Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London

CHAPTER VII.
MISTRESS MILLICENT

"'Tis a pretty wench, a very pretty wench, – nay, a very, very, very pretty wench."

– The Wise-woman of Hogsdon.

The house of Thomas Etheridge, goldsmith, was near facing the great gilt cross in Cheapside, the images around whose base – especially that of the Virgin – were chronically in a state of more or less defacement. A few doors east of Master Etheridge's, and directly opposite the cross, was the western end of Goldsmith's Row, described by Stow as "the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London, or elsewhere in England." It consisted of "ten fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly built four stories high, beautified toward the street with the Goldsmiths' arms and the likeness of woodmen, … riding on monstrous beasts, all … cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt."

Master Etheridge's house, thrusting out an iron arm from which hung a blue-painted square board with a great gilt acorn, was quite as tall and "fair" as any of the ten in the neighbouring "frame." Its upper stories were bright with the many small panes of wide projecting windows. The shop, whose front was usually open to the street by day, occupied the full width, and a good part of the depth, of the ground floor. Behind the shop was a "gallery" or passage, with a private entrance from the side street, and with a stairway; beyond this passage was the kitchen; and over that, the dining-room, which looked down upon a back yard that was really a small garden.

Upon the low plastered ceiling of the dining-room was moulded a curious design of golden acorns. The walls were hung with tapestry representing a chase of deer. The floor was covered with rushes, which crackled under the feet of the boys that waited upon the family at supper.

Captain Ravenshaw, with face clean-shaven all but for the skilfully up-turned moustaches and the tiny lip-tuft, leaned back in his carven chair after a comforting draught of his host's canary, drew his foot away from the dog that was pretending to mistake it for a bone under the table, and thought how lucky were those who supped every day at the board of Thomas Etheridge.

"Yes," said Master Etheridge, who was a man square-faced, square-bodied, hard-eyed, hard-voiced, looking and sounding as if he should deal rather in iron than in the softer, sunnier metal, a man with a shrewd mouth and a keen glance; but just now, for once, a little mellowed by the recollections of youth which his visitor had stirred; "your father was ever a man to have his will or raise a storm else. He led your poor mother many a mad dance. Be thankful all husbands are not as obstinate as Frank Holyday, Jane."

Jane, the goldsmith's wife, looked as if she could tell a tale or two of husband's obstinacy, that would match any to be told of the elder Holyday; but she sweetly refrained. She was a plump, handsome woman, who filled her velvet bodice and white stomacher to the utmost on the safe side of bursting; she was the complete housewife, precise about the proper starching of the ruffs and collars, nice in her dress, of an even temper, choosing serenity rather than supremacy. So she merely beamed the more placidly upon the visitor, and said:

"I warrant this young gentleman will not copy his father in that. His looks show the making of a kind husband. I wish you joy, Master Holyday."

For the pretended Holyday had told the goldsmith in the shop that he was about to marry a young lady of Kent, wherefore he wished presently to buy plate and jewelry. This news had turned the cool reception of an uninvited caller into the cordial welcome of a possible customer. And, as it was a guarantee against his wooing the daughter of the house, for whom a man of the Holydays' moderate estate was no acceptable suitor, it had removed the paternal objection to his presence in the family circle. Hence the goldsmith had honoured the claims of hospitality, and invited his old friend's supposed son to supper.

On being introduced to the ladies, Ravenshaw had promptly recognised the maid of that February night. On her part, his voice had seemed to touch her memory distinctly, but the transformation wrought by the razor had puzzled her as to his face. At supper, sitting opposite him in silence, she had listened alertly while he had continued deluding her father with anecdotes of the elder Holyday; and she had shyly scrutinised his face. He had covertly noticed this. No doubt she was racking her brain in efforts to identify him. Why not enlighten her? The knowledge that he was in the secret of her attempted flight would give him a power over her. So he had said, to her father:

"Oh, pardon my forgetting, sir. I was wrong when I told you I had not been in London except in passing to Cambridge and back. I was here over night last February." At this he had brought his eyes to bear full on Mistress Millicent. "I was in this neighbourhood, too. But the hour was so late, I durs'n't intrude on you. Indeed, no one was abroad in the streets but roysterers, and brawlers, and runaways, and such."

