Chapter Twenty One.

Chapter Twenty One.Sword or Smithy.“Darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture, and to show it a fair pair of heels and run from it!”Shakespeare.Tidings came forth on the parting from the French King that the English Court was about to move to Gravelines to pay a visit to the Emperor and his aunt, the Duchess of Savoy. As it was hoped that jousts might make part of the entertainment, the attendance of the Dragon party was required. Giles was unfeignedly delighted at this extension of holiday, Stephen felt that it deferred the day—would it be of strange joy or pain?—of standing face to face with Dennet; and even Kit had come to tolerate foreign parts more with Sir John Fulford to show him the way to the best Flemish ale!The knight took upon himself the conduct of the Dragons. He understood how to lead them by routes where all provisions and ale had not been consumed; and he knew how to swagger and threaten so as to obtain the best of liquor and provisions at eachkermesse—at least so he said, though it might be doubted whether the Flemings might not have been more willing to yield up their stores to Kit’s open, honest face and free hand.However, Fulford seemed to consider himself one with the party; and he beguiled the way by tales of the doings of the Badgers in Italy and Savoy, which were listened to with avidity by the lads, distracting Stephen from the pain at his heart, and filling both with excitement. They were to have the honour of seeing the Badgers at Gravelines, where they were encamped outside the city to serve as a guard to the great inclosure that was being made of canvas stretched on the masts of ships to mark out the space for a great banquet and dance.The weather broke however just as Henry, his wife and his sister, entered Gravelines; it rained pertinaciously, a tempestuous wind blew down the erection, and as there was no time to set it up again, the sports necessarily took place in the castle and town hall. There was no occasion for the exercise of the armourer’s craft, and as Charles had forbidden the concourse of all save invited guests, everything was comparatively quiet and dull, though the entertainment was on the most liberal scale. Lodgings were provided in the city at the Emperor’s expense, and wherever an Englishman was quartered each night, the imperial officers brought a cast of fine manchet bread, two great silver pots with wine, a pound of sugar, white and yellow candles, and a torch. As Randall said, “Charles gave solid pudding where Francis gave empty praise!”Smallbones and the two youths had very little to do, save to consume these provisions and accept the hospitality freely offered to them at the camp of the Badgers, where Smallbones and the Ancient of the troop sat fraternising over big flagons of Flemish ale, which did not visibly intoxicate the honest smith, but kept him in the dull and drowsy state, which was his idea of thedolce far nienteof a holiday. Meanwhile the two youths were made much of by the warriors, Stephen’s dexterity with the bow and back-sword were shown off and lauded, Giles’s strength was praised, and all manner of new feats were taught them, all manner of stories told them; and the shrinking of well-trained young citizens from these lawless men, “full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,” and some very truculent-looking, had given way to judicious flattery, and to the attractions of adventure and of a free life, where wealth and honour awaited the bold.Stephen was told that the gentleman in him was visible, that he ought to disdain the flat cap and blue gown, that here was his opportunity, and that among the Badgers he would soon be so rich, as to wonder that he had ever tolerated the greasy mechanical life of a base burgher. Respect to his oaths to his master—Sir John laughed the scruple to scorn; nay, if he were so tender, he could buy his absolution the first time he had his pouch full of gold.“What shall I do?” was the cry of Stephen’s heart. “My honour and my oath. They bind me.Shewould weep. My master would deem me ungrateful, Ambrose break his heart. And yet who knows but I should do worse if I stayed, I shall break my own heart if I do. I shall not see—I may forget. No, no, never I but at least I shall never know the moment when the lubber takes the jewel he knows not how to prize! Marches—sieges—there shall I quell this wild beating! I may die there. At least they will allay this present frenzy of my blood.”And he listened when Fulford and Will Marden, a young English man-at-arms with whom he had made friends, concerted how he should meet them at an inn—the sign of the Seven Stars—in Gravelines, and there exchange his prentice’s garb for the buff coat and corslet of a Badger, with the Austrian black and yellow scarf. He listened, but he had not promised. The sense of duty to his master, the honour to his word, always recurred like “first thoughts,” though the longing to escape, the restlessness of hopeless love, the youthful eagerness for adventure and freedom, swept it aside again and again.He had not seen his uncle since the evening of the comedy, for Hal had travelled in the Cardinal’s suite, and the amusements being all within doors, jesters were much in request, as indeed Charles the Fifth was curious in fools, and generally had at least three in attendance. Stephen, moreover, always shrank from his uncle when acting professionally. He had learnt to love and esteem themanduring his troubles, but this only rendered the sight of his buffoonery more distressing, and as Randall had not provided himself with his home suit, they were the more cut off from one another. Thus there was all the less to counteract or show the fallacy of Fulford’s recruiting blandishments.The day had come on the evening of which Stephen was to meet Fulford and Marden at the Seven Stars and give them his final answer, in time to allow of their smuggling him out of the city, and sending him away into the country, since Smallbones would certainly suspect him to be in the camp, and as he was still an apprentice, it was possible, though not probable, that the town magistrates might be incited to make search on inquiry, as they were very jealous of the luring away of their apprentices by the Free Companies, and moreover his uncle might move the Cardinal and the King to cause measures to be taken for his recovery.Ill at ease, Stephen wandered away from the hostel where Smallbones was entertaining his friend, the Ancient. He had not gone far down the street when a familiar figure met his eye, no other than that of Lucas Hansen, his brother’s old master, walking along with a pack on his back. Grown as Stephen was, the old man’s recognition was as rapid as his own, and there was a clasp of the hand, an exchange of greeting, while Lucas eagerly asked after his dear pupil, Ambrose.“Come in hither, and we can speak more at ease,” said Lucas, leading the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories overhung the street. Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the high peaked roof, looking out at the back. Here Stephen recognised a press, but it was not at work, only a young friar was sitting there engaged in sewing up sheets so as to form a pamphlet. Lucas spoke to him in Flemish to explain his own return with the English prentice.“Dost thou dwell here, sir?” asked Stephen. “I thought Rotterdam was thine home.”“Yea,” said Lucas, “so it be, but I am sojourning here to aid in bearing about the seed of the Gospel, for which I walk through these lands of ours. But tell me of thy brother, and of the little Moorish maiden?”Stephen replied with an account of both Ambrose and Aldonza, and likewise of Tibble Steelman, explaining how ill the last had been in the winter, and that therefore he could not be with the party.“I would I had a token to send him,” said Lucas; “but I have nought here that is not either in the Dutch or the French, and neither of those tongues doth he understand. But thy brother, the good Ambrose, can read the Dutch. Wilt thou carry him from me this fresh tractate, showing how many there be that make light of the Apostle Paul’s words not to do evil that good may come?”Stephen had been hearing rather listlessly, thinking how little the good man suspected how doubtful it was that he should bear messages to Ambrose. Now, on that sore spot in his conscience, that sentence darted like an arrow, the shaft finding “mark the archer little meant,” and with a start, not lost on Lucas, he exclaimed, “Saith the holy Saint Paul that?”“Assuredly, my son. Brother Cornelis, who is one whose eyes have been opened, can show you the very words, if thou hast any Latin.”Perhaps to gain time, Stephen assented, and the young friar, with a somewhat inquisitive look, presently brought him the sentence, “Et non faciamus mala ut veniant bona.”Stephen’s Latin was not very fresh, and he hardly comprehended the words, but he stood gazing with a frown of distress on his brow, which made Lucas say, “My son, thou art sorely bestead. Is there aught in which a plain old man can help thee, for thy brother’s sake? Speak freely. Brother Cornelis knows not a word of English. Dost thou owe aught to any man?”“Nay, nay—not that,” said Stephen, drawn in his trouble and perplexity to open his heart to this incongruous confidant, “but, sir, sir, which be the worst to break my pledge to my master, or to run into a trial which—which will last from day to day, and may be too much for me—yea, and for another—at last?”The colour, the trembling of limb, the passion of voice, revealed enough to Lucas to make him say, in the voice of one who, dried up as he was, had once proved the trial, “’Tis love, thou wouldst say?”“Ay, sir,” said Stephen, turning away, but in another moment bursting forth, “I love my master’s daughter, and she is to wed her cousin, who takes her as her father’s chattel! I wist not why the world had grown dark to me till I saw a comedy at Ardres, where, as in a mirror, ’twas all set forth—yea, and how love was too strong for him and for her, and how shame and death came thereof.”“Those players are good for nought but to wake the passions!” muttered Lucas.“Nay, methought they warned me,” said Stephen. “For, sir,”—he hid his burning face in his hands as he leant on the back of a chair—“I wot that she has ever liked me better, far better than him. And scarce a night have I closed an eye without dreaming it all, and finding myself bringing evil on her, till I deemed ’twere better I never saw her more, and left her to think of me as a forsworn runagate rather than see her wedded only to be flouted—and maybe—do worse.”“Poor lad!” said Lucas; “and what wouldst thou do?”“I have not pledged myself—but I said I would consider of—service among Fulford’s troop,” faltered Stephen.“Among those ruffians—godless, lawless men!” exclaimed Lucas.“Yea, I know what you would say,” returned Stephen, “but they are brave men, better than you deem, sir.”“Were they angels or saints,” said Lucas, rallying his forces, “thou hast no right to join, them. Thine oath fetters thee. Thou hast no right to break it and do a sure and certain evil to avoid one that may never befall! How knowst thou how it may be? Nay, if the trial seem to thee over great, thine apprenticeship will soon be at an end.”“Not for two years.”“Or thy master, if thou spakest the whole truth, would transfer thine indentures. He is a good man, and if it be as thou sayest, would not see his child tried too sorely. God will make a way for the tempted to escape. They need not take the devil’s way.”“Sir,” said Stephen, lifting up his head, “I thank you. This was what I needed. I will tell Sir John Fulford that I ought never to have heeded him.”“Must thou see him again?”“I must. I am to give him his answer at the Seven Stars. But fear not me, Master Lucas, he shall not lead me away.” And Stephen took a grateful leave of the little Dutchman, and charged himself with more messages for Ambrose and Tibble than his overburdened spirit was likely to retain.Lucas went down the stairs with him, and as a sudden thought said at the foot of them, “’Tis at the Seven Stars thou meetest this knight. Take an old man’s counsel. Taste no liquor there.”“I am no ale bibber,” said Stephen.“Nay, I deemed thee none—but heed my words—captains of landsknechts inkermessesare scarce to be trusted. Taste not.”Stephen gave a sort of laugh at the precaution, and shook himself loose. It was still an hour to the time of meeting, and the Ave-bell was ringing. A church door stood open, and for the first time since he had been at Gravelines he felt that there would be the calm he needed to adjust the conflict of his spirits, and comprehend the new situation, or rather the recurrence to the old one. He seemed to have recovered his former self, and to be able to perceive that things might go on as before, and his heart really leapt at finding he might return to the sight of Dennet and Ambrose and all he loved.His wishes were really that way; and Fulford’s allurements had become very shadowy when he made his way to the Seven Stars, whose vine-covered window allowed many loud voices and fumes of beer and wine to escape into the summer evening air.The room was perhaps cleaner than an English one would have been, but it was reeking with heat and odours, and the forest-bred youth was unwilling to enter, but Fulford and two or three Badgers greeted him noisily and called on him to partake of the supper they had ready prepared.“No, sir knight, I thank you,” said Stephen. “I am bound for my quarters, I came but to thank you for your goodness to me, and to bid you farewell.”“And how as to thy pledge to join us, young man?” demanded Fulford sternly.“I gave no pledge,” said Stephen. “I said I would consider of it.”“Faint-hearted! ha! ha!” and the English Badgers translated the word to the Germans, and set them shouting with derision.“I am not faint-hearted,” said Stephen; “but I will not break mine oath to my master.”“And thine oath to me? Ha!” said Fulford.“I sware you no oath, I gave you no word,” said Stephen.“Ha! Thou darest give me the lie, base prentice. Take that!”And therewith he struck Stephen a crushing blow on the head, which felled him to the ground. The host and all the company, used to pot-house quarrels, and perhaps playing into his hands, took little heed; Stephen was dragged insensible into another room, and there the Badgers began hastily to divest him of his prentice’s gown, and draw his arms into a buff coat.Fulford had really been struck with his bravery, and knew besides that his skill in the armourer’s craft would be valuable, so that it had been determined beforehand that he should—by fair means or foul—leave the Seven Stars a Badger.“By all the powers of hell, you have struck too hard, sir. He is sped,” said Marden anxiously.“Ass! tut!” said Fulford. “Only enough to daze him till he be safe in our quarters—and for that the sooner the better. Here, call Anton to take his heels. We’ll get him forth now as a fellow of our own.”“Hark! What’s that?”“Gentlemen,” said the host hurrying in, “here be some of the gentlemen of the English Cardinal, calling for a nephew of one of them, who they say is in this house.”With an imprecation, Fulford denied all connection with gentlemen of the Cardinal; but there was evidently an invasion, and in another moment, several powerful-looking men in the crimson and black velvet of Wolsey’s train had forced their way into the chamber, and the foremost, seeing Stephen’s condition at a glance, exclaimed loudly, “Thou villain! traitor! kidnapper! This is thy work.”“Ha! ha!” shouted Fulford, “whom have we here? The Cardinal’s fool a masquing! Treat us to a caper, quipsome sir?”“I’m more like to treat you to the gyves,” returned Randall. “Away with you! The watch are at hand. Were it not for my wife’s sake, they should bear you off to the city jail; the Emperor should know how you fill your ranks.”It was quite true. The city-guard were entering at the street door, and the host hurried Fulford and his men, swearing and raging, out at a back door provided for such emergencies. Stephen was beginning to recover by this time. His uncle knelt down, took his head on his shoulder, and Lucas washed off the blood and administered a drop of wine. His first words were:“Was it Giles? Where is she?”“Still going over the play!” thought Lucas. “Nay, nay, lad. ’Twas one of the soldiers who played thee this scurvy trick! All’s well now. Thou wilt soon be able to quit this place.”“I remember now,” said Stephen, “Sir John said I gave him the lie when I said I had given no pledge. But I had not!”“Thou hast been a brave fellow, and better broken head than broken troth,” said his uncle.“But how came you here,” asked Stephen, “in the nick of time?”It was explained that Lucas, not doubting Stephen’s resolution, but quite aware of the tricks of landsknecht captains with promising recruits in view, had gone first in search of Smallbones, but had found him and the Ancient so deeply engaged in potations from the liberal supply of the Emperor to all English guests, that there was no getting him apart, and he was too much muddled to comprehend if he could have been spoken with.Lucas then, in desperation, betook himself to the convent where Wolsey was magnificently lodged. Ill May Day had made him, as well as others, well acquainted with the relationship between Stephen and Randall, though he was not aware of the further connection with Fulford. He hoped, even if unable to see Randall, to obtain help on behalf of an English lad in danger, and happily he arrived at a moment when State affairs were going on, and Randall was refreshing himself by a stroll in the cloister. When Lucas had made him understand the situation, his dismay was only equalled by his promptitude. He easily obtained the loan of one of the splendid suits of scarlet and crimson, guarded with black velvet a hand broad, which were worn by the Cardinal’s secular attendants—for he was well known by this time in the household to be very far from an absolute fool, and indeed had done many a good turn to his comrades. Several of the gentlemen, indignant at the threatened outrage on a young Englishman, and esteeming the craftsmen of the Dragon, volunteered to accompany him, and others warned the watch.There was some difficulty still, for the burgher guards, coming up puffing and blowing, wanted to carry off the victim and keep him in ward to give evidence against the mercenaries, whom they regarded as a sort of wolves, so that even the Emperor never durst quarter them within one of the cities. The drawn swords of Randall’s friends however settled that matter, and Stephen, though still dizzy, was able to walk. Thus leaning on his uncle, he was escorted back to the hostel.“The villain!” the jester said on the way, “I mistrusted him, but I never thought he would have abused our kindred in this fashion. I would fain have come down to look after thee, nevvy, but these kings and queens are troublesome folk. The Emperor—he is a pale, shame-faced, solemn lad. Maybe he museth, but he had scarce a word to say for himself. Our Hal tried clapping on the shoulder, calling him fair coz, and the like, in his hearty fashion. Behold, what doth he but turn round with such a look about the long lip of him as my Lord of Buckingham might have if his scullion made free with him. His aunt, the Duchess of Savoy, is a merry dame, and a wise! She and our King can talk by the ell, but as for the Emperor, he speaketh to none willingly save Queen Katharine, who is of his own stiff Spanish humour, and he hath eyes for none save Queen Mary, who would have been his empress had high folk held to their word. And with so tongue—tied a host, and the rain without, what had the poor things to do by way of disporting themselves with but a show of fools. I’ve had to go through every trick and quip I learnt when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I’m stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant; But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool’s tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and quibbling the while underhand at one another’s renderings, and the Emperor sitting by in his black velvet, smiling about as much as a felon at the hangman’s jests. All his poor fools moreover, and the King’s own, ready to gnaw their baubles for envy! That was the only sport I had! I’m wearier than if I’d been plying Smallbones’ biggest hammer. The worst of it is that my Lord Cardinal is to stay behind and go on to Bruges as ambassador, and I with him, so thou must bear my greetings to thy naunt, and tell her I’m keeping from picking up a word of French or Flemish lest this same Charles should take a fancy to me and ask me of my master, who would give away his own head to get the Pope’s fool’s cap.”“Wer da? Qui va là?” asked a voice, and the summer twilight revealed two figures with cloaks held high and drooping Spanish hats; one of whom, a slender, youthful figure, so far as could be seen under his cloak, made inquiries, first in Flemish, then in French, as to what ailed the youth. Lucas replied in the former tongue, and one of the Englishmen could speak French. The gentleman seemed much concerned, asked if the watch had been at hand, and desired Lucas to assure the young Englishman that the Emperor would be much distressed at the tidings, asked where he was lodged, and passed on.“Ah ha!” muttered the jester, “if my ears deceive me now, I’ll never trust them again! Mynheer Charles knows a few more tricks than he is fain to show off in royal company. Come on, Stevie! I’ll see thee to thy bed. Old Kit is too far gone to ask after thee. In sooth, I trow that my sweet father-in-law set his Ancient to nail him to the wine pot. And Master Giles I saw last with some of the grooms. I said nought to him, for I trow thou wouldst not have him know thy plight! I’ll be with thee in the morning ere thou partest, if kings, queens, and cardinals roar themselves hoarse for the Quipsome.”With this promise Hal Randall bestowed his still dulled and half-stunned nephew carefully on the pallet provided by the care of the purveyors. Stephen slept dreamily at first, then soundly, and woke at the sound of the bells of Gravelines to the sense that a great crisis in his life was over, a strange wild dream of evil dispelled, and that he was to go home to see, hear, and act as he could, with a heartache indeed, but with the resolve to do his best as a true and honest man.Smallbones was already afoot—for the start for Calais was to be made on that very day. The smith was fully himself again, and was bawling for his subordinates, who had followed his example in indulging in the good cheer, and did not carry it off so easily. Giles, rather silent and surly, was out of bed, shouting answers to Smallbones, and calling on Stephen to truss his points. He was in a mood not easy to understand, he would hardly speak, and never noticed the marks of the fray on Stephen’s temple—only half hidden by the dark curly hair. This was of course a relief, but Stephen could not help suspecting that he had been last night engaged in some revel about which he desired no inquiries.Randall came just as the operation was completed. He was in a good deal of haste, having to restore the groom’s dress he wore by the time the owner had finished the morning toilet of the Lord Cardinal’s palfreys. He could not wait to inquire how Stephen had contrived to fall into the hands of Fulford, his chief business being to put under safe charge a bag of coins, the largesse from the various princes and nobles whom he had diverted—ducats, crowns, dollars, and angels all jingling together—to be bestowed wherever Perronel kept her store, a matter which Hal was content not to know, though the pair cherished a hope some day to retire on it from fooling.“Thou art a good lad, Steve,” said Hal. “I’m right glad thou leavest this father of mine behind thee. I would not see thee such as he—no, not for all the gold we saw on the Frenchmen’s backs.”This was the jester’s farewell, but it was some time before the waggon was under way, for the carter and one of the smiths were missing, and were only at noon found in an alehouse, both very far gone in liquor, and one with a black eye. Kit discoursed on sobriety in the most edifying manner, as at last he drove heavily along the street, almost the last in the baggage train of the king and queens—but still in time to be so included in it so as to save all difficulty at the gates. It was, however, very late in the evening when they reached Calais, so that darkness was coming on as they waited their turn at the drawbridge, with a cart full of scullions and pots and pans before them, and a waggon-load of tents behind. The warders in charge of the gateway had orders to count over all whom they admitted, so that no unauthorised person might enter that much-valued fortress. When at length the waggon rolled forward into the shadow of the great towered gateway on the outer side of the moat, the demand was made, who was there? Giles had always insisted, as leader of the party, on making reply to such questions, and Smallbones waited for his answer, but none was forthcoming. Therefore Kit shouted in reply, “Alderman Headley’s wain and armourers. Two Journeymen, one prentice, two smiths, two waggoners.”“Seven!” rejoined the warder. “One—two—three—four—five. Ha! your company seems to be lacking.”“Giles must have ridden on,” suggested Stephen, while Kit, growling angrily, called on the lazy fellow, Will Wherry, to wake and show himself. But the officials were greatly hurried, and as long as no dangerous person got into Calais, it mattered little to them who might be left outside, so they hurried on the waggon into the narrow street.It was well that it was a summer night, for lodgings there were none. Every hostel was full and all the houses besides. The earlier comers assured Kit that it was of no use to try to go on. The streets up to the wharf were choked, and he might think himself lucky to have his waggon to sleep in. But the horses! And food? However, there was one comfort—English tongues answered, if it was only with denials.Kit’s store of travelling money was at a low ebb, and it was nearly exhausted by the time, at an exorbitant price, he had managed to get a little hay and water for the horses, and a couple of loaves and a haunch of bacon among the five hungry men. They were quite content to believe that Master Giles had ridden on before and secured better quarters and viands, nor could they much regret the absence of Will Wherry’s wide mouth.Kit called Stephen to council in the morning. His funds would not permit waiting for the missing ones, if he were to bring home any reasonable proportion of gain to his master. He believed that Master Headley would by no means risk the whole party loitering at Calais, when it was highly probable that Giles might have joined some of the other travellers, and embarked by himself.After all, Kit’s store had to be well-nigh expended before the horses, waggon, and all, could find means to encounter the miseries of the transit to Dover. Then, glad as he was to be on his native soil, his spirits sank lower and lower as the waggon creaked on under the hot sun towards London. He had actually brought home only four marks to make over to his master; and although he could show a considerable score against the King and various nobles, these debts were not apt to be promptly discharged, and what was worse, two members of his party and one horse were missing. He little knew how narrow an escape he had had of losing a third!

“Darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture, and to show it a fair pair of heels and run from it!”Shakespeare.

“Darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture, and to show it a fair pair of heels and run from it!”

Shakespeare.

Tidings came forth on the parting from the French King that the English Court was about to move to Gravelines to pay a visit to the Emperor and his aunt, the Duchess of Savoy. As it was hoped that jousts might make part of the entertainment, the attendance of the Dragon party was required. Giles was unfeignedly delighted at this extension of holiday, Stephen felt that it deferred the day—would it be of strange joy or pain?—of standing face to face with Dennet; and even Kit had come to tolerate foreign parts more with Sir John Fulford to show him the way to the best Flemish ale!

The knight took upon himself the conduct of the Dragons. He understood how to lead them by routes where all provisions and ale had not been consumed; and he knew how to swagger and threaten so as to obtain the best of liquor and provisions at eachkermesse—at least so he said, though it might be doubted whether the Flemings might not have been more willing to yield up their stores to Kit’s open, honest face and free hand.

However, Fulford seemed to consider himself one with the party; and he beguiled the way by tales of the doings of the Badgers in Italy and Savoy, which were listened to with avidity by the lads, distracting Stephen from the pain at his heart, and filling both with excitement. They were to have the honour of seeing the Badgers at Gravelines, where they were encamped outside the city to serve as a guard to the great inclosure that was being made of canvas stretched on the masts of ships to mark out the space for a great banquet and dance.

