker.  "And not so much as a stick of
a blaze on your sepulchre of a hearth here, Master Hannibal!  A merry
welcome truly to bid your boys! and all of us as wringing wet as any
of the rat vermin in your styx of a moat below there.  I'm drenched
to my skin."

"Had I imagined it to be so thin," dryly returned the deep tones of
the maltster, "I would never have invited your lordship to join our
company."

"And the place smells as mouldy as a vault," fretfully continued the
nobleman.  "I can tell you, had I known it was such a stretch from my
house I'd in any case have spared you my company to-night."

[Sidenote: A wrangle.]

"We could have dispensed with such fine-weather friends," began a
gruff surly voice, "if--"

"Hold thy peace," interrupted Rumbold, "and save your wit, Master
West, till my Lord of Escrick here can find his own to measure with
it."

"Of a truth, I confess my brains seem all washed out," said Howard
more good-temperedly, "by that last slush hole I floundered into,
when I set off in pursuit of the jack-o'-lanthorn, some idiot among
you said was a light in the Rye House."

"My Lord of Escrick makes a rare pother about a sprinkle of rain,"
said the voice which was strange to Ruth; "if he'd been jolted all
the way from Fleet Street, as I have been, atop of the raw bones of a
pack-horse like a sack of husks--"

"Hush! by your leave, Master West," for the remembrance of his
sufferings warmed the speaker's eloquence.  "Not so loud.  Some one
sleeps in the adjoining chamber."

"Marry! 'twould have been as well then," rejoined West, in sour, but
considerably lowered tones, "if you had thought fit to entertain us
in some other part of your ramshackle house here, less conveniently
adapted for eavesdropping--"

"And for getting off if we should be surprised," said Rumbold
quietly.  "Have I not explained often enough, that this chamber is in
direct communication with the subterranean way to Nether Hall?  You
shall judge it for yourself presently, as I promised you."

"And besides," put in Walcot, "we are safe, Master Rumbold said, from
being overlooked on this side."

"The place seems Scylla or Charybdis," said Howard laughing, "and a
veritable vermin trap to boot--if one may judge by the snuffling in
there," and he pointed to the wainscot, "eh, Master Hannibal?"

"The four-legged pests do somewhat overabound here, my lord,"
answered Rumbold; "but my own friends are safe enough, I pledge you
my word.  I did but entreat Master West to be a bit careful.  His
voice is scarce so still and small as caution behoves."

"Liken it rather unto that of a trumpet," piped the shrill tones of
Ferguson, "which shall blare to the uttermost walls--"

[Sidenote: Walls have ears.]

"All in its good time, Master Ferguson," interrupted Walcot;
"meanwhile remember walls have ears."

"And so have listeners," growled West, still sorely put about with
himself for his own forgetfulness, "long as asses' ones."

"Nay," said Rumbold, "they'd have to be longer and sharper too, to
pierce these walls.  More than three feet and a half thick I know
them to be."

"And all of pure stone?" inquired a voice.

"No, of oak, Master Sheriff, which is at least as trustworthy."

"It is a strange omen," said Walcot ruminatively,

"A what?" derisively chorused half a dozen voices.

"'Tis not the first time oak has served Charles a good turn in his
evil hour."

"What's the man maundering about?" said West.

"I know not," growled Rumsey.  "Unless it be of that accursed
Boscobel oak-tree.  Well, well, I'll warrant root and branch shall be
lopped this time close enough, eh, Master Rumbold? and we'll bring
its fine acorns into the mud.  Come, to business.  Are we all here?"

"I do not see my friend of the other night," said Howard looking
round.  "The young gentleman who so deftly rendered my hand that
surgeon's service."

"Lawrence Lee, you mean, my lord?"

"Ay, that was his name.  A likely young fellow he seemed.  A
neighbour of yours, I think you said, Master Hannibal?"

"He should have been here," said the maltster; "but 'tis no matter,
we can do without him.  He is--"

[Sidenote: Noisy rats.]

"To be trusted, let us hope," growled West.  "I swear, Master
Rumbold," and he glowered towards the wainscot, "your rats are the
noisiest I ever heard."

Poor Ruth shivered with terror.  She had but stirred to avert the
worse crash of a slip she had nearly made in that cramped space.

"The vane atop of this roof, creaking in the wind," said Rumbold
carelessly.

"If we should find these Rye House rats of the spy genus, we'll spit
them on it," said West.

"And you along with them, Master Rumbold," said a voice which had not
yet spoken.

[Sidenote: A chest of tools.]

"Your insinuations waste precious time, Sir Thomas Armstrong," said
Rumbold, a frown of offended dignity puckering his brows as he turned
and, crossing to the great oaken chest standing between the windows,
raised its ponderous lid with both hands.  "I would not be held a
boaster; but those who have known Richard Rumbold longer than you
have, will tell you that he is not the man to put his hand to the
plough and draw it back.  See," he went on, addressing the rest, who
greeted his last words with a low murmur of applause, "here lie our
tools," and he pointed into the open chest, "all in order; not
forgetting the last cargo--muskets, bayonets, blunderbusses, and all."




CHAPTER XV.

THE PLOT THICKENS.

"Blunderbusses!" shrieked a voice, which seemed to retreat, as it
spoke, into the room's remotest corners; "the gracious powers above!
Mind, for mercy's sake, be careful.  Not loaded?" piteously went on
the speaker.  "Say they're not loaded, Master Rumbold."

"Not yet, Master Sheriff," grimly smiled Rumbold.

"But whatever can we be wanting of such fearful things?" insisted
Goodenough.

"That remains to be seen," laughed West, approaching the chest; and
selecting a weapon from its gleaming contents, he placed it in
Rumbold's hands.  "Here, Master Hannibal, is the one I promised you
for your special use.  A jewel of a thing.  Be careful of it."

"Ay, yes, yes, do," entreated Goodenough; "hear what Master West says
about it himself."

"A sacred trust indeed," murmured Rumbold, thoughtfully handling the
weapon, "and wielding a mighty power, for good or for ill.  Come,
Parson Ferguson," he went on, suddenly changing his mood, and turning
to the tall, lean, sable-clad individual standing on his right "What
say you?  Will you consecrate it?"

[Sidenote: Foul play.]

"Of a surety it has my blessing," answered Ferguson, displaying his
ugly yellow fangs of teeth in a broad grin.

"Well, well, to business then," continued the maltster, carefully
restoring the blunderbuss to its place and closing the chest.  "Come,
have we our parts by heart?  You, and you," he went on, singling out
three of the company, "and you."

"Oy, oy! sartain sure enough we be o' ourn," said the foremost of the
trio, slouching to the front, and elbowing his two comrades forward
along with him, so that Ruth could plainly discern their features,
and recognized them for the foreman of the malting-yard, one of his
subordinates, and a man who worked in the corn-chambers.  "Roight
enough we be, an't us?" he went on, appealing to the sheepish,
hangdog looking couple beside him.  "'Tes for we to be trampin' out
Stanstead way, an' hidin' us among the hedges and ditches till us
catches soight o' the king's coach an six; an' then 'tes for we to be
turnin' tail in a twinklin', and run as quick--as quick as--"

"Twice as quick anyhow, friend, as the twenty-four legs of his
majesty's Flanders mares," said Howard with a slight yawn.

"Back agin to the Rye House here," continued the spokesman, "an' be
tellin' the rest o' yer which coach the king's a-ridin' in--"

"And how many--"

"I'm a comin' to that, an't I? an' how many's a follerin' after 'em
in coaches too, an' how many guards a 'orseback--"

"Six at the outside," said Rumbold.  "'Tis never more.  You,
colonel," he went on, addressing Walcot, "undertake to attack them."

"As a soldier, I claim that privilege," answered Walcot.

"If report speaks truth, you're not wanting in bravery," said Rumsey,
measuring the stately and graceful figure of Walcot with rather
jealous eyes; "but six is a biggish handful for one man to tackle;
and if," he went on with a sneer, "your gift of second sight should
chance to be making twelve of it--"

"Or if in fact there should happen to be so many," quietly
interrupted Walcot, "I trust I may not be found wanting--nor tripping
neither."

"As to the beasts," said Rumbold quickly, "we shall have little
trouble with them.  They'll all be spent and weak as water with the
long stage."

"They change at Hoddesdon, do they not?" said Howard.

[Sidenote: Preparations for treason.]

"If they were foreordained to reach there, they would, my lord,"
rebukefully replied Rumbold.  "And now, what about the disguises?" he
continued, addressing his foreman.

The son of the soil scratched his carroty poll, and gazed round with
lack-lustre eyes.  "The what, maaster?" he said at last.

"The labourers' clothes, man, that you promised to furnish my Lord
Howard here with, and the other gentlemen."

[Sidenote: The disguises.]

"Oy, oy," and a gleam of intelligence broke over the stolid face.
"Now you speak English, Maaster Rumbold.  Yes, they be all roight
enough; leastways they will be.  But 'tes jest a bit of a job loike,
doant'e see, Master Rumbold.  Stands to reason as 'tes, doant it?
Gettin' tagether o' poor folks' togs.  The quality's got any quantity
o' coats an' britches, silk and satin', an' velvet an' double
broadcloth into the bargain; but 'taint every day an' ollis, as yer
poor man's gotten his one decent smock.  But, never ya fret, my lord.
Me an' these here," and he jerked his thumb at his two comrades, "a
doin' our main best; an' the blame woan't be to our door, if us doant
make such clod poles and scares o' ya, an' these here other dandy
gen'lemen, as the very crows sha'ant be able to make up their minds
whether to fly away from ya for freight, or peck yer eyes out as ya
walk along."

"That is satisfactory," said Rumbold.  "The next question," he went
on, letting his gaze rest on the elegant proportions of Howard, who
had thrown himself in a careless lounging attitude into a tall-backed
Cordovan leather chair, "the next question is"--

"So it be," interrupted the foreman of the malt-yard; "so it be,
maaster, an' 'twas no more than us was a sayin' of as we coomed along
here.  Warn't us?" and again he appealed to his mates, who nodded
stolidly.  "'Tes sartin as our cat's got a tail, there's not one o'
the lot o' ya as looks to be trusted loike."

"Fellow!" fiercely demanded Howard, springing to his feet, "what do
you mean?"

[Sidenote: How to stop the King's coach.]

"The wagon is a main heavy one," continued the man, unheeding the
angry frowns of Howard and the rest, "and'll need a power of
elbergrease afore't can be turned over; an' we can't be lendin' you
fine gen'lemen that, along with our britches an' smocks.  You'd best
have the cart overturned by we first," and he pointed to his
companions, "afore we start away, doant ya know?"

"Certainly not," said Howard haughtily; "I hope we're not such idiots
that we can't do carter's work."

"Carter's work!  Why! 'tes carter's work to be keepin' of his wheels
from gettin' bottom uppermost.  Noa, noa, ye'll never be but gimcrack
soarts o' carters, take ya at ya best, an' if ye're for doing of the
upset yerselves, there should be six o' ye to the work, my lord, or
ye'll make a mess o't, be shure."

"Then," said Howard, "it remains for you to supply us with the six
needful pairs of breeches, and hobnailed shoes."

"I'll swear for the britches, an' the shoes ye'll have to make
stretch as far as they'll go."

"And you," said Rumbold, turning to West and a group near.

"Ay, we engage for the coachman, the postilion, and the horses,"
nodded West.  "We're quite content, Master Hannibal, to leave you to
bring down the Blackbird and the Chaffinch.  You're a fine shot, and
ought to do it at one priming, with such tools as you've got for it;
tho' 'tis true you'll be two to one, and your birds have got some
blood in them."

"Ay, but their claws will be blunt," laughed Rumsey.  "'Tis scarce
probable, I mean, that they'll carry so much as a sword between them.
They never do."

"Still assistance should be at hand, and close too," said Sir Thomas
Armstrong.

[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee in the toils.]

"Among the whole twoscore names written here," said Rumbold, drawing
a large roll of parchment from his pocket, and unrolling it, he
glanced over its contents, "there is not a steadier hand, nor a
stouter heart, than my young neighbour's here of Nether Hall,
Lawrence Lee."

"Lawrence Lee!" echoed Walcot, casting an involuntary glance behind
him ere the words had well left his lips.  Could he be such a prey to
strange fancies, or had he in very deed and truth heard a low gasping
breath break from the wall?  "You're certain he's to be trusted?"

"I flatter myself," replied the maltster, a faint smile curling his
lips, "that Master Lawrence Lee would think twice before he refused
to comply with the slightest wish of Richard Rumbold."

"Wasn't his father a Royalist?" said Howard.

"And what if he were, my lord?" rejoined Rumbold.  "Lee is a lad of
spirit, and exercises his right of private judgment."

"Exactly," said Howard, with a dubious shrug.  "He takes leave to
call his soul his own.  And that, of course, is all in this business.
But how about his heart?  You have a daughter, have you not, Master
Hannibal?"

"And what if I have, my lord?" said the maltster coldly.

"Oh, no offence," carelessly returned Howard; "but she is a comely
lass, they say.  Quite a rustic beauty."

"Beauty is skindeep, my lord.  She is a good child."

"And minds her doll," broke out Rumsey in a hoarse laugh.

"Nay," said Rumbold in displeased tones, "my Ruth's doll-days are
about over.  But she minds her wheel; and meddles not in such matters
as we are discussing--or should be discussing," he added, as the
clock over their heads struck midnight.  "Moments are precious."

"And for my part," said Howard, this time with an unmistakable yawn,
"I think we are misusing them odiously.  There is a fortnight still
before the king comes back from Newmarket; and between this and then
all sorts of things may occur to change his plans."

"What is to be, will be," said Rumbold solemnly.

[Sidenote: A deep snore.]

"Oh! that I grant you," said Lord Howard with a portentous yawn,
glancing at the same time towards one of the window embrasures,
whence issued a prolonged deep sound, not unlike the smothered growl
of a wild beast, but which in fact emanated from the nose of Sheriff
Goodenough, who lay back, lost in the enjoyment of a snatched forty
winks.  "That I grant you, and so seemingly does our good sheriff
here; for he has yielded to the inevitable, and is snoring like a
trooper.  Shake him up, colonel," he added to Walcot, who stood close
by, leaning against the panes, and gazing thoughtfully out into the
night.  "If you're not asleep yourself, that is."

"Very far from it, my lord," answered Walcot, rousing up and
approaching the table; "I was thinking that all being said and done,
it is time to consider the measures for our safety.  We don't want to
be run down inside these four walls like a pack of weasels."

[Sidenote: The subterranean way.]

"By no means," said West; "we're going to burrow underground before
we part to-night, for a good mile and a half through Master
Hannibal's subterranean way.  Aren't we captain?  So as to make sure
we don't blunder our heads into any wrong holes, when the time comes."

"An excellent notion," said Howard with animation.  "And a better
night than this abominable Noah's deluge of a one could not be.
'Twill spare us wading like a flock of geese to--.  By the way, where
did you say it brings us out, captain?"

"Into a large vault that lies under the right-hand tower of the
ruined gatehouse of Nether Hall."

"And near the river?"

"Within a hundred yards of it."

"And then 'Sauve qui peut,' I suppose."

Rumbold inclined his head gravely.

"And Nether Hall," continued Howard, "belongs to our young friend
Farmer Lee.  I perceive now.  You're a clever man, Captain Hannibal.
You did well indeed to win the fellow to our cause, since his
premises appear to be indispensable to our precious lives.  But how
is it we do not see him here to bid us welcome to his dungeons?"

"We may find him below.  But if not, 'tis no matter; and if he should
have stolen a leaf from Master Goodenough's book there, and gone to
bed, I have the duplicate keys.  He has made them over to me;" and
the maltster, kindling his extinguished torch, signed to his
companions to do the same.  "'Tis pretty well pitch dark," he added
warningly, "even in broad daylight, every step of the way.  Ho there,
Sheriff!  Wake up!  And a murrain on you for a sleepy-head.  Give him
a pinch, colonel," he added to Rumsey, who chanced to be seated
nearest the sleeper.

[Sidenote: Two left behind.]

"I couldn't be so barbarous," replied Rumsey, with a peculiar
sneering smile.  "Hark!" he went on, as a thunderous snort was all
the comment on Rumbold's adjuration.  "Let him be."

"Oy, oy.  Let 'm bide, cap'n," said the foreman.  "They narrer
cellars an't for the loikes of a hogshead like he.  He'd be stickin'
fast in the middle o' them like a dodnum in a duck's weasand.  Let
'un sleep his sleep out."

"Nonsense, man!" said Walcot.  "We can't leave him here all alone."

"He won't be alone if I'm with him, I suppose," said Rumsey with a
snarl; "and I shall remain here.  You won't catch me coming down to
break my shins in your pitch-dark vaults at this time of night; as if
I wasn't lamed enough already with that confounded stumble I made on
Monday night.  Time enough when I've got to run for it."

"Do as you please," said Rumbold; "I shall be back in a couple of
hours or so."

"Ay, ay.  Don't hurry.  'Twill be right enough if you leave us here."

"Like doves in a cage.  Ha! ha!  Or a couple of fighting cocks," said
Howard, with a laugh that was echoed a little dubiously by all
present, for it was no secret among them that Rumsey and Goodenough
did not love each other.  "Well, well; slumber, my darling! eh
colonel? ha, ha, ha! and peace be with you."