The girl's face had turned of a colour with her lips, her eyes had flashed complete recognition, had met his for an instant in a startled plea for silence, then had hid themselves under their long lashes. Ravenshaw, feeling as if he had struck a blow at something helpless, had glanced quickly at her parents. They had been busy with their knives and spoons, fingers and napkins, and had observed nothing.

Curiosity and fear, the captain had thought, would now make her grant, if not seek, a word with him alone. After that, he had not rested his look upon her again during the supper. He had met her father's eyes readily enough, and her mother's, and those of the ladies' woman, the head shopman, and the other dependents at the lower part of the table, but not hers.

For, of a truth, she was not the vain and affected hussy, or the stiff and supercilious minx, or the bold and impudent hoyden, he had expected to find as the only daughter of a purse-proud citizen. Every movement of her slim young figure, encased in a close blue taffeta gown, seemed to express innocence and gentleness; her oval face, rich in the colour of blushes, lips, and blue eyes, had a most ineffable softness; even her hair, brown and fine, parting across her brow without too many waves, gave an impression of grace and tenderness; and over her countenance, whose natural habit was one of kindly cheerfulness, there now lay something plaintive. Ravenshaw found it not easy to face her, knowing for what purpose he had lied himself into her presence.

And now, the trenchers being nearly bare, and mouths having more leisure to talk than the voracious custom of that day allowed them during meals, Master Etheridge was minded for further reminiscence of his old friend.

"Ay, ay, many's the quart of wine we've drunk together after supper, in my rash days. Your father would have all drink that were about him. Even his dogs he would make drunk. A great man for dogs. I mind me of a prick-eared cur he had, would drink sack with the best of us, and sit on a stool at table with us, and howl with us when we sang our ballads. And there was a terrier, too; I have my reason not to forget him."

"Yes," quoth Ravenshaw; "he bit you in the calf o' the leg the last time you were at our house."

"Nay, that was a water-spaniel did that," said the goldsmith.

Ravenshaw remembered now that Holyday had said a water-spaniel; but he thought it would appear the more natural if he should seem to be in this point tricked by memory, as, in some detail or other, people often are.

"Nay," said he, "I am sure it was the terrier; I remember it as well – "

"Oh, no, never, never the terrier; 'twas the water-spaniel, on my word. Why, I never see the spaniels diving for ducks in the ponds at Islington but I think of it."

But Ravenshaw feigned to be unconvinced, and when, after some further talk, he yielded the point, it was as if merely out of courtesy. When the supper party rose from the table, the captain was for a pipe of tobacco, which he forthwith produced. But Master Etheridge said he was no tobacconist, and that the smoke made his lady ill. Ravenshaw replied that, by their leave, he would then take a turn or two, and a whiff or two, in the garden, whose beauty, observed by him from the window, invited closer acquaintance. Etheridge liked to hear his garden commended before his wife, as its implied sufficiency saved him the expense of a garden with a summer-house in the suburbs, which many a citizeness compelled her husband to possess. So he went cheerfully ahead to show the way.

"When you return, you shall find us in the withdrawing room, across the passage," said Mistress Etheridge.

Ravenshaw bowed to the ladies; in doing which, he met Mistress Millicent's eyes with a look that said as plainly as spoken words: "I have something for your ears." This intimation, in view of the circumstances of their former meeting, could not fail to engage her interest.

The goldsmith led him down-stairs to the ground floor passage, whence a door opened to a narrow way running past the rear of the house to the little garden. This comprised a square of green turf, in the centre of which was an apple-tree, now in blossom; a walk led to and around this tree, and another walk enclosed the whole square. This latter walk was flanked on the outer side by rosemary and various shrubbery, banks of pinks and other flowers; which screened the garden walls except where a gate gave entrance from Friday Street. The farther side of the garden was sheltered by a small arbour of vines; beneath this was a bench, and another bench stood out upon the turf, so that one might sit either in sun or in shade.

It was still daylight; the regular household supper was taken early in those times, and English days are long in May. Yet an early star or two showed themselves in the clear sky. The scent of the pinks and apple-blossoms was in the air.

"A sweet night toward," said the goldsmith, manifesting an inclination to remain with his guest in the garden. But this was what Ravenshaw did not desire. The captain, therefore, as soon as he had lighted his pipe, took Master Etheridge's arm so as to have the greater pretext for walking close to him, and blew such volumes of smoke in the poor man's direction that, for the sake of his eyes and nostrils, being no "tobacconist," he was soon glad to make excuse for returning into the house, and to hasten back, coughing and blinking.