The weather broke however just as Henry, his wife and his sister, entered Gravelines; it rained pertinaciously, a tempestuous wind blew down the erection, and as there was no time to set it up again, the sports necessarily took place in the castle and town hall. There was no occasion for the exercise of the armourer’s craft, and as Charles had forbidden the concourse of all save invited guests, everything was comparatively quiet and dull, though the entertainment was on the most liberal scale. Lodgings were provided in the city at the Emperor’s expense, and wherever an Englishman was quartered each night, the imperial officers brought a cast of fine manchet bread, two great silver pots with wine, a pound of sugar, white and yellow candles, and a torch. As Randall said, “Charles gave solid pudding where Francis gave empty praise!”

Smallbones and the two youths had very little to do, save to consume these provisions and accept the hospitality freely offered to them at the camp of the Badgers, where Smallbones and the Ancient of the troop sat fraternising over big flagons of Flemish ale, which did not visibly intoxicate the honest smith, but kept him in the dull and drowsy state, which was his idea of thedolce far nienteof a holiday. Meanwhile the two youths were made much of by the warriors, Stephen’s dexterity with the bow and back-sword were shown off and lauded, Giles’s strength was praised, and all manner of new feats were taught them, all manner of stories told them; and the shrinking of well-trained young citizens from these lawless men, “full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,” and some very truculent-looking, had given way to judicious flattery, and to the attractions of adventure and of a free life, where wealth and honour awaited the bold.

Stephen was told that the gentleman in him was visible, that he ought to disdain the flat cap and blue gown, that here was his opportunity, and that among the Badgers he would soon be so rich, as to wonder that he had ever tolerated the greasy mechanical life of a base burgher. Respect to his oaths to his master—Sir John laughed the scruple to scorn; nay, if he were so tender, he could buy his absolution the first time he had his pouch full of gold.

“What shall I do?” was the cry of Stephen’s heart. “My honour and my oath. They bind me.Shewould weep. My master would deem me ungrateful, Ambrose break his heart. And yet who knows but I should do worse if I stayed, I shall break my own heart if I do. I shall not see—I may forget. No, no, never I but at least I shall never know the moment when the lubber takes the jewel he knows not how to prize! Marches—sieges—there shall I quell this wild beating! I may die there. At least they will allay this present frenzy of my blood.”

And he listened when Fulford and Will Marden, a young English man-at-arms with whom he had made friends, concerted how he should meet them at an inn—the sign of the Seven Stars—in Gravelines, and there exchange his prentice’s garb for the buff coat and corslet of a Badger, with the Austrian black and yellow scarf. He listened, but he had not promised. The sense of duty to his master, the honour to his word, always recurred like “first thoughts,” though the longing to escape, the restlessness of hopeless love, the youthful eagerness for adventure and freedom, swept it aside again and again.

He had not seen his uncle since the evening of the comedy, for Hal had travelled in the Cardinal’s suite, and the amusements being all within doors, jesters were much in request, as indeed Charles the Fifth was curious in fools, and generally had at least three in attendance. Stephen, moreover, always shrank from his uncle when acting professionally. He had learnt to love and esteem themanduring his troubles, but this only rendered the sight of his buffoonery more distressing, and as Randall had not provided himself with his home suit, they were the more cut off from one another. Thus there was all the less to counteract or show the fallacy of Fulford’s recruiting blandishments.

The day had come on the evening of which Stephen was to meet Fulford and Marden at the Seven Stars and give them his final answer, in time to allow of their smuggling him out of the city, and sending him away into the country, since Smallbones would certainly suspect him to be in the camp, and as he was still an apprentice, it was possible, though not probable, that the town magistrates might be incited to make search on inquiry, as they were very jealous of the luring away of their apprentices by the Free Companies, and moreover his uncle might move the Cardinal and the King to cause measures to be taken for his recovery.

Ill at ease, Stephen wandered away from the hostel where Smallbones was entertaining his friend, the Ancient. He had not gone far down the street when a familiar figure met his eye, no other than that of Lucas Hansen, his brother’s old master, walking along with a pack on his back. Grown as Stephen was, the old man’s recognition was as rapid as his own, and there was a clasp of the hand, an exchange of greeting, while Lucas eagerly asked after his dear pupil, Ambrose.

“Come in hither, and we can speak more at ease,” said Lucas, leading the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories overhung the street. Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the high peaked roof, looking out at the back. Here Stephen recognised a press, but it was not at work, only a young friar was sitting there engaged in sewing up sheets so as to form a pamphlet. Lucas spoke to him in Flemish to explain his own return with the English prentice.

“Dost thou dwell here, sir?” asked Stephen. “I thought Rotterdam was thine home.”

“Yea,” said Lucas, “so it be, but I am sojourning here to aid in bearing about the seed of the Gospel, for which I walk through these lands of ours. But tell me of thy brother, and of the little Moorish maiden?”

Stephen replied with an account of both Ambrose and Aldonza, and likewise of Tibble Steelman, explaining how ill the last had been in the winter, and that therefore he could not be with the party.

“I would I had a token to send him,” said Lucas; “but I have nought here that is not either in the Dutch or the French, and neither of those tongues doth he understand. But thy brother, the good Ambrose, can read the Dutch. Wilt thou carry him from me this fresh tractate, showing how many there be that make light of the Apostle Paul’s words not to do evil that good may come?”

Stephen had been hearing rather listlessly, thinking how little the good man suspected how doubtful it was that he should bear messages to Ambrose. Now, on that sore spot in his conscience, that sentence darted like an arrow, the shaft finding “mark the archer little meant,” and with a start, not lost on Lucas, he exclaimed, “Saith the holy Saint Paul that?”

“Assuredly, my son. Brother Cornelis, who is one whose eyes have been opened, can show you the very words, if thou hast any Latin.”

Perhaps to gain time, Stephen assented, and the young friar, with a somewhat inquisitive look, presently brought him the sentence, “Et non faciamus mala ut veniant bona.”

Stephen’s Latin was not very fresh, and he hardly comprehended the words, but he stood gazing with a frown of distress on his brow, which made Lucas say, “My son, thou art sorely bestead. Is there aught in which a plain old man can help thee, for thy brother’s sake? Speak freely. Brother Cornelis knows not a word of English. Dost thou owe aught to any man?”

“Nay, nay—not that,” said Stephen, drawn in his trouble and perplexity to open his heart to this incongruous confidant, “but, sir, sir, which be the worst to break my pledge to my master, or to run into a trial which—which will last from day to day, and may be too much for me—yea, and for another—at last?”

The colour, the trembling of limb, the passion of voice, revealed enough to Lucas to make him say, in the voice of one who, dried up as he was, had once proved the trial, “’Tis love, thou wouldst say?”

“Ay, sir,” said Stephen, turning away, but in another moment bursting forth, “I love my master’s daughter, and she is to wed her cousin, who takes her as her father’s chattel! I wist not why the world had grown dark to me till I saw a comedy at Ardres, where, as in a mirror, ’twas all set forth—yea, and how love was too strong for him and for her, and how shame and death came thereof.”

“Those players are good for nought but to wake the passions!” muttered Lucas.

“Nay, methought they warned me,” said Stephen. “For, sir,”—he hid his burning face in his hands as he leant on the back of a chair—“I wot that she has ever liked me better, far better than him. And scarce a night have I closed an eye without dreaming it all, and finding myself bringing evil on her, till I deemed ’twere better I never saw her more, and left her to think of me as a forsworn runagate rather than see her wedded only to be flouted—and maybe—do worse.”

“Poor lad!” said Lucas; “and what wouldst thou do?”

“I have not pledged myself—but I said I would consider of—service among Fulford’s troop,” faltered Stephen.

“Among those ruffians—godless, lawless men!” exclaimed Lucas.

“Yea, I know what you would say,” returned Stephen, “but they are brave men, better than you deem, sir.”

“Were they angels or saints,” said Lucas, rallying his forces, “thou hast no right to join, them. Thine oath fetters thee. Thou hast no right to break it and do a sure and certain evil to avoid one that may never befall! How knowst thou how it may be? Nay, if the trial seem to thee over great, thine apprenticeship will soon be at an end.”

“Not for two years.”

“Or thy master, if thou spakest the whole truth, would transfer thine indentures. He is a good man, and if it be as thou sayest, would not see his child tried too sorely. God will make a way for the tempted to escape. They need not take the devil’s way.”

“Sir,” said Stephen, lifting up his head, “I thank you. This was what I needed. I will tell Sir John Fulford that I ought never to have heeded him.”

“Must thou see him again?”

“I must. I am to give him his answer at the Seven Stars. But fear not me, Master Lucas, he shall not lead me away.” And Stephen took a grateful leave of the little Dutchman, and charged himself with more messages for Ambrose and Tibble than his overburdened spirit was likely to retain.

Lucas went down the stairs with him, and as a sudden thought said at the foot of them, “’Tis at the Seven Stars thou meetest this knight. Take an old man’s counsel. Taste no liquor there.”

“I am no ale bibber,” said Stephen.

“Nay, I deemed thee none—but heed my words—captains of landsknechts inkermessesare scarce to be trusted. Taste not.”

Stephen gave a sort of laugh at the precaution, and shook himself loose. It was still an hour to the time of meeting, and the Ave-bell was ringing. A church door stood open, and for the first time since he had been at Gravelines he felt that there would be the calm he needed to adjust the conflict of his spirits, and comprehend the new situation, or rather the recurrence to the old one. He seemed to have recovered his former self, and to be able to perceive that things might go on as before, and his heart really leapt at finding he might return to the sight of Dennet and Ambrose and all he loved.

His wishes were really that way; and Fulford’s allurements had become very shadowy when he made his way to the Seven Stars, whose vine-covered window allowed many loud voices and fumes of beer and wine to escape into the summer evening air.

The room was perhaps cleaner than an English one would have been, but it was reeking with heat and odours, and the forest-bred youth was unwilling to enter, but Fulford and two or three Badgers greeted him noisily and called on him to partake of the supper they had ready prepared.

“No, sir knight, I thank you,” said Stephen. “I am bound for my quarters, I came but to thank you for your goodness to me, and to bid you farewell.”

“And how as to thy pledge to join us, young man?” demanded Fulford sternly.

“I gave no pledge,” said Stephen. “I said I would consider of it.”

“Faint-hearted! ha! ha!” and the English Badgers translated the word to the Germans, and set them shouting with derision.

“I am not faint-hearted,” said Stephen; “but I will not break mine oath to my master.”

“And thine oath to me? Ha!” said Fulford.

“I sware you no oath, I gave you no word,” said Stephen.

“Ha! Thou darest give me the lie, base prentice. Take that!”

And therewith he struck Stephen a crushing blow on the head, which felled him to the ground. The host and all the company, used to pot-house quarrels, and perhaps playing into his hands, took little heed; Stephen was dragged insensible into another room, and there the Badgers began hastily to divest him of his prentice’s gown, and draw his arms into a buff coat.

Fulford had really been struck with his bravery, and knew besides that his skill in the armourer’s craft would be valuable, so that it had been determined beforehand that he should—by fair means or foul—leave the Seven Stars a Badger.

“By all the powers of hell, you have struck too hard, sir. He is sped,” said Marden anxiously.

“Ass! tut!” said Fulford. “Only enough to daze him till he be safe in our quarters—and for that the sooner the better. Here, call Anton to take his heels. We’ll get him forth now as a fellow of our own.”

“Hark! What’s that?”

“Gentlemen,” said the host hurrying in, “here be some of the gentlemen of the English Cardinal, calling for a nephew of one of them, who they say is in this house.”

With an imprecation, Fulford denied all connection with gentlemen of the Cardinal; but there was evidently an invasion, and in another moment, several powerful-looking men in the crimson and black velvet of Wolsey’s train had forced their way into the chamber, and the foremost, seeing Stephen’s condition at a glance, exclaimed loudly, “Thou villain! traitor! kidnapper! This is thy work.”

