What will happen next?!

After dinner, I will post the next installments, in which Roy disregards his mother's wishes and visits the powder-magazine.

Stay tuned.

Chapter Nine.
Portcullis and Bridge.
As Roy appeared, there was a low buzz of voices, and directly after the butler cried, “Three cheers for the young master!” with a hearty result.

Just then Ben came close up to say, confidentially—

“I made it all comfortable with poor old Jenk, sir.”

“That’s right; and Sam Rogers?”

“Proud’s a dog with two tails, sir. Now, sir, if you’ll give the orders, we’ll go up and see what can be done about making the place safe, and I’m afraid we’re going to have a job.”

Roy felt a slight sensation of shrinking, but he mastered it, and calling to the men to follow him, he turned in by the low arched door-way, and ascended to the first chamber of the gate tower, to pause where the great iron grating hung before him in its stone grooves formed in the wall, and with its spikes descending through the slit on the floor, below which the stone paving of the entrance could be seen.

To make sure of its not descending by any accident of the chains giving, three massive pieces of squared oak had been thrust through as many of the openings at the bottom, so that the portcullis rested upon them as these crossed the long narrow slit through which it descended, and a little examination showed that if the chains were tightened by turning the two capstans by means of the bars, and the chains drawn a little over the great wheels fixed in the ceiling, it would be easy enough to withdraw the three supports and let the grating down.

“Chains look terribly rusty,” said Roy. “Think they’ll bear it, Ben?”

“They’re rusty, sir, and a good deal eaten away; but they used to put good work into these sort o’ things, because if they hadn’t, they’d have come down and killed some one. Shall we try?”

“Yes; no one can be hurt if a watch is kept below. Go down, one of you, and see that no one passes under.”

One of the men ran down, the old capstan-bars were taken from the corners, and two men on each side inserted them into the holes, and waited for the order to tighten the chains round the rollers.

“Ready? All together!” cried Roy; and the men pulled the bars towards them with a will, the chains tightened, the pulleys creaked and groaned, and the grating rose an inch or two, sufficient for the pieces of oak crossing the narrow slit to have been drawn out, when crack—crack—two of the bars the men handled snapped short off, and their holders fell, while the portcullis sank back to its old place with a heavy jar.

“Hundred years, perhaps, since they’ve been used,” said Roy. “Any one hurt?”

“No, sir,” said the men, laughing in spite of a bruise or two; and the bars being examined, it was found that the tough oak of which they were composed was completely honeycombed by worms, and powdered away to dust.

“First job, then, sir, to make new bars,” said Ben, promptly.

“Yes; we’ll have the carpenters in from the village directly, Ben. With these pulleys well greased, I suppose this will work.”

“Ay, sir, no doubt about that; it’s the drawbridge I’m afraid of,” said Ben.

“Let’s go up and see, then.”

Roy led the way again, and the men followed into the dark chamber above, where the old furnace stood, and in the corners on either side of the narrow window, with its hollowed-out notches for firing or using cross-bows from, were two great round chimney-like constructions built in the stone, up and down which huge weights, which depended from massive chains and passed over great rollers, had formerly been used to glide.

Ben shook his head as he put his hand upon one of the weights, which were formed of so many discs of cast lead, through the centre of which the great chain passed, a solid bar of iron being driven through a link below to keep them from sliding off.

The weights hung about breast-high; and at the slight pressure of the man’s hand began to swing to and fro in the stone place open to the chamber, but closed below where they ran down in the wall at the sides of the gate-way.

“Well, these must have been worked by hand, Ben,” said Roy. “Men must have stood here and run them down. Two of you go to the other side, and all press down together, but stand ready to jump back in case anything breaks. I don’t see how you can be hurt if you do.”

“No, sir; no one can’t be hurt, for the weights will only go down these holes with a bang.”

“Try, then. Now, all together—pull!”

The men tugged and strained, but there was no sign of yielding, and Ben shook his head.

“Rollers must be rusted, sir, and stick.”

But upon his climbing up to examine them, it proved that these had not been made to turn, only for the chains to slide over them, as the grooves worn in the iron showed.

“Nothing to stop ’em here, sir,” said the man.

“Then it must be set fast at the end of the bridge,” said Roy; and, descending with the men, they crossed the moat and found the bridge completely wedged and fixed in the opening of stone which embraced the end.

Picks and crowbars were fetched, the stones and sand scraped out, and when the place was cleared they reascended to the furnace-chamber, when, upon another trial being made, it was found that the weights so accurately balanced the bridge that with very little exertion the chains came screeching and groaning over the iron rollers, and the men gave a cheer as the end rose up and up till it was drawn very nearly up to the face of the tower.

Ben rubbed his ear and grinned with satisfaction.

“Come, sir,” he said, “we can make ourselves pretty safe that way; but I’m afraid the moat’s so filled up that a man can wade across.”

“That he can’t,” cried one of the gardeners. “I’ve plumbed it all over, and there aren’t a place less nor seven or eight feet deep, without counting the mud.”

“Then you’ve been fishing!” thought Roy, but he did not say so, only gave orders for the bridge to be lowered again, and sent a man for a supply of grease to well lubricate the rollers and chains.

Down went the bridge, in a most unmusical way, and as soon as it was in its place once more, a man was sent across for the village carpenter to come with his tools, there being plenty of good seasoned oak-wood stored up in the buildings.

Then a consultation ensued. They had the means of cutting themselves off from the outer world, and in a short time the portcullis would add to the strength of their defences.

“What’s next, Ben?” said Roy.

“I’m a-thinking, sir. We’ve done a lot already, but there’s so much more to do that things get a bit jumbled like in my head. We’ve got to get our garrison, and then there’s two very important things—wittles and water!”

“The well supplies that last,” said Roy; “and if we were running short, we could use the water from the moat for everything but food.”

“Yes, sir, that’s good. Cart must go to the mill, and bring all the corn and flour that can be got. Then we must have some beasts and sheep from the farm.”

“That’s bad,” said Roy, “because they’ll want feeding.”

“Have to be driven out every morning, sir, till we’re besieged. Must have some cows in too, so that if we are beset we can be independent. But first of all, sir, we ought to see to the powder and the guns. But you and me must see to the powder ourselves. We shall want some help over the guns, and I’m thinking as you’d best make that carpenter stay. The wheels are off one or two of the gun-carriages, and there’s no rammers or sponges; and I shouldn’t wonder if the carriages as I painted over and pitched are only so many worm-eaten shells.”

“Well, all these things will have to be got over by degrees, Ben. We have done the first great things towards making the castle safe, and an enemy need not know how unprepared we are.”

“I don’t know so much about being safe, sir.”

“What, not with the drawbridge up?”

“No, sir,” said Ben, in a low tone. “But suppose you sends the men to dinner now, and orders ’em to meet in a hour’s time in the court-yard—oh dear, oh dear! that’s all garden now.”

