CONTENTS

CHAP.

1. "The King has come in to his own again"

2. Newbolt Manor

3. Somerset House

4. New Friends

5. May-Day

6. A First Parting

7. A King's Vengeance

8. Arrested

9. Old Newgate

10. A Legend

11. A Brave Woman

12. A Faithful Friend

13. The Hamlet of St. Mary's

14. The Mystery cleared up

15. At Court

16. Under the Shadow of Newgate

17. The Great Plague

18. Lost

19. On the Track

20. A Great Sea-Fight

21. London on Fire

22. Found

23. Home at Last

ILLUSTRATIONS

"They took refuge with Nurse Patience" (missing from book) Frontis.

"The commander of the company handed him a sheet of parchment"

"He drew out the packets"

"I will give you your answer to-night," she said

CHAPTER I

"The king has come in to his own again"

In a large, sombre apartment, in the palace of the Louvre, there was unusual commotion. The Queen Dowager, Henrietta Maria, was seated in a crimson gilt fauteuil, wearing her widow's black robes, for she had never cast off the mourning she had donned for her murdered husband, Charles I; and indeed she had unwillingly suffered any of her attendants to array themselves in brighter colours.

"Until he is avenged," she would say; "until his murderers have suffered what he suffered, if that be possible!"

Behind her, leaning on the back of her chair, was her young daughter, a girl of sixteen--that child who had never seen her father's face, who had been brought over to France by stealth in swaddling clothes, who had suffered all the miseries of exile, and shared all the poverty which her mother's position had forced upon them.

Everybody knows the story of how the queen kept this child in bed in winter, because they could afford no fire in their room. Possibly she did this to shame the king, Louis XIV, who denied the necessaries of existence to the daughter of Henry IV.

The princess was at the present time just passing from girlhood into womanhood. She gave promise of great beauty, which was to be fully realized. There was a triumphant look on her face; indeed, on the faces of all those present, for kneeling at the queen's feet was a messenger who had just arrived from Holland bearing the news that a deputation from England had waited on her son, Charles II, and had invited him back to England, entreating him to suffer himself to be placed upon that throne which had cost his father his life.

After the envoy had delivered his message, a great silence fell upon all present. The queen, for a few seconds, seemed incapable of realizing the truth. It is at this moment we introduce our readers to her court.

Suddenly a little voice broke the silence, and a childish figure, a girl of ten or eleven years old, sprang forward, and holding out with both her little hands a somewhat shabby white satin gown, she pirouetted into the centre of the room, and, dancing on the tips of her toes, sang gaily: "The king has come in to his own again; the king has come in to his own!"

The ice was broken: a general movement took place. A young woman in a tight-fitting black gown and a white cap sprang after the child and passionately shook her.

"How dare you; how dare you!" she exclaimed; but the child twisted herself free of her, and ran lightly to the Princess Henrietta, hiding herself in the folds of her gown.

"Let her alone," said the queen, "she has spoken for us all." And a smile such as had not been seen on that royal face for many a day crept over the widowed queen's countenance. Regaining her self-command, she said to the messenger still kneeling before her:

"I thank you for the haste you have made in coming to us, and I bid you return with equal haste to my dear son, and tell his majesty that all loyal hearts rejoice with him, and that we await but his command to join him in England. Until then we will abide here as patient and loyal subjects."

The messenger arose, and bowed low, saying;

"I have no doubt that the king will desire your majesty's presence as soon as he has taken possession of his kingdom." And with that he bowed himself backwards out of the room.

With the disappearance of the messenger etiquette slackened; there was much talking and not a little laughter. Suddenly the door leading into the anteroom was thrown open, and all the elite of the court of France, all those faithful followers of the Stuart cause who had escaped out of Cromwell's hands and taken up their abode at the French court, young and old, gay sparks of the aristocracy, and grey-headed men and women who had lost lands and fortunes in their master's cause, pressed forward. Their day had come at last; surely they would now reap the fruit of their devotion.

The queen rose and went into their midst with all that stately courtesy for which she was remarkable, and her young daughter, following her example, gave her hand to be kissed, smiling with that wonderful charm and look of gladness which was destined to fascinate so many hearts.