“Ha! ha!” shouted Fulford, “whom have we here? The Cardinal’s fool a masquing! Treat us to a caper, quipsome sir?”

“I’m more like to treat you to the gyves,” returned Randall. “Away with you! The watch are at hand. Were it not for my wife’s sake, they should bear you off to the city jail; the Emperor should know how you fill your ranks.”

It was quite true. The city-guard were entering at the street door, and the host hurried Fulford and his men, swearing and raging, out at a back door provided for such emergencies. Stephen was beginning to recover by this time. His uncle knelt down, took his head on his shoulder, and Lucas washed off the blood and administered a drop of wine. His first words were:

“Was it Giles? Where is she?”

“Still going over the play!” thought Lucas. “Nay, nay, lad. ’Twas one of the soldiers who played thee this scurvy trick! All’s well now. Thou wilt soon be able to quit this place.”

“I remember now,” said Stephen, “Sir John said I gave him the lie when I said I had given no pledge. But I had not!”

“Thou hast been a brave fellow, and better broken head than broken troth,” said his uncle.

“But how came you here,” asked Stephen, “in the nick of time?”

It was explained that Lucas, not doubting Stephen’s resolution, but quite aware of the tricks of landsknecht captains with promising recruits in view, had gone first in search of Smallbones, but had found him and the Ancient so deeply engaged in potations from the liberal supply of the Emperor to all English guests, that there was no getting him apart, and he was too much muddled to comprehend if he could have been spoken with.

Lucas then, in desperation, betook himself to the convent where Wolsey was magnificently lodged. Ill May Day had made him, as well as others, well acquainted with the relationship between Stephen and Randall, though he was not aware of the further connection with Fulford. He hoped, even if unable to see Randall, to obtain help on behalf of an English lad in danger, and happily he arrived at a moment when State affairs were going on, and Randall was refreshing himself by a stroll in the cloister. When Lucas had made him understand the situation, his dismay was only equalled by his promptitude. He easily obtained the loan of one of the splendid suits of scarlet and crimson, guarded with black velvet a hand broad, which were worn by the Cardinal’s secular attendants—for he was well known by this time in the household to be very far from an absolute fool, and indeed had done many a good turn to his comrades. Several of the gentlemen, indignant at the threatened outrage on a young Englishman, and esteeming the craftsmen of the Dragon, volunteered to accompany him, and others warned the watch.

There was some difficulty still, for the burgher guards, coming up puffing and blowing, wanted to carry off the victim and keep him in ward to give evidence against the mercenaries, whom they regarded as a sort of wolves, so that even the Emperor never durst quarter them within one of the cities. The drawn swords of Randall’s friends however settled that matter, and Stephen, though still dizzy, was able to walk. Thus leaning on his uncle, he was escorted back to the hostel.

“The villain!” the jester said on the way, “I mistrusted him, but I never thought he would have abused our kindred in this fashion. I would fain have come down to look after thee, nevvy, but these kings and queens are troublesome folk. The Emperor—he is a pale, shame-faced, solemn lad. Maybe he museth, but he had scarce a word to say for himself. Our Hal tried clapping on the shoulder, calling him fair coz, and the like, in his hearty fashion. Behold, what doth he but turn round with such a look about the long lip of him as my Lord of Buckingham might have if his scullion made free with him. His aunt, the Duchess of Savoy, is a merry dame, and a wise! She and our King can talk by the ell, but as for the Emperor, he speaketh to none willingly save Queen Katharine, who is of his own stiff Spanish humour, and he hath eyes for none save Queen Mary, who would have been his empress had high folk held to their word. And with so tongue—tied a host, and the rain without, what had the poor things to do by way of disporting themselves with but a show of fools. I’ve had to go through every trick and quip I learnt when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I’m stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant; But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool’s tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and quibbling the while underhand at one another’s renderings, and the Emperor sitting by in his black velvet, smiling about as much as a felon at the hangman’s jests. All his poor fools moreover, and the King’s own, ready to gnaw their baubles for envy! That was the only sport I had! I’m wearier than if I’d been plying Smallbones’ biggest hammer. The worst of it is that my Lord Cardinal is to stay behind and go on to Bruges as ambassador, and I with him, so thou must bear my greetings to thy naunt, and tell her I’m keeping from picking up a word of French or Flemish lest this same Charles should take a fancy to me and ask me of my master, who would give away his own head to get the Pope’s fool’s cap.”

“Wer da? Qui va là?” asked a voice, and the summer twilight revealed two figures with cloaks held high and drooping Spanish hats; one of whom, a slender, youthful figure, so far as could be seen under his cloak, made inquiries, first in Flemish, then in French, as to what ailed the youth. Lucas replied in the former tongue, and one of the Englishmen could speak French. The gentleman seemed much concerned, asked if the watch had been at hand, and desired Lucas to assure the young Englishman that the Emperor would be much distressed at the tidings, asked where he was lodged, and passed on.

“Ah ha!” muttered the jester, “if my ears deceive me now, I’ll never trust them again! Mynheer Charles knows a few more tricks than he is fain to show off in royal company. Come on, Stevie! I’ll see thee to thy bed. Old Kit is too far gone to ask after thee. In sooth, I trow that my sweet father-in-law set his Ancient to nail him to the wine pot. And Master Giles I saw last with some of the grooms. I said nought to him, for I trow thou wouldst not have him know thy plight! I’ll be with thee in the morning ere thou partest, if kings, queens, and cardinals roar themselves hoarse for the Quipsome.”

With this promise Hal Randall bestowed his still dulled and half-stunned nephew carefully on the pallet provided by the care of the purveyors. Stephen slept dreamily at first, then soundly, and woke at the sound of the bells of Gravelines to the sense that a great crisis in his life was over, a strange wild dream of evil dispelled, and that he was to go home to see, hear, and act as he could, with a heartache indeed, but with the resolve to do his best as a true and honest man.

Smallbones was already afoot—for the start for Calais was to be made on that very day. The smith was fully himself again, and was bawling for his subordinates, who had followed his example in indulging in the good cheer, and did not carry it off so easily. Giles, rather silent and surly, was out of bed, shouting answers to Smallbones, and calling on Stephen to truss his points. He was in a mood not easy to understand, he would hardly speak, and never noticed the marks of the fray on Stephen’s temple—only half hidden by the dark curly hair. This was of course a relief, but Stephen could not help suspecting that he had been last night engaged in some revel about which he desired no inquiries.

Randall came just as the operation was completed. He was in a good deal of haste, having to restore the groom’s dress he wore by the time the owner had finished the morning toilet of the Lord Cardinal’s palfreys. He could not wait to inquire how Stephen had contrived to fall into the hands of Fulford, his chief business being to put under safe charge a bag of coins, the largesse from the various princes and nobles whom he had diverted—ducats, crowns, dollars, and angels all jingling together—to be bestowed wherever Perronel kept her store, a matter which Hal was content not to know, though the pair cherished a hope some day to retire on it from fooling.

“Thou art a good lad, Steve,” said Hal. “I’m right glad thou leavest this father of mine behind thee. I would not see thee such as he—no, not for all the gold we saw on the Frenchmen’s backs.”

This was the jester’s farewell, but it was some time before the waggon was under way, for the carter and one of the smiths were missing, and were only at noon found in an alehouse, both very far gone in liquor, and one with a black eye. Kit discoursed on sobriety in the most edifying manner, as at last he drove heavily along the street, almost the last in the baggage train of the king and queens—but still in time to be so included in it so as to save all difficulty at the gates. It was, however, very late in the evening when they reached Calais, so that darkness was coming on as they waited their turn at the drawbridge, with a cart full of scullions and pots and pans before them, and a waggon-load of tents behind. The warders in charge of the gateway had orders to count over all whom they admitted, so that no unauthorised person might enter that much-valued fortress. When at length the waggon rolled forward into the shadow of the great towered gateway on the outer side of the moat, the demand was made, who was there? Giles had always insisted, as leader of the party, on making reply to such questions, and Smallbones waited for his answer, but none was forthcoming. Therefore Kit shouted in reply, “Alderman Headley’s wain and armourers. Two Journeymen, one prentice, two smiths, two waggoners.”

“Seven!” rejoined the warder. “One—two—three—four—five. Ha! your company seems to be lacking.”

“Giles must have ridden on,” suggested Stephen, while Kit, growling angrily, called on the lazy fellow, Will Wherry, to wake and show himself. But the officials were greatly hurried, and as long as no dangerous person got into Calais, it mattered little to them who might be left outside, so they hurried on the waggon into the narrow street.

It was well that it was a summer night, for lodgings there were none. Every hostel was full and all the houses besides. The earlier comers assured Kit that it was of no use to try to go on. The streets up to the wharf were choked, and he might think himself lucky to have his waggon to sleep in. But the horses! And food? However, there was one comfort—English tongues answered, if it was only with denials.

Kit’s store of travelling money was at a low ebb, and it was nearly exhausted by the time, at an exorbitant price, he had managed to get a little hay and water for the horses, and a couple of loaves and a haunch of bacon among the five hungry men. They were quite content to believe that Master Giles had ridden on before and secured better quarters and viands, nor could they much regret the absence of Will Wherry’s wide mouth.

Kit called Stephen to council in the morning. His funds would not permit waiting for the missing ones, if he were to bring home any reasonable proportion of gain to his master. He believed that Master Headley would by no means risk the whole party loitering at Calais, when it was highly probable that Giles might have joined some of the other travellers, and embarked by himself.

After all, Kit’s store had to be well-nigh expended before the horses, waggon, and all, could find means to encounter the miseries of the transit to Dover. Then, glad as he was to be on his native soil, his spirits sank lower and lower as the waggon creaked on under the hot sun towards London. He had actually brought home only four marks to make over to his master; and although he could show a considerable score against the King and various nobles, these debts were not apt to be promptly discharged, and what was worse, two members of his party and one horse were missing. He little knew how narrow an escape he had had of losing a third!