“You can make room for the men to meet without disturbing the garden,” said Roy, sharply.

“Very well, sir; you’re master. Will you give your orders?”

Roy gave them promptly, and the men walked away.

“Now, then,” said Roy, “what did you mean about the place not being safe? With the bridge up, they could only cross to us by rafts or boats, and then they couldn’t get in.”

“Well, sir, it’s like this. I’ve heard tell, though I’d forgotten all about it till just now, as there’s a sort o’ passage goes out from the dungeons under the nor’-west tower over to the little ruins on the hill over yonder.”

“Impossible! Why, it would have to be half a mile long, Ben.”

“All that, sir.”

“But it couldn’t go under the moat. It would be full of water.”

“Nay, not if it was made tight, sir.”

“But what makes you say that? You’ve never seen the passage?”

“No, sir, I’ve never been down, but your father once said something about it. It was a long time before that tower was done up and made right for Master Pawson. I don’t recollect much about it, but I suppose it must be there.”

“That’s another thing to see to, then,” said Roy. “Because, if it does exist, and the enemy heard of it, he might come in and surprise us. I know; we’ll find it, and block it up.”

“Nay, I wouldn’t do that, sir. It might be that we should have to go away, and it isn’t a bad thing to have a way out in case of danger.”

“Not likely to do that, Ben,” said Roy, haughtily. “We are going to hold the place.”

“Yes, sir, as long as we can; but we can’t do impossibilities. Now, sir, will you go and have your bit o’ dinner, while I have mine?”

“Oh, I don’t feel as if I could eat, Ben; I’m too full of excitement.”

“More reason why you should go and have your dinner, sir. Man can’t fight without he eats and drinks.”

“Nor a boy, neither—eh, Ben?”

“That’s so, sir; only I wouldn’t be talking before the men about being only a boy. You leave them to say it if they like. But they won’t; they’ll judge you by what you do, sir; and if you act like a man, they’ll look at you as being the one in command of them, and behave like it.”

“Very well, I’ll go to dinner, and in an hour meet you here.”

“Fifty minutes, sir. It’s a good ten minutes since the men went in.”

Roy joined his mother, feeling, as he said, too full of excitement to eat; but he found the meal ready, with one of the maids in attendance, and everything so calm and quiet, that, as they sat chatting, it seemed as if all this excitement were as unsubstantial as the distant rumours of war; while, when the meal was at an end, his mother’s words tended to lend some of her calm to his excited brain.

“I have been hearing of all that you have done, Roy,” she said. “It is excellent; but do not hurry. I cannot afford to have you ill.”

That was a fresh idea, and the consequences of such a trouble too horrible to be contemplated; but it made Roy determine to take things more coolly, and in this spirit he went to where the servants were assembled in the gate-way, and joined his trusty lieutenant, who had just drawn them up in line.

Chapter Eight.
Ben means Business.
With his blood seeming to effervesce in his veins from the excitement he felt, Roy placed the writing-materials in front of his mother and then hurried out, crossed the drawbridge, and made for the little gate tower, where, upon hearing steps, the old retainer came out, bent of head and stooping, with one ear raised.

“Master Roy’s step,” he said; and as the boy came closer: “Yes, it’s you, sir; just like your father’s step, sir, only younger. What’s the news, Master Roy?”

“Bad, Jenk,—civil war has broken out. Father is well and with his regiment, but there is great trouble in the land. I’m going to put the castle in a state of defence. Shut the gate again and keep it close. No one is to come in or out without an order from my mother or from me.”

“That’s right, Master Roy, sir; that’s right,” piped the retainer. “I’ll just buckle on my sword at once. She’s as sharp and bright as ever she was. Nobody shall go by. So there’s to be a bit of a war, is there?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so, Jenk.”

“Don’t say afraid so, Master Roy; sounds as if you would be skeart, and your father’s son couldn’t be that. But nobody goes by here without your orders, sir, or my lady’s, and so I tell ’em. I’m getting on a bit in years, and I can’t see quite as well as I should do, not like I used; but it’s the sperrit as does it, Master Roy.”

“So it is, Jenk; and you’ve got plenty in you, haven’t you?”

“Ay, ay, ay, Master Roy,” quavered the old man, “plenty. Up at the house there they get talking about me as if I was so very old; but I’ll let some of ’em see. Why, I want five year o’ being a hundred yet, and look at what they used to be in the Scripter. I’ll keep the gate fast, sir—I did this morning, didn’t I, when they three dragoons come up?”

“Yes, capitally, Jenk—but I must go. I’m busy.”

“That’s right, sir—you go. Don’t you be uneasy about the gate, sir. I’ll see to that.”

“Yes,” said Roy to himself, “it is the spirit that does it. Now I wonder whether I’ve got spirit enough to do all the work before me!”

He hurried back over the drawbridge, and glanced down into the clear moat where he could see the great pike lying, but he did not stop to think about catching it, for he hurried on to the servants’ hall, drawing himself up as he felt the importance of his position, and upon entering, the three troopers, who were seated at a good substantial meal, all rose and saluted their colonel’s son.

“Got all you want, men?” said Roy, startling himself by his decisive way of speaking.

“Yes, sir; plenty, sir,” said the man who bore the despatch. “Master Martlet saw to that.”

“That’s right. Now, look here, of course we want you and your horses to have a good rest, but when do you think you’ll be ready to take a despatch back?”

“Take a despatch back, sir?” said the man, staring. “We’re not to take anything back.”

“Yes; a letter to my father.”

“No, sir. Colonel Sir Granby Royland’s, orders were that we were to stop here and to help take care of the castle.”

“Were those my father’s commands?” cried Roy, eagerly.

“Yes, sir, to all three of us—all five of us, it were, and I’m sorry I couldn’t bring the other two with me; but I did my best, didn’t I, lads?”

“Ay, corporal,” chorused the others.

“Oh, that’s capital!” cried Roy, eagerly. “It relieves me of a good deal of anxiety. But my father—he’ll expect a letter back.”

“No, sir; he said there was no knowing where he would be with the regiment, and we were to stay here till he sent orders for us to rejoin.”

“Where is Martlet?” asked Roy then.

“Said something about an armoury,” replied the corporal.

Roy hurried off, and in a few minutes found the old soldier busy with a bottle of oil and a goose feather, applying the oil to the mechanism of a row of firelocks.

“Oh, here you are, Ben,” cried Roy, excitedly. “News for you, man.”

“Ay, ay, sir, I’ve heard,” said the old soldier, sadly. “More rust.”

“Yes, for you to keep off. My father’s orders are that the castle is to be put in a state of defence directly.”

Down went the bottle on the floor, and the oil began to trickle out.

“But—but,” stammered the old fellow, “what does her ladyship say?”

