He bowed ironically towards the door. Their unlordly lordships went off together, and he followed and closed the door behind him. Dot sensibly hustled off the lackey, and so we were alone together.

As ever, I had my full reward. She turned to me, took my hands in hers, and whispered, "My splendid Oliver!"

"What, madam?" said I, laughing lest I should do otherwise and most unbecomingly. "In a red beard?"

"You look like a Cossack!" she declared, laughing in her turn.

So, in the way we had, we kept ourselves at arm's length from each other and dropped at once into our old footing.

Then, bit by bit, and unwillingly, and mainly in answers to my questions, she told a tale that made my heart bound within me. This is the mere skeleton of it, for I have no skill to give body and soul to such devotion.

The Colonel brought the news of my capture by Brocton, pieced together from the stories of my men, who got back unhurt, and of one of Brocton's dragoons who was luckily taken prisoner in order to be questioned.

Margaret had immediately started on horseback for London, with one English servant in attendance, going by Appleby to evade the Duke's army, and across the mountains to Darlington. There she had travelled flying post down the great north road, getting to London in five days thirteen hours after her start from Penrith.

Master Freake had started back with her within five hours of her arrival.

They travelled post through Leicester and Derby, and then on over ground that was familiar. No wonder I had thought her near, since she had pa.s.sed within fifty paces of me as I shambled about dreaming of her. Part of the five hours' delay in London was taken up by a visit paid by Master Freake to the Earl of Ridgeley. He had gone forth stern and resolute. What had happened she did not know, but as they sped north the Earl sped north a mile behind them, as if they were dragging him along by his heart-strings.

At Carlisle, now in the hands of the Duke, they drew blank, for Brocton was unaccountably absent from military duty. Fortunately Margaret, from the window of her room, saw the sergeant ride by. Dot was sent on his track and learned that Brocton was here, the house being a hunting-lodge belonging to a crony of his who was an officer in the c.u.mberland militia.

They had ridden out that morning to see him, at which point her tale linked up with mine and ended.

"I am greatly indebted to you, Margaret," said I, very lamely, slipping out her name at unawares.

"Nonsense!" she cried. "May I not do as much as your pet ghostie did for you without being a miracle? Do not you dare, sir, to offer me a pinnerfull of guineas!"

She looked at me with a merry twinkle in her eyes, and I feel sure I knew what she was thinking of. But Nance Lousely was a simple country maiden, such as I was born and bred amongst, and at that time I had no vile red stubble, rough as a horse-comb, on my chin.

We were interrupted by the lackey, who came with Mr. Dot Gibson's respects to his honour, and would his honour like the refreshment of a shave and a bath as both were at his service? Like master, like man. This resplendent person was for the nonce humility's self. I went with him and was made clean and comfortable, and my rags trimmed a little.

This was preliminary to being summoned by Master Freake to a discussion with their lordships, with whom was Margaret, aloof and icy.

"At the 'Ring o' Bells,'" began Master Freake, addressing me, "you took from my lord Brocton's sergeant, now dead, a bundle of papers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Among them a letter addressed simply, 'To His Royal Highness'?"

"That is so, sir."

"You gave that letter to me, unopened, in the presence of Mistress Waynflete?"

"I did," said I, and Margaret nodded agreement.

"Several attempts have been made to recover the letter from you?"

"At least three such attempts were made by the late sergeant, and two by my lord Brocton," I replied.

"Their lordships' urgent need of recovering the letter is thus proven, and the Court will attach due weight to the facts," said Master Freake.

Brocton turned white as a sheet, and the old rogue shook as a dead leaf shakes on its twig before the wind strips it off. There was in them none of the family pride which keeps the great families agoing.

"I opened the letter. I mastered its contents. I still have it,"

continued Master Freake, every sentence, like the crash of a sledge-hammer, making these craven bystanders shake at the knees. "It is deposited, sealed up again, with a sure friend, who has instructions, unless I claim it in person on or before the last day of this year, to deliver it in person to the King. At present no one knows its contents except my lord Brocton who wrote it, and I who read it."