Chapter Twenty Two.An Invasion.“What shall be the maiden’s fate?Who shall be the maiden’s mate?”Scott.No Giles Headley appeared to greet the travellers, though Kit Smallbones had halted at Canterbury, to pour out entreaties to Saint Thomas, and the vow of a steel and gilt reliquary of his best workmanship to contain the old shoe, which a few years previously had so much disgusted Erasmus and his companion.Poor old fellow, he was too much crest-fallen thoroughly to enjoy even the gladness of his little children; and his wife made no secret of her previous conviction that he was too dunderheaded not to run into some coil, when she was not there to look after him. The alderman was more merciful. Since there had been no invasion from Salisbury, he had regretted the not having gone himself to Ardres, and he knew pretty well that Kit’s power lay more in his arms than in his brain. He did not wonder at the small gain, nor at the having lost sight of the young man, and confidently expected the lost ones soon to appear.As to Dennet, her eyes shone quietly, and she took upon herself to send down to let Mistress Randall know of her nephew’s return, and invite her to supper to hear the story of his doings. The girl did not look at all like a maiden uneasy about her lost lover, but much more like one enjoying for the moment the immunity from a kind of burthen; and, as she smiled, called for Stephen’s help in her little arrangements, and treated him in the friendly manner of old times, he could not but wonder at the panic that had overpowered him for a time like a fever of the mind.There was plenty to speak of in the glories of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and the transactions with the knights and nobles; and Stephen held his peace as to his adventure, but Dennet’s eyes were sharper than Kit’s. She spied the remains of the bruise under his black curly hair; and while her father and Tib were unravelling the accounts from Kit’s brain and tally-sticks, she got the youth out into the gallery, and observed, “So thou hast a broken head. See here are grandmother’s lily-leaves in strong waters. Let me lay one on for thee. There, sit down on the step, then I can reach.”“’Tis well-nigh whole now, sweet mistress,” said Stephen, complying however, for it was too sweet to have those little fingers busy about him, for the offer to be declined.“How gatst thou the blow?” asked Dennet. “Was it at single-stick? Come, thou mayst tell me. ’Twas in standing up for some one.”“Nay, mistress, I would it had been.”“Thou hast been in trouble,” she said, leaning on the baluster above him. “Or did ill men set on thee?”“That’s the nearest guess,” said Stephen. “’Twas that tall father of mine aunt’s, the fellow that came here for armour, and bought poor Master Michael’s sword.”“And sliced the apple on thine hand. Ay?”“He would have me for one of his Badgers.”“Thee! Stephen!” It was a cry of pain as well as horror.“Yea, mistress; and when I refused, the fellow dealt me a blow, and laid me down senseless, to bear me off willy nilly, but that good old Lucas Hansen brought mine uncle to mine aid—”Dennet clasped her hands. “O Stephen, Stephen! Now I know how good the Lord is. Wot ye, I asked of Tibble to take me daily to Saint Faith’s to crave of good Saint Julian to have you all in his keeping, and saith he on the way, ‘Methinks, mistress, our dear Lord would hear you if you spake to Him direct, with no go-between.’ I did as he bade me, Stephen, I went to the high Altar, and prayed there, and Tibble went with me, and lo, now, He hath brought you back safe. We will have a mass of thanksgiving on the very morn.”Stephen’s heart could not but bound, for it was plain enough for whom the chief force of these prayers had been offered.“Sweet mistress,” he said, “they have availed me indeed. Certes, they warded me in the time of sore trial and temptation.”“Nay,” said Dennet, “thoucouldstnot have longed to go away from hence with those ill men who live by slaying and plundering?”The present temptation was to say that he had doubted whether this course would not have been for the best both for himself and for her; but he recollected that Giles might be at the gate, and if so, he should feel as if he had rather have bitten out his tongue than have let Dennet know the state of the case, so he only answered—“There be sorer temptations in the world for us poor rogues than little home-biding house crickets like thee wot of, mistress. Well that ye can pray for us without knowing all!”Stephen had never consciously come so near lovemaking, and his honest face was all one burning glow with the suppressed feeling, while Dennet lingered till the curfew warned them of the lateness of the hour, both with a strange sense of undefined pleasure in the being together in the summer twilight.Day after day passed on with no news of Giles or Will Wherry. The alderman grew uneasy, and sent Stephen to ask his brother to write to Randall, or to some one else in Wolsey’s suite, to make inquiries at Bruges. But Ambrose was found to have gone abroad in the train of Sir Thomas More, and nothing was heard till their return six weeks later, when Ambrose brought home a small packet which had been conveyed to him through one of the Emperor’s suite. It was tied up with a long tough pale wisp of hair, evidently from the mane or tail of some Flemish horse, and was addressed, “To Master Ambrose Birkenholt, menial clerk to the most worshipful Sir Thomas More, Knight, Under Sheriff of the City of London. These greeting—”Within, when Ambrose could open the missive, was another small parcel, and a piece of brown coarse paper, on which was scrawled—“Good Ambrose Birkenholt,—I pray thee to stand, my friend, and let all know whom it may concern, that when this same billet comes to hand, I shall be far on the march to High Germany, with a company of lusty fellows in the Emperor’s service. They be commanded by the good knight, Sir John Fulford.“If thou canst send tidings to my mother, bid her keep her heart up, for I shall come back a captain, full of wealth and honour, and that will be better than hammering for life—or being wedded against mine own will. There never was troth plight between my master’s daughter and me, and my time is over, so I be quit with them, and I thank my master for his goodness. They shall all hear of me some of these days. Will Wherry is my groom, and commends him to his mother. And so, commending thee and all the rest to Our Lady and the saints,“Thine to command,“Giles Headley,“Man-at-Arms in the Honourable Company of Sir John Fulford, Knight.”On a separate strip was written—“Give this packet to the little Moorish maid, and tell her that I will bring her better by and by, and mayhap make her a knight’s lady; but on thy life, say nought to any other.”It was out now! Ambrose’s head was more in Sir Thomas’s books than in real life at all times, or he would long ago have inferred something—from the jackdaw’s favourite phrase—from Giles’s modes of haunting his steps, and making him the bearer of small tokens—an orange, a simnel cake, a bag of walnuts or almonds to Mistress Aldonza, and of the smiles, blushes, and thanks with which she greeted them. Nay, had she not burst into tears and entreated to be spared when Lady More wanted to make a match between her and the big porter, and had not her distress led Mistress Margaret to appeal to her father, who had said he should as soon think of wedding the silver-footed Thetis to Polyphemus. “Tilley valley! Master More,” the lady had answered, “will all your fine pagan gods hinder the wench from starving on earth, and leading apes in hell.”Margaret had answered that Aldonza should never do the first, and Sir Thomas had gravely said that he thought those black eyes would lead many a man on earth before they came to the latter fate.Ambrose hid the parcel for her deep in his bosom before he asked permission of his master to go to the Dragon court with the rest of the tidings.“He always was an unmannerly cub,” said Master Headley, as he read the letter. “Well, I’ve done my best to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear! I’ve done my duty by poor Robert’s son, and if he will be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though ’tis pity of the old name! Ha! what’s this? ‘Wedded against my will—no troth plight.’ Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, Dennet, my maid!”Dennet screwed up her little mouth, and looked very demure, but she twinkled her bright eyes, and said, “My heart will not break, sir; I am in no haste to be wed.”Her father pinched her cheek and said she was a silly wench; but perhaps he marked the dancing step with which the young mistress went about her household cares, and how she was singing to herself songs that certainly were not “Willow! willow!”Ambrose had no scruple in delivering to Aldonza the message and token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea, carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely tasks.There came a wonderful illumination and agitation over the girl’s usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make them surpassingly beautiful.“Woe is me!” was, however, her first exclamation. “That he should have given up all for me! Oh! if I had thought it!” But while she spoke as if she were shocked and appalled, her eyes belied her words. They shone with the first absolute certainty of love, and there was no realising as yet the years of silent waiting and anxiety that must go by, nay, perhaps an entire lifetime of uncertainty of her lover’s truth or untruth, life or death.Dame Alice called her, and in a rambling, maundering way, charged her with loitering and gadding with the young men; and Margaret saw by her colour and by her eyes that some strange thing had happened to her. Margaret had, perhaps, some intuition; for was not her heart very tender towards a certain young barrister by name Roper whom her father doubted as yet, because of his Lutheran inclinations. By and by she discovered that she needed Aldonza to comb out her long dark hair, and ere long, she had heard all the tale of the youth cured by the girl’s father, and all his gifts, and how Aldonza deemed him too great and too good for her, (poor Giles!) though she knew she should never do more than look up to him with love and gratitude from afar. And she never so much as dreamt that he would cast an eye on her save in kindness. Oh yes, she knew what he had taught the daw to say, but then she was a child, she durst not deem it more. And Margaret More was more kind and eager than worldly wise, and she encouraged Aldonza to watch and wait, promised protection from all enforced suits and suitors, and gave assurances of shelter as her own attendant as long as the girl should need it.Master Headley, with some sighing and groaning, applied himself to write to the mother at Salisbury what had become of her son; but he had only spent one evening over the trying task, when just as the supper bell was ringing, with Master Hope and his wife as guests, there were horses’ feet in the court, and Master Tiptoff appeared, with a servant on another horse, which carried besides a figure in camlet, on a pillion. No sooner was this same figure lifted from her steed and set down on the steps, while the master of the house and his daughter came out to greet her, than she began, “Master Alderman Headley, I am here to know what you have done with my poor son!”“Alack, good cousin!”“Alack me no alacks,” she interrupted, holding up her riding rod. “I’ll have no dissembling, there hath been enough of that, Giles Headley. Thou hast sold him, soul and body, to one of yon cruel, bloodthirsty plundering, burning captains, that the poor child may be slain and murthered! Is this the fair promises you made to his father—wiling him away from his poor mother, a widow, with talking of teaching him the craft, and giving him your daughter! My son, Tiptoff here, told me the spousal was delayed and delayed, and he doubted whether it would ever come off, but I thought not of this sending him beyond seas, to make merchandise of him. And you call yourself an alderman! The gown should be stript off the back of you, and shall be, if there be any justice in London for a widow woman.”“Nay, cousin, you have heard some strange tale,” said Master Headley, who, much as he would have dreaded the attack beforehand, faced it the more calmly and manfully because the accusation was so outrageous.“Ay, so I told her,” began her son-in-law, “but she hath been neither to have nor to hold since the—”“And how should I be to have or to hold by a nincompoop like thee,” she said, turning round on him, “that would have me sit down and be content forsooth, when mine only son is kidnapped to be sold to the Turks or to work in the galleys, for aught I know.”“Mistress!” here Master Hope’s voice came in, “I would counsel you to speak less loud, and hear before you accuse. We of the City of London know Master Alderman Headley too well to hear him railed against.”“Ah! you’re all of a piece,” she began; but by this time Master Tiptoff had managed at least to get her into the hall, and had exchanged words enough with the alderman to assure himself that there was an explanation, nay, that there was a letter from Giles himself. This the indignant mother presently was made to understand—and as the alderman had borrowed the letter in order to copy it for her, it was given to her. She could not read, and would trust no one but her son-in-law to read it to her. “Yea, you have it very pat,” she said, “but how am I to be assured ’tis not all writ here to hoodwink a poor woman like me.”“’Tis Giles’s hand,” averred Tiptoff.“And if you will,” added the alderman, with wonderful patience, “to-morrow you may speak with the youth who received it. Come, sit down and sup with us, and then you shall learn from Smallbones how this mischance befel, all from my sending two young heads together, and one who, though a good fellow, could not hold all in rule.”“Ay—you’ve your reasons for anything,” she muttered, but being both weary and hungry, she consented to eat and drink, while Tiptoff, who was evidently ashamed of her violence, and anxious to excuse it, managed to explain that a report had been picked up at Romsey, by a bare-footed friar from Salisbury, that young Giles Headley had been seen at Ghent by one of the servants of a wool merchant, riding with a troop of Free Companions in the Emperor’s service. All the rest was deduced from this intelligence by the dame’s own imagination.After supper she was invited to interrogate Kit and Stephen, and her grief and anxiety found vent in fierce scolding at the misrule which had permitted such a villain as Fulford to be haunting and tempting poor fatherless lads. Master Headley had reproached poor Kit for the same thing, but he could only represent that Giles, being a freeman, was no longer under his authority. However, she stormed on, being absolutely convinced that her son’s evasion was every one’s fault but his own. Now it was the alderman for misusing him, overtasking the poor child, and deferring the marriage, now it was that little pert poppet, Dennet, who had flouted him, now it was the bad company he had been led into—the poor babe who had been bred to godly ways.The alderman was really sorry for her, and felt himself to blame so far as that he had shifted the guidance of the expedition to such an insufficient head as poor Smallbones, so he let her rail on as much as she would, till the storm exhausted itself, and she settled into the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return. The good man felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits. So Mrs Headley stayed on after Tiptoff’s return to Salisbury, and had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of autumn. She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was welcomed at a civic banquet and drank of the loving cup, and she beheld the Lord Mayor’s Show in all its picturesque glory of emblazoned barges on the river. In fact, she found the position of denizen of an alderman’s household so very agreeable that she did her best to make it a permanency. Nay, Dennet soon found that she considered herself to be waiting there and keeping guard till her son’s return should establish her there, and that she viewed the girl already as a daughter—for which Dennet was by no means obliged to her! She lavished counsel on her hostess, found fault with the maidens, criticised the cookery, walked into the kitchen and still-room with assistance and directions, and even made a strong effort to possess herself of the keys.It must be confessed that Dennet was saucy! It was her weapon of self-defence, and she considered herself insulted in her own house.There she stood, exalted on a tall pair of pattens before the stout oaken table in the kitchen where a glowing fire burned; pewter, red and yellow earthenware, and clean scrubbed trenchers made a goodly show, a couple of men-cooks and twice as many scullions obeyed her behests—only the superior of the two first ever daring to argue a point with her. There she stood, in her white apron, with sleeves turned up, daintily compounding her mince-meat for Christmas, when in stalked Mrs Headley to offer her counsel and aid—but this was lost in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the dame’s scarlet-hosed ankles.She shook her petticoats at him, but Dennet tittered even while declaring that Tray hurt nobody. Mrs Headley reviled the dog, and then proceeded to advise Dennet that she should chop her citron finer. Dennet made answer “that father liked a good stout piece of it.” Mistress Headley offered to take the chopper and instruct her how to compound all in the true Sarum style.“Grammercy, mistress, but we follow my grand-dame’s recipe!” said Dennet, grasping her implement firmly.“Come, child, be not above taking a lesson from thine elders! Where’s the goose? What?” as the girl looked amazed, “where hast thou lived not to know that a live goose should be bled into the mince-meat?”“I have never lived with barbarous, savage folk,” said Dennet—and therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, it followed her like a train, while she rushed to box the ears of the offender, crying:“You set him on, you little saucy vixen! I saw it in your eyes. Let the rascal be scourged.”“Not so,” said Dennet, with prim mouth and laughing eyes. “Far be it from me! But ’tis ever the wont of the kitchen, when those come there who have no call thither.”Mistress Headley flounced away, dish-cloth and all, to go whimpering to the alderman with her tale of insults. She trusted that her cousin would give the pert wench a good beating. She was not a whit too old for it.“How oft did you beat Giles, good kinswoman?” said Dennet demurely, as she stood by her father.“Whisht, whisht, child,” said her father, “this may not be! I cannot have my guest flouted.”“If she act as our guest, I will treat her with all honour and courtesy,” said the maiden; “but when she comes where we look not for guests, there is no saying what the black guard may take it on them to do.”Master Headley was mischievously tickled at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet’s ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father’s foolish fondness. He would rue the day!Meantime if the alderman’s peace on one side was disturbed by his visitor, on the other, suitors for Dennet’s hand gave him little rest. She was known to be a considerable heiress, and though Mistress Headley gave every one to understand that there was a contract with Giles, and that she was awaiting his return, this did not deter more wooers than Dennet ever knew of, from making proposals to her father. Jasper Hope was offered, but he was too young, and besides, was a mercer—and Dennet and her father were agreed that her husband must go on with the trade. Then there was a master-armourer, but he was a widower with sons and daughters as old as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the bare notion. There also came a young knight who would have turned the Dragon court into a tilt-yard, and spent all the gold that long years of prudent toil had amassed.If Mistress Headley deemed each denial the result of her vigilance for her son’s interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on the folly of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the household go to rack and ruin; while as to the wench, she might prank herself in her own conceit, but no honest man would soon look at her for a wife, if her father left her to herself, without giving her a good stepmother, or at least putting a kinswoman in authority over her.The alderman was stung. He certainly had warmed a snake on his hearth, and how was he to be rid of it? He secretly winked at the resumption of a forge fire that had been abandoned, because the noise and smoke incommoded the dwelling-house, and Kit Smallbones hammered his loudest there, when the guest might be taking her morning nap; but this had no effect in driving her away, though it may have told upon her temper; and good-humoured Master Headley was harassed more than he had ever been in his life.“It puts me past my patience,” said he, turning into Tibble’s special workshop one afternoon. “Here hath Mistress Hillyer of the Eagle been with me full of proposals that I would give my poor wench to that scapegrace lad of hers, who hath been twice called to account before the guild, but who now, forsooth, is to turn over a new leaf.”“So I wis would the Dragon under him,” quoth Tibble.“I told her ’twas not to be thought of, and then what does the dame but sniff the air and protest that I had better take heed, for there may not be so many who would choose a spoilt, misruled maid like mine. There’s the work of yonder Sarum woman. I tell thee, Tib, never was bull in the ring more baited than am I.”“Yea, sir,” returned Tib, “there’ll be no help for it till our young mistress be wed.”“Ay! that’s the rub! But I’ve not seen one whom I could mate with her—let alone one who would keep up the old house. Giles would have done that passably, though he were scarce worthy of the wench, even without—” An expressive shake of the head denoted the rest. “And now if he ever come home at all, ’twill be as a foul-mouthed, plundering scarecrow, like the kites of men-at-arms, who, if they lose not their lives, lose all that makes an honest life in the Italian wars. I would have writ to Edmund Burgess, but I hear his elder brother is dead, and he is driving a good traffic at York. Belike too he is wedded.”“Nay,” said Tibble, “I could tell of one who would be true and faithful to your worship, and a loving husband to Mistress Dennet, ay, and would be a master that all of us would gladly cleave to. For he is godly after his lights, and sound-hearted, and wots what good work be, and can do it.”“That were a son-in-law, Tib! Of who speakest thou? Is he of good birth?”“Yea, of gentle birth and breeding.”“And willing? But that they all are. Wherefore then hath he never made suit?”“He hath not yet his freedom.”“Who be it then?”“He that made this elbow-piece for the suit that Queen Margaret ordered for the little King of Scots,” returned Tibble, producing an exquisite miniature bit of workmanship.“Stephen Birkenholt! The fool’s nephew! Mine own prentice!”“Yea, and the best worker in steel we have yet turned out. Since the sickness of last winter hath stiffened my joints and dimmed mine eyes, I had rather trust dainty work such as this to him than to myself.”“Stephen! Tibble, hath he set thee on to this?”“No, sir. We both know too well what becometh us; but when you were casting about for a mate for my young mistress, I could not but think how men seek far, and overlook the jewel at their feet.”“He hath nought! That brother of his will give him nought.”“He hath what will be better for the old Dragon and for your worship’s self, than many a bag of gold, sir.”“Thou sayst truly there, Tib. I know him so far that he would not be the ingrate Jack to turn his back on the old master or the old man. He is a good lad. But—but—I’ve ever set my face against the prentice wedding the master’s daughter, save when he is of her own house, like Giles. Tell me, Tibble, deemst thou that the varlet hath dared to lift his eyes to the lass?”“I wot nothing of love!” said Tibble, somewhat grimly. “I have seen nought. I only told your worship where a good son and a good master might be had. Is it your pleasure, sir, that we take in a freight of sea-coal from Simon Collier for the new furnace? His is purest, if a mark more the chaldron.”He spoke as if he put the recommendation of the son and master on the same line as that of the coal. Mr Headley answered the business matters absently, and ended by saying he would think on the council.In Tibble’s workroom, with the clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling’s cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-starched it was.The bird had taken fright and flown to the tree in the court; Dennet hastened in pursuit, but all the boys and children in the court rushing out after her, her blandishments had no chance, and “Goldspot” had fluttered on to the gateway. Stephen had by this time come out, and hastened to the gate, hoping to turn the truant back from escaping into Cheapside; but all in vain, it flew out while the market was in full career, and he could only call back to her that he would not lose sight of it.Out he hurried, Dennet waiting in a sort of despair by the tree for a time that seemed to her endless, until Stephen reappeared under the gate, with a signal that all was well. She darted to meet him. “Yea, mistress, here he is, the little caitiff. He was just knocked down by this country lad’s cap—happily not hurt. I told him you would give him a tester for your bird.”“With all my heart!” and Dennet produced the coin. “Oh! Stephen, are you sure he is safe? Thou bad Goldspot, to fly away from me! Wink with thine eye—thou saucy rogue! Wottest thou not but for Stephen they might be blinding thy sweet blue eyes with hot needles?”“His wing is grown since the moulting,” said Stephen. “It should be cut to hinder such mischances.”“Will you do it? I will hold him,” said Dennet.“Ah! ’tis pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing—that no armour of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots. But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine excuse. There! Peck not, ill birdling. Know thy friends, Master Stare.”And with such pretty nonsense the two stood together, Dennet in her white cap, short crimson kirtle, little stiff collar, and white bib and apron, holding her bird upside down in one hand, and with the other trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in his leathern coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black hair, with soot, stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the lustrous wing with one hand while he used his smallest pair of shears with the other to clip the pen-feathers.“See there, Master Alderman,” cried Mistress Headley, bursting on him from the gallery stairs. “Be that what you call fitting for your daughter and your prentice, a beggar lad from the heath? I ever told you she would bring you to shame, thus left to herself. And now you see it.”Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and Dennet flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, “O father, father! suffer her not. He did no wrong. He was cutting my bird’s wing.”“I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house,” said the alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it all at once. “Stephen Birkenholt, come here.”Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in his heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but imagining at the moment that his feelings had been actions.“Stephen,” said the alderman, “thou art a true and worthy lad! Canst thou love my daughter?”“I—I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it,” stammered Stephen, not catching the tone of the strange interrogation, and expecting any amount of terrible consequences for his presumption.“Then thou wilt be a faithful spouse to her, and son to me? And Dennet, my daughter, hast thou any distaste to this youth—though he bring nought but skill and honesty!”“O, father, father! I—I had rather have him than any other!”“Then, Stephen Birkenholt and Dennet Headley, ye shall be man and wife, so soon as the young man’s term be over, and he be a freeman—so he continue to be that which he seems at present. Thereto I give my word, I, Giles Headley, Alderman of the Chepe Ward, and thereof ye are witnesses, all of you. And God’s blessing on it.”A tremendous hurrah arose, led by Kit Smallbones, from every workman in the court, and the while Stephen and Dennet, unaware of anything else, flew into one another’s arms, while Goldspot, on whom the operation had been fortunately completed, took refuge upon Stephen’s head.“O, Mistress Dennet, I have made you black all over!” was Stephen’s first word.“Heed not, I ever loved the black!” she cried, as her eyes sparkled.“So I have done what was to thy mind, my lass?” said Master Headley, who, without ever having thought of consulting his daughter, was delighted to see that her heart was with him.“Sir, I did not know fully—but indeed I should never have been so happy as I am now.“Sir,” added Stephen, putting his knee to the ground, “it nearly wrung my heart to think of her as belonging to another, though I never durst utter aught,”—and while Dennet embraced her father, Stephen sobbed for very joy, and with difficulty said in broken words something about a “son’s duty and devotion.”They were broken in upon by Mistress Headley, who, after standing in mute consternation, fell on them in a fury. She understood the device now! All had been a scheme laid amongst them for defrauding her poor fatherless child, driving him away, and taking up this beggarly brat. She had seen through the little baggage from the first, and she pitied Master Headley. Rage was utterly ungovernable in those days, and she actually was flying to attack Dennet with her nails when the alderman caught her by the wrists; and she would have been almost too much for him, had not Kit Smallbones come to his assistance, and carried her, kicking and screaming like a naughty child, into the house. There was small restraint of temper in those days even in high life, and below it, there was some reason for the employment of the padlock and the ducking stool.Floods of tears restored the dame to some sort of composure; but she declared she could stay no longer in a house where her son had been ill-used and deceived, and she had been insulted. The alderman thought the insult had been the other way, but he was too glad to be rid of her on any terms to gainsay her, and at his own charge, undertook to procure horse and escort to convey her safely to Salisbury the next morning. He advised Stephen to keep out of her sight for the rest of the day, giving leave of absence, so that the youth, as one treading on air, set forth to carry to his brother, his aunt, and if possible, his uncle, the intelligence that he could as yet hardly believe was more than a happy dream.