Once more the doors were thrown wide open, but this time heralds announced:

"Le roi, le roi!"

Queen Henrietta stood still, but, as the king entered, she advanced a few steps to meet him, curtsying deeply.

"Ma tante," he said, "I would have been the first to congratulate you, but news flies so fast, you have already heard what I would gladly have imparted to you myself."

"You are very good, my nephew," answered the Queen, "but sorrow has followed me for so long, that I can scarcely allow myself to hope that my dear son will succeed his martyred father in peace and without bloodshed."

"What matters that to you, ma tante? If blood has to be shed in a good cause, there is no regretting it; and there are those here present," he added, turning round and facing the courtiers, "who will not hesitate to give their lives for their rightful king."

A murmur ran through the crowd, and the whole assemblage bowed low in acquiescence. One voice rose above the others:

"His majesty speaks like Solomon; we are ready to shed the last drop of our blood for our royal master. Long live King Charles!"

People said that Queen Henrietta Maria had grown hard in her trouble. At the present moment the softening element of joy crept into her heart and brought tears to her eyes.

"Grand merci, grand merci to you all!" she repeated; and the king, taking her hand, led her to her seat, himself occupying the fauteuil which had been hastily brought for him.

A whispered word to Henrietta, repeated by her to the gentlemen of her household, and the crowd of courtiers disappeared, leaving the king and his aunt alone. Even Princess Henrietta and her little companion were dismissed.

What took place between the royal aunt and nephew was only known some years later; but the queen was well satisfied with the result of their conversation, for the strings of the king's purse were opened, and the poverty which so long oppressed her disappeared.

The princess and the child Agnes felt this change more than anyone. There was a mystery concerning Agnes; but mysteries about personages were very common in those days. In this great Civil War children had been lost, families had disappeared, no one quite knew who might be who.

When people questioned as to who this child was, the queen answered haughtily:

"Her name is Agnes Beaumont. Who she is and whence she comes I know; that is my secret, and must suffice all men."

It was on a cold winter's night nigh upon twenty years ago, and snow lay thick upon the ground, when Patience had found her way to the Palace of the Louvre, and begged and prayed, and almost forced herself into Queen Henrietta's presence. It was in the early days of the queen's widowhood. She had pawned all her jewels; she had sent all her money to the assistance of her son; and she herself was living a beggar on the bounty of the King of France, and that was measured out stingily. Poverty was in the air; the great rooms assigned to her in the Palace of the Louvre were bare and cold; and when Patience succeeded in forcing her way into her presence, she found the queen cowering over a few embers in the great fireplace, with the young princess, then only a child of eight years, gathered in her arms for warmth.

Approaching the queen, Patience knelt before her.

"Do you not recognize me, your majesty?" she said.

The queen looked at her.

"Yes, I recognize you," she said; "you come from my friend," and in a low voice she mentioned a name, adding:

"What of her?"

"Dead," answered Patience, "even as her husband died after the great battle, and with her dying breath she bade me bring you this." And opening back her cloak she showed, lying in her arms, a sleeping child of some eighteen months old.

"Why did you bring her here?" said the queen, throwing up her hands in despair. "What am I to do with her? We have scarce food for ourselves. How shall I feed her?"

"Have no fear on that score," said Patience, "I will feed her. Only let her live under your shelter, protected by your name; for there are those who, if they found her, would cast her out or do her some evil turn. You know that well. They have entered upon her possessions--they hold what by right is hers; therefore she must be cared for until such time as she can claim her own, or till you can give it to her."

"Then I wot she will wait a weary while," said the queen.

Whilst they were speaking, Princess Henrietta had approached the child, whose eyes were now wide open, and who was struggling to rise.

"Oh, how pretty she is! Look, Mother!"

And she said truly. She was a lovely babe, with soft, golden curls clustering round her little face, and large brown eyes. She was laughing, too--laughing with the merry gurgle of a happy babe--stretching out her little hands towards the princess. She looked the very child of joy, and yet she was a child born of bitter sorrow.