[Sidenote: The conspirators' stair.]

And Howard, lighting his torch as he spoke, followed the rest, who,
preceded by Rumbold, were beginning to file down the winding stair
through the door by which they had entered.




CHAPTER XVI.

A LITTLE DIFFERENCE OF OPINION.

When the shuffling of the footsteps of the conspirators had died away
far down below, not a sound was to be heard, save the rain, now
fallen to a gentle patter, and ever and anon the wind spending itself
in low fitful moans round the old mansion.  From time to time,
however, this monotony was varied by the obbligato which Sheriff
Goodenough's nose continued to trumpet forth.

One more than ordinarily prolonged and loud snort afforded Ruth an
opportunity of changing her cramped position, and at the same time of
obtaining a clearer view of the scene before her.

Almost immediately facing her, at the corner of the table, sat
Rumsey, staring with such a fixed steady gaze straight before him,
through the lamp's thin flickering flame, that she trembled and sank
crouching to the floor.  Could he have caught sight of her?

Never a fear of that.  For even if he had chanced to notice the long
straggling crack in the wainscot, and that tiny hole caused by the
displacement of a little knot in the wood, you had but to look at his
moody face a second time, to be sure that his thoughts were blinding
his outward senses to all around him; save when from time to time he
turned his head on his sleeping companion with an ugly look of
mingled mistrust and contempt.

[Sidenote: Rumsey draws cold steel.]

"Clod! idiot!" he growled at last through his clenched teeth, at the
same time drawing a short poignard from a sheath in his buff leathern
belt, and throwing it on the table with such a clatter that it woke
the sheriff, who sat up with a start of terror.

"Ha; thieves!" he shouted.  "Murder!  Call the watch!"

"Come, come, sheriff; what's the matter?" laughed Rumsey.  "Are you
dreaming still? don't you know where you are?  Hey! look about you,
man."

Goodenough obeyed mechanically; and his dazed eyes, as fate would
have it, fell first upon the naked dagger, glittering in the
lamplight--"What's that? what's that?" he shrieked again, startled
into all his senses at the sight of the thing.  "Take it away!  For
mercy's sake, take it away," he entreated piteously.  "It--it's just
what I've been dreaming about!  Put it up, Master Rumsey; dear Master
Rumsey, put it away in its proper place."

"When I am quite sure where that is, I will," coolly answered Rumsey.
"In the meantime you and I, sheriff, will just have a little bit of
gossip together.  There couldn't be a nicer opportunity for it, while
we've got the place all snug to ourselves; 'under four eyes,' as they
used to call it when I served in Italy."

[Sidenote: The sheriff and his enemy,]

"But where are they all?" said Goodenough, staring round into the
darkness visible, with eyes now thoroughly wide-awake.  "And how the
plague came I to fall asleep?"

"I suppose only Sheriff Goodenough can solve that problem," answered
Rumsey with a shrug.

"But where are they all?" persisted Goodenough.

"Ah!" impatiently said Rumsey, "down below."

"Down below!" gasped Goodenough.  "Oughtn't we to be there along with
them, colonel?  They'd no business to go leaving us all alone;" and
the sheriff shivered--"Eh, ought they now?  Let's be going too, shall
we?" and Goodenough rose to his feet, and began stumbling in his
haste to reach the door, over the disorder of chairs and footstools.
"I'd rather, I would indeed."

"Too late," said Rumsey.  "They're ever so far by now.  Serves you
right, sheriff.  Who ever heard of being caught napping when there's
work of this sort on hand?  Come, now--steady there--come.  It's of
no earthly use your rattling the bolts about like that.  The
captain's locked us in."

"No, no, he hasn't," said Goodenough frantically, wrenching at the
ponderous door till he dragged it half open.  "See!"

"The mischief seize you!" savagely returned Rumsey, snatching off
Goodenough's hands, and banging to the door again with a kick "Not
that one.  The door, I mean, down at the stairfoot.  'Tis locked, I
tell you.  Double, triple locked; and you can't get out if you tore
your arms off trying."

"But never mind," he went on, as Goodenough fell back despairingly
against the wall, "don't look so down in the mouth, man; ain't I
here?" and with a low chuckle of amusement at the poor man's
discomfiture, he flung himself into a chair, and thrusting his hands
deep into his pockets, sat watching through his half-closed eyelids
every movement of his companion, who retreated slowly to a chair
standing farthermost from Rumsey, and sat down on its edge, looking
the very picture of wretchedness and despondency.  "'Tis too bad," he
said shiveringly, "I wish I hadn't come.  I wish I'd never--"  Then
he stopped short.

"Well?" sharply interrogated Rumsey, fixing the unfortunate man's
wandering glances with the steady, piercing, snakelike glitter of his
own.  "Say on, sheriff, out with it; you wish you'd never--joined
this conspir--this society; is that it?"

[Sidenote: A faltering tongue.]

"I said nothing of the sort, Master Rumsey," faltered Goodenough.
"But I--I--I do say--h'm.  No matter;" and as his eyes followed
Rumsey's, which were fixed on the dagger upon the table, he relapsed
into silence.

"On the contrary," said Rumsey in calm hard tones, "'tis very great
matter.  Our noble association brooks no sticklers, nor cowards
neither.  What were you going to say?"

"That I hope there's not going to be any--any blood-spilling," said
Goodenough in a steadier voice.

"Whose blood?" laughed Rumsey.  "Charles's, do you mean?"

"Ah, heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated Goodenough, "and forgive us
the bare thought.  Of the guards, I meant, or of any with him."

"That they must take their risk of, pretty dears," sneered Rumsey,
"so long only as we secure our Blackbird, and our Chaffinch."

[Sidenote: Murderous plans.]

"Ay, ay," sighed Goodenough.  "Well, 'tmust be chanced, I suppose, as
you say, colonel; and perhaps if it comes to't, the sacrifice of a
man's life will be forgiven by Providence, so only as we can succeed
in bringing his majesty to our way of thinking, and make our
Protestant religion safe from these popish scoundrels; and bind him
to appoint a real true Church of England king to come after him."

"Instead of the Chaffinch."

"The Duke of York must certainly be set aside, if it be true indeed
that he is a Papist at heart."

"If!" cried Rumsey in tones that might have been crook-backed
Richard's own.

"But I never dreamed," continued Goodenough, "that 'twould come to
blood-spilling, I protest, even of so much as a poor horse's."

"Bluer blood than a wretched Flanders mare's, or a handful of red
coats', will be staining yonder road before this moon's out, I take
it," muttered Rumsey.  "You're a fool, Master Goodenough," he added
in a louder key, and turning contemptuously on Goodenough; "a
cowardly fool."

"No," said Goodenough, and he rose to his feet, a sudden light of
indignation in his eyes; "but you are a traitor, Richard Rumsey! and
'tis not now for the first time I read your murderous thoughts."  A
low laugh was all Rumsey's comment.  "Master Rumbold," hurried on
Goodenough, "and Colonel Walcot--"

"Bah!  Walcot!" interrupted Rumsey, snapping his fingers.

[Sidenote: A dangerous threat.]

"And my Lord of Escrick and the rest know well enough how I have
bidden them beware of you."

"Absolutely!" said Rumsey, elevating his brows, and the corners of
his mouth quivering about his teeth like some hungry hyena's.  "We're
as mighty fine as the pot was, when it talked a homily to the kettle.
Do you imagine that Charles, once safe in their clutches, our good
captain, or my Lord of Escrick, or any man-jack of our forty boys,
would let him off alive?"

Goodenough was silent for a moment.  "I doubt they would not one of
them stain their hands with cold blood," he said then.  "And for a
certainty I can speak to Walcot--"

"Psha! speak no more of him, the white-livered loon."

"I can speak to Walcot," stoutly persisted Goodenough, "for many
times I have heard him say that a fair front-to-front tussle with the
guards was what his soul itched for.  But for attacking the king he
would not do it; for that it was a base thing to kill a naked man."

"Naked!" sneeringly echoed Rumsey as he rose from his chair and
sauntered towards the table, on whose edge he seated himself, and
began carelessly toying with the handle of the poignard he had thrown
there.  "Let his purple and fine linen shield him."

[Sidenote: The coward speaks up.]

"They would stand him in less stead against a bullet or a
blade-thrust, than even my good Norwich drugget here would shield me,
if any man bore me a grudge," answered Goodenough with a faint smile.
"But 'tis no matter; why should it be spoken of?  'Tis quite certain
that none of us are for killing the king, nor anybody else."

Rumsey's lips twitched with the old baleful smile.  "There I think
you are out, Master Sheriff," he said, as he took the poignard into
his hand, and began examining its hilt with a half absent attention.
"The puling scruples of a mere handful out of all our forty boys
would not go for much;" and he fixed his eyes in a covert glare on
Goodenough, who stood thoughtfully gazing into the lamp; "and these
must be got rid of, for a 'house divided against itself cannot
stand.'"

"'Tis the assassins who must be got rid of," sturdily retorted
Goodenough.  "For they foully blot our cause."

"Ha!" cried Rumsey starting up, with the poignard clutched fast in
his hand.  "Do you forget who--what I am?"

[Sidenote: An assassin.]

"Nay.  But I think you do," answered Goodenough calmly.  "You should
be a soldier, but it looks much as if you would have me take you for
a scoundrel, and a craven-hearted assassin!"

The last word was lost in a sudden sharp shriek of agony; and swaying
round, Goodenough clutched convulsively at the poignard which lay
plunged to the hilt in his breast, and fell heavily to the floor.




CHAPTER XVII.

"DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES."

"So, Master Sheriff," muttered Rumsey, as he stood coolly watching
the thin stream of blood trickling slowly from the prostrate body of
his victim, "that is one of you ticked off, at all events.  It was
such a pity you should be calling names for nothing, wasn't it? and
wasps like you are mightily troublesome, not to say dangerous; for
who's to guess where you mightn't go buzzing our plans?  Not dead
yet, aren't you?" he went on scowlingly, as a low groan broke from
Goodenough's lips.  "Why, you yelled out loud enough for a dozen men.
I swear I could almost have fancied 'twas a woman's screech, 'twas so
shrill;" and he looked round as he spoke.  "But then one might fancy
anything in this charnel hole of a place;" and again he cast covert
glances at the shadows thrown upon the wainscotting by the flicker of
the expiring lamp; and crossing to one of the windows, he looked out
through the murky darkness, towards a light gleaming steadily in the
far distance.  "Cold as charity it is too.  I'd give a gold piece to
be out of this, and drying before the kitchen fire over at the
Thatched House at Hoddesdon yonder, with a cup of mulled sack and a
tender cut.--The mischief seize you!" he growled on, as a deep groan
from the wounded man arrested his speculations, and turning sharply
on him he saw Goodenough feebly move his right hand towards his
breast.  "Not still yet?  Hang it!  Richard Rumsey never pinned a
jerkin so clumsily before.  Want it pulled out, do you?" he
continued, with a brutal laugh, as he came close up beside his
victim, and stooping over him, plucked the poignard from his breast.
"Have your way, then.  But don't be saying it's my fault, if your
last gasp comes with it."  Then with savage indifference he saw the
ebbing thread of life-blood swell into a stream let loose by the
removal of the weapon, and the limbs relax, while the face grows gray
and fixed.  "So, I thought as much.  Well, go your ways friend, to
your journey's end, and keep yourself ready when you get there, to
welcome the Blackbird and the Chaffinch when they knock.  And now I
think I'll be going my road;" and Rumsey glanced meditatively towards
the window.  "Another time will serve to explain to Captain Hannibal
how you got yourself into this coil.  Stay," and he slowly lifted the
blood-stained poignard still dangling in his fingers.  "A mighty
excellent notion!"

[Sidenote: The assassin.]

Kneeling down by the wounded man's side, he wrenched open the
clenched fingers of his right hand, and thrust the hilt of the dagger
between them.  "Yes," he muttered; "that will tell its own tale.  And
now for the Thatched House."

Returning to the window, and craning out his neck, Rumsey spent
several minutes, first in consideration of the projecting corbels and
cornices, and the stout web work of ivy covering the walls; then
drawing his head back again, he fell to scowling contemplation of his
lamed foot.  Once on terra firma, nothing, he knew, was easier than
to find the postern; and if by ill luck it should be locked, the
trees bordering the walls on their inner side would assist him to
scale them, and so away across the Rye by the bridges.

Only the first step was the hard one; but the guilty man knew there
was no choice for him but to grapple with it; and after one or two
clumsy failures, he succeeded in at last obtaining a firm footing on
the window ledge.

[Sidenote: An unexpected appearance.]

Scarcely had he accomplished this feat, than a flash of light broke
across his eyes, with such startling suddenness that it caused him to
sway forward, and he would have dropped headlong into the moat, had
he not stretched out both hands, clinging for dear life to the stout
old ivy trails; and by a wrench and a twist that for some hours
afterward he did not forget, held on by the jutting stone-work of the
window, staring helplessly into the room at the figure of a man, who
stood lantern in hand, in the arch of the door facing him.  "Hullo!"
he cried.

"The same to you, colonel," laughingly returned the voice of Lawrence
Lee.  "What in the name of Fortune are you about there?  Marry!  'Tis
an odd time of night to be practising gymnastics!"

"Lend me a hand for mercy's sake!" gasped Rumsey, "or I shall fall
and break my neck."

"And it would be such a pity that, eh, colonel?" laughed Lee, as he
ran forward.  "Have with you then."

"Great heaven!" he cried, stumbling in his haste head foremost across
the body of Goodenough; "what have we here?  Sheriff Goodenough!" he
continued in horrified amazement, as he turned his lantern light on
the pale still face, and perceived the pool of blood it lay weltering
in.  "Dead?  Murdered?"

Rumsey shrugged his shoulders with an air of cool indifference.

"Man!" shouted Lee, turning on Rumsey.  "What is the meaning of this?"

"Pooh! nonsense!" replied Rumsey, as well as his almost spent breath
permitted him.  "Dead!  Well, like enough; but murdered--Here, hi!
lend a hand, can't you?"

[Sidenote: Saved for the gallows.]

Lawrence complied; but the hand he placed at Rumsey's disposal was no
very gentle one, and he hauled him to the floor like a sack of bones.
"Speak, man!" he cried.

"Well, give me breathing time," answered Rumsey, shaking himself; and
then, glancing askance at the dark mass upon the floor, he growled
sulkily, "What is it?  What do you want to know?  Murdered?  Well,
killing's no murder, I take it, when a man is driven to it in
self-defence."

"Self-defence!"

"Ay.  There's no telling where I mightn't be now, if this quarrelsome
fellow here, had got the best of me.  Don't you see the dagger there
in his hand?"

"Where are you hurt?" asked Lawrence, looking from the dagger to
Rumsey.

"I?--I?--Oh!" stammered Rumsey confusedly; "well, well, 'tis nothing
to speak of.  A scratch; hardly a mere scratch."

"Who's dagger is this?" demanded Lee, stooping down, and closely
inspecting the weapon in Goodenough's grasp.

"Whose should it be?" rejoined Rumsey, letting his eyes fall shiftily
beneath the penetrating glance of Lee, as it fell on him.

"Faith! well, only I never knew him to carry so much as a bare bodkin
about him," said Lawrence.

[Sidenote: The traitor's tale.]

"Then that shows how little you do know him," retorted Rumsey.  "A
more bloodthirsty, cantankerous fellow than he is, isn't to be found
among the lot of us.  Why, he's for lopping everybody who doesn't say
'snap' to his 'snip.'"

"'Tis very strange," said Lee thoughtfully.

"A nice thing," grumbled on Rumsey, letting his eyes rest on Lee's
left hand, which hung straight down beside him.  "A nice thing to
attack a man in this fashion, as if he was a viper in a rut.  And
it's preciously fortunate I'm always prepared for any surprise.
You'd find it a hard matter to catch Richard Rumsey on the hip;" and
he smiled a smile of infinite self-complacency.  "What's that
dangling in your fingers there?"

[Sidenote: The key.]

"Only the key of the tower door," absently replied Lee.  "But," he
went on, again keenly glancing over Rumsey's figure: "it takes two to
a fair fight--and a pair of weapons.  Where is yours?"

"Hadn't I my choice of twoscore at least out of the toys there?" said
Rumsey after an instant's silence, and pointing to the oaken chest.
"If you doubt it look for yourself.  A real embarrassment of riches,
eh?" he went on, watching Lee's face, as he lifted the lid of the
chest and stood gazing at its gleaming contents.  "Enough to do for a
score of lives if one had 'em.  But the best of us has but one in
this bad world," he continued, piously turning up his eyes; "and
Providence has spared me, as you see, from the sword of the ungodly.
I'd have given my best firelock, though, it had not happened;" and
for once Rumsey spoke pure and simple truth.  "The fellow had his
faults, but I had a great respect for him."

"And is that what sent you clearing off in such a hurry?" asked
Lawrence, turning contemptuously from Rumsey, and kneeling down
beside Goodenough's motionless body he set his lantern on the floor,
and the key beside it, and raised the wounded man's head; "and
leaving him in this state?"

"Well, you see--" but here a violent fit of coughing interfered with
Colonel Rumsey's powers of articulation.  "Hang that open window!" he
said, when speech at last returned; "'tis enough to give a man his
death," he went on, as he closed the pane with such violence that the
draught from it extinguished the dying flame of the lamp.  "It
was--h'm--h'm--it was awkward, don't you see, being found here,
with--with no one to tell the tale but myself, as it were; for dead
men tell none," he added with a low chuckle.