“That she trusts to my father’s faithful old follower to work with me, and do everything possible for the defence of the place. Hurrah, Ben! God save the king!”

“Hurrah! God save the king!” roared Ben; and running to the wall he snatched a sword from where it hung, drew it, and waved it round his head. “Hah! Master Roy, you’ve made me feel ten years younger with those few words.”

“Have I, Ben? Why, somehow all this has made me feel ten years older.”

“Then you’ve got a bit off me that I had to spare, Master Roy, and good luck to you with it. Then,” he continued, after listening with eager attention to Roy’s rendering of his father’s orders, “we must go to work at once, sir.”

“Yes; at once, Ben.”

“Then the first thing is to order the gate to be kept shut, and that no one goes out or in unless he has a pass from her ladyship or from you.”

“Done, Ben. I have been to old Jenk, and he has shut the gate, and buckled on his old sword.”

“Hah! hum! yes,” said the old soldier, rubbing one of his ears; “that sounds very nice, Master Roy, but,” he continued, with a look of perplexity, “it doesn’t mean much, now, does it?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Why, sir, I mean this: that if any one came up to the gate and wanted to come in—‘Give the pass,’ says Jenk. ‘Haven’t got one,’ says whoever it is. ‘Can’t pass, then,’ says Jenk, and then—”

“Well, yes, and then?” said Roy. “Why, sir, if he took a good deep breath, and then gave a puff, he’d blow poor old Jenk into the moat. He’s a good old boy, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but we can’t leave things at the gate like that.”

“But it would break his heart to be told he is—he—”

“Too rusty to go on, sir,” said Ben, grimly. “But it would break her ladyship’s heart if we didn’t do our duty, and we shan’t be doing that if we leave our outwork in the hands of poor old Jenk.”

“What’s to be done?”

“I know, sir. Tell him the gate’s very important, and that he must have two men with him, and let him suppose they’re under his command.”

“That’s it, capital!” cried Roy. “Then we must place two men there with him at once.”

“Ye-e-es, sir,” said Ben, drily. “But who are we to place there—ourselves?”

Roy looked hard at Ben, and Ben looked hard at Roy.

“You see, sir, we’ve got the castle and the weepuns, but we’ve no garrison. That’s the first thing to see to. Why, when those three troopers have gone back with their despatch, we shall have as good as nobody.”

“But they’re not going back, Ben. Father’s orders are that they’re to stay.”

“Three trained soldiers, sir, to start with!” cried Ben. “Me four, and you five. Why, that’s just like five seeds out of which we can grow a little army.”

“Then there are the men-servants.”

“Well, sir, they’re more used to washing cups and cleaning knives, and plate, and horses; but we shall have to lick ’em into shape. Let’s see, there’s the three men indoors, the groom, and coachman, that makes five more.”

“And the two gardeners.”

“Of course, sir! Why, they’ll make the best of ’em all. Twelve of us.”

“And Master Pawson, thirteen.”

“P’ff! him!” cried Ben, with a look of contempt. “What’s he going to do? Read to the sentries, sir, to keep ’em from going to sleep?”

“Oh, he’ll be of some use, Ben. We mustn’t despise any one.”

“Right, sir; we mustn’t: so as soon as he comes back—he’s gone over to Parson Meldew’s—”

“Yes, I know.”

“You tell him to get to his books and read all he can about sword and pike wounds, and how to take a bullet out of a man when he gets hit. Then he can cut up bandages, and get ready knives and scissors and thread and big needles.”

“Do you mean in case of wounds, Ben?”

“Why, of course, sir.”

“But do you think it likely that we shall have some—”

“Rather queer sort of siege if we don’t have some damage done, sir. Well, that settles about Master Pawson. Now, what next?”

“The men at the farm, Ben.”

“Yes, sir; we ought to get about ten or a dozen. They’re good stout lads. We must have them up at once and do a bit of drilling. They needn’t stay here yet, but they can be got in order and ready to come in at a moment’s notice. Next?”

“All the tenants must be seen, Ben. They’ll all come too, and drill ready for service if wanted.”

“And that means about another twenty, I suppose, sir.”

“Yes, or more, Ben.”

“If they’re staunch, sir.”

“Ah, but they would be. My father’s own tenants!”

“I dunno, sir. If times are going to be like we hear, you’ll find people pretty ready to go over to the strongest side.”

“Oh, nonsense! There isn’t a man round here who wouldn’t shout for the king.”

“Quite right, sir,” said Ben. “I believe that.”

“Then why do you throw out such nasty hints?”

“’Cause I’ve got my doubts, sir. Lots on ’em’ll shout for the king, but if it comes to the pinch and things are going wrong, I want to know how many will fight for the king.”

“Every true man, Ben.”

“Azackly, sir; but, you see, there’s a orful lot o’ liars in the world. But we shall see.”

“Well, we’ve got to keep the castle, Ben.”

“We have, sir, and keep it we will, till everybody’s about wounded or dead, and the enemy comes swarming and cheering in, and then they shan’t have it.”

“Why, they’ll have got it, Ben,” said Roy, laughing, but rather uncomfortably, for the man’s words as to the future did not sound pleasant.

“Ay, and I shall take it away from ’em, sir; for if the worst comes to the worst, I shall have made all my plans before, and I’ll do a bit o’ Guy Fawkesing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I should ha’ thought you’d ha’ understood that, sir.”

“Of course I do; but how could you blow up the castle?”

“By laying a train to the powder-magazine, knocking the heads out of a couple o’ kegs, and then up it goes.”

“Powder—magazine—kegs?” cried Roy. “Why, we haven’t one, and I wanted to talk to you about getting some. How’s it to be done?”

“By going to your father’s lib’ry, sir, and opening the little drawer as he keeps locked up in the big oak table. There’s the keys there.”

“Yes, of the wine-cellars, Ben; but no—Oh, absurd!”

“Is it, my lad? I think not. Think it’s likely as your grandfather and his father would have had swords and pikes and armour, and big guns and little guns, and not had no powder to load ’em with?”

“Well, it doesn’t sound likely, Ben; but I’m sure we have none here.”

“Well, sir, begging your pardon for contradicting my master, I’m sure as we have.”

“Down in the cellars?”

“Down in one of ’em, sir.”

“But I never knew.”

“Perhaps not, sir; but I’ve been down there with your father, and I don’t suppose it’s a thing he’d talk about. Anyhow, there it is, shut up behind three doors, and I’ll be bound to say dry as a bone. It’s very old, but good enough, may be. All the same, though, Master Roy, the sooner we try what it’s like the better, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll have one of the big guns loaded and fired with a good round charge. That’ll try the gun, scale it out, and give ’em a hint for miles round that, though Sir Granby’s gone to the wars, his son’s at home, and his dame too, and that they don’t mean to stand any nonsense from a set o’ crop-eared rascals. That’ll do more good, Master Roy, than a deal o’ talking, and be less trouble.”

