"Ah! true," interrupted the Prince, reflectively.

"If your Highness deign to say the word, they'll be brought back. It's not yet too late."

The suggestion was selfish as it was base. For he who made it but wished them detained on his own account.

For a moment Rupert seemed inclined to fall in with it; and might have done so, but for a reflection that got the better of him.

"_Nein_, Colonel!" he said at length. "We dare not."

"What dares not your Royal Highness?"

"That you propose. You forget the terms of capitulation? To infringe them would cause scandal, and of that we Cavaliers have had accusation already--as much as we can well carry. Ha-ha-ha!"

The laugh told how little he cared for it, and how lightly it sat upon his conscience.

"Your Highness, I'm aware of all that," persisted Lunsford. "But these are excepted people--that is, the father."

"How so?"

"Because of his being one of the King's worst and bitterest enemies.

But that's not all. He's been a _recusant_--is still. I myself attempted to levy on him for a loan by Privy Seal--three thousand pounds--the King required. I not only failed to get the money, but came near being set upon, and possibly torn to pieces, by a mob of Dean Foresters--very wolves--his adherents and retainers. Surely all that should be sufficient justification for the detaining of him and his."

Prompted by his vile pa.s.sions again, the Royal Sybarite seemed inclined to act upon the diabolical counsel. But, although the war's history already bristled with chronicles of crime, nothing quite so openly scandalous, as that would be, had yet appeared upon its pages. Many such there were afterwards, when this Prince and his gallants had more corrupted England's people, and better accustomed them to look lightly on the breaches of all law and all decency.

At a later period Rupert would not have regarded them, as indeed he did not twelve months after in this same city of Bristol. Of his behaviour then thus wrote one of his attached servitors to the Marquis of Ormonde,--

"Prince Rupert is so much given to his ease and pleasure that every one is disheartened that sees it. The city of Bristol is but a great house of bawdry."

Things were not so on that day succeeding its surrender, and public opinion had still some restraint upon him. Enough to deter him from the outrage he would otherwise willingly have perpetrated.

"Never mind, Colonel," he at length said resignedly. "We must let the birds go, and live in hopes of seeing them again. You know their roosting place, I suppose?"

"I do, your Royal Highness."

"So, well! When we've settled things with the sword, which we soon shall now, I may want you to pilot me thither. Meanwhile, _laszt es gehen_."

At which the dialogue ended, unheard by all save Reginald Trevor. And he only overheard s.n.a.t.c.hes of it; still enough to make him apprehensive about the fate of Vaga Powell. If he wanted her for himself it was not in the way Prince Rupert wanted her.

CHAPTER FORTY.

THE CADGERS ON THE KYMIN.

"Laws, Jack! fear us be takin' back bad news to Sir Richard. An worse for the poor young lady at Glo'ster. Rob's tolt me her wor well-nigh deestract when her heerd he wor took pris'ner. What'll it be as her get to hear o' his bein' bad wounded too? Her knows nothin' o' that."

"Maybe 'tant so much o' a wownd after all, nothin' for he to go dead on.

Folks allays zagerates sich things. An' if he live it through, like 'nough 'twon't be very long fores they git un free o' his 'prisonment.

I ha' an idea, Winny dear, the letter us ha' got be relatin' to that same. Else-wise why shid the Colonel Kyrle, who wor onct on the Parlamenteery side, an's now on t'other why shid him be writin' to Sir Richard, or Sir Richard to he? Beside, all this queery business us be a doin'. It seem to mean somethin' 'bout gittin' the young gen'lemen out o' gaol; maybe by changin' he for another. Don't ee think so?"

"Like it do."

She knew it meant that, and more. For Rob Wilde had given her a hint of why they had been sent to Monmouth market--ostensibly cadging on their own account, but in reality as messengers in the pay and employ of Sir Richard Walwyn. Though Jack was personally the bearer of the secret despatches, Winny was the one entrusted with the diplomacy, and knew more than she thought necessary to confide to him.

They were on return from the market--for it was afternoon--and once more climbing a steep hill; this time not the _Cat's_ but the _Kymin_--the old Roman Road (Camen), which, crossing the Wye at Monmouth (Blestium), led up to the Forest table-land by Staunton. The ascent commences at the bridge, winding for miles through romantic woods and scenery unsurpa.s.sed in England. The bridge as then was a quaint, ma.s.sive structure, having a towered gate on its _tete de pont_, with portcullis, draw-arch, and guard-house. A guard of Royalist soldiers were stationed on it; for ever since the breaking out of the war Monmouth had been kept for the King. But the cadgers had found no difficulty in pa.s.sing this guard, either at going in, or coming out. It was market day, and Jink.u.m was laden with marketable commodities--a motley collection of farmyard fowls--hens, ducks, and geese--making a very pandemonium in the panniers. Had the soldiers upon the bridge but known what the little limping man carried inside his wooden leg, like enough they would have pitched him over the parapet. It was after getting clear of them, and well uphill, that the brother and sister were unburthening themselves to one another, as above described. The dialogue had commenced by Jack chuckling over the way they had outwitted the bridge guards, and referring back to how they had done the same, some fifteen months before, with the "Cavalieres," encountered on the Bristol road by Berkeley. He was in high glee, jesting about and praising his artificial leg--which had proved worth more to him than the real one-- again in pleasant antic.i.p.ation of a like remunerative result. The sister, however, was not joyous as he; her thoughts just then dwelling on that poor young lady described by Rob Wilde as having been "well-nigh deestract." That was it which had turned their conversation into the channel it had taken.

There was a short interregnum of silence after Winny's a.s.senting rejoinder. Broken by Jack with an observation bearing on the same topic of discourse, but about a different place and time.