“What shall be the maiden’s fate?Who shall be the maiden’s mate?”Scott.

“What shall be the maiden’s fate?Who shall be the maiden’s mate?”Scott.

No Giles Headley appeared to greet the travellers, though Kit Smallbones had halted at Canterbury, to pour out entreaties to Saint Thomas, and the vow of a steel and gilt reliquary of his best workmanship to contain the old shoe, which a few years previously had so much disgusted Erasmus and his companion.

Poor old fellow, he was too much crest-fallen thoroughly to enjoy even the gladness of his little children; and his wife made no secret of her previous conviction that he was too dunderheaded not to run into some coil, when she was not there to look after him. The alderman was more merciful. Since there had been no invasion from Salisbury, he had regretted the not having gone himself to Ardres, and he knew pretty well that Kit’s power lay more in his arms than in his brain. He did not wonder at the small gain, nor at the having lost sight of the young man, and confidently expected the lost ones soon to appear.

As to Dennet, her eyes shone quietly, and she took upon herself to send down to let Mistress Randall know of her nephew’s return, and invite her to supper to hear the story of his doings. The girl did not look at all like a maiden uneasy about her lost lover, but much more like one enjoying for the moment the immunity from a kind of burthen; and, as she smiled, called for Stephen’s help in her little arrangements, and treated him in the friendly manner of old times, he could not but wonder at the panic that had overpowered him for a time like a fever of the mind.