“We must do it at once, Ben,” said Roy, decidedly.

“The first thing, sir; and, by the way, as we’re going to begin to get our garrison together, it’ll be as well to make a little show. If I was you, I’d put on a pair of buff boots, wear a sword and a sash always, and I don’t say put on a lot of armour, but if you’ll let me, I’ll take the gorget off that suit of Italian armour, and you can wear that.”

“But it will look so—” said Roy, flushing.

“Yes, sir; but we’ve got to look so,” said the old soldier, decidedly. “It makes people respect you; and if you’ll be good enough to give me my orders, I’ll take to a buff coat and steel cap at once.”

“Very well, do so,” said Roy. “But I will not promise to make any show myself.”

“But you must, sir, please, for her ladyship’s sake. Look here, Master Roy, you’ll be calling the tenants and labourers together, and you’ll have to make them a speech.”

“Shall I?” said Roy, nervously.

“Why, of course, sir, telling ’em what their duty is, and calling upon ’em to fight for their king, their country, and their homes. Yes, that’s it, sir; that’s just what you’ve got to say.”

“Well, Ben, if I must, I must.”

“Then must it is, sir; but if they come here to the castle, and you’re like you are now, they’ll be only half warmed up, and say that Master Roy can talk, and some of ’em’ll sneer and snigger; but if you come out when they’re all here, looking like your father’s son in a cavalier hat and feathers, with the gorget on, and the king’s colours for a sash, ay, and buff boots and spurs—”

“Oh, no, not spurs when I’m walking,” protested Roy.

“Yes, sir, spurs,—a big pair with gilt rowels, as’ll clink-clink with every step you take; they’ll set up a cheer, and swear to fight for you, when you’ve done, to the death. And look here, Master Roy, when you’ve done speaking, you just wave your hat, and chuck it up in the air, as if fine felts and ostridge feathers weren’t nothing to you, who called upon ’em all to fight for the king.”

Roy drew a deep sigh, for his follower’s words had nearly made him breathless.

“We shall see,” he sighed.

“Yes, sir, we shall see,” cried Ben. “So now, if you please, sir, I won’t wait to be getting into my buff jerkin now, but I’ll take your orders for what we’re to do first.”

“Yes, Ben; what ought we to do first?”

“Well, sir, it’s you as know. You said something about strengthening the guard at the gate.”

“Oh, but I say, Ben, that was you said so.”

“Only as your mouthpiece, sir.”

“But it sounds silly to talk about strengthening the guard at the gate when we’ve only got old Jenk, and no regular sentry to put there.”

“Never you mind about how it sounds, sir, so long as it’s sense,” cried Ben, striking his fist into his left palm. “We’ve got to make our garrison and our sentries out of the raw stuff, and the sooner we begin to sound silly now the better. It won’t be silly for any one who comes and finds a staunch man there, who would sooner send a musketoon bullet through him than let him pass.”

“No, Ben, it will not, certainly. Whom shall I send?”

“Well, sir, if I was you, I’d do it as I meant to go on. You give me my orders, and I’ll go and enlist Sam Rogers in the stable at once, bring him here fierce-like into the armoury; put him on a buff coat, buckle on a sword, and give him his bandoleer and firelock, and march him down with sword drawn to relieve guard with old Jenk.”

“But he’ll be cleaning the troopers’ horses, and begin to laugh.”

“Sam Rogers, sir? Not him. He’ll come like a lamb; and when I marches him down to the gate, he’ll go out like a lion, holding his head up with the steel cap on, and be hoping that all the servant-girls and the cook are watching him. Don’t you be afraid of him laughing. All I’m afraid of is, that while he’s so fresh he’ll be playing up some games with his firelock, and mocking poor old Jenk.”

“Pray, warn him, then.”

“You trust me, sir. Then, when that’s done, perhaps you’ll give the orders to find quarters for our new men, and tell ’em that they’re to rest till to-morrow by your orders; and after that there’s the drawbridge and portcullis.”

“Yes; what about them?”

“Why, sir, you know how they’ve been for years. You must have ’em seen to at once; and, if I was you, I’d have the portcullis seen to first, and the little sally-port door in the corner of the tower. We shall want half a dozen men. I’m a bit afraid of the old bars and rollers, but we shall see.”

“Order the men to come, then, when you’ve done, and let us see, and get everything right as soon as possible.”

Ben saluted in military fashion, and marched off to the hall, where Roy heard him speak in a cheering, authoritative voice to the new-comers, and then came out to march across to the stables, which were in the basement of the east side of the castle, with their entrance between the building and the court; but the gate-way that had opened into the court-yard had been partly closed up when that was turned into a flower-garden, and the archway was now covered with ivy.

Roy went up to one of the corridors beneath the ramparts, and watched, out of curiosity, to see how the groom would take his new orders.

He was not long kept in suspense, for the sturdy young fellow came out talking eagerly with Ben and turning down his sleeves. Then they went inside, through the great gate-way to the armoury, and in an incredibly short space of time came out together, the groom in steel jockey-shaped cap with a spike on the top, buff coat, sword, and bandoleer, and shouldering the clumsy firelock of the period.

As they reached the archway, Ben stopped short, drew his sword, said a few words in a sharp tone, and marched off, with Sam Rogers keeping step; while a muttering of voices told of how strangely matters had turned out according to old Ben’s prophecy, for, on turning to see what it meant, Roy saw down through one of the narrow windows that the whole of the household had turned out to do likewise. But there was no giggling and laughing, for the women seemed to be impressed, and the men-servants were shaking their heads and talking together earnestly about the evil times that had come.

Another sound made Roy turn sharply in the other direction to see his mother approaching.

“Then you have begun, my son,” she said, gravely.

“Yes, mother. The sentry was set, after a long talk with Martlet.”

“You need not speak in that apologetic tone, my boy,” said Lady Royland, quietly. “I see the necessity, and I am sure you are doing well. Now, come and tell me more of your plans.”

She led the way to the library, and as they entered Roy glanced towards the big oak table standing at one end; his eyes fixed themselves upon the small drawer, and he seemed to see a rusty old key lying there, one whose wards were shaping themselves plainly before his eyes, as he told of his arrangements with the old soldier.

“Yes, you have begun well, Roy,” said Lady Royland at last. “And what Martlet says is quite true.”

“But you would not dress up as he advises, mother?” protested Roy, rather bashfully.

“Dress up? No, my boy; but I would put on such things as a cavalier and an officer would wear under such circumstances,—a gorget, sword, boots, hat and feathers, and the king’s colours as a scarf. Why, Roy, your father would wear those in addition to his scarlet coat.”

“Yes, mother; but he is a soldier.”

“So are you now, Roy,” said the dame, proudly. “And so must every man be who loves his king and country. Martlet is quite right, and I shall prepare your scarf and feathers with my own hands.”