"Thank G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the rascal old earl fervently.

"Egad," thought I to myself. "It's the Ridgeley estates no less."

"We will call it, for the purposes of our discussion," said Master Freake soothingly, "a letter about certain lands."

"Yes! Yes! Certainly! A letter about lands! So it was!" cried the Earl eagerly, and Brocton began to look less like a coward on the scaffold.

"Would you prefer any other designation or description, my lords?"

inquired Master Freake.

"I'm quite satisfied, my good Master Freake," babbled the Earl.

"What lands?" I burst out, unable to hold in my curiosity any longer.

"The lands known as the Upper Hanyards in the county of Staffordshire,"

replied Master Freake.

"Well I'm ----," cried I, in amazement, but pulling up in time, and Margaret's blue eyes were as wide open as mine.

"You are, Master Oliver Wheatman," said Master Freake, "the future, rightful owner of the ancient estate of your family in all its former amplitude; and all arrearages of rents and incomings as from the thirteenth of April, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two, with compound interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum, together with a compensation for disturbance and vexation caused to you and yours, provisionally fixed in the sum of two thousand pounds. The Earl of Ridgeley, smitten to the heart by the remembrance of his roguery and knavery, has agreed to make this full rest.i.tution. Am I right, my lord?"

"Absolutely, Master Freake, if you please," whined the rascal old earl.

"My G.o.d, I'm a ruined man!"

"Well, my lord," said Master Freake, "if you lose your lands and moneys, and I will not bate an acre or a guinea of the full tale, you and your son will at least retain what, as I see, you both value more highly. The rest.i.tution is to be made by you to me personally, so that we can avoid quibbles about Oliver's legal position, he being a rebel confessed, and the day after he is inlawed I will in my turn convey the property in both kinds to him. When the rest.i.tution has been fully and legally made, without speck or flaw in t.i.tle, and pa.s.sed as such by my lawyers, the letter will be returned to you sealed as now, and of course I shall be rigidly silent on the matter. Your lordships," he ended coldly, "may start for London at once to see to the matter."

The old earl started for the door eagerly, calling down on his son dire and foul curses. Brocton looked poisonously at me before following, and I knew I had not done with him yet.

"I've got you your lands, Oliver, but there has been no time to get you pardoned. The King was at Windsor; every moment was precious; and there was no use, in the temper of the town, in dealing with underlings. It will not do to run any risk of your being retaken, for c.u.mberland loves blood-letting, and is no friend of mine. We shall take you to a little fishing village on the Solway and get you a cast over to Dublin, whither my good ship, 'Merchant of London,' Jonadab Kilroot, Master, outward bound for the Americas, will pick you up. When we all meet again in London, in a few months, you will be pardoned. Margaret and I must now follow her father. The Stuart cause is smashed to pieces."

Late that night I stood with Margaret on the end of a jetty in a little fishing village on the c.u.mberland coast. Master Freake was giving final instructions to the owner of a herring-buss that was creaking noisily against the side of the jetty under the swell of the tide. Dot was busily handing to one of her crew of two certain packages for my use.

We stood together, and she had linked her arm in mine. We who had been so close together for a month were now to have an ocean put between us. Not that that mattered to me, already separated from her by something wider than the Atlantic, a lonely unnamed grave away there in Staffordshire.

Suddenly she called to Dot, and he, as knowing just what she wanted, brought her a box. She loosed her arm from mine and took it from him, and when I would in turn have relieved her of it, she gently refused.

"Oliver," she said, in quiet, firm tones, "you met me when I was in grave danger and immediately, like the gallant gentleman you are, left mother and home to do me service."

"It was the privilege of my life, madam," I said earnestly.

"You have sweetened your service by so regarding it, giving greatly when you gave. And, sir, that service put me in your debt. You see that?"

"It is like you to say so. What of it?"