"She is like her father," said the queen. "I never knew a man more gloriously happy than he was; and she has the same look in her eyes."

"She never weeps; she never moans," said Patience. "Ah, madame, she will bring you sunshine and good luck!"

As she spoke she unwrapped the child and placed her upon the ground. A beauty, a perfect beauty she was, and the princess clapped her hands.

"Oh, you must keep her, Mother, you must keep her!"

"I have no choice in the matter. She is my dearest friend's child. Yes, I must keep her, Patience." And from that hour Agnes was the Princess Henrietta's daily companion.

This princess had also been born in sorrow and nurtured in it. She had no playfellows. She had led the dreariest life that any child could lead until this baby came; but from that hour her whole nature changed. She laughed, she played, she danced with her; there was noise, there was life, in that dark apartment. Whatever ills others had to bear, Agnes never suffered. Patience was always there, and Patience sufficed for her, and often for the princess too. They occupied a tiny chamber leading out of the queen's room, and this was their haven of rest, their playroom.

Sometimes even the queen would come in there and sit down and talk to Patience, not as to a subordinate, but as to a friend, and that is saying a great deal for Queen Henrietta Maria, whose pride and arrogance were proverbial.

Everyone was sure Agnes was of noble birth, because, as she grew older, she was brought up nobly and had the same teachers as the princess. They were neither of them overweighted with study; it was not the fashion in those days. They learnt French from their surroundings, a little writing, a little reading, a smattering of Latin, because the queen was bringing up her daughter as a Catholic, and she must needs follow the Mass in her Breviary. This sufficed; but they learnt dancing, and little songs, and thus a certain amount of gaiety emanated through them into the dark Palace of the Louvre.

This gaiety was in Princess Henrietta's blood. Was she not a granddaughter of Henry IV, that great lover of pleasure?

So these two children ignored the death-traps which lay under their feet, those oubliettes which had swallowed up so many men and women. They did not see the ghosts that others saw gliding along the passages, which led to mysterious chambers, down narrow staircases, ending they knew not where. They did not care. They would escape from Patience and play their games of hide-and-seek and touch-wood, their cries of childish joy ringing through the corridors and starting the echoes. Men would smile at them, and women shake their heads, but no one bade them be silent. Sometimes even the king in the distance heard them and would smile. "That is the wild Henrietta and her companion," he would say.

"Shall they be silenced, sire?" asked a courtier once.

"Nay, nay; it is good for them to laugh," he answered. "Their weeping days will come. It were a sin to silence them."

On this day, when the princess and Agnes were sent forth from the king's presence, they took refuge with Patience, and, curling themselves up on the window-sill, began to talk.

"I wonder if we shall have as good a time in England as we have had here!" said Agnes. "I feel as if I were going to lose you, Princess. You will be a great lady at court, and I am only a child and nobody. I wonder what this England is like! I have heard that the sun shines but little there. I do not feel much love for it or for the people. I never can forget that they killed their king, your father."

"If I cannot forget, I shall have to make believe I can," said Henrietta; "but as to what England is like, I know no more than you do," she added. "I was brought over from England just as you were, an infant in swaddling clothes, by my dear Lady Dalkeith, so we are equal there."

"Except that you know who you are, but I am only Agnes Beaumont, with neither father nor mother, nor kith nor kin, no one save Patience to care for me."

"We care for you, my mother and I," said the princess, drawing the child closer to her. "What more do you want?"

"Never to leave you," said the child passionately. "I would be your handmaid, your servant." And, as if a sudden fear had taken hold on her, she clung to the princess.

"You foolish child," answered Henrietta. "Of course you will always stay by me. Where should I be without my little Agnes?"

"But kings and queens, I have heard, cannot do what they will; they cannot even love where they will," said the child.

"That is true," answered Henrietta, "but you are only a child. Who will mind you? Besides," she continued thoughtfully, "you are Agnes Beaumont to-day, but you may be a great lady in disguise. Courtiers will crowd round my brother's throne; those who have been against him will be for him, now he is king, and you, the queen's favourite, my favourite, may find both kith and kin in your prosperity."