"He's not dead," said Lawrence, placing his hand on Goodenough's
heart.

"Bah! dead as a door-nail.  I'm mightily sorry for it, to be sure;
but the fellow brought it on himself.  What could I do?  Necessity
knows no law."

[Sidenote: In the dark.]

And Rumsey, stooping down over Lee as if to scrutinize the
countenance lying pillowed on the young man's arm, contrived to let
his hand drop well over the key upon the floor.  Then clutching the
ring of the lantern, he paused and repeated his observation.  "Take
my word for it.  He's dead as a door-nail.  Good-night, Master Lee.
I'll leave you to explain matters, if it's all the same to you."

Lee looked up.  Absorbed in his efforts to staunch the flow of blood
from Goodenough's wound, he had hardly heard Rumsey's last words.
As, however, he raised his head the door fell softly to, and he found
himself in total darkness.




CHAPTER XVIII.

"GOD SAVE THE KING!"

"Come back!" he shouted.

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

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

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

"Lawrence!"

[Sidenote: Ruth to the rescue.]

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: RUTH AND LAWRENCE SUCCOUR SHERIFF GOODENOUGH]

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

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

[Sidenote: A terrible sight.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Bad company.]

But she shook her head silently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tut! tut!--"

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

"Killing the king?!!"

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

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

[Sidenote: A child's grief.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The secret kept.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But if she should waken?" said Lawrence.

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

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

"Newmarket."

[Sidenote: The warning to the King.]

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

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

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

"Betray my oath?"

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

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

[Sidenote: Lawrence decides.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Gone.]

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




CHAPTER XIX.

"STARS AND GARTERS."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, yes! whatever you please, if--"

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

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

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

"A horse."

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

[Sidenote: Stars and garters.]

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

"Stars and Garters!" gasped Mistress Sheppard.

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

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

"A brace of pistols," began Lee.

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Mistress Sheppard hesitates.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: A good start.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The King's highway.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: In a mighty hurry.]

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

[Sidenote: The day dawns.]

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

[Sidenote: The horseman.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: "Pleasure!"]

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

[Sidenote: A moralist.]

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




CHAPTER XX.

"A FRIEND IN NEED."

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

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

[Sidenote: Tit for tat.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Accounts for what?" fired back the other, catching the _sotto voce_
comment.

"For your being so polite--and--and--"

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Crooked answers.]

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

"Go about your business."

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

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

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

"And where--"

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: A grand personage.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The lackey.]

"Sirrah!"

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

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

"Opposite Master Rumbold's."

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

"Of the Rye House."

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

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

[Illustration: LAWRENCE ENCOUNTERS MR. FLIPPET]

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

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

[Sidenote: Mr. Alworth.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: How to see the King.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Flippet's duties.]

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

[Sidenote: Brought to book.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes or no," said Alworth inflexibly.

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

[Sidenote: A friend not at court.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The power of the purse.]

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

"A wealthy man?" said Lawrence.

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

[Sidenote: Stopped in time.]

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




CHAPTER XXI.

"A FRIEND INDEED."

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

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

[Sidenote: An awkward fix.]

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

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

[Sidenote: An awkward introduction.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The Queen.]

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

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

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

"Your majesty--" began the Usher.

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

[Sidenote: Court ladies.]

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

[Sidenote: "A plot!  A plot!"]

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

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

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

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

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

"Listen to that now!" giggled the ladies.

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

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

[Sidenote: The Queen listens.]

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

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




CHAPTER XXII

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


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

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

[Sidenote: The King's chambers.]

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

[Sidenote: Under the royal eye.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The King's breakfast.]

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

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

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

"Was urgent, he said."

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Lawrence speaks out.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Suspicion.]

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

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

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

"Treason!" curtly answered Lawrence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Charles wakes up.]

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

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

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

"The same, your majesty."

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

"--bold.  Richard Rumbold, a maltster."

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

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

[Sidenote: A slip in a name.]

"Sheppard," prompted Lee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: A reminder.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Sorry jesting.]

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

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

Lee started.  "I said not--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The royal pleasure.]

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

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

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

"And that is mine," said the queen, too well content to hesitate
longer.




CHAPTER XXIII.

"DID YOU NOT KNOW?" SHE SAID.

Slowly the gatehouse clock tolled out the hours succeeding Lawrence's
departure.  Terrible and solemn ones they were for Ruth, maintaining
her solitary watch beside the secret panel where the wounded man lay,
with eyes closed, and now breathing heavily, now catching feeble
gasping breaths, so feeble that more than once Ruth thought life had
left him.

She had done her best, poor Ruth, and like any Lady Bountiful of
treble her years, had got out her little stock of salves and simples
and old linen rag, and gently and tenderly dressed the gaping wound;
but it was all of just as much and no more use than the endeavours of
the skilfullest doctors would have been.

"I am past thy surgery, child," he said in feeble but distinct tones,
when towards two o'clock he stirred a little and opened his eyes.
"The knife did its work.  But give me a drink--ay, a cordial if you
have it in your store.  So," and he eagerly drank the contents of the
little cup which Ruth filled from a flask upon the table, and
shouldering himself feebly on his right side, his eyes wandered
wistfully round the shadowy chamber as if in search of something, and
rested at last on a little table of carved oak, bearing materials for
writing.  "Bring it here," he said.  "Yes, that is well," he went on,
as Ruth, marking his wish, even before he had given it utterance,
brought the table beside the panel and set it close within his reach.
"For I have a message to leave behind me, and my hours are numbered.
My minutes belike," and his eyes closed; but in a few seconds he
opened them again, and stretched out a trembling hand.  "Quick!" he
went on.  "Pen and paper, dear child, as thou'rt a God-fearing
maiden, and hop'st for heaven at last."

[Sidenote: The dying man.]

"As you do," gently murmured Ruth, spreading the paper as well as she
could out upon the narrow bed, and placing the pen in his hand.  "As
you do, dear Master Goodenough."

"Nay," moaned the dying man.  "Sin lies heavy on my soul."

"But God is love, dear Master Goodenough," said Ruth, dashing aside
the tears that blurred her sight.

"Who taught thee thy creed?" said the sheriff, wonderingly fixing his
hollow eyes on her pitying face.  "'Tis none of the master's of this
house, for his is a gospel of wrath, and of vengeance for our ill
deeds."

"'I will have mercy and not sacrifice.'  Does not the Bible say that,
Master Goodenough? and the Lord Christ, did not He say 'There is joy
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.'"

[Sidenote: A last message.]

"I doubt," murmured the wounded man, "had I been thy pupil, I had not
been in this plight now."  Then he gazed down at the blank paper, and
thoughtfully setting the pen to it, while Ruth knelt upon the floor
beside him and held the lamp close, began to write.  "'_I Thomas
Goodenough, being now at the point of death_'--Thy lamp burns very
dim, there is a mist about it," he went on, labouring at his
self-imposed task, while Ruth trimmed the flame, and made it shine
brightly enough, but it remained only a poor dim thing enough for the
eyes that never on this world's sea or shore, would see the light
again--"'_by the hand of the man, Richard Rumsey, who has thus now
destroyed my body, as first he did my soul--_'

"As first he strove to do that," amended Ruth, watching the words, as
one by one the labouring tremulous fingers produced them.

"Take you the pen, and alter it then if you can write, for my hand
will not reach to't," said Goodenough, "and may it be as you say,
little one," he went on, a gleam of something like content breaking
upon his pallid lips as Ruth took the pen, and neatly wrote in her
little amendment between the crooked-back up-hill-and-down-dale
lines.  "'_As first he strove to ruin my soul, by--_' Nay, but write
on, and I will sign--quick--'_by fair and reasonable seeming words;
persuading me to enrol myself into the foul plot which hath been
hatched for the making away of the persons of His Majesty, and of His
Majesty's Brother, James, Duke of York; thereby_.'  Hast thou it all
down? '_thereby_,'" continued Goodenough, as Ruth nodded, "'_to rid
the country of the race of Stuarts; and to set up rulers of their own
choosing_.'"

"Choosing," said Ruth as she wrote the last word.

[Sidenote: A tale of murder.]

"'_It now appeareth_,' went on Goodenough after a brief silence, '_by
this night's work, that there has further been intended the
compassing of the murder of the king, and of his brother, by these
bloody-minded men_'--write on, child, quick, quick!"  Ruth's hand
trembled cruelly, and a huge drop of ink fell from her pen; but she
wrote on: "'_by their waylaying of the coach in which the king shall
return from Newmarket;_' where's the cup, child? give me another
drink.  Now, thy pen again--stay, my brain grows confused--ay, from
Newmarket, '_upon the by-road which runs by the Rye House, over
against Hoddesdon, and there stopping the coach by the overturning of
a cart across the narrow way, to shoot the guards from the hedges,
and so in cold blood to kill the king and his brother_.'  Hast thou
that all down in black and white?"

"Yes," answered Ruth, though in sober truth the characters glared
fiery red from the fair white paper in her fevered eyes.

"'_And hereby_,' faltered on the dying man, '_I, with these my last
perishing breaths do declare, that of the forty conspirers in this
plot, I take not upon myself to single out the more guilty, and
murderously disposed ones; save only that my own soul is innocent of
all desire and intent to shed blood; and furthermore I do desire to
state, that of those plotters who gathered this night to discuss the
ways and means for His Majesty's death, the young man Lawrence--_'"

"Lee; yes, yes, Lawrence Lee," rapidly wrote on Ruth.  "I know,
Master Goodenough."

"Thou dost? so much the better, the brave lad who would--who would--"

"Ay, who would have saved you from that fearful man if he could."

Goodenough nodded.  "_Lawrence Lee was not one_,' and--and--"
Goodenough's voice sank to a whisper, and his dim eyes closed.  "I
can say no more.  I would have--liked to--tell--the noble turn he did
me--and--how--thou, whoever thou art--"

[Sidenote: The light grows dim.]

Slower and slower, fainter and fainter, rose and fell the dying man's
voice upon the silence; until suddenly his eyes opened, and fixing
wistfully for a little while upon Ruth's face, wandered from it to
the paper under her hand.  "Set thy name to it," he said, "for--a
living witness."

"'Tis well," he went on, when she had obeyed.  "And now, give it me
here again under my hand, and thy pen--and hold the light close, for
it grows so dark--dark--nay, but I cannot see the place;" and his
fast glazing eyes strayed helplessly over the paper.

"Here, dear Master Goodenough," said Ruth, taking the cold hand and
gently placing it aright, "here is where I have written my name."

[Sidenote: The signatures.]

He made a desperate but ineffectual effort to steady the pen on the
spot she indicated.  "I cannot do it," he said, as the quill dropped
loosely in his numbed fingers; "and my mark must suffice.  But 'twill
serve--'twill serve.  Set the paper close--closer;" and then with
infinite labour he made the cross mark.  "Ruth Rumbold!" he cried, as
he moved his hand, and the full light of the lamp fell upon the
clear, boldly-marked characters of her signature beneath.  "This
man--Richard Rumbold's--daughter!" and his eyes fixed upon her in a
stare of mingled horror and pity.

She nodded her head slowly up and down.  "Did you not know?" she
said, meeting his gaze with sad, appealing looks--"did you not know
he was my father?"

"Then Heaven help thee, poor child, and comfort thee, for thou hast
need of it indeed, poor innocent!"

Then his voice fell away into uneasy inaudible murmurings.  His eyes
closed again, and presently he seemed to sleep.  And so till dawn
slowly began to silver the fresh young leaves about the ivy panes,
and creep on into the room towards the dark recess, spreading itself
gently on the white, still face of the dying man, and the hardly more
life-like one of the watcher, there was silence.  But just as the
song of the birds trilled cheerily forth, he stirred slightly.  "Art
thou there?" he murmured, feebly stretching out his hand.

"I am here, dear Master Goodenough!" she said, kneeling beside him
and covering the pale fingers in her gentle clasp.

"God bless thee, child!" and he drew her hand close towards his lips:
"for thy sweet charity God bless--"

[Sidenote: Death of Goodenough.]

And in a smile of content the lips parted slightly, a low sigh broke
from them, and Master Goodenough was dead.




CHAPTER XXIV.

LAWRENCE SLEEPS ON IT.

"Now, Friend What-d'ye-call-'em, are you going to accept his
majesty's polite invitation? or d'ye mean to stand staring all day
like a stuck pig, at your brother-porker's pate here?"

The dig in the ribs accompanying these words, which were rendered
bewilderingly indistinct by reason of the quantity of the toothsome
edibles he referred to, filling the speaker's mouth, materially
assisted Lee to catch something of their signification; and he
started from the reverie into which he had fallen.  "Your majesty--"
he began, looking round with dazed, uneasy eyes, and staggering
forward a pace or two.

"Ha! ha! ha!  That's excellent!" broke out a laughing chorus.  "Your
majesty!  Hear the fellow!  Are his wits clean gone?  I' faith, he
looks something like it!  Majesty forsooth!  There's none of it here,
friend; unless we're to be having you for a change.  Come, Master
Up-in-the-clouds, out with you!  Was ever such insolence!  Out with
you!  D'ye hear?"

It was the most doubtful question in the world whether he did.  If
so, it was, at all events, without a spark of comprehending; and
Lawrence Lee continued to lie back, pale and more than half
senseless, in the king's chair, whither he had staggered forward as
he had uttered those last words, and with a twist and a reel, sunk
among its crimson cushions.

"Nay," said another of the crowd of lackeys; "leave him alone.  Let
him bide a minute.  I saw 'twas a comin' over him before the king had
done speakin' to him.  He went on gettin' whiter and whiter.  Come,
man, drink a drop o' this;" and he took a tall ruby-red Venice goblet
of wine from the table and placed it to the young man's lips.  "So;
that's brave!" he went on in kindly tones, as Lawrence drank a little
of the wine and roused up.  "Finish it, man, and have another atop
o't.  One leg o' mutton drives down another.  Oh! eh! but we don't
take noes here.  Drink, I tell 'ee;" and refilling the goblet, the
well-meaning fellow forced Lawrence to drain it again, in spite of
his efforts at resistance.

[Sidenote: Where is the King?]

"Where's the king?--the king?" said Lawrence as consciousness all
broke in upon him, and he sat up.  "I must speak to him.  I haven't
told him half--"

"Then t'must wait!" cried another lackey, "for the king's gone."

"Gone!"

"Ay; ever so far by now.  He wasn't going to stop here all day
listening to your wild-goose tales, I doubt.  He's half-way across
the heath by now, and all the lot after him."

"But the queen!"

"Ay; her too.  Didn't you see them all go?  Where had your eyes got
to?"

"Gone a wool-gathering along of his wits!" laughed another.

And while their shouts of boisterous laughter made the old walls echo
again, Lawrence pressed the palms of his hands on the top of his
aching head and made an effort to recall all that had passed, and to
solve the puzzle of the strange condition in which he found himself.
Possibly the fact of neither food nor drink having passed his lips
since a hasty meal snatched at the Nether Hall early dinner of the
previous day, was accountable for much of it.  Neither can
long-fasting men ride a score and a half of miles and retain their
wits in good working order; and strong wine, if it be a temporary
remedy, is scarcely one to be recommended, as these noisy court
lackeys seemed bent on doing.  And when he refused the dainty food
they hospitably pressed upon him with the savageness only those who
have lost all desire for eating, from too long going without it, can
ever be guilty of, they forced more wine upon him, challenging him
with a toast he neither dared nor willed to refuse.

[Sidenote: A loyal toast.]

"The king! the king!" they cried, filling all round for themselves,
and brimming the goblet in his hand.  "Come, Master Stranger, we must
see what metal you're made of.  Drink a bumper to the king's majesty,
and no heeltaps.  Here's confusion to all crop-eared knaves."

"Ay, ay!" shouted Lee, starting to his feet, and waving the goblet
high over his head.  "Confusion to all crop-eared knaves.  And now a
toast.  A toast!"

"Silence!  Oh, yes; oh, yes!  Listen!" shrieked the noisy crew.
"Fill high.  His majesty the chairman proposes a toast."

"The queen.  God bless her!" cried Lee, putting the glass to his lips
and draining it to the last drop.

"Ho! ho!  Ha! ha!  Queen?  Which queen?" cried the roysterers.
"Which queen?--"

"Queen Ruth, to be sure!" shouted one, hooking his arm into
Lawrence's as Lee rose from the chair.  "She of the Rye House, you
blockheads.  Queen Ruth!"

[Sidenote: Lawrence escapes.]

The sound of her name steadied Lee's senses like the working of a
charm.  He straightened himself to his full height, and striking out
right and left, sent the troublesome fellows stumbling and tripping
pell-mell among the chairs and tables.  Then with a parting fling of
his empty glass at the one who had dared to make a jest of the dear
name, he rushed from the room--on, on--by the now entirely deserted
ante-chambers, headlong down the grand staircase, through pitch dark
interminable passages, until he found himself standing spent and
breathless in the open air, the cloudless blue sky above him, and his
feet ankle-deep in a miry lane.

[Sidenote: The King's garden.]