“Why, mother,” cried the boy, wonderingly, “how you have changed since even a short time ago.”

“So has our position, Roy, my son,” she said, firmly. “Who’s there?”

The butler entered.

“Benjamin Martlet would be glad, my lady, if Master Roy would come and give him his instructions, and, if you please, my lady, he wishes me to help.”

“And you will, I am sure, Grey?”

“Oh, yes, my lady,” said the man, eagerly; “but I was afraid your ladyship might be wanting something, and no one to answer the bell.”

“I want my servants, Grey, to help me to protect their master’s interests while he is forced to be away in the service of the king. Can I count upon that help?”

“Yes, my lady, to a man,” cried the old servant, eagerly.

“I thought so,” said Lady Royland, smiling proudly. “You will go, then, Roy, and see what Martlet is to do.”

Roy was already at the door, and five minutes later he was standing in the gate-way with every man employed about the place, the three troopers being fast asleep, exhausted by their long journey down from town.

Chapter Seven.
News from the War.
Roy and the old soldier hurried to a slit which gave on the road, and the latter began to breathe hard with excitement as his eyes rested upon three dusty-looking horsemen, well-mounted, and from whose round-topped, spiked steel caps the sun flashed from time to time.

“Why, they’re dragoons!” cried the old fellow, excitedly. “Enemies, perhaps, and we’re without a drawbridge as’ll pull up. Here, quick, take a sword, Master Roy. Here’s mine. Let’s make a show. They won’t know but what there’s dozens of us.”

Roy followed the old soldier’s commands, and, buckling on the sword, hurried with him down to the outer gate, just as the venerable old retainer slammed it to with a heavy, jarring sound, and challenged the horsemen, whom he could hardly see, to halt.

“Well done, old man!” muttered Ben. “The right stuff, Master Roy, though he is ninety-four.”

“What is it?” cried Roy, as he reached the gate, where the men were dismounting and patting their weary troop-horses.

“Despatches for Lady Royland,” said one, who seemed to be the leader. “Are you Master Roy, Sir Granby’s son?”

“Yes. Have you come from my father?”

“Yes, sir, and made all the haste we could; but we’ve left two brave lads on the road.”

“What! their horses broke down?”

“No, sir,” said the man, significantly; “but they did.”

He took off his cap as he spoke, and displayed a bandage round his forehead.

“My mate there’s got his shoulder ploughed, too, by a bullet.”

“Open the gates, Jenks,” cried Roy.

“One moment, sir,” whispered Ben. “Get the despatches and see if they’re in your father’s writing.”

“Right,” whispered back Roy. “Here!—your despatches.”

“No, sir,” said the man, firmly. “That’s what they asked who barred the way. Sir Granby’s orders were to place ’em in his lady’s hands.”

“Quite right,” said Roy. “But show them to me and let me see my father’s hand and seal.”

“Yes, that’s right enough, sir,” said the man. “We might be enemies;” and he unstrapped a wallet slung from his right shoulder, took out a great letter tied with silk and sealed, and held it out, first on one side, then upon the other, for the boy to see.

“Yes,” cried Roy, eagerly, “that’s my father’s writing, and it is his seal. Open the gate, Jenkin, and let them in. Why, my lads, you look worn-out.”

“Not quite, sir; but we’ve had a rough time of it. The country’s full of crop-ears, and we’ve had our work cut out to get here safe.”

“Full of what?” said Roy, staring, as the troopers led in their horses, and he walked beside the man who bore the despatches.

“Crop-ears, sir,—Parliamentary men.”

“Is it so bad as that?”

“Bad? Yes, sir.”

“But my father—how is he?”

“Well and hearty when he sent us off, sir.”

“Come quickly then,” cried Roy, hurrying the men along to the great drawbridge, over which the horses’ hoofs began to rattle loudly. But they had not gone half-way across the moat before there was the rustle of a dress in front, and, looking ghastly pale and her eyes wild with excitement, Lady Royland came hurrying to meet them.

Roy sprang to her, crying—

“Letters from father, and he is quite well!”

He caught his mother in his arms, for her eyes closed and she reeled and would have fallen; but the next minute she had recovered her composure, and held out her hand for the packet the trooper had taken from his wallet.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “Martlet, take these poor tired fellows into the hall at once, and see that they have every attention. Set some one to feed their horses.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said the man, with rough courtesy, as he took off his steel cap.

“Ah, you are wounded,” cried Lady Royland, with a look of horror.

“Only a scratch, my lady. My comrade here is worse than I.”

“Your wounds shall be seen to at once.”

“If I might speak, my lady, a place to sit down for an hour or two, and something to eat and drink, would do us more good than a doctor. We haven’t had a good meal since we rode away from Whitehall and along the western road a week ago.”

“Eight days and a harf, comrad’,” growled one of his companions.

“Is it? Well, I haven’t kept count.”

“See to them at once, Martlet,” said Lady Royland; and the horses were led off, while, clinging to her son’s arm, the anxious wife and mother hurried into the library, threw herself into a chair, tore open the great letter, and began, wild-eyed and excited, to read, while Roy walked up and down the room with his eyes fixed longingly upon the despatch till he could bear it no longer.

“Oh, mother!” he cried, “do, do, do pray give me a little bit of the news.”

“My poor boy! yes. How selfish of me. Roy, dear, there is something terribly wrong! Your dear father says he has been half-mad with anxiety, for he has sent letter after letter, and has had no news from us. So at last he determined to send his own messengers, and despatched five men to guard this letter to us—but I saw only three.”

“No,” said Roy, solemnly; “the roads are in the hands of the enemy, mother, and two of the poor fellows were killed on the way. Two of these three are wounded.”

“Yes, yes! Horrible! I could not have thought matters were so bad as this.”

“But father is quite well?”

“Yes, yes, my dear; but he says the king’s state is getting desperate, and that he will have to take the field at once. But the letters I sent—that he sent, my boy?”

“They must have all fallen into the enemy’s hands, mother. How bad everything must be! But pray, pray, go on. What does he say?”

Lady Royland read on in silence for a few moments, and, as she read, the pallor in her face gave way to a warm flush of excitement, while Roy, in spite of his eagerness to hear more, could not help wondering at the firmness and decision his mother displayed, an aspect which was supported by her words as she turned to her son.

“Roy,” she cried, “I was obliged to read first, but you shall know everything. While we have been here in peace, it seems that a terrible revolution has broken out, and your father says that it will only be by desperate efforts on the part of his friends that the king’s position can be preserved. He says that these efforts will be made, and that the king shall be saved.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the boy, wildly. “God save the king!”

“God save the king!” murmured Lady Royland, softly, with her eyes closed; and her words sounded like a prayerful echo of her son’s utterance.

There was a pause for a few moments, and then Lady Royland went on.