"I shall not care for those who forsook me when I was cast alone on the world." And Agnes tossed her beautiful head proudly.

"Why trouble?" said Henrietta. "Let us take life as it comes; we are so young. We are going to have a good time--a right good time!" And she wiped the tears from the child's face, kissed and hugged her.

At that moment the door opened and the queen came in. Her face, too, was radiant, and she brought with her a ray of sunshine, as if Nature itself shone upon her. She sat down beside the two girls and laid a hand on each of them.

"We shall soon be going to England," she said.

"Oh, Mother, tell us about England," said Henrietta. "We know nothing about it."

The queen's eyes filled with tears. "For ten years," she said, "I was the happiest and best-beloved woman in England. There was no man like your father, Henrietta: the greatest lover and the best husband. He gave me for my dower-house a palace on the Thames, upon which the sun always shone, from west and east, north and south, beneath whose windows the whole world passed, barges with pennons flying and with music playing all the live-long day, and oft far into the night. Ah, it was a glorious time! Who would have thought of the misery to come!" She put her kerchief to her eyes and wept audibly.

"It is over, Mother, it is over," said Henrietta, kneeling beside her.

"It can never be over," answered the queen. "Those joy days are ever present with me, not even when your brother has avenged your father's death upon his murderers shall I forget. My sun is dimmed for ever." And a look of hatred came over her face. "We will not talk of it," she continued, shrugging her shoulders in her quick French way. "You want to know about this England, children? Well, we shall go back to Somerset House. It is my own, given to me by my husband, and there we shall dwell. It is a beautiful place, full--as I have told you--of sunlight; very different from this gloomy Louvre."

"But we have been very happy here," said Agnes. "I fear our play-days are over."

The queen smiled and stroked the child's face. "You are growing a big girl, Agnes; we must think of something better for you than play, ma mie."

Patience coming in broke this strain of talk. She and the queen went to the farther end of the room together in consultation.

Indeed, for the next few months there was much planning and much talking. It was the month of May when King Charles went to England, and England became old England again in its festive gaiety. From the moment Charles set foot on English soil at Dover with his brothers the Dukes of York and Gloucester, and was met by General Monk and courtiers, who knelt to welcome him, England went mad concerning him. On the twenty-ninth of May, which was his birthday, he made his solemn entry into London. We are told the streets were railed, and windows and balconies were hung with tapestries, flowers were scattered in his path, and all was joy and jubilee. So he entered triumphantly that Whitehall where the king, his father, had suffered so cruelly. It was a strange metamorphosis. Those who had been the father's bitterest enemies now bowed before the son. They called him the "King of Hearts". From his people he would receive a "crown of hearts", they said; "the duty of all men would be to make him forget the past; he was to be the most glorious king of the happiest people. Such was his welcome!"

All this was reported to his mother, still living at the Louvre, waiting for her summons to go home, and the whole of that summer passed in joy and laughter. Princess Henrietta was courted by foreign potentates and even by kings, but the queen would not part with her.

"She has shared my troubles, she must share my joys; she must go home with me," she said.

In the autumn the queen set sail with her suite for England, and after what seemed to Agnes a weary journey by sea and land, they reached London, and were conducted through the city to Somerset House, the "Queen's House" as it was called.

Agnes kept close to the princess. Nothing Patience said to her was of any avail; she was determined; she set her lips and pushed her away.

"I will not leave the princess," she said, clinging to her gown.

"Let her alone," said Princess Henrietta; "she is my charge, Patience." So she kept her in her room, and they slept together that first night; yet, strange to tell, they knew not why, both fell asleep weeping.

"It is a bad omen," said Patience; "evil will come of it;" and she looked down sadly upon those two young faces wet with tears.