There was plenty to speak of in the glories of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and the transactions with the knights and nobles; and Stephen held his peace as to his adventure, but Dennet’s eyes were sharper than Kit’s. She spied the remains of the bruise under his black curly hair; and while her father and Tib were unravelling the accounts from Kit’s brain and tally-sticks, she got the youth out into the gallery, and observed, “So thou hast a broken head. See here are grandmother’s lily-leaves in strong waters. Let me lay one on for thee. There, sit down on the step, then I can reach.”

“’Tis well-nigh whole now, sweet mistress,” said Stephen, complying however, for it was too sweet to have those little fingers busy about him, for the offer to be declined.

“How gatst thou the blow?” asked Dennet. “Was it at single-stick? Come, thou mayst tell me. ’Twas in standing up for some one.”

“Nay, mistress, I would it had been.”

“Thou hast been in trouble,” she said, leaning on the baluster above him. “Or did ill men set on thee?”

“That’s the nearest guess,” said Stephen. “’Twas that tall father of mine aunt’s, the fellow that came here for armour, and bought poor Master Michael’s sword.”

“And sliced the apple on thine hand. Ay?”

“He would have me for one of his Badgers.”

“Thee! Stephen!” It was a cry of pain as well as horror.

“Yea, mistress; and when I refused, the fellow dealt me a blow, and laid me down senseless, to bear me off willy nilly, but that good old Lucas Hansen brought mine uncle to mine aid—”

Dennet clasped her hands. “O Stephen, Stephen! Now I know how good the Lord is. Wot ye, I asked of Tibble to take me daily to Saint Faith’s to crave of good Saint Julian to have you all in his keeping, and saith he on the way, ‘Methinks, mistress, our dear Lord would hear you if you spake to Him direct, with no go-between.’ I did as he bade me, Stephen, I went to the high Altar, and prayed there, and Tibble went with me, and lo, now, He hath brought you back safe. We will have a mass of thanksgiving on the very morn.”

Stephen’s heart could not but bound, for it was plain enough for whom the chief force of these prayers had been offered.

“Sweet mistress,” he said, “they have availed me indeed. Certes, they warded me in the time of sore trial and temptation.”

“Nay,” said Dennet, “thoucouldstnot have longed to go away from hence with those ill men who live by slaying and plundering?”

The present temptation was to say that he had doubted whether this course would not have been for the best both for himself and for her; but he recollected that Giles might be at the gate, and if so, he should feel as if he had rather have bitten out his tongue than have let Dennet know the state of the case, so he only answered—

“There be sorer temptations in the world for us poor rogues than little home-biding house crickets like thee wot of, mistress. Well that ye can pray for us without knowing all!”

Stephen had never consciously come so near lovemaking, and his honest face was all one burning glow with the suppressed feeling, while Dennet lingered till the curfew warned them of the lateness of the hour, both with a strange sense of undefined pleasure in the being together in the summer twilight.

Day after day passed on with no news of Giles or Will Wherry. The alderman grew uneasy, and sent Stephen to ask his brother to write to Randall, or to some one else in Wolsey’s suite, to make inquiries at Bruges. But Ambrose was found to have gone abroad in the train of Sir Thomas More, and nothing was heard till their return six weeks later, when Ambrose brought home a small packet which had been conveyed to him through one of the Emperor’s suite. It was tied up with a long tough pale wisp of hair, evidently from the mane or tail of some Flemish horse, and was addressed, “To Master Ambrose Birkenholt, menial clerk to the most worshipful Sir Thomas More, Knight, Under Sheriff of the City of London. These greeting—”

Within, when Ambrose could open the missive, was another small parcel, and a piece of brown coarse paper, on which was scrawled—

“Good Ambrose Birkenholt,—I pray thee to stand, my friend, and let all know whom it may concern, that when this same billet comes to hand, I shall be far on the march to High Germany, with a company of lusty fellows in the Emperor’s service. They be commanded by the good knight, Sir John Fulford.

“If thou canst send tidings to my mother, bid her keep her heart up, for I shall come back a captain, full of wealth and honour, and that will be better than hammering for life—or being wedded against mine own will. There never was troth plight between my master’s daughter and me, and my time is over, so I be quit with them, and I thank my master for his goodness. They shall all hear of me some of these days. Will Wherry is my groom, and commends him to his mother. And so, commending thee and all the rest to Our Lady and the saints,

“Thine to command,

“Giles Headley,

“Man-at-Arms in the Honourable Company of Sir John Fulford, Knight.”

On a separate strip was written—

“Give this packet to the little Moorish maid, and tell her that I will bring her better by and by, and mayhap make her a knight’s lady; but on thy life, say nought to any other.”

It was out now! Ambrose’s head was more in Sir Thomas’s books than in real life at all times, or he would long ago have inferred something—from the jackdaw’s favourite phrase—from Giles’s modes of haunting his steps, and making him the bearer of small tokens—an orange, a simnel cake, a bag of walnuts or almonds to Mistress Aldonza, and of the smiles, blushes, and thanks with which she greeted them. Nay, had she not burst into tears and entreated to be spared when Lady More wanted to make a match between her and the big porter, and had not her distress led Mistress Margaret to appeal to her father, who had said he should as soon think of wedding the silver-footed Thetis to Polyphemus. “Tilley valley! Master More,” the lady had answered, “will all your fine pagan gods hinder the wench from starving on earth, and leading apes in hell.”

Margaret had answered that Aldonza should never do the first, and Sir Thomas had gravely said that he thought those black eyes would lead many a man on earth before they came to the latter fate.

Ambrose hid the parcel for her deep in his bosom before he asked permission of his master to go to the Dragon court with the rest of the tidings.

“He always was an unmannerly cub,” said Master Headley, as he read the letter. “Well, I’ve done my best to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear! I’ve done my duty by poor Robert’s son, and if he will be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though ’tis pity of the old name! Ha! what’s this? ‘Wedded against my will—no troth plight.’ Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, Dennet, my maid!”

Dennet screwed up her little mouth, and looked very demure, but she twinkled her bright eyes, and said, “My heart will not break, sir; I am in no haste to be wed.”

Her father pinched her cheek and said she was a silly wench; but perhaps he marked the dancing step with which the young mistress went about her household cares, and how she was singing to herself songs that certainly were not “Willow! willow!”

Ambrose had no scruple in delivering to Aldonza the message and token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea, carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely tasks.

There came a wonderful illumination and agitation over the girl’s usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make them surpassingly beautiful.

“Woe is me!” was, however, her first exclamation. “That he should have given up all for me! Oh! if I had thought it!” But while she spoke as if she were shocked and appalled, her eyes belied her words. They shone with the first absolute certainty of love, and there was no realising as yet the years of silent waiting and anxiety that must go by, nay, perhaps an entire lifetime of uncertainty of her lover’s truth or untruth, life or death.

Dame Alice called her, and in a rambling, maundering way, charged her with loitering and gadding with the young men; and Margaret saw by her colour and by her eyes that some strange thing had happened to her. Margaret had, perhaps, some intuition; for was not her heart very tender towards a certain young barrister by name Roper whom her father doubted as yet, because of his Lutheran inclinations. By and by she discovered that she needed Aldonza to comb out her long dark hair, and ere long, she had heard all the tale of the youth cured by the girl’s father, and all his gifts, and how Aldonza deemed him too great and too good for her, (poor Giles!) though she knew she should never do more than look up to him with love and gratitude from afar. And she never so much as dreamt that he would cast an eye on her save in kindness. Oh yes, she knew what he had taught the daw to say, but then she was a child, she durst not deem it more. And Margaret More was more kind and eager than worldly wise, and she encouraged Aldonza to watch and wait, promised protection from all enforced suits and suitors, and gave assurances of shelter as her own attendant as long as the girl should need it.

Master Headley, with some sighing and groaning, applied himself to write to the mother at Salisbury what had become of her son; but he had only spent one evening over the trying task, when just as the supper bell was ringing, with Master Hope and his wife as guests, there were horses’ feet in the court, and Master Tiptoff appeared, with a servant on another horse, which carried besides a figure in camlet, on a pillion. No sooner was this same figure lifted from her steed and set down on the steps, while the master of the house and his daughter came out to greet her, than she began, “Master Alderman Headley, I am here to know what you have done with my poor son!”

“Alack, good cousin!”

“Alack me no alacks,” she interrupted, holding up her riding rod. “I’ll have no dissembling, there hath been enough of that, Giles Headley. Thou hast sold him, soul and body, to one of yon cruel, bloodthirsty plundering, burning captains, that the poor child may be slain and murthered! Is this the fair promises you made to his father—wiling him away from his poor mother, a widow, with talking of teaching him the craft, and giving him your daughter! My son, Tiptoff here, told me the spousal was delayed and delayed, and he doubted whether it would ever come off, but I thought not of this sending him beyond seas, to make merchandise of him. And you call yourself an alderman! The gown should be stript off the back of you, and shall be, if there be any justice in London for a widow woman.”

“Nay, cousin, you have heard some strange tale,” said Master Headley, who, much as he would have dreaded the attack beforehand, faced it the more calmly and manfully because the accusation was so outrageous.

“Ay, so I told her,” began her son-in-law, “but she hath been neither to have nor to hold since the—”

“And how should I be to have or to hold by a nincompoop like thee,” she said, turning round on him, “that would have me sit down and be content forsooth, when mine only son is kidnapped to be sold to the Turks or to work in the galleys, for aught I know.”

“Mistress!” here Master Hope’s voice came in, “I would counsel you to speak less loud, and hear before you accuse. We of the City of London know Master Alderman Headley too well to hear him railed against.”

“Ah! you’re all of a piece,” she began; but by this time Master Tiptoff had managed at least to get her into the hall, and had exchanged words enough with the alderman to assure himself that there was an explanation, nay, that there was a letter from Giles himself. This the indignant mother presently was made to understand—and as the alderman had borrowed the letter in order to copy it for her, it was given to her. She could not read, and would trust no one but her son-in-law to read it to her. “Yea, you have it very pat,” she said, “but how am I to be assured ’tis not all writ here to hoodwink a poor woman like me.”

“’Tis Giles’s hand,” averred Tiptoff.

“And if you will,” added the alderman, with wonderful patience, “to-morrow you may speak with the youth who received it. Come, sit down and sup with us, and then you shall learn from Smallbones how this mischance befel, all from my sending two young heads together, and one who, though a good fellow, could not hold all in rule.”

“Ay—you’ve your reasons for anything,” she muttered, but being both weary and hungry, she consented to eat and drink, while Tiptoff, who was evidently ashamed of her violence, and anxious to excuse it, managed to explain that a report had been picked up at Romsey, by a bare-footed friar from Salisbury, that young Giles Headley had been seen at Ghent by one of the servants of a wool merchant, riding with a troop of Free Companions in the Emperor’s service. All the rest was deduced from this intelligence by the dame’s own imagination.

After supper she was invited to interrogate Kit and Stephen, and her grief and anxiety found vent in fierce scolding at the misrule which had permitted such a villain as Fulford to be haunting and tempting poor fatherless lads. Master Headley had reproached poor Kit for the same thing, but he could only represent that Giles, being a freeman, was no longer under his authority. However, she stormed on, being absolutely convinced that her son’s evasion was every one’s fault but his own. Now it was the alderman for misusing him, overtasking the poor child, and deferring the marriage, now it was that little pert poppet, Dennet, who had flouted him, now it was the bad company he had been led into—the poor babe who had been bred to godly ways.

The alderman was really sorry for her, and felt himself to blame so far as that he had shifted the guidance of the expedition to such an insufficient head as poor Smallbones, so he let her rail on as much as she would, till the storm exhausted itself, and she settled into the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return. The good man felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits. So Mrs Headley stayed on after Tiptoff’s return to Salisbury, and had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of autumn. She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was welcomed at a civic banquet and drank of the loving cup, and she beheld the Lord Mayor’s Show in all its picturesque glory of emblazoned barges on the river. In fact, she found the position of denizen of an alderman’s household so very agreeable that she did her best to make it a permanency. Nay, Dennet soon found that she considered herself to be waiting there and keeping guard till her son’s return should establish her there, and that she viewed the girl already as a daughter—for which Dennet was by no means obliged to her! She lavished counsel on her hostess, found fault with the maidens, criticised the cookery, walked into the kitchen and still-room with assistance and directions, and even made a strong effort to possess herself of the keys.