The place seemed to form a sort of thoroughfare to the back premises
of the palace, whose walls skirted its length on one side, while the
other was bounded by a tall privet-hedge.  Between the ragged twigs
he could discern the broad flat stretch of country beyond.  On the
left, some fifty yards off, stood the timbered plaster fronts of a
row of street cottages, and a few paces to his right a high narrow
iron gateway, flanked by a couple of moss-grown stone pillars
surmounted respectively by the royal lion and unicorn.  Through this
gate's filigreed iron-work, at the end of a somewhat broad, gravel,
yew-bordered path, Lee could see a podgy marble Cupid spouting water
through a hunting-horn into a basin.  Lured by the gentle plash of
the water, he approached the gate and attempted to push it open.
With a faint screech, as if of surprise at being disturbed, it
yielded, and undeterred by its stone guardians, whose jaws seemed
indeed to grin less in defiance of his intrusion, than in wonder and
derision at his fancy for exploring the deserted place, Lee entered,
and strolled towards the fountain.  On its broad edge he seated
himself, to the great confusion of the gold and silver fish moving
about its weedy depths, and found that it formed the centre of a
fair-sized garden, the path by which he had come being one of four,
radiating off at equal distances between grass-plots, towards the
lofty red brick boundary walls, gay now with the snowy blossom of
espaliered fruit-trees.

Here and there white stone gods and goddesses gleamed amidst the dark
yew paths, and would have seemed to render the silence of the place
still more intense, had it not been broken by the voices of the
myriad insect creatures footing it merrily among the parterres, and
the darting butterflies, while stout old bumble-bees hummed
cogitatively as they gathered in their wealth, as if they were
mentally reckoning the probable sum total of its returns; and all to
the music of Sir Cuckoo, who had a vast deal to promise of the good
time coming.

[Sidenote: A reverie.]

Well, well; and Lawrence Lee, rising from his seat on the fountain's
brink, and strolling listlessly onward by the nearest path, heaved a
prolonged and heart-vexed sigh, making all the while not too
flattering comparisons between these careless denizens of the king's
pleasaunce--the bees, of course, simply proving his case by their
exceptional prudence--who troubled their feather-brains not one doit
about to-morrow's storms, which were as likely as not--more likely
than not, indeed, to fall; as you might see if you would but spare
half an eye towards the south-eastward horizon--and the king himself.
As to the idiotic, selfish, frivolous lot about him, they were
beneath contempt, Lawrence considered.  To compare them with the
butterflies and gnats would be an insult--to the insects.

This stage of his meditations brought him so near to the foot of a
flight of rustic wooden steps that he tripped upon the lowermost one;
and looking upward, as he recovered his balance, he saw that they
wound up to some height, terminating at the entrance of a pavilion of
octagon shape, built into the angle of the wall, and partly
overhanging the road running beneath.  For sheer lack of something
better to wile away his enforced leisure--for to see the king again,
by hook or by crook, Lawrence was determined--he ascended the steps,
and found himself in a small eight-sided chamber.  Its walls were
studded with morsels of spar, bright-coloured shells, and bits of
looking-glass disposed in various and eye-fatiguing geometrical
devices, sparkling like Hassan's cave in the rays of sun, now beating
fiercely through the two windows.  One of these looked upon the road,
the other, commanding a view of the rear of the palace, admitted
light into the place; but in accordance with the rule of such
pleasure-houses, no air, since they were "not made to open."

[Sidenote: The summer house.]

Nevertheless, a cool breeze rustled in through the doorless entrance;
and Lawrence, wearied out, and still dizzy with the fumes of the wine
which had been forced upon him, sank upon the part of the bench
running round the wall which was nearest the inner window, and fell
to a listless contemplation of the scene before him.

Ugly, or altogether unpicturesque it assuredly could not be called;
but incongruous and disorderly it was, with its queer irregular mass
of wall and roof, new and old, time stained and brand new, all flung
together without apparent rhyme or reason, as if they might settle
down as they could.

It was some time before Lawrence was able to distinguish, amid such
countless odd holes and corners, the door by which he had found his
way into the open air; and longer still before, carrying his eye to
the upper story, he discovered the row of little bull's-eye casements
which lighted the corridor conducting to the king's apartments.  That
it ran to the rear of the palace he had some hazy sort of notion;
since through one of those casements he had caught a glimpse of
waving green beechen boughs, and had guessed at the possibility of a
garden beyond, while not a single tree shaded the street front of the
palace.

[Sidenote: A long nap.]

The last straw, eastern wiseacres say, breaks the camel's back; and
it is possible that his toilsome little ascent to the pavilion, and
the burning sunbeams pouring in through the glass on Lawrence's head
bore their share in producing the drowsy sensations stealing so
rapidly upon him, that all the scene before him dissolved as he
looked, into one confusing haze.  "'Tis like a dream," he murmured to
himself, pressing the palms of both his hands on his throbbing
temples, in a desperate effort to shake off their oppression.  "A
murrain on those rascals for drenching me with that stuff till I feel
as if I was spinning in an Epping Fair merry-go-round.  Like a
dream--a bad dream"--and his head drooping lower and lower upon his
arms outspread upon the broad window-seat, rested a dead weight there
at last, and he fell asleep.

Heavily as one of the Seven Sleepers he slept on.  Ten, eleven,
mid-day came and went; and still, as afternoon lengthened, and the
shadows grew deep upon the grass, he stirred only to sink back again
into the unrefreshing sleep of utter fatigue and exhaustion.  Sultry
as midsummer the sunbeams poured into the airless chamber, till its
walls seemed sheeted in parti-coloured flame, which grew but the more
dazzling as the time of parting drew on, and the gray evening mists
began to spread over the low-lying fields.

[Sidenote: A sudden waking.]

High aloft in the greenish blue sky the young May moon rose and
mingled her mild beams with the fiery westward glow, and still he
slept on; but restlessly now, and muttering hurried but inarticulate
words, as if he was dreaming uneasy dreams.  How much longer he would
have drowsed the precious hours away, it is hard to guess, had it not
been for a sudden and deafening blare of French horns and all kinds
of music, mingled with shouts of gay laughter and voices which broke
just beneath the window, sending Lee to his feet with a start and a
cry of terror.  "Fire!  Fire!" he shouted, staggering to the middle
of the floor and gazing in wild distraction round the pavilion, while
he gasped for breath in its stifling atmosphere.  Could it be that he
was dreaming still?  Strange ugly visions of--Nay, now, but see what
things are dreams! and what is it after all but the setting-sun
blaze?  And as Lee stumbled tremblingly back against the trellised
doorway, greedily drinking in the cool evening air, his senses dawned
upon him.

"Ay, ay," he said to himself, with a faint smile of amusement at his
own fancies, as he stretched his neck over the wall, just in time to
obtain a glimpse of the brilliant cavalcade turning the street corner
in a cloud of white dust, and caught the shouts of the little crowd
collected to see the king pass.  "Come back, has he?  Yes, yes, God
save him, with all my heart and soul--God save the king!  But the
question is, you see, good people.  The question is--" and then
Lawrence Lee came to a dead pause, and fell into a deep reverie.
"How was he to be saved?" pondered on the young man, his brows
knitting painfully.  This happy-go-lucky Charles, who suspected no
foul play, because he would persist in judging others by himself,
despite all his harsh experiences, and thought no one capable of
taking so much trouble as to contrive it.  This good-natured
gentleman, whose manner of speaking, far more than the words he
spoke, had won Lawrence Lee's heart, as they were apt to win all who
approached him.  How--so the young man now asked himself, could he
ever have been brought to nurse one traitorous thought towards him?
Ay, now indeed he understood, as never he had before, his mother's
glowing look, when with the proud tears glistening star-bright in her
eyes, she would say: "Thy father died for his king, lad."

[Sidenote: What is to be done?]

The last shout sank to silence.  The birds' song ceased.  The last
ray of the sunset glory faded, and only the plash of the fountain
broke the silence, and still Lawrence Lee stood leaning against the
ivied wall so motionless, and his face showing so white and fixed in
the dazzling moonlight, that he might have been taken for one of the
garden's statues; but at last, as eight o'clock struck in the town
belfries, and far-off village church towers chimed it back, he
stirred, and slowly descended the little rustic steps.

[Sidenote: A deep resolve.]

"Rest thee well, father," he murmured, reverently folding his hands
as he went.  "The world may blame me, and say what it lists.  The
king shall be saved, though my life should answer for it.
Father--only let heaven count me worthy to be called thy son."

And so across the garden, and through the gate, still standing half
open as he had left it, he passed on into the street.




CHAPTER XXV.

SUPPER AT THE SILVER LEOPARD.

"Oh, all that I grant you; 'tis indeed a mockery of hospitality which
moves a man to press his good things on his guest beyond his
appetite; and the rascals were to blame--much to blame.  But, my good
Master Lee, you're absolutely no trencherman."

And as he spoke, Master Alworth laid a tempting cut from the huge
sirloin before him upon Lawrence Lee's plate.  "A strapping fellow of
your inches," he went on, "should know better how to dispose of a
glass, and to ply his knife and fork."

"Nay," answered Lee, toying with the implements in question till he
seemed to be making grand havoc with the slice of beef.  "But I have
supped excellently," and he glanced in courteous admiration at the
temptingly loaded table.  "Such good things would almost charm a dead
man."

"And 'tis almost what he looks," thought the goldsmith, as he
secretly scanned Lee's colourless face; colourless save where on
either cheek two spots burned crimson red.

[Sidenote: A good servant.]

"Though I doubt dead men's eyes never shone like his," he mentally
added.  "What the mischief ails the lad?" but aloud he only replied
in well-pleased tones: "They're wholesome enough; and to speak no
treason, Master Lee, the king's own kitchen, at least here in
Newmarket, boasts not such a hand as my old Margery's at turning a
venison pasty; try a morsel of it.  No? well then, drink, man, drink.
There's no finer colouring for white cheeks like your's, than a glass
of my old Tokay.  What! you won't neither?" said his hospitable host
with a shrug, as Lee drew the massive silver-gilt goblet smilingly
but resolutely on one side.  "I' faith!  I like not sots and topers,"
he went on, as he filled his own glass to the brim, "and as worthy
Warwickshire Will--Oh, no offence, young gentleman--out of date
Master Shakspere may be, but mind you, he can frame as wise and witty
a phrase when he pleases, as any of your Shadwells or Rochesters, or
your long-winded Master Drydens either, and he says ''tis a shame for
men to put an enemy in their mouths, to steal away their brains.'
But wine need be no man's enemy.  It should rather be his trusty
servant and helper.  For wine, as another wise man hath it, is a good
servant, though it be a tyrant master, just as fire--"

"Fire!  Fire!" loudly echoed Lawrence, starting from the brown study
into which he had fallen during his entertainer's disquisition.

"Why, bless the good fellow!" ejaculated the goldsmith under his
breath, as he leant back in his well-cushioned chair, and tipping
together the points of his ten fingers, contemplated Lawrence through
his half-closed eyelids with no small curiosity.  "'Tis but a
cloud-brained lad after all; one would ha' guessed I'd flashed a
musket-shot in his ear, to see him start."

"Ay," he added aloud, "I was but remarking that fire is a good
servant, but a bad master, since 'tis easier to kindle a flame than
to put it out.  But come, tell me now.  How did your suit prosper
to-day with his majesty?  Though in truth what its nature was I know
not; nor desire to be inquisitive," he added good-humouredly, as he
perceived that Lee showed little willingness to enlighten him.  "But
you succeeded in it?"

"No--yes, no--that is, I saw the king."

"And spoke with him?"

"And spoke with him--Oh yes."

"And what think you of his majesty?" catechised on his host, just a
thought drowsily.  "A right debonair and gracious gentleman, is he
not so?"

"Every inch a king," enthusiastically cried Lee.

[Sidenote: Lawrence drinks another toast.]

"Oh ho! have I warmed the ice at last?" thought the goldsmith, with a
twinkle in his eyes.  "Why, so say I, Master Lawrence," he cordially
rejoined.  "And--come now, a challenge, you can't refuse--nay, i'
faith! but you must drain it.  I shall hold you a double-dyed traitor
else indeed.  Here's to King Charles," and reaching the bottle over
Lee's goblet, he filled it, unchecked this time, and rose to his
feet.  "God bless him, and confusion to his foes by land and sea."

"Confusion to his foes!" echoed Lawrence, rising too, and draining
the cup to its dregs.

"And, since his majesty so well pleases you, what think you of his
Newmarket palace?" continued Alworth, as both resumed their seats,
manfully struggling to keep up the lagging ball of conversation,
though, to own the truth, a long day over his ledgers, the dulness of
his companion, who did not seem to be able to originate one single
observation, and the supper he had eaten, were beginning to work more
and more soporifically upon him.

[Sidenote: A rat-hole for a palace.]

"Palace!" cried Lee with sudden animation.  "A rat-hole; just a
rat-hole.  Only fit to be smoked out!"

"Scarce big enough, truly, to swing a cat in," laughingly acquiesced
Alworth.  "'Tis a mean place, as you say, with its chimneys huddled
away in corners and crannies, as if they were ashamed of themselves;
and the house abutting, like any common one, upon the street, without
any court or avenue to't."[1]


[1] _Evelyn's Diary._


"I looked to find it built somewhere upon the course itself," said
Lee.

"As it should ha' been," replied the goldsmith.  "Upon the very
carpet, as one might say, where the sports are celebrated.  My own
identical words to Mr. Samuel, the--the gods forgive us!--the
architect.  'But,' says he, 'Master Alworth, his majesty is bent on
the purchase of this wretched old house.'  And his majesty has a rare
obstinate head-piece of his own, like the one they cut off his
father's neck before him--heaven rest his soul!  And so there's his
fine house, and a mighty improper one too, in my poor judgment, for
sport and pleasure, Mr. Samuel has made of it.  Though, to give even
him his due, you may go far before you find better turned arches than
the supports of the cellars that run beneath the king's private
apartments.

"Which lie to the back of the house, if I mistake not," said Lee.

"You do not.  And cut off almost entirely from the rest of it, a
perfect network of pillars, and arches beneath, that one might go
losing one's self in, like any trapped mouse, if you didn't know the
trick of them," added the goldsmith half absently, half as if amused
by some suggested thought, and toying with an ancient-looking little
twisted and chased bar of silver which hung upon the massive gold
chain he wore round his neck.  "Tho' that would scarcely be my case;
for here I have an open Sesame, that, if I had a mind to't, would
bring me straight into Hassan's Cave.  In other words--"

[Sidenote: Lawrence learns a secret.]

"The king's own bed-chamber?" eagerly cried Lee.

"Why, you are quite right," said Alworth, looking up with wide open
astonished eyes.  Was this young farmer such a dull-pated clodpole
after all?  "Though how you should guess--"

"Oh!  I have heard of such contrivances as these subterranean ways,"
said Lawrence carelessly.  "Where does it lead from?"

"Under your nose almost!" laughed Alworth, pointing to one of the
large buttons, or bosses, carved on the intersections of the oaken
framework of the wainscoting which lined the room.

"The dog's face?" asked Lee, carefully noting his glance.

"Nay, 'tis a sphinx's.  And right well 'tis said she has guarded her
secret for the three hundred years this house has been built."

"So long?"

"Ay.  Just about the same time that the original foundations of what
is now the king's palace were set.  Some say that the lord of it, and
my grandfather six or seven times removed, had dealings together in
the black art,--but that is a way folks have of talking of honest
traders when they happen to grow rich,--and that the two would meet
together alone in the vaults at dead of night over their crucibles,
to find out the secret of making gold."

"Was he of your craft, Master Alworth?" asked Lawrence.

"Ay; and a skilful master of it he must have been," said Alworth
proudly, detaching the key from its chain and handing it to Lawrence
for his inspection, "to have been able to cast such a pretty thing as
this."

[Sidenote: The sphinx's throat.]

"And the lock it fits to," said Lawrence, taking the key and
examining it curiously, "lies, you say, in the sphinx's throat
yonder?"

The goldsmith nodded.  "And the tale goes on to say," he added, "as I
tell you, that they who push far enough along the passage, when they
get to the bottom of the little staircase the panel opens upon, would
find themselves in the room that is now the king's own bed-chamber.
But I'd not care to be making the quest."

"Why not?"

[Sidenote: The key.]

"I' faith! 'tis possible, for one thing, his majesty might not care
for the intrusion," laughed Alworth; "and for a greater reason, I've
no fancy to be breaking my shins over broken-backed old stone floors
and slimy steps, or running my head against these fine new stone
posts of Master Samuel's, let them be never so mighty well turned.
No; thank you for nothing!" continued Alworth with a sapient shake of
his grizzled periwig.  "I'm quite content to be in possession of the
secret without putting my knowledge to the proof.  And hark you,
young gentleman," he went on more gravely, "if I've confided it to
you, 'tis because--.  Eh! eh! somehow I tripped upon it; but 'tis
safe enough with you.  You're not a man to betray secrets.  You'll
not put your knowledge to any ill use," he went on, as Lawrence made
no reply, but bent his head lower and lower over the key.  "'Twill go
in at one ear and out at t'other, eh?  By your leave," he went on,
stretching out his hand for the key, which, however, Lawrence seemed
in no hurry to give back, but sat dangling it in his fingers, lost,
apparently, in deep thought.