CHAPTER II

Newbolt Manor

"Well, Ann, all I can say is, that, though I hate turn-coats, I am thankful my father has ranged himself on the right side at last. Others are doing like him. We know full well that one of Cromwell's own daughters was against him. Fairfax and Falkland, those great and noble men, both fought for the liberties of England against their king. General Monk, who is bringing Charles home, was a republican; but times have changed. It needed a strong hand like Cromwell's to govern England without hereditary right, only with might. Richard Cromwell, good fellow though he be, could not do it, and he knew it from the first. He has had enough of ruling, he told me so but the other day; he is only too thankful to retire into private life, farm his own land, and smoke his pipe in peace. So we need not feel any compunction over the fact that our father has given in his adhesion to the king at last, and now I shall be at liberty to follow the dictates of my heart. I was too young to fight for our martyred king, but I am of age now, and will at once enlist in his son's service. Let us hope we may have our rightful king and our rightful liberties as well. I'm for King Charles! Hurrah!" And Reginald Newbolt took up his hat from the table beside him and tossed it gaily into the air.

His sister, Ann Newbolt, laughed at him as she echoed his "Hurrah!"

"I am glad of it," she went on; "you cannot conceive how glad, Reginald! You can never know what pain and grief the murder of our king has been to me. I think my father felt it sorely, and yet he has always held that it was a necessity."

"He had no hand in it," cried Reginald sharply.

"Not directly," answered Ann. "I believe he would not vote either for or against, which vexed our mother greatly."

"It was a mistake," said Reginald, his young face lighting up with a certain sternness. "A man ought to know his own mind: it should be either 'yea' or 'nay'. My father would have had me enlist in Cromwell's army, young as I was; but I would not, and, thank God, I did not! I can show clean hands and a loyal heart to Charles Stuart when he lands."

"Will you go up to London with my father?" she said.

"No," he answered, in the same stern voice. "I shall go alone, and lay my virgin sword at my king's feet."

His sister looked at him with intense love and pride. They were the only children of Colonel Newbolt, who had served the Republican cause throughout the Civil Wars so well that Cromwell had rewarded him with gifts of land and property which had belonged to old Royalist families, who had either disappeared in the struggle or been dispossessed. The most important of these was the Abbey de Lisle, a lovely estate in Westmorland, amidst the moors and fells, just bordering upon Yorkshire. The house had been an old monastery of great fame. Its chapel had been one of exquisite beauty a hundred years before, but under Thomas Cromwell's ruthless hand, in the reign of Henry VIII, when monasteries and abbeys were sacked, it had been reduced to ruins, and so remained, unroofed, with the grass growing up the nave and through the aisles. Ivy clambered round the delicate pillars, and moss lay thick on the steps leading up to the broken altar.

It had been bestowed by Henry on the De Lisles, and with it, as was believed by many, a curse had been inherited, uttered by the last monk who passed out of the monastery grates. It ran thus: "The abbey and its lands shall go from the De Lisles, even as it came to them, by fire and sword".

Now the prophecy had been fulfilled. Gilbert de Lisle, the last of his race, had fallen fighting for King Charles in the Battle of Worcester. He left no children--the race was extinct.

So Cromwell had bestowed the land and all that appertained thereto, the dower-house and the abbey itself, upon Colonel Newbolt, to be his and his heirs' after him. Thither he had brought his wife and children, had spent a considerable sum of money in restoring the house, which had been injured during the war; but the chapel remained a ruin--even that was a concession--and many blamed him for not razing it to the ground. Cromwell's soldiers had finished Henry VIII's vandalism, mutilated the few remaining statues, and broken to pieces the stained-glass window over the altar.

In the country around it was whispered that at midnight there were shadows seen coming and going, ghosts of the dead monks, whose tombs had been desecrated, but whose bodies still rested in the crypt below the altar, awaiting the great judgment day.

Reginald and Ann Newbolt had been little more than children when they came to the Abbey, and the very atmosphere of the place seemed to seize upon their imaginations. They felt kindly towards the dead monks and towards the De Lisles, whose portraits hung in the long gallery which ran the length of the quadrangle. They became, to their father's horror, Royalists. Reginald at fifteen refused to join the Parliamentary forces, though his father could have obtained for him a first-rate appointment. Had he been older, he would have gone straight over to the other side; but the final defeat of the king and his death prevented him from taking that step.

A year or two before our story opens the young man had gone abroad, had visited King Charles in Holland, and sworn allegiance to him. This was unknown to his father, and upon his return he had contented himself with following the natural course of events, fully persuaded in his own mind that when Cromwell should cease to rule England, the English nation would recall their rightful monarch.