“Your father says that we lie right out of the track of the trouble here, and that he prays that nothing may disturb us; but as the country grows more unsettled with the war, evil men will arise everywhere, ready to treat the laws of the country with contempt, and that it is our duty in his absence to be prepared.”

“Prepared! Yes, mother,” cried Roy, excitedly; and he flung himself upon his knees, rested his elbows on his mother’s lap, and seized her hands. “Go on, go on!”

“He says that you have grown a great fellow now, and that the time has come for you to play the man, and fill his place in helping me in every way possible.”

“Father says that, mother?” cried the boy, flushing scarlet.

“Yes; and that he looks to you to be my counsellor, and, with the help of his faithful old servant Martlet, to do everything you can to put the place in a state of defence.”

“Why, mother,” said Roy, “old Ben will go mad with delight.”

Lady Royland suppressed a sigh, and went on firmly.

“He bids me use my discretion to decide whom among the tenants and people of the village I can—we can—trust, Roy, and to call upon them to be ready, in case of an emergency, to come in here and help to protect the place and their own belongings; but to be very careful whom I do trust, for an enemy within the gates is a terrible danger.”

“Yes, of course,” cried Roy, whose head seemed once more in a whirl.

“He goes on to say that there may not be the slightest necessity for all this, but the very fact of our being prepared will overawe people who might be likely to prove disaffected, and will keep wandering bands of marauders at a distance.”

“Of course—yes; I see,” cried Roy, eagerly. “Yes, mother, I’ll go to work at once.”

“You will do nothing foolish, I know, my boy,” said the mother, laying one hand upon his head and gazing proudly in his eyes.

“Nothing if I can help it,” he cried; “and I’ll consult you in everything, but—but—”

“Yes, my boy, speak out.”

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, dear, and yet if I speak of a sword or a gun—”

Lady Royland shivered slightly, but she drew a long, deep breath, and raised herself up proudly.

“Roy,” she said, “that was in times of peace, before this terrible emergency had arisen. As a woman, I shrink from bloodshed and everything that suggests it. It has been my constant dread that you, my boy, should follow your father’s profession. ‘My boy a soldier!’ I said, as I lay sleepless of a night, and I felt that I could not bear the thought. But Heaven’s will be done, my son. The time has come when my weak, womanly fears must be crushed down, and I must fulfil my duty as your dear father’s wife. We cannot question his wisdom. A terrible crisis has come upon our land, and we must protect ourselves and those who will look to us for help. Then, too, your father calls upon us to try to save his estate here from pillage and the ruthless wrecking of wicked men. Roy, my boy, I hope I shall not be such a weak woman now, but your help and strengthener, as you will be mine. You will not hurt my feelings, dear, in what you do. You see,” she continued, smiling, as she laid her hand upon the hilt of the sword the lad had so hastily buckled on, “I do not wince and shudder now. Fate has decided upon your career, Roy, young as you are, and I know that my son’s sword, like his father’s, will never be drawn unless it is to protect the weak and maintain the right.”

“Never, mother,” cried the boy, enthusiastically; and as Lady Royland tried to raise him, he sprang to his feet. “Oh,” he cried, “I wish I were not such a boy!”

“I do not,” said his mother, smiling. “You are young, and I am only a woman, but our cause will make us strong, Roy. There,” she continued, embracing him lovingly, “the time has come to act. You will consult with Martlet what to do about the defences at once, while I write back to your father. When do you think the men will be fit to go back?”

“They’d go to-night, mother; they seem to be just the fellows; but their horses want two or three days’ rest.”

“Roy!”

“Yes, mother. It’s a long journey, and they’ll have to go by out-of-the-way roads to avoid attack.”

“But we have horses.”

“Yes, mother, but they would sooner trust their own.”

Lady Royland bowed her head.

“The letters must go back by them,” she said, “and they must start at the earliest minute they can. But there is another thing. It is right that Master Pawson should be taken into our counsels.”

“Master Pawson, mother?”

“Yes, my boy. He is your father’s trusted servant, and I must not slight any friends. Go and ask him to come here.”

“Can’t,” said Roy, shortly. “He went out this morning, and said he didn’t think he would be back to dinner.”

“Indeed!”

“Gone over to see the vicar.”

“Gone to Mr Meldew,” said Lady Royland, whose face looked very grave. “Then it must be deferred till his return. Now, Roy, what will you do first?”

“See to the gates, mother, and that no one goes out or comes in without leave.”

“Quite right, Captain Roy,” said Lady Royland, smiling.

The boy looked at her wonderingly.

“My heart is more at rest, dear,” she said, gently, “and that aching anxiety is at an end. Roy, we know the worst, and we must act for the best.”

Chapter Six.
Ben Martlet feels Rusty.
“Come to me in half an hour, Roy,” said Master Pawson, as they rose from the table, the boy hurrying away to the armoury to find Ben busy as ever, and engaged now in seeing to the straps and fittings of the Italian suit of bronzed steel.

“Thought I’d do it, sir,” he said, “in case you ever asked for it; but I s’pose it’s all over with your learning to be a man now.”

“Indeed it is not,” said Roy, sharply. “I’m sure my father would not object to my learning fencing.”

“Sword-play, sir.”

“Very well—sword-play,” said Roy, pettishly; “so long as I do not neglect any studies I have to go through with Master Pawson.”

“And I s’pose you’ve been a-neglecting of ’em, sir, eh?” said the old man, drily.

“That I’ve not. Perhaps I have not got on so well as I ought, but that’s because I’m stupid, I suppose.”

“Nay, nay, nay! That won’t do, Master Roy. There’s lots o’ things I can do as you can’t; but that’s because you’ve never learnt.”

“Master Pawson’s cross because I don’t do what he wants.”

“Why, what does he want you to do, sir?”

“Learn to play the big fiddle.”

“What!” cried the man, indignantly. “Then don’t you do it, my lad.”

“I don’t mean to,” said Roy; “and I don’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings; and so I won’t make a lot of show over learning sword-play with you, but I shall go on with it, Ben, and you shall take the swords or sticks down in the hollow in the wood, and I’ll meet you there every morning at six.”

“Mean it, sir?”

“Yes, of course; and now I must be off. I was to be with Master Pawson in half an hour.”

“Off you go, then, my lad. Always keep to your time.”

Roy ran off, and was going straight to Master Pawson’s room in the corner tower, but on the way he met Lady Royland, who took his arm and walked with him out into the square garden.

“Why, mother, you’ve been crying,” said the boy, tenderly.

“Can you see that, my dear?”

“Yes; what is the matter? I know, though. You’re fretting about not hearing from father.”

“Well, is it not enough to make me fret, my boy?” she said, reproachfully.

“Of course! And I’m so thoughtless.”

“Yes, Roy,” said Lady Royland, with a sad smile; “I am afraid you are.”