"If she is a woman," mused the captain, left alone, "she will come to hear what I may tell her. She has been on pins and needles. By this light, what a piece of chance! – that this maid should be that one! What shall I say to her? I must open upon the matter of that night. Tut, has she not yet observed I am alone here now? Or has she not the freedom of the house? or the wit to devise means of coming hither? Well, I will give her the time of this pipeful. What a sweet evening!"

But the sweetness of the evening made him only sigh uneasily, and feel more out of sorts with himself. Several minutes passed, and he was thinking he might have to resort to some keen stroke of wit to get private speech with her, after all; when suddenly she appeared, with ghostlike swiftness, at the corner where the passage along the kitchen wing gave into the garden. He was, at the moment, scarce ten feet from that spot.

She was blushing and perturbed. She cast a look up at the dining-room window, then glanced at him, and, instantly dropping her eyes, sped over the turf to the farther side of the apple-tree. He quickly followed her; and when, thereupon, they stood together, the tree screened them from the house.

Without looking at him, and tremblingly plucking the apple-blossoms to hide her confusion, she said, quickly:

"Sir, I thank you for what you did that night. You will not tell them, will you?"

He thought that, by promising unconditionally, he should lose a possible means of controlling her actions; so he must, for the moment, evade.

"Then they know not?" he queried.

"Nay; I got in, and to my chamber, without waking any one."

"And had you no further molestation in the streets? One of those men tricked me, and followed you. I learned it after."

She looked at him with a little surprise. "Nay, I saw him not, nor heard him. I had no trouble. But you will not tell?"

Her wide-open eyes, round and large and of the deepest blue, were turned straight upon his face, as if they meant to leave him not till they should have a direct answer.

"Why – mistress," he blundered, and then dropped his own gaze to where he was beginning to scrape the gravel awkwardly with his shoe, "why need you ask? Did I not protect your secret that night?"

"Then why do you hesitate now?" she demanded, with a sudden unconcealed mistrust. "Oh, Master Holyday, what is in your mind? Why have you drawn me hither to speak with you alone? Why do you make a doubt of promising not to betray me? Come, sir, I have little time; they will soon be wondering where I am; either promise me, or I myself will tell them, and then, by St. Anne, I care not – "

There was a threat of weeping in her voice and face, and Ravenshaw impulsively threw up his hand, and said:

"Nay, fear not. I will not tell. I give my word."

Trouble fled from her face, and a smile of gratitude made her appear doubly charming.

Ravenshaw cleared his throat, without reason, and tried to meet her glance without seeing her, if that had been possible.

"You are a happy maid," quoth he, settling down to a disagreeable business. "'Tis proven that you may play the runaway for an hour or two, when you wish, and none be the wiser. There's many a maid would give her best gown thrice over, for that assurance."

"Troth, it serves me nothing," she said, with a forlornness he could not understand. "An I were to play the runaway again, whither should I run?"

He thought for an instant of going into the mystery of her former desire to run away; but he decided that, as time pressed, it were better to hold to the present design.

"Whither, indeed?" quoth he. "Faith, London has no lack of pleasant bowers, where beauty may hear itself praised by the lips of love. Sure, you look as if I talked Greek to you. Certainly you are wont to hear yourself admired?"

"Oh!" she murmured, at a loss, with a smile, and a blush of confusion.

"Troth, now," said he; "confess you enjoy to be admired."

"Oh, pray," she faltered, "talk not of such things. I know not how to answer."

"Yet you take pleasure in hearing them? Come, the truth, mistress. Faith, 'tis but a simple question."

"Oh – why – I do – and I do not."

"I warrant," quoth he, softly, "there would be no 'I do not,' if the right gentleman spoke them." The captain's tone seemed lightly gay and bantering; but, though she knew it not, his throat was dry, and he was trembling from head to foot like a shivering terrier.

"I am sure I know not," she answered, embarrassedly, but still smiling.

"Put it to the test," he whispered, huskily. "Give him the occasion to speak – one that adores you – hear him utter your praises – hear him vow his devotion – give him the occasion."

"Methinks – you take the occasion now," said she, in a voice scarce above the rustle of the air among the leaves.

"Nay – heaven's light! – I mean not myself!" he said, dismayed.