His was not an isolated case. There were many young men--ay, old men too--in England in whom Charles's death killed republicanism and awoke once more the smouldering embers of loyalty.

As for Ann, she had not hidden her feelings any more than Lady Fairfax had done; she worshipped the martyred king. Their mother was a Puritan, of an old Puritan family, and the defection of her children was a source of infinite trouble to her. She ruled her house with Puritanical strictness. Morning and evening the whole family assembled for the reading of the Bible and for prayers. She herself dressed in the plainest attire, without furbelows or jewels of any kind. Her maids and the men who served in the house were clothed after the same fashion. Ann at one time sought to array herself something after the mode of the French court, with laces and ribbons, and with her hair curled; but her mother would not have it, and more than once she was sent to her chamber to dress herself decently; and so wisely Ann yielded to her mother, and wore the plain muslins and sober colours which marked a Puritan girl.

With her son Mistress Newbolt never discussed matters, for she knew that he would not yield to her one inch. He had told her once and for all, when he was quite a lad, that he was a king's man, and that he would never draw his sword in any other cause. He was her own son, as steadfast as she was, in holding fast by what he considered to be right. At the present moment she was deeply grieved at her husband's action in furthering the accession of Charles II.

It was of no use for Colonel Newbolt to reason with his wife, to show her that the kingdom could not be governed by such men as Richard Cromwell, and who else was there to govern it? The nation at large called for their sovereign, for their old race of kings; and he, Colonel Newbolt, hoped and believed that the new king had learnt wisdom in exile, and would govern with equity and justice. He said as much to his wife, but Mistress Newbolt laughed scoffingly. "Did you ever know a Stuart govern wisely?" she asked. "That man, Charles Stuart, will surely bring his mother back again and lodge her in Somerset House with her French people and her priests, where so lately the Lord Protector hath lain in state. Ay, the tide has turned, and you with it; but as for me, I stand by the good cause, as befits the daughter of one who fell at Dunbar."

So there was a sharp division in the house. Mistress Newbolt spoke little, but they sometimes heard her singing slowly and fervently in her own room to the old tune sung before the victory at Dunbar:

"O Lord our God, arise and let

Thine en'mies scattered be;

And let all them that do Thee hate

Before Thy presence flee".

 

Hearing her one day as they stood together at the window in the picture gallery, Ann said to her brother:

"If only she does not persuade our father to change his mind again!"

"She will not do that; my father's mind is fixed for once," answered Reginald. "He said only the other day, 'The great Lord Protector is dead; there is none to take his place; we can but trust the future to God. It were foolish for me to set my face against the new order of things. I should neither make nor mend, and I should probably lose all I have gained--my lands and my money'."

Ann bent her head. "Yes, that holds him," she said. "He loves this place; he would not part with it on any consideration."

"But suppose the rightful heir should turn up?" said Reginald.

"There is no rightful heir," answered Ann; "the last man died at Worcester, childless."

"Was he married?" asked Reginald.

"Oh, yes!" said Ann; "there is an old woman down the village who knew him, and saw his young bride when he brought her home to this very house, a lovely girl, she said, too tender to weather the storms of these rough times; so when her husband died, she, broken-hearted, died also."

"And we have stepped into their place," said Reginald; "at least, there is no one to reproach us with it. No one seems to have any claim except perhaps some distant cousins of the late De Lisles I once heard of."

"Have you ever tried to find out aught concerning these De Lisles?" asked Ann.

"Yes I have," answered Reginald, "for I have always had a sort of feeling against ousting people out of their rights."

"Ah, well! it would make no difference," said Ann, "for my father told me that the deeds which gave us this estate were well and securely made out to him and to his heirs for ever."

"For ever!" repeated Reginald, with a light laugh; "as if there could be a for ever in this world." And he turned on his heel and went his way across the quadrangle beneath the great porch, where Ann lost sight of him.

"If he did find a lost heir," said Ann, "he is capable of throwing up his inheritance, at least if he were the master, which he is not."