"'Twor a pity the Captain goed back to Hollymead wi' so few o' his sodgers along. I cud a tolt he that wan't safe, seein' the Colonel Lingen ha' his quarters so near by, in Goodrich Castle. Him be a dangerous neighbour, an' master o' all round about theer now."

"Ye be right, Jack; 'twor a pity," she answered, echoing his first reflection. "But theer wor a good reason for 't, Rob's gied me. Seems Master Powell had somethin' at Hollymead--him wanted gettin' to Glo'ster, so's to be safer theer. 'Twor a thing o' great value him had hid away, fores leavin' for Bristol that time, an' the Captain volunteered like to go for it. How could him know o' the danger frae Goodrich? That wor brought about by treezun; one o' his men, who stepped away in the night an' warned the Colonel Lingen. So him got tooked by surprise."

"Well, they didn't take he, 'ithout gettin' a taste of his steel; a sharp taste, too; beside more frae his sodgers, few as they wor. Jim Davis, who wor up to the house, mornin' after, seed blood all 'bout the place; more'n could a' comed o' them as lay killed. The Cavalieres had carried away the wounded a' both sides, wi' theer own dead; as Jim think a good dozen."

"That be true enough; more nor a dozen, I ha' myself heerd. But what do it signify how many o' Lingen's wolves be gone dead, if that handsome young gentlemen ha' to die, too? Sure as we be on Kymin hill, 'twill break Mistress Vaga's heart."

"Stuff an' nonsense! Hearts beant so eezy broke."

"Ah! that's all _you_ know about it."

She could make the remark with confidence in its truth. There was no record of Jerky ever having had sweetheart, or feeling the soft sentiment of love. And for herself, some pangs of jealousy which Rob Wilde had occasioned her, though unconsciously, made her a believer that hearts _could_ be broken. For this great Forest woman loved like a lioness, and could be jealous as a tigress.

"Oh, well!" rejoined the amiable brother, without taking notice of the slur on his lack of his amatory experience, "it mout be as ye say, sister Winny; supposin' the young gen'leman's wounds to prove mortyal.

But that an't like, from all us ha' heerd the day. So let's we live in hope. An' I wudn't wonner," he added, in a more cheerful tone; "wudn't a bit wonner, if, inside this timmer leg o' mine, theer be somethin' to tell Sir Richard the Captain an't in any great danger. Maybe to say him will soon be out o' prison, an' bade in his saddle, to cut down another Cavaliere or two."

"Hope that's the news us be takin' to High Meadow. Whativer 'tis, let we get theer quick's us can. Whack on the creetur."

The final admonition referred to Jink.u.m; and his master, in obedience to it, gave out the customary "yee-up!" accompanied by the less usual application of cudgel.

A good deal of this last the donkey now needed. The morning had been hot, with the panniers full and heavy, toward the market. Now, on return, it was still sultry, and the wicker weighted as ever, Sir Richard Walwyn was not the strategist to let his scheme have a chance of miscarrying; and Jink.u.m was bearing back into the Forest country a large consignment of grocery goods; for which the consignee would care little, save as to the time of delivery. But about this he would be particular to an instant, as the cadgers knew; and so, on up the Kymin, Jink.u.m caught stick, in showers thick as had ever rained upon his hips, even when climbing the sharper and more familiar pitches of Cat's Hill.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

BY THE "BUCKSTONE."

On the highest point of the Forest of Dean district--just one thousand feet above ocean's level--is a singular ma.s.s of rock known as the "Buckstone." An inverted pyramid, with base some fifteen feet in diameter, poised upon its apex, which rests on another rock ma.s.s of quadrangular shape as upon a plinth. Into this the down-turned apex seems indented so far as to make the apparent surface of contact but a few square feet. In reality the two ma.s.ses are detached, the superimposed one so loose as to have obtained the character of a "rocking stone." Many the attempt to rock it; many the party of tourists who had laid shoulders against it to stir it from its equilibrium; not a few taking departure from the place fully convinced they had felt, or seen it, move.

And many the legend belonging thereto, Druidical and demoniac; some a.s.signing it an artificial, others a supernatural, origin.

Alas for these romantic conjectures! the geologist gives them neither credence nor mercy. Letting the light of science upon the Buckstone, he shows how it comes to be there; by the most natural of causes--simply through the disintegration of a soft band of the old red sandstone interposed between strata of its harder conglomerate.

From beside this curious eccentricity of the weather-wearing forces is obtained one of the finest views of all England, or rather a series of them, forming a circular panorama. Turn what way one will the eye encounters landscape as lovely as it is varied. To the east, south-east, and south can be seen the far-spreading champaign country of Gloucester, Somerset, and Devon, here and there diversified by bold, isolated prominences, as the Cotswolds and Mendips, with a n.o.ble stream, the Severn, winding snake-like along, and gradually growing wider, till in funnel-shape it espouses the sea, taking to itself the t.i.tle of Channel.

From the sh.o.r.es of this, stretching away northward, but west from the Buckstone, is a country altogether different. No plains in that direction worth the name, but hills and undulating ridges, rolling up higher and higher as they recede, at length ending in a mountain background, blue black, with a horizontal line which shows many a curious _col_ and summit.

The greater portion of this view is occupied by the shire of Monmouth, its foreground being the valley of the Wye, where this river, after running the gauntlet between English Bicknor and the Dowards, comes out surging and foam-crested as a victorious warrior with his plumes still unshorn. And as he in peaceful times might lay them aside, so the fretted and writhing river, clot after clot, casts off its snowlike froth, and, seemingly appeased, flows in tranquil current through the narrow strip of meadow land on which stands the miniature city of Monmouth.