It must be confessed that Dennet was saucy! It was her weapon of self-defence, and she considered herself insulted in her own house.

There she stood, exalted on a tall pair of pattens before the stout oaken table in the kitchen where a glowing fire burned; pewter, red and yellow earthenware, and clean scrubbed trenchers made a goodly show, a couple of men-cooks and twice as many scullions obeyed her behests—only the superior of the two first ever daring to argue a point with her. There she stood, in her white apron, with sleeves turned up, daintily compounding her mince-meat for Christmas, when in stalked Mrs Headley to offer her counsel and aid—but this was lost in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the dame’s scarlet-hosed ankles.

She shook her petticoats at him, but Dennet tittered even while declaring that Tray hurt nobody. Mrs Headley reviled the dog, and then proceeded to advise Dennet that she should chop her citron finer. Dennet made answer “that father liked a good stout piece of it.” Mistress Headley offered to take the chopper and instruct her how to compound all in the true Sarum style.

“Grammercy, mistress, but we follow my grand-dame’s recipe!” said Dennet, grasping her implement firmly.

“Come, child, be not above taking a lesson from thine elders! Where’s the goose? What?” as the girl looked amazed, “where hast thou lived not to know that a live goose should be bled into the mince-meat?”

“I have never lived with barbarous, savage folk,” said Dennet—and therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, it followed her like a train, while she rushed to box the ears of the offender, crying:

“You set him on, you little saucy vixen! I saw it in your eyes. Let the rascal be scourged.”

“Not so,” said Dennet, with prim mouth and laughing eyes. “Far be it from me! But ’tis ever the wont of the kitchen, when those come there who have no call thither.”

Mistress Headley flounced away, dish-cloth and all, to go whimpering to the alderman with her tale of insults. She trusted that her cousin would give the pert wench a good beating. She was not a whit too old for it.

“How oft did you beat Giles, good kinswoman?” said Dennet demurely, as she stood by her father.

“Whisht, whisht, child,” said her father, “this may not be! I cannot have my guest flouted.”

“If she act as our guest, I will treat her with all honour and courtesy,” said the maiden; “but when she comes where we look not for guests, there is no saying what the black guard may take it on them to do.”

Master Headley was mischievously tickled at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet’s ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father’s foolish fondness. He would rue the day!

Meantime if the alderman’s peace on one side was disturbed by his visitor, on the other, suitors for Dennet’s hand gave him little rest. She was known to be a considerable heiress, and though Mistress Headley gave every one to understand that there was a contract with Giles, and that she was awaiting his return, this did not deter more wooers than Dennet ever knew of, from making proposals to her father. Jasper Hope was offered, but he was too young, and besides, was a mercer—and Dennet and her father were agreed that her husband must go on with the trade. Then there was a master-armourer, but he was a widower with sons and daughters as old as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the bare notion. There also came a young knight who would have turned the Dragon court into a tilt-yard, and spent all the gold that long years of prudent toil had amassed.

If Mistress Headley deemed each denial the result of her vigilance for her son’s interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on the folly of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the household go to rack and ruin; while as to the wench, she might prank herself in her own conceit, but no honest man would soon look at her for a wife, if her father left her to herself, without giving her a good stepmother, or at least putting a kinswoman in authority over her.

The alderman was stung. He certainly had warmed a snake on his hearth, and how was he to be rid of it? He secretly winked at the resumption of a forge fire that had been abandoned, because the noise and smoke incommoded the dwelling-house, and Kit Smallbones hammered his loudest there, when the guest might be taking her morning nap; but this had no effect in driving her away, though it may have told upon her temper; and good-humoured Master Headley was harassed more than he had ever been in his life.

“It puts me past my patience,” said he, turning into Tibble’s special workshop one afternoon. “Here hath Mistress Hillyer of the Eagle been with me full of proposals that I would give my poor wench to that scapegrace lad of hers, who hath been twice called to account before the guild, but who now, forsooth, is to turn over a new leaf.”

“So I wis would the Dragon under him,” quoth Tibble.

“I told her ’twas not to be thought of, and then what does the dame but sniff the air and protest that I had better take heed, for there may not be so many who would choose a spoilt, misruled maid like mine. There’s the work of yonder Sarum woman. I tell thee, Tib, never was bull in the ring more baited than am I.”

“Yea, sir,” returned Tib, “there’ll be no help for it till our young mistress be wed.”

“Ay! that’s the rub! But I’ve not seen one whom I could mate with her—let alone one who would keep up the old house. Giles would have done that passably, though he were scarce worthy of the wench, even without—” An expressive shake of the head denoted the rest. “And now if he ever come home at all, ’twill be as a foul-mouthed, plundering scarecrow, like the kites of men-at-arms, who, if they lose not their lives, lose all that makes an honest life in the Italian wars. I would have writ to Edmund Burgess, but I hear his elder brother is dead, and he is driving a good traffic at York. Belike too he is wedded.”

“Nay,” said Tibble, “I could tell of one who would be true and faithful to your worship, and a loving husband to Mistress Dennet, ay, and would be a master that all of us would gladly cleave to. For he is godly after his lights, and sound-hearted, and wots what good work be, and can do it.”

“That were a son-in-law, Tib! Of who speakest thou? Is he of good birth?”

“Yea, of gentle birth and breeding.”

“And willing? But that they all are. Wherefore then hath he never made suit?”

“He hath not yet his freedom.”

“Who be it then?”

“He that made this elbow-piece for the suit that Queen Margaret ordered for the little King of Scots,” returned Tibble, producing an exquisite miniature bit of workmanship.

“Stephen Birkenholt! The fool’s nephew! Mine own prentice!”

“Yea, and the best worker in steel we have yet turned out. Since the sickness of last winter hath stiffened my joints and dimmed mine eyes, I had rather trust dainty work such as this to him than to myself.”

“Stephen! Tibble, hath he set thee on to this?”

“No, sir. We both know too well what becometh us; but when you were casting about for a mate for my young mistress, I could not but think how men seek far, and overlook the jewel at their feet.”

“He hath nought! That brother of his will give him nought.”

“He hath what will be better for the old Dragon and for your worship’s self, than many a bag of gold, sir.”

“Thou sayst truly there, Tib. I know him so far that he would not be the ingrate Jack to turn his back on the old master or the old man. He is a good lad. But—but—I’ve ever set my face against the prentice wedding the master’s daughter, save when he is of her own house, like Giles. Tell me, Tibble, deemst thou that the varlet hath dared to lift his eyes to the lass?”

“I wot nothing of love!” said Tibble, somewhat grimly. “I have seen nought. I only told your worship where a good son and a good master might be had. Is it your pleasure, sir, that we take in a freight of sea-coal from Simon Collier for the new furnace? His is purest, if a mark more the chaldron.”

He spoke as if he put the recommendation of the son and master on the same line as that of the coal. Mr Headley answered the business matters absently, and ended by saying he would think on the council.

In Tibble’s workroom, with the clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling’s cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-starched it was.

The bird had taken fright and flown to the tree in the court; Dennet hastened in pursuit, but all the boys and children in the court rushing out after her, her blandishments had no chance, and “Goldspot” had fluttered on to the gateway. Stephen had by this time come out, and hastened to the gate, hoping to turn the truant back from escaping into Cheapside; but all in vain, it flew out while the market was in full career, and he could only call back to her that he would not lose sight of it.

Out he hurried, Dennet waiting in a sort of despair by the tree for a time that seemed to her endless, until Stephen reappeared under the gate, with a signal that all was well. She darted to meet him. “Yea, mistress, here he is, the little caitiff. He was just knocked down by this country lad’s cap—happily not hurt. I told him you would give him a tester for your bird.”

“With all my heart!” and Dennet produced the coin. “Oh! Stephen, are you sure he is safe? Thou bad Goldspot, to fly away from me! Wink with thine eye—thou saucy rogue! Wottest thou not but for Stephen they might be blinding thy sweet blue eyes with hot needles?”

“His wing is grown since the moulting,” said Stephen. “It should be cut to hinder such mischances.”

“Will you do it? I will hold him,” said Dennet.

“Ah! ’tis pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing—that no armour of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots. But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine excuse. There! Peck not, ill birdling. Know thy friends, Master Stare.”

And with such pretty nonsense the two stood together, Dennet in her white cap, short crimson kirtle, little stiff collar, and white bib and apron, holding her bird upside down in one hand, and with the other trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in his leathern coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black hair, with soot, stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the lustrous wing with one hand while he used his smallest pair of shears with the other to clip the pen-feathers.

“See there, Master Alderman,” cried Mistress Headley, bursting on him from the gallery stairs. “Be that what you call fitting for your daughter and your prentice, a beggar lad from the heath? I ever told you she would bring you to shame, thus left to herself. And now you see it.”

Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and Dennet flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, “O father, father! suffer her not. He did no wrong. He was cutting my bird’s wing.”

“I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house,” said the alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it all at once. “Stephen Birkenholt, come here.”

Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in his heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but imagining at the moment that his feelings had been actions.

“Stephen,” said the alderman, “thou art a true and worthy lad! Canst thou love my daughter?”

“I—I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it,” stammered Stephen, not catching the tone of the strange interrogation, and expecting any amount of terrible consequences for his presumption.

“Then thou wilt be a faithful spouse to her, and son to me? And Dennet, my daughter, hast thou any distaste to this youth—though he bring nought but skill and honesty!”

“O, father, father! I—I had rather have him than any other!”

“Then, Stephen Birkenholt and Dennet Headley, ye shall be man and wife, so soon as the young man’s term be over, and he be a freeman—so he continue to be that which he seems at present. Thereto I give my word, I, Giles Headley, Alderman of the Chepe Ward, and thereof ye are witnesses, all of you. And God’s blessing on it.”

A tremendous hurrah arose, led by Kit Smallbones, from every workman in the court, and the while Stephen and Dennet, unaware of anything else, flew into one another’s arms, while Goldspot, on whom the operation had been fortunately completed, took refuge upon Stephen’s head.

“O, Mistress Dennet, I have made you black all over!” was Stephen’s first word.

“Heed not, I ever loved the black!” she cried, as her eyes sparkled.

“So I have done what was to thy mind, my lass?” said Master Headley, who, without ever having thought of consulting his daughter, was delighted to see that her heart was with him.

“Sir, I did not know fully—but indeed I should never have been so happy as I am now.

“Sir,” added Stephen, putting his knee to the ground, “it nearly wrung my heart to think of her as belonging to another, though I never durst utter aught,”—and while Dennet embraced her father, Stephen sobbed for very joy, and with difficulty said in broken words something about a “son’s duty and devotion.”

They were broken in upon by Mistress Headley, who, after standing in mute consternation, fell on them in a fury. She understood the device now! All had been a scheme laid amongst them for defrauding her poor fatherless child, driving him away, and taking up this beggarly brat. She had seen through the little baggage from the first, and she pitied Master Headley. Rage was utterly ungovernable in those days, and she actually was flying to attack Dennet with her nails when the alderman caught her by the wrists; and she would have been almost too much for him, had not Kit Smallbones come to his assistance, and carried her, kicking and screaming like a naughty child, into the house. There was small restraint of temper in those days even in high life, and below it, there was some reason for the employment of the padlock and the ducking stool.

Floods of tears restored the dame to some sort of composure; but she declared she could stay no longer in a house where her son had been ill-used and deceived, and she had been insulted. The alderman thought the insult had been the other way, but he was too glad to be rid of her on any terms to gainsay her, and at his own charge, undertook to procure horse and escort to convey her safely to Salisbury the next morning. He advised Stephen to keep out of her sight for the rest of the day, giving leave of absence, so that the youth, as one treading on air, set forth to carry to his brother, his aunt, and if possible, his uncle, the intelligence that he could as yet hardly believe was more than a happy dream.

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