"Ah, ha!  I see how it is," laughed the goldsmith; "you'd be for
reading my sphinx's riddle, Master Harum-Scarum Christopher Columbus.
But I'll have none o' that.  Come, no tricks.  Give it back.  No
tricks," continued Alworth, as Lawrence obeyed and gave up the
precious key.  "So, lie you there safe and snug," he went on,
slipping the key on to the chain again, and putting it neatly into
the breast of his coat,--"safe and snug, little friend.  And as for
you, Master Lee, if you'll take my advice you'll be getting between
the sheets Marjory has spread for you in the Blue Room above stairs."

"Many thanks," replied Lawrence, shaking his head; "but that is not
possible.  I should be back at Nether Hall before mid-day to-morrow;
and 'tis a longish journey.  In an hour's time I ought to be upon the
road."

[Sidenote: Nature's soft nurse.]

"Tut, tut, man.  Bed is the place for you to-night, and not a horse's
saddle.  Already your eyes shine like candles kindled at both ends.
Six-and-thirty-hours it is, by your own showing, since you've closed
'em; and you know what Will of Warwick--and he speaks sound sense,
mind you, does Will--of Warwick; as good as any of your modish
Sedleys, and Shadwells, and--and--'sleep, sleep, Nature's'--how does
it go?  Why, to be sure--'Nature's soft--nurse.'  Come, Master Lee,
how goes it?  You should know.  By my faith, but you should.  Ay--so
it runs--'How have I frighted thee.'  Marry, come up!  What's next?
'That thou--no more shouldst weigh mine eyelids down'--and--and--"

But then, like a wise physician who puts faith in his own
prescription, Master Alworth's senses sank steeped in forgetfulness,
his head drooped gently among the cushions, and a profound snore fell
upon the silence.

Lawrence's face grew dark with vexation.  Could anything be more
tiresome and inopportune?  The church clock struck eleven.  A
fearfully late hour for those good old times, when "early to bed, and
early to rise" made everybody "so healthy, and wealthy, and wise."

"Master Alworth," said Lee gently, though he was biting his lip all
the while with impatience.  "Master Alworth, by your leave--I will
bid you good-night."

A second and deeper snore was the response.

"And farewell," shouted Lee.

"Eyelids down; eyelids--down," murmured the sleeper.

[Sidenote: How to save the King?]

"Nay, but begone I must," muttered Lawrence, starting up and pushing
back his chair, while his eyes despairingly contemplated his
slumbering host, until suddenly a light flashed into them.  "Let's
see what a shake will do," he went on to himself, approaching
Alworth's chair, and suiting his action to his words with no gentle
hand.  It produced no effect beyond an angry snort of remonstrance
from the sleeper, who turned in his chair only to settle more
comfortably.  "What is to be done?" ejaculated Lawrence, casting
desperate glances towards the door, as if he intended making a run
for it.  "Another half hour--a quarter, even, and--"

Something which fell with a faint jingle and a clash to the floor at
his feet, interrupted his speculations.  He stooped to pick it up.

It was Master Alworth's gold chain, whose elaborate fastening had
apparently missed touching home in his drowsy attempts to clasp it.

"Adieu, then," he said, placing the chain noiselessly beside his
host's plate, and wafting him a kiss from his finger-tips; "for I
must be taking French leave, if you will not be having an English
one," and he turned to escape noiselessly from the room.

The first step he took, however, brought his foot down upon some
small hard object.  He picked it up.  It was the key, which must have
slipped from the goldsmith's chain when it glided from his neck to
the cushions of the chair, and thence, as he had turned himself
about, to the floor.

[Sidenote: Mad fancies]

"Oh, ho!" laughed Lee, looking at the key as it lay in the palm of
his hand; "you're a mighty slippery little customer!" and he was
about to lay it with the chain, when he gave a start, and stood stock
still, as if some sudden idea had mastered him; and still holding the
key, he gazed from it towards the sphinx with thoughtful speculative
eyes.  Could it be that she was winking her heavy lids?  Were her
grim lips curving into a meaning smile until her very jaws seemed to
be opening? or was it all only the shadowy flicker of the dying lamp?
or perhaps a mere delusion of the young man's already highly excited
brain.

Lawrence knew only that the half-mocking, half-goodnatured face
beckoned him irresistibly.

[Sidenote: The false panel.]

One instant he stood hesitating.  The next, he had seized the lamp,
and with the key in his hand was on his knees before the panel.




CHAPTER XXVI.

"FIRE!  FIRE!"

Silent and dark as any city of the dead lies Newmarket under the
starless sky.  Not so much as a glimmer to be seen even about the
palace, excepting from the mullioned lattices of the king's own
bedchamber.

Two hours since, Charles bade good-night to his courtiers, who,
despite their best efforts to be entertaining, were yawning
frightfully after their long day's pleasure; and then, retiring to
his dressing-room, he dismissed also his drowsy valets, who,
evidently for once in a way, seemed not indisposed to allow him to
draw on his own night-cap instead of doing it for him, "for all the
world," as he used to complain, as if he were "some poor Tyburn
gallows-wretch."

Whether he was too tired for sleep, which is sometimes the case with
people, or not tired enough, it was certain the king himself was in
no mood for sleep; and wrapping his silken dressing-gown about him,
and trimming the wick of the massive silver lamp upon the table with
his own august fingers, he drew it towards him, and stretching
himself upon a couch, took up a book which lay tumbled face downwards
among its cushions.

[Sidenote: Charles sits up to read.]

"A fair outside truly," he murmured half aloud to himself as he
carelessly scanned its richly emblazoned velvet and gilt binding, and
then proceeded as carelessly to turn its embossed pages; "and with
such a mighty pretty dedication to my sacred majesty, that my poor
privy-purse will suffer cruelly, I fear.  Tho' I'll dare swear that
'tis all as full of emptiness, or at best of fulsome fawning
flatteries, as my fine lords and ladies, who hang upon my skirts, and
care no more for me than this little Médor here," and he gently
caressed the satin soft ears of the little dog who had jumped to its
favourite spot between himself and the downy cushions, "who loves
me--for the cake and comfits I carry in my pocket.  Nay, but I do
thee an ill compliment after all, Médor; for though to be sure thou
mightst not be at the pains to stretch out one of thy fringy paws
here to help me in my need, at least thou'dst not turn against me, as
some I wot of would, who have fed upon my bounty.  But what have we
here?" continued the king, turning on again at the pages of his book.
"Nay, now, fie, fie, Master Poetaster! but is not your choice of
mottoes here uncourtly, to say the least?

  "'For kings and mightiest potentates must die.
  For that's the end of human misery.'


"I' faith! and I doubt 'twould trouble you no more than the rest of
the herd, were I to die to-night, so long as your dedication money
were safe to you.  All--all alike, every man jack, and woman jill of
you.  'The king is dead,' you'd cry, 'alack! alack!' though I doubt
your breath might not reach to so much as that--'The king is dead--'"

[Sidenote: A startling visitor.]

"God save the king!"

"Who goes there?" cried the king, starting to his feet and flinging
down the book.  What voice was this, snatching, as it were from his
lips the very words that were upon them, and in tones so deep and
significant, from the darkest recesses of the dimly lighted chamber?
"Who goes there?" he reiterated, peering hard into the obscurity,
till at last his keen gaze caught the outlines of a figure enveloped
in a black riding cloak.

"A friend," answered the voice in hurried tones.

Charles laughed bitterly.  "Our foes in disguise call themselves
that," he said.  "Come forward--friend, into the lamplight here."

The intruder needed not to do so much in order to reveal his
identity; for the words had not left the king's lips before a glare
of light lit up the whole apartment, and revealed the face of
Lawrence Lee.  An exclamation of anger broke from Charles; and he
darted a look of mingled suspicion and defiance on Lee.

"Ha!  I thought as much, Master Talebearer," he cried; "and this is
your vaunted loyalty--this is--"

"Fire! fire! your majesty," and Lee rushed forward with outspread
arms.  "Come quick! for God's sake, come! afterwards hang me--kill
me--do as you will.  But now--now--the palace is on fire, I say! and
there's not an instant to lose."

[Sidenote: Madness indeed.]

"Fire?" cried the king, casting a rapid glance upward at the dazzling
glare lighting up every object in the room, and hurrying towards the
curtained entrance, only to stagger backward into Lee's arms,
overcome with the smoke and flame bursting from the heavy drapery as
he lifted it.

"No, no! great heavens! not that way!" shouted Lee.  "Already the
corridors have caught, and communication will be cut off.  Come for
your life;" and he dragged the half-breathless king across the room.
"Here, by the private staircase!"

"What private staircase?" demanded Charles, reeling forward after
Lee, with his hand to his month.  "I tell thee, man," he went on, in
tones of anger as well as of fear, "there is no private stair--"

"Come! come!" shouted his deliverer with a laugh of triumph which
rang through the burning room, and he seized the king round the waist
with both arms; "we are safe enough this way--as yet."

"The dog! the dog!" cried the king, struggling in Lee's embrace, and
pointing towards poor Médor, whose piteous yelpings resounded from
the couch.

[Illustration: LAWRENCE LEE SAVES THE KING]

"Ay, come, then," said Lawrence, turning, and catching up the little
animal with one hand, he thrust it into his pocket.  Then tightening
his clutch upon the king, he dragged him to a square hole in the side
of the wainscoted wall as yet untouched by the flames, and almost
flung him down on his knees as with a vigorous push he thrust him
through the aperture.

"What is the meaning of this, sirrah?" angrily demanded the king, as,
after a maddening interval passed in stumbling and sliding through
pitch darkness encircled by Lee's arms, he went round and round, down
and down, as if in some hideous nightmare dream, till at last his
feet were safely deposited on level ground, and his shoulders against
a rough stone wall, which struck ice cold through his silken
dressing-gown.  "Say! what does it all mean?"

[Sidenote: Fire on the brain.]

"Fire! fire! your majesty," was all Lawrence could find breath to
articulate, as, reeling from the weight of his burden, he advanced
towards a lamp whose rays sufficed dimly to reveal a low stone
vaulted roof, supported by thick pillars, whose outlines loomed
ghost-like through the obscurity.  "The palace is on fire;" and
catching up the lamp, and again seizing the king, this time, however,
only by the arm and with a more gentle grip, he succeeded in dragging
him a few paces farther.

"This way! this way--"

"No," said the king, wrenching himself free, and coming to a dead
standstill with his back resolutely planted against the wall!  "I'll
go no farther; not a yard.  'Tis some plot," he added, casting
suspicious looks round from Lee's face to the darkness visible, and
then again to the eager agitated countenance of the young man.  "Some
scurvy plot.  Villain!" he cried, suddenly seizing Lawrence by the
throat.  "How many are there of you?  Speak!"

It was only by something like a miracle, however, that Lee was still
able to breathe.  "Speak!" shouted the king, and his imperious tones
echoed again and again through the vaulted place, till for the moment
he might well have fancied that a host of conspirators were hidden
away behind the pillared arches; but not a creature came to the
rescue, and Charles's grip relaxed.  "I cry your pardon," he said
then, a little shamefacedly, and retaining his hold about Lee's
shoulder more in kindness now than in anger.  "Such doubts are
unworthy.  A miserable requital indeed for this good service you have
shown me.  Your face should be no traitor's.  Nay, never blush.  I
thought this morning that 'twas as honest a one as I had seen for
many a day, and should tell its own story."

[Sidenote: A desperate plan.]

"Yet even though my tongue helped it, your Majesty would not listen.
Yet here as we stand," went on Lee, as Charles replied only by a
shrug of his shoulders, "man to man, liege-man to his lord," and
Lawrence fell on his knees at the king's feet, "I swear I spoke the
truth.  But it was to worse than deaf ears.  All in vain--and so--and
so--" his voice faltered.

"And so--Ods-fish, man!" cried Charles in bewildered astonishment at
the agitation of Lee's face.  "Don't be afraid.  Speak out.  And so?"

"I fired the palace."

"You!" cried the king, recoiling in horror.

"What else was to be done?" asked Lee, regaining his composure, and
shrugging his shoulders in his turn!  "We smoke out the fox's hole
when we can't unearth him."

"To kill him after all, poor fellow," said the king, with a half
smile, and a faint glimmer of the old suspicion in his dark eyes
fixed on Lawrence, as though he was striving to penetrate to his
inmost heart.

"Nay," bluntly answered the young man, "I have no wit for carrying on
conceits of that kind, nor time for it neither.  If I burnt out the
fox, 'twas to save him from himself, and get him to make off out of
harm's way."

"And what of the queen, and all my poor people?" cried the king,
looking with troubled eyes along the way they had come.  "A heavy
ransom they are paying for my rescue.  Let us get out of this place,
and help, before every one of them is burned in bed."

[Sidenote: Out of danger.]

"'Tis but little enough harm they'll come to, I'll warrant," said
Lee, in cool tones, and detaining the king with a firm hand.  "The
fire had a mighty pretty effect," he continued, with pride, "a mighty
pretty effect; and so do a man's frills and furbelows, though he
hasn't a thread of shirt underneath to bless himself with; and 'twas
just that and no more--a flash in the pan, a snap-dragon, that has
but just burned up all your Majesty's little favourite odds and ends,
and rattle-traps, but I doubt it had not done a groat's worth of
harm."

"That's reassuring," said the king dismally.

"Your Majesty may take my word for it," continued Lawrence.  "I did
but fire the wainscot of your chamber, as close as I could by the
stone corridor, which I know cuts off all communication with the rest
of the palace."

"But how did you know that?"

"One may learn a great deal--"

"By opening one's mouth, hey, and asking questions?"

[Sidenote: Lawrence dictates to the King.]

"By keeping it shut, and listening," said Lawrence.  "Your Majesty
may trust me for minding what I was about, and that I risked no
chance against that sweet lady's life, just for the sake of saving
your Majesty's."

"Well, well," said Charles, feeling more and more satisfied that he
might place confidence in his deliverer.  "But I like not these
extremes," he went on, shivering and dragging his thin Indian silk
garment about him.  "First, you frizzle me within an inch of my life,
and then you freeze me to the marrow.  How long is it your pleasure
that we stop in this dreary cellar?"

"So please your Majesty's own pleasure, you might be sleeping in your
own bed-chamber at Whitehall by this time to-morrow night?  'Twould
be the best course I can advise."

"I might do worse, I doubt," shivered the king.

"But you must leave Newmarket unattended and secretly.  My horse
stands at your Majesty's service."

"And a pretty figure I should cut upon him!" ruefully laughed the
king, looking down at his airy attire.  "To say nothing of my singed
periwig here," and he passed his hand over the spot where the
coal-black locks had been scorched and burnt.

"Your Majesty would in any case be safer for finding one of another
colour to travel in; and if you'll but keep moving, I'll warrant that
Master Alworth will help you to it, and all else you may need."

"Alworth!  Richard Alworth!" cried Charles.

"Ay," said Lawrence.  "Your Majesty, I take it, can trust him."

"With untold gold," warmly said the king--"with my crown jewels--"

"With yourself, then."

"Have with you, Master Lee;" and the last lingering doubt faded from
his face.  "Which way?"

[Sidenote: The private stair.]

"Up by this little staircase."




CHAPTER XXVII.

"IN THE NIGHT ALL CATS ARE GRAY."

The after-supper nap indulged in by Master Alworth was no little
affair of forty winks; and he would possibly have slept on till
morning's light, had not the sound of countless tramping feet, and a
deafening uproar of voices outside in the street, disturbed his
repose.

"Hey day! morning already!" he grumbled, sitting up shiveringly, and
cramped in every limb.  "Ha! what's that?" he went on, blinking and
rubbing his eyes, as a flare of red light broke across the
green-tinted traceried lattice of the window looking into the High
Street, and lit up the room clear as day.  The next moment he was in
utter darkness, for the lamp had disappeared.  "Mercy alive, 'tmust
be fire!" ejaculated the goldsmith, as another and another flash rose
and fell; and aided by the fitful light, he groped, stumbling among
the chairs to the window-seat, where he sank down staring
horror-stricken at the showering sparks, as they fell on the heads of
the crowd surging in the street, as far as his eyes could reach.
"What, where is it?" he gasped, dashing open a pane, and seizing the
nearest gaper by the chin.

[Sidenote: Quick work.]

"The king's private apartments, so 'tis said," answered the man,
shaking himself free, and rushing onward with the rest.  "And the
king! the king!" shrieked Alworth, in a frenzy of dismay as he turned
from the window, and groping forward in the direction of the door,
stumbled into a pair of strong supporting arms.

"Here, Master Alworth, safe and sound," said the unmistakable
sonorous tones of Charles, as he set the trembling old man on his
feet again.  "Thanks to my young friend here."

"But how--how--" began Alworth, gasping like a stranded fish.

"The sphinx helped me, Master Alworth," said Lee, as he lighted a
couple of waxen tapers which stood on the buffet, by the flame of the
almost spent lamp.  "But we'll talk about all that another time.
Meanwhile there's a plot being hatched against the king's life; and
if he stays here till folks from the palace yonder find him, and he
be detained, and no doubt they are already in search of him, 'tis
likely to go hard but his life runs in danger."

"What's to be done?" cried Alworth, gazing with scared eyes from Lee
to the king.  "What is to be done?" he went on, wringing his hands.
"What can I do?"

"Lend him your coat, and the rest of it, and your hat, and spare him
your periwig--Eh?" added Lee, laying despoiling hands on the grizzled
article in question.  "So, by your leave, 'in the night all cats are
gray.'"