"Why, wha – ? What then? What mean you?"

Her smile had fled in a breath, and in its place was a look of suddenly awakened horror that smote him like a whip's blow across the eyes.

"Oh, nothing," he stammered. "I mean – 'tis not myself that's worthy to praise you. I know not – I am out of my wits – forget – "

Just then a woman's voice was heard calling from the house, "Mistress Millicent, where art thou?"

"'Tis Lettice, my mother's woman," whispered the girl, quickly. "I must in. I have come out for this bunch of apple-blossoms. Some other time we'll talk – perhaps."

Without another word she ran from the garden.

The captain snapped his pipe in two, and flung the pieces to the ground; then turned toward the evening sky, in which a numerous company of stars now twinkled, a face bitter with self-loathing.

"I am a beast," he hissed; "a slave, a scavenger, a raker of rags, fit company for the dead curs in Houndsditch. Foh! but, by God's light and by this hand, I swear – "

He raised his hand toward the stars, and finished his oath, whatever it was, in thought, not in speech. Then, suddenly resuming his former mien, he turned and walked rapidly into the house.

CHAPTER VIII.
SIR PEREGRINE MEDWAY

 
"How the roses,
That kept continual spring within her cheeks,
Are withered with the old man's dull embraces!"
 

– The Night-Walker.

As the captain entered, he heard some little bustle, as of an arrival. In the lower passage, at the door leading to the kitchen, was a strange serving-man, already on terms of banter with the cook and maids. He was provided with a torch, as yet unlighted; evidently the guest he attended would stay till after dark. Ravenshaw climbed the narrow stairs to the withdrawing-room, of which the door was open.

This was a fine large room, with an oaken ceiling and oaken panelling; with veiled pictures and veiled statues in niches; with solid chairs, carved chests and coffers, tables covered with rich Eastern "carpets;" with a wide window bulging out over Cheapside, and with a great, handsome chimneypiece. The floor was strewn with clean rushes. Some boughs burning in the fireplace gave forth a pleasant odour. A boy was lighting the candles in the sconces.

Ravenshaw's glance took in these details at the same moment in which it embraced the group of people in the room. The goldsmith and his wife stood beaming, and the woman Lettice looked on at a respectful distance, while in the centre of the room was Mistress Millicent in the grasp of a tall, lean old gentleman in gorgeous raiment, who very gallantly kissed both her cheeks and then both her hands.

"Sweet, sweet," this ancient gallant lisped to her, "I can see how thou hast pined. But all is well now; I am with thee again; my leg is mended. Thou wert not fated to lose thy Sir Peregrine for all the ramping horses in England. So cheerily, cheerily now. Smooth thy face; I see how thou'st grieved, and I love thee the better for it."

Mistress Millicent certainly looked far from happy; but her dejection at that moment seemed to proceed less from any past apprehension for the visitor's safety than from a present antipathy to his embraces. She was pale and red by turns, and she drew back from him with much relief the instant he released her. Her eyes met those of Ravenshaw, and she blushed exceedingly, and looked as if she would sink out of observation.

"Come in, Master Holyday," said the goldsmith seeing the captain in the doorway. "Come in and be known to Sir Peregrine Medway. Master Holyday's father is an old friend of mine, that was my neighbour in Kent."

"Holyday, Holyday," repeated Sir Peregrine, with indifferent thoughtfulness, looking at the captain carelessly. "My first wife had a cousin that was a Holyday, or some such name, but not of Kent. Sir, I crave your better acquaintance," to which polite expression the old knight gave the lie by turning from the captain as if he dismissed him for ever from his consciousness, and offering his hand to Mistress Etheridge to lead her to a chair.

"What withered reed of courtesy, what stockfish of gallantry, may this be?" mused Ravenshaw, striding to a corner where he might sit unregarded.

"You should have come hither straightway, bag and baggage," said Master Etheridge to the old fop. "What need was there to go to the inn first?"

"Need? Oh, for shame, sir! Would you have me seen in the clothes I travelled in? Good lack, I trow not! Thinkst thou we that live in Berkshire know not good manners?" The knight spoke in pleasantry; it was clear he accounted himself the mirror of politeness. "What sayst thou, mother?"

"Oh, what you do is ever right, Sir Peregrine," replied Mistress Etheridge, placidly. But Ravenshaw, in his corner, was almost startled into mirth at hearing the wrinkled old visitor address the youthful-looking matron as mother. What did it mean?