As Reginald swung down the broad avenue of lime-trees, he saw his father coming towards him. It vexed him, for they had but little in common.

Colonel Newbolt was a man who had risen from the people. He had displayed considerable military talents, which Cromwell had been quick to recognize and to make use of; so he had pushed John Newbolt, stirring up his ambition and throwing titbits to him as one does to a hungry dog, and Newbolt had responded. He was not a man likely to go back, or to suffer himself to be defrauded of what he had gained honestly, as he considered, therefore he now persuaded himself that the change in his political opinions was both desirable and lawful. His position had been, according to his lights, honestly won, both in the field and in Parliament, where he had taken his seat. It was but natural that he should desire to retain his place and wealth, and hand them down to his son.

He was glad that circumstances had enabled him to join hands with Reginald, and, as is often the case, his new loyalty was somewhat exaggerated, almost to bravado.

"Well, Reggie, will you be ready to ride to-morrow?" he asked boisterously, as he came up towards him.

"Where to?" asked the youth.

"Why, to London, of course, man! We must not be laggards. I would not miss the king's entrance into the city for a hundred pounds."

"I had not thought of going so soon," said Reginald; "but if you desire it, I will accompany you."

"I do desire it," said his father; "we will go together."

"As far as London," said Reginald; "but as for presenting myself with you before the king, I cannot do that; I have no place at court."

"Tush, tush, man!" said his father, "we will soon find you one."

"Thanks! but I am in no hurry," said Reginald; "nevertheless I will ride with you. I should like to see the pageant, and shout 'Long live the king!'"

A cloud had gathered on the colonel's brow. He perceived only too clearly that his son was unwilling to appear at court under his auspices, and he did not dare to press the matter, because, though Reginald was always respectful and in a general way obedient, the father was afraid of him. He knew it was a case of "so far and no farther".

"When are you thinking of starting?" asked Reginald.

"Not later than to-morrow early," said the colonel, "so see you are ready. You had better take two men for your own service, and I will take two for myself. Look to their clothes, their horses' harness, and their appointments altogether. I would not be behind my fellows."

"Am I to go as a Cavalier or as a Roundhead?" said his son.

"Roundhead!" answered his father furiously. "Who talks of Roundheads? Are we not all Cavaliers? Why, if you play your cards well, you may yet be Sir Reginald Newbolt."

"Nay," said Reginald, "there are many better men than we are, Father, who have won knighthood fighting for the king; they must come first, we after, if at all."

"Nonsense!" said his father; "if our new king picks and chooses like that, he will make a great mistake. Why, who are bringing him back? Not Royalists, but Cromwell's men. Let him remember that!"

Reginald shrugged his shoulders. "At least I should not put myself to the fore, if I were you, Father."

"You are a fool, Reginald. If I hold back I shall seem half-hearted, and that would never do. I shall ride and meet the king on his way to London, and join his escort. Will you come with me or not?"

"As far as London we will ride together," said Reginald, "but then we will part company. You are an old soldier; I am not yet sworn in."

His father looked at him askance. "Do you doubt me, Reginald?"

"Not for one moment," answered his son; "but in this matter I desire to stand alone. We can never tell, Father; I have a clean record, which may be of use to you."

The colonel laughed. "I don't think I run much danger. Why, there is scarce a man who is welcoming Charles to London who has not fought with the Parliamentarians. He would have to take a scythe if he were to sweep off the heads of all those who have fought against him. And there is the Treaty of Breda to protect us."

"You forget the clause," said Reginald.

"Tut, tut!" answered the colonel. "De Vere and a few others will be arrested; the rest will get off."

"Possibly," said Reginald, "but I doubt it."

At that moment the supper-bell rang out from the belfry, and father and son went together into the great hall, which had been the refectory of the monks. It was a beautiful place, with carved oak panelling and fretted roof; but Ann noticed as she sat beside her father that he was somewhat querulous that night, and drank deeper than was his wont.

"Has anything happened?" she asked Reginald after supper, looking at her father.

"Nothing that I am aware of," answered Reginald. "Good-night, little one!" And so they parted.

Father and son rode forth together the following morning on their way to London.