"I would give my skin to save your Majesty," murmured the goldsmith,
as he watched Lee tear off Charles's singed perruque, and assist him
in fitting on the more venerable borrowed locks.

"Nay," laughed the king, "'tis not a flaying question, I trust,
though it comes pretty near it, to be sure," he added, with a
compassionate glance at Alworth's coatless bald-pated figure.  "Here,
Master Alworth, take this for pity's sake.  Exchange is no robbery;"
and tearing off his gorgeous robe de chambre, he flung it across the
shoulders of Alworth, who, as he proudly drew the garment about him,
produced an effect less beautiful than striking, and as much as
possible like some Chinese idol with his smooth shining crown adorned
by its tight little wisp of hair.  "Your Majesty," he said, as Lee
put his finishing touches to the king's rapid toilette, "looks
charming--perfection!" he went on, clasping his hands.  "The very
double of myself.  No one would ever take you for the--h'm--the sort
of person you are."

[Sidenote: Ready for the road.]

"I look like a better man, I doubt," answered the king, turning to
survey himself in a mirror.  "And now, Master Lee, what next?"

"Stars and Garters," said Lee.

"Ods-fish, man!" cried Charles, opening his eyes.  "Hadn't we best be
leaving those alone?  They'd be telling tales."

"Stars and Garters is the name of my mare," smiled Lee, "who is to
carry your Majesty."

"To London?"

"Nay, not so far as that, only to the King's Arms by Hoddesdon Rye."

[Sidenote: Into the lion's mouth.]

"What?" cried Charles, with a little start of surprise.  "Into the
lion's mouth?"

"And the unicorn's.  Your Majesty will find no loyaler hearts than
beat there, where danger most threatens you."

"I could get to London by another road; 'twould be better, even if it
were ever such a circuitous one," said the king dubiously.

"'Twould be safer to take the road I propose," said Lee, "since it is
the one by which I must return home; and I must have further speech
with your Majesty."

"Is your horse a good one?"

"Her better is not to be found in your Majesty's stables.  She'll
prove worth the cost of her feed.  I'll warrant your Majesty will be
telling me that, when next we meet."

"At the King's Arms?"

"To-morrow afternoon; and there are those who will not be far behind
your Majesty on the road."

And then Lee, kneeling at the king's feet, took his hand, and,
kissing it, turned to go.

"Wait a bit," said Charles, detaining him; "what--who the mischief am
I?"

"For the next eighteen hours you cannot be a better person than
Master Alworth, called on sudden pressing business affairs to London."

"That's all very well," said the king, still rather perplexedly; "but
I don't clearly comprehend--"

"Then your Majesty must pardon me for saying you are not Master
Alworth."

[Sidenote: Masquerading.]

"Well, well," laughed Charles, "'tis not the first time Charles
Stuart has been driven to exercise his wits."

"And Stars and Garters," continued Lee, "will serve the King of
England at his need every whit as well as ever Royal Oak did.  In ten
minutes she will be at the street corner."

And bidding a warm adieu to the goldsmith, Lawrence Lee hurried away.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

And so as the shadows fled away, and breaking day cast its pale
gleams across the face of the dead conspirator, Ruth drew the panel
back into its place; for down in the malting-yard she could hear the
voices of the men getting to their work, and she turned away, making
an effort to collect her thoughts.

It was no easy task; and she was still far from having achieved it
when she was roused by the apparition of Maudlin Sweetapple's head
through the tapestry.

"Marry come up!  Dressed a'ready!" cried the old woman grumblingly.
"We shall be havin' thee astir in the middle o' the night next!  That
comes o' the maaster sendin' o' thee off to bed at sundown, like he's
bin so fond o' doin' o' late.  Oh, ay! they may say what pleases
'em," continued Maudlin, searchingly scanning Ruth's face in the
young yellow sunshine; "but I say it don't agree with thee, child.
Thy cheeks are as white as turnips; an' thy face as gastered as if
thou'dst bin seein' of spirits.  And--for the gracious power's sake!"
she shrieked in terror as a rattling at the locks of the opposite
door suddenly made itself audible, "what's that?  Master Rumbold, as
I'm a livin' soul!  And me--"

[Sidenote: Rumbold home again.]

The rest was lost in the privacy of her own apartment, into which
Maudlin speedily withdrew her benightcapped head.

"I may come in, Ruth?" said the maltster, as he pushed open the door,
and paused for an instant on its threshold for her reply, casting, as
he did so, one swift keen glance round the room.  "I was upon the
drawbridge and saw you opening the window.  Up and dressed earlier
than usual; is it not so?"

"Is it, father?" said Ruth mechanically.

"Ay, is it, is it," he rejoined in impatient tones.  "Have you and
your pillow quarrelled, that you are so soon astir?" he went on.
"Come, can you not answer me?"

"I could not sleep, father," faltered she.

"And why not, mistress?" he demanded with the uneasy twitch of his
lips which sometimes did duty with him for a smile.  "Were the rats
more troublesome than usual?  A plague on the vermin for eating my
malt till I shall be ruined; and vexing thy rest."

But Ruth only shook her head.

"Why, what then?" he insisted.  "Was perhaps the White Woman walking?
Ah! for shame, child, on thy foolish fancies!"

"Alack! father, 'twas no fancy," answered she.  "It was no White
Woman's spirit that haunted yonder room last night; but the black one
of an evil, wicked-hearted man."

"Psha!" said Rumbold with an uneasy laugh.  "Let us have done with
riddles.  I understand you now.  You heard me and my boys--"  He
stopped with a confused, shamefaced smile.  "That is what the foolish
fellows, you know, love to call themselves.  You heard, belike, I
say, me and my friends--"

"Friends, father!" reproachfully interrupted she.

[Sidenote: An anxious question.]

A deep flush suffused Rumbold's face, but his tones of assumed
careless indifference changed.  "How now, mistress?" he demanded with
sternly knitted brows.  "Was it needful to be craving your leave for
them to pay a little visit to the Warder's Room to--to inspect its
pictures, and--and--its old oak chest, and--and--what not?" rather
lamely concluded Rumbold, darting at the same time a keen sideways
glance at her.  "But let me tell you, Ruth, I like not these would-be
prying ways of yours.  'Tis fortunate that these walls"--and he
glanced with infinite satisfaction round the solid-looking
wainscot--"were not made in to-day's gimcrack fashion, for the
entertainment of every eaves-dropper who pleases to be lending his
idle ear to--to concerns that are too high for him.  You did hear
nothing?" he added with ill-concealed anxiety after a moment's pause.

"Father--dearest, do you love me?" was all her answer.  "In truth, do
you love me?"

"Ay, ay.  What a strange girl you are, Ruth!  I love you dearer than
life, little one;" and he drew her towards him, and laid her head
down gently on his breast.  "Far, far dearer than life.  But hark
you," and then all the wistful tenderness died out of his voice,
"that says not that I love your faults.  Among which I find this
prying, curious habit--that accursed inheritance of which our poor
unhappy mother Eve has bequeathed her daughters so large a share of."

"But, father--dearest--"

"Ay.  Then let me see thee thy father's child.  Seek truth and
righteousness as he has always done; and put off,--as some one put
off certain mountebank pink petticoats we wot of--eh, little
Ruth?--the pride of life, and the lust of the eye and the ear; for
these are but part and parcel all of things that lead to the soul's
destruction; feeding vain imagination and empty fancy--"

"Father!  father!" interrupted Ruth, wildly, "I would it were fancy,
or that my poor silly imagination were to blame.  But 'tis truth and
fact indeed.  See here!" and dragging him before the panel, she
pushed it open with hasty trembling hands.  "See what these--friends
of yours have done!"

"Sheriff Goodenough!" cried Rumbold, recoiling in horror-struck
amazement!  "Dead?"

[Sidenote: Murdered!]

"Murdered--look.  There is blood upon his hands."

"Who has done this?  Who?--"

"Colonel Rumsey."

"The villain!" muttered Rumbold, grinding his teeth.  "I knew," he
went on meditatively, knitting his brows, "that their hearts were not
at peace with one another.  How came we to be so ill-advised as to
leave them alone together?--Yet to dream of its coming to this!  And
how--"  Then he paused.  What need to ask how she had come by her
information?  The broken panel explained all.  "What brought it
about?" he said after another silence.  "They came to high words?"

Ruth nodded.

"Concerning?--"

"The murder of the king."

"Master Goodenough being opposed to it?"

"And Master Rumsey," nodded Ruth, "all for striking him
down--unawares--like he has poor Master Goodenough himself."

[Sidenote: Honour among conspirators.]

"Ay," said Rumbold, "I guessed as much; though he breathed no word of
it.  I suspected it, I say, to be in his thoughts.  Heaven forgive
him!  I think now, he would not have hesitated at putting poison
in--a man's food, be he Charles Stuart, or any other--or stabbing him
in his sleep, so only that he might gain his end."

"But you, father, you?" almost joyfully cried Ruth.

"Nay, we are not assassins.  I and my--friends.  And this scum of the
earth, Richard Rumsey was not fit to consort with men of honour like
us--we looked, Walcot and the rest of us, we looked indeed to be the
slayers, if heaven blessed our project, or the slain, and it saw fit.
A fair fight, front to front--"

"Fair!" cried Ruth, "Fair?  In that narrow by-way?  Where the coach
could not pass for the overturned cart!"

Rumbold frowned.  "You have it all, seemingly, at your fingers' ends,
mistress," he said, "and 'tis useless to dissemble with you; or to
reason over nice and just distinctions with obstinate young maids'
brains.  Enough!  See only that you make a discreet use of your
indiscretion.  Keep a silent tongue in your head.  Do you hear me,
mistress?  Or by--"

"Father! father! kill me.  Do with me what you will," cried Ruth,
throwing herself at his feet.  "By this time the king knows all!"

"Girl!" and in his fury he turned pale as the dead man beside him,
and seized her by both wrists.  "How?  By what means?  Who?  This is
Lawrence Lee's handiwork?  Speak."

Her lips moved, but she made no answer.

[Sidenote: The looming gallows.]

"Betrayed!" he wailed forth in a paroxysm of impotent fury, "and
brought to naught!  Destroyed like any wind-bag.  All our holy
work--our sacred compact.  By the machinations of a frivolous girl,
and a love-sick Don Quixote of a boy!  Oh, Ruth, Ruth!  Little Ruth,
was he indeed more to you than your father--and your very faith?  Ay,
but 'tis so--'tis so.  What have you done?  And is it nothing to you
neither, that this brave night's work of your's must see me swing for
it on Tyburn tree?"

"Father! father!  No, no," shuddered Ruth.  "There is time--time yet
to escape."

"Ho!  Is there so?" cried he with a grating bitter laugh.  "I protest
now, my daughter, you are really too tender and dutiful.  Time is
there?  Time for me to play the poltroon's part, and make a byword
and a scorn of myself while the world lasts!  No, let them take me
here.  And yet--"

[Sidenote: A father lost.]

He paused, and his hold on Ruth's arms relaxed, so that she slowly
fell away from him, while he stood sternly gazing into the chilly
morning haze as though he saw in it some prophetic vision.  "And
yet," he murmured, "to be hunted down so.  To let myself be trapped
like vermin--when still I may be preserved, for an instrument to
crush out the superstition and the tyranny of these evil days that
darken more and more--"

"Father! father!" implored Ruth.  "Quick!  By the vaults.  Before it
is too late!"

"Yes," he went on, letting his keen glance drop on her for a moment,
and then fixing it again like some prophetic seer, on empty space.
"So it shall be.  And my voice shall yet once more be uplifted to
cry: Woe! woe! to the doers of wickedness in high places.  Yes, I
will live.  I will live!  I will stoop, even to the very dust beneath
my feet--to conquer.  I will live--and if every hair of my head were
a man, I would venture them all in this quarrel."

Then he turned, and looked towards the door.

"Father!" cried Ruth, dashing aside the tangle of hair all fallen
about her face, and clinging to him with agonized clutch.  "Father!
one kiss--one word--one little word before you go!"  But his face was
turned stonily upon the door.

"Father!"

[Sidenote: Alone!]

Then he was gone, leaving her stretched where at last he wrenched
himself free of her clinging agonized hands, prone and senseless upon
the threshold.




CHAPTER XXIX.

A WELCOME HOME.

"Past three o' the clock, and a fine starlight night," piped the old
watchman, as he shuffled along, bell and lantern in hand, down
Newmarket High Street.  "Past three o' the clock."

"Hullo!  Master Diogenes.  Have a care where you're running to,"
cried a deep good-humoured voice, as the old fellow came trundling
full-tilt against the tall, broad-shouldered figure of a man dressed
in gray, who was just about to vault on to the back of a fine black
horse standing before the door of the Silver Leopard.  "Are you
looking for an honest man?"

"I've found him anyhow, Master Alworth," replied the old man, half
lifting his lantern to the face of the speaker, which was shaded by a
hat of gray felt, whose broad brim almost covered the long iron-gray
locks of his periwig.  "'Tis the early bird that catches the worm,
they say," continued he.  "But you be astir betimes indeed, Master
Alworth."

"I've a longish journey before me."

[Sidenote: The watchman.]

"Cambridge?" asked the old fellow.

"Nay.  Farther by many a mile," answered the other, vaulting into the
saddle.

"The powers alive!  You don't say so!  Well, you seem in mighty good
trim for the task anyhow!  'Tis many a month,--years not to
say--since I've noticed ye so springy-like about the knees, Master
Alworth."

"H'm," said the traveller, passing his hand across the lower half of
his face and then down his thighs.  "But I must mind, or I shall be
paying for my agility."

"Ay, ay.  It don't do to be making too free when us is gettin' well
on in our threescore, do it?  But happen 'tis some good stroke o'
business as is greasin' the wheels for ye," slyly laughed the old
fellow.  "Coin's a rare mender of a man's paces.  'Tis money--"

"Makes the mare to go," laughed the horseman.  "Try the recipe
yourself, friend," and he threw a crown-piece upon the ground.

Not without a half-suppressed exclamation of surprise at the
goldsmith's unwonted liberality, albeit Master Alworth was no
skinflint, the old man picked up the coin, and contemplated it with
affectionate admiration.  "I never see likenesses of old Rowley ever
pleases me so well as these do," he said.  "Eh, Master Alworth?"

"They're well enough," said the horseman, with a preoccupied shrug,
as he stooped to adjust his stirrup.

"Tho', to be sure," continued the old man, "I grant you 'tis mightily
handsomer than ever Charles was, or is like to be.  For 'tis few on
us grows comelier as we gets on in the years.  And there's no doubt
this here picture makes the best of him.  But there, 'tis part o'
kings' trades to be flattered, 'tan't oftentimes as they stumble upon
truth."

"Ods-fish!" laughed the other, "'tis seemingly a deal more likely to
stumble upon them!"

"Ay--Past three o' the clock! and a fine starlight night--you may say
that, for stumblin' 'tis, an no mistake, when you get no heed nor
thanks neither for your pains.  Maybe as you've heard--for the tale's
in everybody's mouth by now--that there came one yesterday mornin' to
the king, to warn him o' some fresh plottin's that's hatchin'.  And
what does Charles do, but turn on his heel, along with all his
tag-rag an' bobtail o' lords an' ladies, an' leave the young
gentleman to take care o' himself--Past three o' the clock, an' a
starlight night--what d'ye think o' that?"

"I think 'twas mightily ill-bred of him," said the horseman.

[Sidenote: News.]

"Well, pray Heaven the breedin' be the baddest part o't, and keep his
majesty from any worse dangers than this night's," said the old man
fervently.

"The fire, do you mean?  But--'twas nothing after all?"

"Just a flash in the pan.  An up-an'-ha'-done-wi't piece of business.
Not so much, as far as I can make out, as a hair o' the tails o' one
o' his little spannel dogs scorched."

"And the king?"

"He? oh ha!--near four o' the clock, an'--not to be found high nor
low, so 'tis said.  But what won't folks say?  He knows where he is,
depend upon't; 'tis not the first time as Charles has bin mislaid.
He'll show up again, safe as the nose on your face.  A cat with nine
lives is old Rowley, God bless him!"

"Well, well, adieu, friend!"

"And a safe journey to your worship--Just four o' the clock, an' a
bright sunshiny morning," called out the old man, trudging on and
ringing his bell with such tremendous energy, as if to make up for
any little delays, that it completely drowned the clatter of Stars
and Garters' hoofs as she cantered over the cobble-stones of the High
Street.

[Sidenote: Another horseman.]

Meanwhile Lawrence Lee, only halting to snatch a meal by the way, and
to give his horse half an hour's rest, reached Stanstead Church, just
as the youngsters let loose from morning dame school were pranking
among the gravestones, and plundering the hawthorn hedges.  Tired
out, but lighter of heart than he could remember for many a long day,
he threw them a gay quip as he passed.  Bang, clash, rattle, went the
churchyard wicket, away all over the dusty road the poor may
blossoms, scattered and trampled under ruthless little feet all
trotting after the big horse's legs.  And no marvel neither; for let
alone the merry jokes of Master Lee, who always was the most popular
creature in the world with the young fry of the neighbourhood, there
was a thing to be seen popping its head in and out of the deep pocket
of his doublet in the most strange fashion.  Head, forsooth! a bunch
of brown satin ribbons you mean, or some fairing of the sort for
Mistress Ruth Rumbold, that wobbled to and fro with the horse's
movements.