Sir Peregrine bowed, with his hand on his heart; in which motion his eye fell upon a speck of something black upon the lower part of his stocking. Stooping further to remove it, and striving not to bend his knees in the action, he narrowly escaped overbalancing; and came up red-faced and panting. Ravenshaw thought he detected in Mistress Millicent's face a flash of malicious pleasure at the old fellow's discomfiture. She had taken a seat by the chimneypiece, where she seemed to be nursing a kind of suppressed fury.

The knight, after his moment of peril, dropped into a chair in rather a tottering fashion, and sat complacently regarding his own figure and attire.

The figure was shrugged up, and as spare as that of Don Quixote – a person, at that time, not yet known to the world. It was dressed in a suit of peach-colour satin, with slashes and openings over cloth of silver; with wings, ribbons, and garters. His shoes were adorned with great rosettes; a ribbon was tied in the love-lock hanging by his ear; and a huge ruff compelled him to hold high a head naturally designed to sink low between his sharp shoulders. His face, a triangle with the forehead as base, was pallid and dried-up; the eyes were small and streaky, the nose long and thin, the chin tipped with a little pointed beard, which, like the up-turned moustaches and the hair of the head, was dyed a reddish brown. On this countenance reposed a look of the utmost sufficiency, that of a person who takes himself seriously, and who never dreams that any one can doubt his greatness or his charms.

From the subsequent talk, it became known to Ravenshaw that Sir Peregrine had, a few months before, been thrown by a horse on his estate in Berkshire, and had but now recovered fully from the effects. The knight described the accident with infinite detail, and with supreme concern for himself, repeating the same circumstances over and over again. He was equally particular and reiterative in his account of his slow recovery. His auditors, making show of great attention and solicitude, punctuated his narrative with many yawns and frequent noddings; but on and on he lisped and cackled.

"Good lack," said he, "there was such coming and going of neighbours for news of how I did! I never knew so much ado made in Berkshire; faith, I lamented that I should be the cause on't, such disturbance of the public peace, and I a justice. And what with the ladies coming in dozens to nurse me! – troth, that they all might have a share on't, and none be offended, I must needs be watched of three at a time – What, sweet?" He was casting a roguish look at Mistress Millicent. "Art vexed? Art cast down? Good lack! see how jealous it is! Fie, fie, sweetheart! Am I to blame if the ladies would flock around me? Comfort thyself; I am all thine."

Mistress Millicent, despite her vexation, of which the cause was other than he assumed, could not help laughing outright. The captain began to see how matters stood. But old Sir Peregrine was untouched by her brief outburst of mirth, and continued to shake a finger of raillery at her.

"Sweet, sweet, ye're all alike, all womankind. My first wife was so, and my second wife was so; and now my third that is to be."

The girl's face blazed like a poppy with fury, and her blue eyes flashed with rebellion. She looked all the more young, and fresh, and warm with life, for that; and when Ravenshaw glanced from her to the colourless, shrivelled old knight – from the humid rose in its first bloom, to the withered rush – he felt for an instant a choking sickness of disgust. But the girl's parents remained serenely callous, and the old coxcomb, with equal insensibility, prattled on, putting it to the blame of nature that he should be, without intent, so much the desire of ladies and the jealousy of his wives past and to come.

Meanwhile Mistress Etheridge, having silently left the room with the woman Lettice, returned alone, and begged Sir Peregrine to come and partake of a little supper. From the knight's alacrity in accepting, it was plain he had honoured the family doubly, – first by tarrying to change his clothes for his call, and then by not tarrying to eat before coming to them, an additional honour that Mistress Etheridge had divined. With courtly bows and flourishes, he followed her toward the dining-chamber; whither he was followed in turn, for politeness' sake, by the goldsmith, who apologised to Ravenshaw for leaving him.

Whatever were the captain's feelings, Mistress Millicent seemed glad, or at least relieved, to be alone with him.

"I wish you joy of your coming marriage," said Ravenshaw, tentatively.

"You would as well wish me joy of my death," she replied, with a mixture of anger and forlornness.

He rose and walked over to the fireplace, near her.

"Why, 'tis true," quoth he; "when the bride is young, the arms of an old husband are a grave."

"Worse! When one is dead in one's grave, one knows nothing; but to be alive in those arms – foh!"