“I try not to be, mother; I do indeed,” cried Roy; “but tell me—is there anything fresh? Yes; you’ve had some bad news! Then you’ve heard from father.”

“No, my boy, no; the bad news comes through Master Pawson. He has heard again from his friends in London.”

“Look here, mother,” cried the boy, hotly, “I want to know why he should get letters easily, and we get none.”

Lady Royland sighed.

“Father must be too busy to write.”

“I am afraid so, my dear.”

“But what is the bad news he has told you this morning?”

They were close up to the foot of the corner tower as Roy asked this question; and, as Lady Royland replied, a few notes of some air being played upon the violoncello high up came floating down to their ears.

“He tells me that there is no doubt about a terrible revolution having broken out, my boy; that the Parliament is raising an army to fight against the king, and that his friends feel sure that his majesty’s cause is lost.”

“Then he doesn’t know anything about it, mother,” cried the boy, indignantly. “The king has too many brave officers like father who will fight for him, and take care that his cause is not lost. Oh, I say, hark to that!”

“That” was another strain floating down to them.

“Yes,” said Lady Royland, sadly; “it is Master Pawson playing. He is waiting for you, Roy.”

“Yes, playing,” said the boy, hotly. “It makes me think of what I read with him one day about that Roman emperor—what was his name?—playing while Rome was burning. But don’t you fret, mother; London won’t be burnt while father’s there.”

“You do not realise what it may mean, my boy.”

“Oh, yes, I think I do, mother; but you don’t think fairly. You are too anxious. But there! I must go up to him now.”

“Yes, go, my boy; and you will not cause me any more anxiety than you can help?”

“Why, of course I won’t, mother. But if it is going to be a war, don’t you think I ought to learn all I can about being a soldier?”

“Roy! No, no!” cried Lady Royland, wildly. “Do I not suffer enough on your father’s account?”

“There, I won’t say any more, mother dear,” said Roy, clinging to her arm; “and now I’ll confess something.”

“You have something to confess?” said Lady Royland, excitedly, as she stopped where they were, just beneath the corner tower, and quite unconscious of the fact that a head was cautiously thrust out of one of the upper windows and then drawn back, so that only the tip of an ear and a few curls were left visible. “Then, tell me quickly, Roy; you have been keeping back some news.”

“No, no, mother, not a bit; just as if I would when I know how anxious you are! It was only this. Old Ben is always grumbling about the place going to ruin, as he calls it, and I told him, to please him, that he might clean up some of the big guns.”

“But you should not have done this, my dear.”

“No; I’ll tell him not to, mother. And I’d made an arrangement with him to meet him every morning out in the primrose dell to practise sword-cutting. I was going to-morrow morning, but I won’t go now.”

Lady Royland pressed her lips to the boy’s forehead, and smiled in his face.

“Thank you, my dear,” she said, softly. “Recollect you are everything to me now! And I want your help and comfort now I am so terribly alone. Master Pawson is profuse in his offers of assistance to relieve me of the management here, but I want that assistance to come from my son.”

“Of course!” said Roy, haughtily. “He’s only the secretary, and if any one is to take father’s place, it ought to be me.”

“Yes; and you shall, Roy, my dear. You are very young, but now this trouble has come upon us, you must try to be a man and my counsellor so that when your father returns—”

She ceased speaking, and Roy pressed her hands encouragingly as he saw her lips trembling and that she had turned ghastly white.

“When your father returns,” she said, now firmly, “we must let him see that we have managed everything well.”

“Then why not, as it’s war time, let Ben do what he wanted, and we’ll put the place in a regular state of defence?”

“No, no, no, my dear,” said Lady Royland, with a shudder. “Why should you give our peaceful happy home even the faintest semblance of war, when it can by no possibility come into this calm, quiet, retired nook. No, my boy, not that, please.”

“Very well, mother. Then I’ll go riding round to see the tenants, and look after the things at home just as you wish me to. Will that do?”

Lady Royland smiled, and then pressed her son’s arm.

“Go up now, then, to Master Pawson’s room,” she said; “and recollect that one of the things I wish you to do is to be more studious than you would be if your father were at home.”

Roy nodded and hurried up into the corridor, thinking to himself that Master Pawson would not like his being so much in his mother’s confidence.

“Then he’ll have to dislike it. He has been a bit too forward lately, speaking to the servants as if he were master here. I heard him quite bully poor old Jenk one day. But, of course, I don’t want to quarrel with him.”

Roy ascended the staircase and entered the room, to find the secretary bending over a big volume in the Greek character; and, as he looked up smiling, the boy felt that his tutor was about the least quarrelsome-looking personage he had ever seen.

“Rather a long half-hour, Roy, is it not?” he said.

“Yes, sir; I’m very sorry. My mother met me as I was coming across the garden, and talked to me, and I could not leave her in such trouble.”

“Trouble? Trouble?” said the secretary, raising his eyebrows.

“Of course, sir, about the bad news you told her this morning.”

“Indeed! And did Lady Royland confide in you?”

“Why, of course!” said Roy, quickly.

“Oh, yes,—of course! Her ladyship would do what is for the best. Well, let us to our reading. We have lost half an hour, and I am going to make it a little shorter this morning, for I thought of going across as far as the vicarage.”

“To see Master Meldew, sir?”

“Yes; of course. He has not been here lately. Now, then, where we left off,—it was about the Punic War, was it not?”

“Yes, sir; but don’t let’s have anything about war this morning.”

“Very well,” said the secretary; “let it be something about peace.”

It was something about peace, but what Roy did not know half an hour later, for his head was in a whirl, and his reading became quite mechanical. For there was the trouble his mother was in, her wishes as to his conduct, and his secret interview with Ben, to keep on buzzing in his brain, so that it was with a sigh of relief that he heard the secretary’s command to close his book, and he gazed at him wonderingly, asking himself whether the words were sarcastic, for Master Pawson said—

“I compliment you, Roy; you have done remarkably well, and been very attentive this morning. By the way, if her ladyship makes any remark about my absence, you can say that you expect Master Meldew has asked me to stay and partake of dinner with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not unless she asks,” continued the secretary. “In all probability she will not notice my absence.”

Roy descended with his books; then felt that he should like to be alone and think, and to this end he made his way to the gloomy old guard-room on the right of the great gate-way, ran up the winding stair, and soon reached the roof, where he lay down on the breastwork over the machicolations, and had not been there long before he heard steps, and, looking over, saw Master Pawson cross the drawbridge and go out of the farther gate-way, watching him unseen till he turned off by the pathway leading through the village and entering the main road.

Then it occurred to Roy that, as he had an unpleasant communication to make, he could not do better than get it over at once. So he descended, and began to search for the old soldier; but it was some time before he could find him out.

Yet it seemed to be quite soon enough, for the old fellow looked very grim and sour as he listened to the communication.