[Sidenote: "'Tis a dog."]

"Naa, 'tes a dog, tell'ee," whispered a five-year-old wiseacre under
his breath.

"Dog!" contemptuously laughed a wise virgin of six, whose canine
circle of acquaintance was limited to huge farm mastiffs and gypsy
curs.  "'Tes a silk pincush'n for Madam Lee, cain't you see the brown
and whoite bows to the corners o't."

"Pincush'n! bows!  Thems its ears an' its oyes a gogglin'.
Pincush'ns doesn't goggle their oyes; 'tes a dog, ain't it, Marster
Lee?"

"Something of the sort," answered Lee, carefully drawing the little
King Charles from his snug hiding-place, and exhibiting its roly-poly
body to the public gaze; but the shrieks of delight greeting its
appearance, so startled its unaccustomed ears, that terror got the
better of Master Médor's courtly breeding, and sent him scuffling
back into the recesses of his friend's riding-coat; and amidst a
general groan at this disappointing man[oe]uvre, Lee ambled on at a
good round trot, which quickly brought him within sight of the
grass-grown broken tower tops of Nether Hall.  It was now close upon
mid-day, and the sun shone hotly, so that the deserted look of the
meadows where the haymakers had just commenced work would have
occasioned their young proprietor small surprise, even could his
preoccupied mind have spared the matter a thought.  Just a day it was
for creeping away into the shade of the hedges, or of the alders
overhanging the cool water shallows, to munch your rye-bread and
bacon, and drink your draught of milk or small-beer out of your old
tin can; and one or two old crippled men and women seemed the only
folks in the way to give the master a welcome home.

[Sidenote: A posse comitatus.]

Eager to relieve the anxiety he felt his long and unexpected absence
must be causing his mother, Lawrence Lee had no eyes for the strange
stares full of wonderment and suspicion the old gaffers and goodies
threw after him; but he was startled out of himself as he reached the
last field skirting the lane which led to the house, by a confused
hubbub of voices and angry discussion, as if the whole parish had
collected between its lofty hedgerows.  The spot, ordinarily so
peaceful and so silent, save for the singing of the birds in the big
elm boughs overhead, was now a veritable Babel; and breaking through
a gap in the hedge, fresh made by the trampling of a hundred
hobnailed shoes, he leaped the intervening ditch, and alighting in
their very midst, demanded in imperative tones, what they did there?

For one instant, all stood as if confounded by his apparition.  A
thunderbolt fallen among them would have startled them less.  Here
had they been scouring the country pretty well since daybreak, north,
south, east, west, and all points of the compass between, among
Epping glades, along Hainhault hedgerows, away over Amwell,
Hoddesdon, Wideford, Ware, Waltham--far and wide, the hue and cry had
gone.  Deep into oozing ditches, and hollow tree trunks, and
pigsties, and barns, and farmhouse cellars, and gable roofs, and
canal barges, and river craft, pitchforks, and sticks, and cudgels of
all sorts and sizes had prodded and poked in search of farmer
Lawrence Lee.

"What is the meaning of this?" indignantly demanded Lee, as half a
dozen strapping fellows clad in the local militia uniform broke
through the crowd of smock-frocks, and closed round him.  "Is this
the way you do your duty, Master Sergeant?" he went on addressing
that officer, who had seized his bridle-rein.

[Sidenote: Arrested for murder.]

"Ay, it be, Master Cap'n," grinned the fellow--for Lee was the head
of their company--"an' a moighty proper pretty way too.  You be our
prisoner!"

"Prisoner!"

"Oy, oy, it be all roight, ship-shape.  You be arrested."

"On what charge?"

"That be no business o' yourn."

"The murder o' Sheriff Goodenough," shrieked an open-mouthed matron.
"The murder o' Sheriff Goodenough, Master Innocence.  Him as lies
dead in the Warder's Room at Master Rumbold's?"

"By whose charge?" said Lee, passing his hand across his eyes, like a
man striving to see the light.

"You want to be knowing more than's good for you," sneeringly replied
the sergeant; "'tis all roight.  Him as asks no questions, woan't be
telled no lies.  I warrant ya 't be no use kickin'.  Eh--yow! yow!
stand still, you brute," yelled the brave Hector, as Lawrence's horse
evinced a decided disposition to make a trial of his heels, and sent
the by-standers to a safer distance.  Lee, however, quieted the
animal, and then with a composure of manner that worked everybody up
to an unendurable pitch of exasperation, he again demanded his
accuser's name.

"Colonel Richard Rumsey," answered the spokesman, thinking it wiser
perhaps to comply.

"Very good," said Lawrence dismounting, and consigning his horse to
one of his own stablemen who stood near.

"Come!  Quick march, cap'n," said the sergeant, regaining all his
wonted valour, as the sound of the departing horse's hoofs grew
fainter and fainter.

"Where to?" said Lawrence, facing about.

[Sidenote: "To the King's Arms!"]

"The King's Arms, to begin with, and then--" the man chuckled.

"That will do," calmly said Lee.  "What do you mean by this?" he
added, a purple red flush of wounded pride suffusing all his face, as
a stout cord was flung over his shoulders from behind, and a dozen
hands secured it.

"Only a little compliment we pay to plotters and suchlike folk,"
laughed the sergeant.

[Sidenote: Mob law.]

Lawrence was about to make a violent resistance; but suddenly his
face changed, a look of deep humiliation came over it, and he stopped
short.  "Do I not deserve this?" he said to himself, and then he
submitted quietly; and as if he were in his old position as leader of
these men, and not the led one, he turned and faced about for the
Rye; only delaying for a moment to charge some of the terror-stricken
women-servants of the farm with a cheering message for his mother,
and to bid them conceal the truth from her, as up till now they had
contrived to do--"till he should return," as he said, regardless of
the mocking gibes of the rabble, pressing upon all sides.




CHAPTER XXX

A TRAVELLER FROM NEWMARKET.

"This a fair scene," said the king to himself, as between three and
four o'clock in the afternoon he reached the rising ground which
commanded the familiar prospect of the square battlemented roof and
tall spiral chimney-shaft of the Rye House.  "I think," he pondered
on, "if I were not king of England, I would be a maltster, and live
in such a corner of it, as this Master Rumbold does, without a care
to fret me, and with one fair daughter, and my honest friend Farmer
Lee for my nearest neighbour.  But yonder," continued Charles, as his
glance caught the gables of the King's Arms, "lies our rendezvous.
Now, may my luck be as good as Master Isaak Walton's, and bring me as
good a supper of fish out of yonder little silver stream, as he used
to find under the old hostelry's roof.  'Tis quite certain at all
events," he went on, smilingly to himself, as he caught sight of the
buxom figure of Mistress Sheppard, who was standing at the porch
expectantly, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked up the
road, "that this present hostess of the King's Arms, is as cleanly
and handsome-looking as her predecessor could be; and as to her
civility, if Master Lee's word is to be taken--"

[Sidenote: Pleasant quarters.]

"Bless the darling!" murmured Mistress Sheppard, making a profound
curtsey to the king, as Stars and Garters stopped of her own sweet
will before the porch, and neighed a greeting.

"Pretty creature!" she murmured on under her breath, hardly knowing
whether the sight of her favourite, or of her favourite's rider, more
originated the agreeable fluttering about her heart; for at the first
glimpse she had recognized the king; and guessed at the consequent
success of Lawrence Lee's mission.  "Will your Majesty be pleased to
dismount?" she said in low glad tones, as she laid her hand lightly
on the mare's neck.

"Why, bless my soul!" ejaculated Sheppard, who now made his
appearance in the porch, to receive the new-comer, and rubbing his
eyes to stare at the horse.  "Stars and Garters--as I'm alive!"

"You're not alive, man.  You're asleep," laughed his wife, a trifle
nervously, and placing her ample figure in such a position as to
intercept his view of the horse, as it disappeared under the ostler's
care in the direction of the stables.  "Stars and Garters!  What
next, I wonder?  'Tis all Stars and Garters in thy sleepy eyes!
Come, stir about man.  Waken up, and take his Ma--take this good
gentleman indoors, an' lay the table, while I see about somethin' for
him to eat."

"Not forgetting a trout.  Eh, Mistress?" called the guest after her.

"Ay.  I'll warrant your--worship.  A right royal one 'tis too,"
answered the beaming hostess.

"One would ha' guessed she'd bin' expectin' of him," muttered
Sheppard, still rubbing the mystification out of his eyes, while he
preceded his guest to the inn parlour, "and him a moighty sort of a
favourite too.  Now, there's a many that comes along, as she thinks
naught o' puttin' off with chub; nasty fork-boned watery skelintons
o' things.  But my foine old gentleman here, must be havin' his
trout, and his curtseys, and down bobbins into the bargain."  And
Master Sheppard, who, as luck would have it, had been a bit put about
all day with one thing and another, having first rather sulkily
flicked a few stray crumbs with his snow-white apron from the bright
oaken table to the floor, proceeded to lay the cloth.

"Any news stirring in these parts?" asked the guest in careless
tones, as he threw himself comfortably among the cushions of a settle
drawn up in the deep bay of the window looking upon the road.

[Sidenote: A surly host.]

Now there was a good deal of news stirring; but Sheppard, contrary to
his garrulous wont, seemed in no mood to impart it; and he only
replied by a shrug of his lean shoulders, and a shake of the head,
casting at the same time uneasy and sheepish glances towards a stout
broad-shouldered man, seated in the embrasure of a distant window
smoking an enormous Dutch pipe, whose hat was drawn low down over his
eyes, which were apparently absorbed in gloomy contemplation of the
huge jack of ale on the table before him.

[Sidenote: Meaning words.]

"Be you from nor'ards, Master Traveller?" said Sheppard to the
new-comer, as if in haste to turn the current of conversation.

"Cambridge," answered the guest, craning his neck towards the window,
as if he expected somebody.

"Eh! be you, now?" said Sheppard, rousing up a little, and a gleam of
intelligence breaking into his eyes.  "Then I doubt you can tell me
if 'tis true that May Queen has beat Satan by ten paces, as the talk
goes she has?"

"Quite true."

"An' what," gleefully nodded Sheppard, "what's your notions over
Flatfoot?"

"Oh! safe to win."

"The king's own horse, an't he?"

The traveller nodded.

"Maybe as you've a score on her yourself?" said Sheppard with a
knowing wink.

"Rather a heavy one.  Yes," replied the traveller, suppressing a
faint sigh.

"Well, well," consolingly said Sheppard.  "An' you'll make a potful,
depend upon't.  Trust Old Rowley for tellin' good horseflesh from
carrion."

"Ay.  As he's able to tell honest subjects from crop-eared knaves,"
laughed the stranger, drawing close up to the table, and pouring out
a bumper of ruby red wine from the tall silver-lipped flagon which
Mistress Sheppard had just brought in, and placed at his elbow.
"Shall we drink his health, friend?" he added, brimming another
glass, and pushing it toward Sheppard.

A more agonizing expression than the one breaking on Sheppard's face
at this challenge, it would be impossible to conceive.  Half-way his
trembling fingers carried the goblet to his lips that quivered with
strange contortions; then as his oblique stolen glances crossed those
of the silent smoker, uplifted towards the shadows cast by the ivy
half covering the lattice, his cheeks turned white as his apron, and
he set down the glass untasted.

"Come man! what ails you?" said the stranger, looking up at the
unhappy Sheppard, and then not without a touch of suspicion at the
flagon.  "Or is anything wrong with the wine?"

"No, no," gasped Sheppard, "it's very nice wine indeed;" and he gazed
at the contents of his cup, with affectionate admiration.  "Very
nice.  But I--I--I'm--ordered not--to--to--"  Then he broke down
hopelessly.

[Sidenote: Dinner for a King.]

"Not to touch it, eh?" and laughing heartily at his host's
perturbation, the stranger turned his attention to the trout which
Mistress Sheppard was now setting before him with her own fair hands.
"And who's your medical adviser?" he continued, as he made a deep
incision into the gleaming armour of the fish.  "I' faith! if 'tis
yonder gentleman," and he gave a half glance towards the silent
stranger, "I'd seek another opinion if I were you.  What is this?" he
went on, turning to inspect the contents of a little cruet-tray which
Mistress Sheppard was handing to him.  "Verjuice and vinegar!
Thanks, no.  I'll have none of them.  For though 'tis said they're
good for the digestion, they always spoil mine," and he pushed away
his plate, almost untasted, and his dark eyes wandered towards the
silent guest.  "What have you there?" he went on, as Sheppard with
vast pomp and circumstance, placed on the table a large dish.

"Sirloin," answered Sheppard, flourishing off the silver cover, huge
as Mambrino's helmet.  "Sirloin--your worship," he reiterated
obsequiously, as if he was anxious to patch up the appalling hole he
had just now made in his manners.  "Prime cut.  Fit for a king."

[Sidenote: Dangerous names.]

"I'll have none of it.  I cannot wait longer," said Charles,
impatiently looking again towards the window.  "I came here by
appointment with a--friend, who does not appear disposed to be
punctual.  And yet, by his own tale, he lives not so far off from
here.  His name is--"

"Hush!" whispered Mistress Sheppard in his ear, as she bent to
replace his plate with a clean one.

"H'm--No matter," went on Charles.  "We--I am not accustomed to be
kept waiting," and he rose, and took up his hat.  "Tell the young
gentleman when he does come, that he will find me at Whitehall--"

"Hush--sh!" again whispered Mistress Sheppard.

"H'm--not far from the water stairs.  But he knows my address.  So
come, Master Landlord, have with you, and find me a fresh horse.  And
pray be quick about it, for if I would sleep at home to-night, I must
be brisk.  I cry your pardon, Mistress Sheppard.  You were about to
speak?" he added in courteous tones, as he perceived his hostess
smoothing her apron, and her lips opening and shutting, and opening
again.

[Sidenote: A fair visitor.]

"So please you, there is one," answered Mistress Sheppard.  "Nay,
names matter little.  One who earnestly desires an audience--a word
with you, before you go.  A young girl--"

"Let her come in," said Charles with animation.




CHAPTER XXXI.

RUMSEY MEETS HIS MATCH.

"Mistress, your servant," said the king, his voice dropping to a
gentle gravity, as the door opened, and disclosed the gray-clad
figure of Ruth Rumbold.  "What can we do for you?" he added, striving
to conceal the curiosity he could not but feel at sight of the pale
face, and the sad wearied look of the beautiful downcast eyes.  "Or
do you perhaps bring me the reckoning?" he went on, as, encouraged by
his kindly tones, she tendered him a large folded paper which she
carried in her hand, making a profound curtsey as she did so, at the
same time lifting her eyes to his friendly gaze, so that he could
read in them of the heart too full for words.

"Ods-fish, it must be something of a heavy one!" he added laughingly,
as he turned the paper about, examining its seal; "but it bears no
superscription, Mistress--Mistress--are you not Mistress Ruth
Rumbold?"  She curtseyed again, "It bears no superscription?" he
reiterated, and hesitating to break open the seal.

"It is meant for your--your--"

"Worship," prompted Mistress Sheppard.

"Your worship's reading," said Ruth.

Then without more ado, Charles opened the paper.

"Why, what have we here?" he said, glancing over its contents with
awakened curiosity.  "'Tis made out in two hands!  '_I, Thomas_'--who
is it?  '_Thomas Good_'--I' faith! 'tis less like handwriting, than
as if a spider had dipped his legs in ink, and then danced a coranto
on this fair white paper meadow.  Pray had the gentleman his wits
when he indited this?"

"Indeed, indeed," cried Ruth, "he had, but not his strength--your
worship.  He was dying."

"Oh, I crave your pardon," said the king, growing grave again, and
dropping his gaze from Ruth's troubled face, to the paper; "'_being
now at the point of death_.'  Ay, ay, I see now, I should have read
further, '_by the hand of the man Richard_'--what's that noise?" he
went on, breaking off in his deciphering endeavours, as a distant
chorus of yells and shouts and hideous cat-calls suddenly broke upon
the drowsy afternoon silence.  "Your neighbourhood," he added with an
amused smile, as he turned to continue his task, "would appear to be
less peaceful than it looks.  '_The man Richard_--'"

[Sidenote: The strange guest speaks.]

"Maybe 'tis your friend come at last to keep his appointment," said
the stranger, whose eyes had for many minutes past been fixed on
Charles.  "Better late than never, you know," he added, putting his
pipe back between his lips, which were curled into an ugly leer; and
thrusting both hands into the pockets of his small clothes, he
settled himself to watch the approach of a dense motley rabble
enveloped in a cloud of dust, which suddenly broke with a renewed
outburst of uproar, over the low wood garden-fence, trampling it
under foot, till it lay scattered in all directions.  On, on, tramp,
tramp, surging to the very windows it came, amidst shrieks and
whoops, and cries of "Shame! shame! give him a yard o' rope, fair
play!  God save the king!--The gallows tree's too good for
him!"--Tramp, tramp, fell the heavy tread of hobnailed shoes, until
the forest of pitchforks, cudgels, rusty firearms, spades, spuds,
rakes, and every conceivable weapon and tool brandished aloft by the
strange crew fell apart, and disclosed the cord-bound figure of
Lawrence Lee.

[Sidenote: The prisoner.]