"Your good parents will have you take this husband, I trow, whether you will or no?"

"Yes; and I shall love them the less for it," she replied, sadly.

"Has a contract passed between you?"

"Not on my part, I can swear to that! Before Sir Peregrine went back to Berkshire the last time, they tried to have a betrothal before witnesses; but I let fall both the ring he wished to force upon me and the ring I was to give him; I would not open my lips either to speak, or to return his kiss; I held my hand back, closed tight, and he had to take it of his own accord. And all this the witnesses noted, for they laughed and spoke of it among themselves."

"Is the wedding-day set?"

"It may be any day, now that Sir Peregrine is well and in London. No doubt they will get a license, to save thrice asking the banns. I hope I may die in my sleep ere the time comes!"

"'Twere pity if that hope came true," said Ravenshaw, smiling.

"I dare not hope for a better escape. I'm not like to be favoured again as I was the other time Sir Peregrine was coming to town for the marriage. Then his horse threw him, and gave me a respite – but for only three months. Now he is well again, and safe and sound in London."

"What, were you in this peril three months ago?"

"Yes. 'Twas that which made me try to run away, the night you first saw me. The next day, instead of him, came news of his accident."

"Whither would you have run?"

"To my Uncle Bartlemy's, in Kent. You know him of course; he lives near your father."

"Oh, yes, yes, certainly," replied the supposed Holyday.

"And you saw him that night; at least, you told me the watch had let him go."

"What, was that your Uncle Bartlemy? – the old gentleman you were to have met – the man my friends and I rescued from the watch!"

"I knew not 'twas you had rescued him; but 'twas he I went to meet at the Standard. Nay, then, if 'twas Uncle Bartlemy you rescued, you would have known him!"

"Oh, as for that," blundered Ravenshaw, realising how nearly he had betrayed himself, "no doubt 'twas your Uncle Bartlemy, now I think on't; but I recognised him not that night. For, look you, he took pains to keep unknown; and all was darkness and haste; and though we are neighbours, I see but little of him; and he is the last man I should expect to meet in London abroad in the streets after curfew."

"That is true enough," she said, with a smile; "and I hope you will not play the telltale upon him. If his wife knew he had been to London, there would be an end of all peace. Sure, you must promise me not to tell; for 'twas my pleading brought him to London."

"Oh, trust me. I give my word. So he came to help you run away from being married to this old knight?"

"Yes. You know there's no love lost betwixt Uncle Bartlemy and my father. But mine uncle hath doted upon me from the first, the more, perchance, because he hath no child of his own. And I think he loves me doubly, for the quarrel he has with my father."

"And so he had not the heart to refuse when you begged him to come and carry you away to his house," conjectured Ravenshaw.

"'Tis so. 'Twas the only way I could devise to escape the marriage. I thought, if all could be done by night, I might be concealed in mine uncle's house; and even if my father should think of going there to seek me, he could be put off with denials."

"But what would your uncle's wife have said to this?"

"Oh, Aunt Margaret is bitter against my father; she would delight to hoodwink him. The only doubt was how mine uncle might come and take me, without her knowing of his visit to London. For, of a truth, she would never consent to his setting foot inside London town; and there was no one else I dared trust to conduct me. And so we had it that Uncle Bartlemy should feign to go to Rochester, and then, on his way home, to have happened upon me in my flight."

"And so your aunt be none the wiser? Well, such folly deserves to be cozened – the folly of forbidding her husband coming to London."

"Oh," replied Mistress Millicent, blushing a little as she smiled, "my dear aunt is, in truth, as jealous as Sir Peregrine would have us believe his wives were. There is a lady in London that Uncle Bartlemy played servant to before he was married, and Aunt Margaret made him promise never to come within sight of the town."

"I marvel how you laid your plans with him, without discovery of your people or his."

"There was a carrier's man that goes betwixt London and Rochester, who used to come courting one of our maids. We passed letters privately by means of him, till he fell out with the maid, and now comes hither no more. The last word I had of my uncle was after that night. He told me of his mishap with the watch, and of his getting free – though he said not how. And he vowed he must leave me to my fate, for he would never venture for me again as he had done. So I was left without hope. When I recognised you to-day as my preserver that night, and remembered that the Holydays were my uncle's neighbours, I thought – mayhap – you might have some message from him; but, alas – !"