"What!" cried the king, starting in amazement.  "Master Lee?"

"And a right magnificent progress he appears to have made," said the
stranger, with an insolent laugh, as he carefully laid aside his pipe
and rose from his seat.  "Ho! come, guards," he shouted through the
open window; "bring in your prisoner;" and hustled forward along the
broad passage, despite the proddings and fisticuffs dealt right and
left by his guards, against whom Mistress Sheppard seconded her
indignant protests, by the vigorous aid of her own hands and finger
nails, Lee, deprived of all power of helping himself, stumbled head
first into the presence of the king.

"What does this mean?" cried Charles, as Lee, maintaining a stout
resistance, succeeded for a moment in elbowing off the worst of the
press, and hurrying forward, dropped, breathless and spent, upon one
knee at the king's feet.

"Your Majesty," he began.

"The king?!!" broke in one universal shout of amazement from all
present, excepting from the lips of Mistress Sheppard and Ruth
Rumbold, and then an awe-stricken silence fell.

"Tell me--" began the king.

"I can tell your Majesty but this," said Lee, his voice falling clear
and resonant through the utter stillness, "that I have been arrested
by the order of the man who stands there, Richard Rumsey; but on what
charge, I wait for him to say."

"On the charge," said Rumsey, advancing from the shadows, like some
savage beast from its lair, with an evil twitching of his lips, and a
serpent-like glitter in his cold eyes, which, however, carefully
eluded the gaze of all present--"the charge of the murder of Sheriff
Goodenough."

"What?!" shouted Lee, bounding to his feet.

"Committed," calmly continued Rumsey, still looking into space, "in
the Warder's Room of Master Rumbold's house yonder yesterday morning."

[Sidenote: The witness.]

"Nay, that is false," broke in Ruth, "for it wanted almost ten
minutes of midnight.  The clock had not struck."

"Girl!" cried Rumsey starting, and turning upon her a face grown
ghastly pale; but immediately collecting himself he added, addressing
the king, with a baleful smile upon his lips, "Let it be so, your
M----.  The young woman may be right.  She is in Master Lee's
confidence I doubt not; and he has whispered the gentle secret of his
exploit to her.  Ten minutes to midnight it might have been."

"Villain!" furiously burst forth Lee.

"And since he has imparted in sweet confidence to this--in sooth I
think she just now said her name was--"

[Sidenote: The accuser.]

"Ruth Rumbold, yes," cried the girl in a loud ringing voice.  "And
'tis you--you, Richard Rumsey, are the murderer of Sheriff
Goodenough!"

"You are certainly mighty wise, little mistress," he rejoined with a
spasmodic twitch of his pallid lips.  "Your Majesty," he went on,
turning jauntily to the king, and with a careless wave of his hand
towards Lee, "can see how the land lies betwixt these two.  And this
brave young bloodsucker is indeed to be envied so fair a special
pleader.  But it won't do, my dear," he added, addressing Ruth in
jeering tones.  "'Tis too grave a matter."

"Ay, truly," said the bewildered Charles, again glancing over the
paper in his hands.  "Grave indeed!"

"Scoundrel! double-dyed villain!" exclaimed Lee, writhing in his
cords, and glaring at Rumsey.  "Is it not enough that already your
soul is black with its guilt, but you must accuse another of your
crime?"

"Words break no bones," coolly laughed Rumsey.  "If ever now," he
went on, pointing at Lee's bound hands, whose every vein stood out to
bursting in his struggles to get free, "these inconvenient little
knots should be loosed, you shall certainly be set to rant it at
Drury Lane playhouse.  You'd make Manager Betterton's fortune in a
week.  In the meantime," he added, turning to the king, "your Majesty
sees before you the slayer of Thomas Goodenough."

[Sidenote: For the defence.]

"Ay, ay; he speaks truth at last!" cried Mistress Sheppard, and
dashing forward, and squaring up to Rumsey, she shook her clenched
fist in his face.

"Woman!" he snarled, retreating a step, and his ashen lips quivering
apart, like a half-cowed hyena's.

"Oh! woman me as much as you please," she stormed on.  "That don't
frighten me much, I reckon.  Yes, yes, woman I am, and Ruth here has
told me all about it; and how the others being gone away--"

"Others?" wonderingly interrupted the king.  "Gone away?"

"Ay, for sure.  The other conspirators, your Majesty--being gone down
into the vaults with Master Rumbold, to see the way they should
escape by, if--when--"  She hesitated a moment.

"Go on, my good woman.  I understand," said the king, "when their
purpose should be accomplished."

"And they left Master Goodenough, who had fallen asleep in the
window, alone with this Rumsey here; and Master Goodenough, who was
not for--for your Majesty being murdered, but only for being made
away with like, across the water--being presently wakened up, picked
a quarrel with this fellow--that is, this fellow, who was all for
hacking down your Majesty and his grace of York yonder in the lane,
like any butcher's oxen, picked it with him, and--Come, Ruth, child;"
and seizing Ruth by the arm, Mistress Sheppard dragged her forward.
"Those were his words.  Tell the king how those were his words."

"Lies!" hissed Rumsey through his livid lips.  "Let her bring her
witnesses.  Just a string of lies!"

"Those are in thy foul mouth," retorted Mistress Sheppard.  "Not in
this gentle child's, who found courage, Heaven helping her, for the
king's sake, to make herself certain of all your evil minds were
hatchin'; and then spared not what was best and dearest to her, so
only that the king should be apprised of your villainy.  Oh, I trow
they'll be well mated man an' wife," murmured on Mistress Sheppard,
gazing with proud tears in her eager eyes, from Ruth to Lawrence Lee,
"when please old Time's good leisure, he shall make her a trifle
older."

[Sidenote: A parenthesis.]

"Keep to the point, dear Mistress Sheppard," said Lawrence, flushing
a little.

"An' what am I doin', if I aren't keepin' to't?" demanded she.
"Don't I say that she spared not even you, Lawrence Lee, to the
perilsome journey to Newmarket? and didn't you right willingly mind
her biddin'?  Oh, I'll warrant me, little Ruth has told me all; and
who but me was't, that girthed Stars and Garters, not waitin' to
untie--savin' your Majesty's sacred presence--to untie my nightcap,
and bid ye God-speed, and sent ye both gallopin' off together?"

"This is a strange tale," said the king, as Mistress Sheppard paused
for lack of breath.

[Sidenote: The evidence.]

"Ay, 'tis indeed," she went on, "and Mistress Ruth has eyes an' ears,
an' uses 'em to better purpose than some folks I know"--and she threw
a significant glance at her bewildered better half--"as can only
stand gaffin' and gawmin' at a body.  An' she used 'em to bestest
purpose of all, that moment when she hided, poor lamb, inside o'
yonder panel that looks into the Warder's Room, an' saw you, Richard
Rumsey, commit your foul deed.  And so for your witness, if you want
one, why here she stands."

"Unbind this young man's arms," said the king.

Rumsey started forward with looks of well-feigned concern.  "Is your
Majesty mad?" he said protestingly.  "'Tis indeed too
venturesome--too foolhardy, if I may say so.  This fellow--taken
red-handed--"

"We are surety for his not running away," interrupted the king with a
faint smile.

"Shall she tell more?" went on Mistress Sheppard, looking on with
triumphant satisfaction, while the king's commands were being obeyed.
"Do you want to know how like the Lord's own blessed Bible Samaritan
this child tended the poor bleeding sinful soul, an' strove to save
his poor body; but Heaven would not have it so, an' called him to his
account--"

"Does your Majesty," loftily broke in Rumsey, "accept the testimony
of this ranting virago, and this puling girl, or the word of a
soldier?"

"He can take it, or leave it," cried Mistress Sheppard, throwing all
her court manners to the winds, "like pigs leave pearls for offal.
The witness of living truth," she went on in slower and solemn tones,
"and of loyal hearts, is no thing to be despised.  But the testimony
of the dead is mightier than the angel's last trumpet; and that looks
his Majesty in the face;" and Mistress Sheppard pointed to the paper
in the king's hands.

[Sidenote: The tables turned.]

"It is enough," said Charles, gazing with emotion on the poor faint
signature of the dying man's hand, and the somewhat tremulous but
clerkly little characters beneath it.  "Richard Goodenough being
dead, yet speaketh.  Arrest that traitor!" and he pointed to Rumsey.

Like a wild beast at bay, the guilty wretch glared round him.  All
chance of escape was worse than hopeless; and the guard which now
left Lawrence Lee a free man, and hastened to surround their new
prisoner, had apparently an easy task in securing him.  Ere, however,
they could touch him, he plunged his hand into his breast, and with a
heavy, but lightning-quick sideways lurch, eluded the grasp of his
captors, and breaking into a low rageful howl stumbled forward within
a couple of paces of the king.  "So then!" he cried with an
imprecation, snatching his hidden hand from the bosom of his doublet.

[Sidenote: Rumsey's last attempt.]

Time only to see that it clutches some gleaming weapon which he turns
with a savage thrust upon the king's breast,--time only for a moment
of dumb stricken horror instantly broken by shrieks and cries
mingling with the deafening report of a pistol, whose smoke as it
clears in thin bluish vapour reveals Rumsey prostrate at the king's
feet beneath the grip of Lawrence Lee, the fingers of the would-be
regicide's right hand still grasping the pistol, whose muzzle points
straight upward to the broad beam overhead, shattered and charred,
and riddled with its discharged contents!




CHAPTER XXXII.

  "So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
  What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.--"
                                              _Shakspere_.


One bright June morning, a few weeks after the events recorded in
this little chronicle, the large audience chamber of the palace of
Whitehall is thronged with a brilliant company, in whose midst are
seated King Charles and his Queen.  With curious eager glances the
fine lords and ladies jostle each other to obtain a closer view of
the dark-eyed handsome young fellow, and the girl standing beside
him, apparently some few years his junior, with whom their majesties
are absorbed in conversation.

The young man's eyes, when he can spare them from the queen, turn
admiringly on his companion, around whose slender neck, white as
alabaster, except indeed where the saucy sun has just bestowed his
touches of tan upon it--his majesty has just cast a chain of
exquisitely wrought gold, from which hangs a double pendant, set with
diamonds encircling the miniatures of himself and Queen Catharine.
"'Tis a souvenir of our regard and affection," the king is saying.
"Requital for your noble service, gold nor diamonds cannot make.
These gems are but poor shadows of truth and fealty like yours, fair
Mistress Ruth."

He paused, he had been about to institute some worn-out comparison
between the beautiful jewels and Ruth's eyes, but a look from the
queen checked him, she saw those eyes were too brimful of tears for
any trifling, and as they welled over, dropping fast upon the basket
on her arm, she made an attempt to speak.  "This--" she faltered,
slowly drawing down the handles over her arms.

"Ay?" said the king graciously, as he looked with rather expectant
eyes at the basket.  Could it be a present of eggs or cream or such
like, from the farm?

[Sidenote: A converted courtier.]

"Médor!" he exclaimed as he lifted the lid, and the snubby muzzle,
and two velvet brown eyes of the little dog peered forth.  "Poor
Médor!  Ods-fish! we had been near forgetting thee altogether!"
Notwithstanding which piece of self-confessed royal shortcoming, the
small creature bestowed a lick or two on his master's hands; though
it was a trifle carelessly, and he set up a whine, and vigorous
efforts to wriggle back into Ruth's arms.

"Your kindness in this instance has been very cruel, Mistress Ruth,"
smiled the king, as he let the little creature have its way.  "You
have given him such hospitable entertainment since he and I parted
company in the burning room at Newmarket, that now he is loth to be
separated from you.  Médor loves you."

Nothing could be more clear than that the dog's sentiments were fully
reciprocated, judging from Ruth's caress, and the wistful look her
eyes bestowed on the little creature.

"Not better than she loves Médor," said Lawrence.

"Say you so?  Why then, 'twould be the breaking of two hearts to part
them!  A crime no conscience could endure," cried the king.  "Say,
fair Mistress, will you keep the little jackanapes for your own?"

Would she?  Would she not?  Well, as Maudlin always would have it,
Ruth was a strange incomprehensible creature; and if pleasure shone
in her face at the gift of that costly carkanet, what comparison did
that bear to the content brightening it, as she clasped Médor her
own, her very own, in her arms!

[Sidenote: Marriage bells.]

Benefits of a more substantial sort were conferred on Lawrence Lee;
and the estate of Nether Hall was widened by many a broad acre, so
that Farmer Lee came to be accounted one of the wealthiest landowners
of the shire, and the marvel of it was, that few begrudged him this
worldly good fortune; though it would be too much to say none envied
his lot, when one fine morning a year or two later, old Stanstead
Church bells rang a joyous peal, as he led his wife Ruth along the
flower-strewn way to her new home.

Something, nay very much of the old content shines again, now at last
in Ruth's face; though its placid light-hearted look is gone for
ever, and the shadow of past griefs will linger on it, till, herself
an aged woman, they will lay her to her rest, to wait the time when
all shadows flee away.

[Sidenote: Patriots and plotters.]

Still, very bright and blessed was Ruth's future, with the love of
Madam Lee, warm and deep as own mother's love could be; and the
devotion of her husband, and the music of small voices that by and by
began to ring about the old house, and the mysterious alleys of the
hornbeam maze; but no happiness could ever efface for her the memory
of her father's fate.

Stern and implacable, yielding only to the gentler side of his
nature, to stifle it down again, he had deeply loved Ruth, and been
loved by her with a child's heart-felt affection.  Honest in his
convictions, loyal to his leader the famous Argyle, bravely as he had
lived, Richard Rumbold, maimed and tortured by his captors, died an
ignominious death at the Market Cross at Edinburgh, two years after
the exposure of the Rye House Plot.

Cruel as these tidings of his end were, it was rendered ten times
crueller by the thought of all those noble hearts that perished for
the cause which had exasperated more desperate, and less disciplined
minds to devise the hideous lengths of bloodshed and assassination;
bringing all alike to the scaffold; patriot and lofty spirits like
Sydney and Russel, grovelling, revengeful self-seekers like so many
of the plotters.  Few escaping with their lives, excepting such scum
as those who turned king's evidence like Richard Rumsey, and bought
their evil breath at the price of their old hand-in-glove comrades'
death.

Upon all this, Ruth in the coming years would oftentimes sit and
ponder.  Ardent, unshaken little Stuart royalist as she remained to
her latest day, and as Master Lawrence under her good guidance came
to be, it is doubtful whether either was ever brought to declare with
good Madam Lee, that "the king could do no wrong."  That question,
however, they left uncontested, and, content with trying to do as
little of it as possible themselves, did so much good as to call down
upon their heads in life and in death the blessings of all the
country side.

[Sidenote: Good company.]

The grandfather's part which the roll of time brought into request at
Nether Hall, was excellently represented by good old bachelor Master
Alworth, who was its frequent guest, and of the many tales he used to
tell the little ones, they liked very much that one of the brave,
dear, real grandfather who died fighting for the king on Worcester
field.

Of old Maudlin, what more can be said than that she passed her
uneventful later years in the snug ingle nook at Nether Hall, made
much of by every member of the establishment.

Adam Lockit, being of another turn of mind, declined to forsake his
quarters in the gatehouse.  New masters of the old mansion might come
and they might go.  Maltster or magnifico, peasant or peer, but
monarch of his trophy-hung little domain he remained; bequeathing it,
when at last he went the way of all flesh, with his well-seasoned
tales of flood and field, and hobgoblinry, to Barnaby Diggles, who
superadded in fair writing (an accomplishment, by the way, for which
he was beholden to his old master's daughter), that tradition of his
own times, of the famous plot and conspiracy against his gracious
majesty King Charles the Second--known as the Rye House Plot--and
whose valuable assistance towards the putting together of this
present record, it well behoves this chronicler gratefully to
recognize.

[Sidenote: The author of this story.]

Need it be added that the substantial marks of the king's gratitude
which were bestowed on the hostess of the King's Arms, entirely
converted Master Sheppard to his wife's way of thinking? and they
subsided into the happiest peacefullest pair you could find in
Hertfordshire; but then Master Sheppard never again put his fingers
in what his wife called "pies that weren't baked for his eatin';" and
when sea-coal was wanted for the King's Arms' hearth-places, honest
sea-coal it might be, but Mistress Sheppard took good care it should
be conveyed overland in a proper decent wagon; and always stood by in
person, to count the sacks, and to see to the bottom of them too.

As to oysters, she steadily set her face against the things, and
refused ever again to admit the ghost of a shell of one inside her
doors.  "If chub and barbel and trout--trout such as his sacred
majesty King Charles, not to speak of the renowned Master Isaak
Walton before him, had partaken of under her roof, was not good
enough for common wayfarin' folks, why, let 'em go farther," she
said, "an' fare worse."

[Sidenote: The end.]

Spiked atop of the spiral chimney of the gatehouse, there hung for
many a year the ghastly decapitated head of one of the arch
conspirators, but long ago it crumbled to nothingness, and no blot
now mars the scene that is as goodly and fair as old England has to
show.  Side by side in sweet converse, like old friends, the two
rivers still wander on amid the green pastures.  Still round about,
and in and out of the red battlemented walls, the rooks flit, and caw
their never-ending chorus, and the tall trees wave their long arms
day and night, and whisper to those who list to hear it, the story of
the Old Rye House.



THE END.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74255 ***