“Very well, Master Roy,” he said; “the mistress is master now, and it’s your dooty to obey her; but it do seem like playing at fast and loose with a man. There, I’ve got no more to say,—only that I was beginning to feel a bit bright and chirpy; but now I’m all going back’ard again, and feel as rusty as everything else about the place.”

“I’m very sorry, Ben, for I really did want to learn,” said Roy, apologetically.

“Yes, sir, I s’pose you did; and this here’s a world o’ trouble, and the longer you lives in it the more you finds out as you can’t do what you like, so you grins and bears it; but the grinning’s about the hardest part o’ the job. You’re ’bliged to bear it, but you aren’t ’bliged to grin; and, when the grins do come, you never has a looking-glass afore you, but you allus feels as if you never looked so ugly afore in your life.”

“But you’ll have to help me in other things, Ben.”

“Shall I, sir? Don’t seem to me as there’s anything else as I can help you over.”

“Oh, but there is,—while the war keeps my father away.”

“War, sir? Nonsense! You don’t call a bit of a riot got up by some ragged Jacks war.”

“No; but this is getting to be a very serious affair, according to what Master Pawson told my mother this morning.”

“Master Pawson, sir! Why, what does he know about it?”

“A good deal, it seems. Some friends of his in London send him news, and they said it is going to be a terrible civil war.”

“And me not up there with Sir Granby!” groaned the man. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! it’s a wicked, rusty old world!”

“But I’ve promised to help my mother all I can, Ben, and you must promise to help me.”

“Of course, sir; that you know. But say, sir, war breaking out, and we all rusted up like this! We ought to be ready for anything.”

“So I thought, Ben; but my mother says there’s not likely to be trouble in this out-of-the-way place.”

“Then bless my dear lady’s innocence! says Ben Martlet, and that’s me, sir. Why, you never knows where a spark may drop and the fire begin to run.”

“No, Ben.”

“And if this is sure to be such a peaceful spot, why did the old Roylands build the castle and make a moat and drawbridge, and all the rest of it? They didn’t mean the moat for nothing else, sir, but carp, tench, and eels.”

“And pike, Ben.”

“No, sir. They thought of very different kind of pikes, sir, I can tell you,—same as they I’ve got on the walls yonder in sheaves. But there; her ladyship gives the word to you, and you gives it to me, and I shouldn’t be worth calling a soldier if I didn’t do as I was ordered, and directly, too, and—Hark!”

The old soldier held up his hand.

“Horses!” cried Roy, excitedly. “Why, who’s coming here?”

Chapter Five.
Roy takes his next Lesson.
The clock in the little turret which stood out over the gate-way facing Lady Royland’s garden had not done striking six when Roy entered the armoury next morning, to find Ben hard at work fitting the interior of a light helmet with a small leather cap which was apparently well stuffed with wool.

“Morning, Ben,” said the boy. “What’s that for?”

“You, sir.”

“To wear?”

“Of course. Just as well to take care of your face and head when you’re handling swords. You can use it with the visor up or down, ’cording to what we’re doing. You see, I want to learn you how to use a sword like a soldier, and not like a gentleman who never expects to see trouble.”

“Ready?”

“Yes, sir, quite; and first thing ’s morning we’ll begin where we left off, and you shall try to learn that you don’t know how to thrust. Nothing like finding out how bad you are. Then you can begin to see better what you have to learn.”

“Very well,” said Roy, eagerly. “You’ll have to look out now then, Ben, for I mean to learn, and pretty quickly.”

“Oh, yes; you’ll learn quickly enough,” said Ben, placing the helmet upon the table and taking the pair of sticks up from where he had placed them. “But say, Master Roy, I have been working here. Don’t you think the place looks better?”

“I think my father would be proud of the armoury if he could see the weapons,” said Roy, as he looked round. “Everything is splendid.”

The old soldier smiled as he walked from suit to suit of armour, some of which were obsolete, and could only be looked upon as curiosities of the day; but, in addition, there were modern pieces of defensive armour, beautifully made, with carefully cleaned and inlaid headpieces of the newest kind, and of those the old soldier seemed to be especially proud. Then he led the way on to the stands of offensive weapons, which numbered quaint, massive swords of great age, battle-axes, and maces, and so on to modern weapons of the finest steel, with, guns, petronels, and horse-pistols of clumsy construction, but considered perfect then.

“Yes, sir, I’m proud of our weepuns,” said Ben; “but I aren’t a bit proud of the old castle, which seems to be going right away to ruin.”

“That it isn’t,” cried Roy, indignantly. “It has been repaired and repaired, whenever it wanted doing up, again and again.”

“Ah! you’re thinking about roofs and tiles and plaster, my lad. I was thinking about the defences. Such a place as this used to be. Look at the gun-carriages,—haven’t been painted for years, nor the guns cleaned.”

“Well, mix up some paint and brush it on,” said Roy, “and clean up the guns. They can’t be rusty, because they’re brass.”

“Well, not brass exactly, sir,” said the man, thoughtfully. “It’s more of a mixtur’ like; but to a man like me, sir, it’s heart-breaking.”

“What! to see them turn green and like bronze?”

“Oh, I don’t mind that so much, sir; it’s seeing of ’em come down so much, like. Why, there’s them there big guns as stands in the court-yard behind the breastwork.”

“Garden, Ben.”

“Well, garden, sir. Why, there’s actooally ivy and other ’nockshus weeds growing all over ’em.”

“Well, it looks peaceful and nice.”

“Bah! A gun can’t look peaceful and nice. But that aren’t the worst of it, sir. I was along by ’em a bit ago, and, if you’ll believe me, when I put my hand in one, if there warn’t a sharp, hissing noise!”

“A snake? Got in there?”

“Snake, sir? No! I wouldn’t ha’ minded a snake; but there’s no snakes here.”

“There was one, Ben, for I brought it up out of the woods, and kept it in a box for months, till it got away. Then that’s where it is.”

“Nay. It were no snake, sir. It were one of them little blue and yaller tomtit chaps as lays such lots o’ eggs. I fetches a stick, and I was going to shove it in and twist it in the hay and stuff o’ the nest and draw it out.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No, sir, I didn’t; for I says to myself, if Sir Granby and her ladyship like the place to go to ruin, they may let it; and if the two little birds—there was a cock and hen—didn’t bring up twelve of the rummiest little, tiny young uns I ever did see. There they was, all a-sitting in a row along the gun, and it seemed to me so comic for ’em to be there that I bust out a-laughing quite loud.”

“And they all flew away?”

“Nay, sir, they didn’t; they stopped there a-twittering. But if that gun had been loaded, and I’d touched it off with a fire-stick, it would have warmed their toes, eh? But would you clean up the old guns?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t, Ben. They’re valuable.”

“Vallerble? I should think they are, sir. And, do you know, I will; for who knows what might happen? They tell me down in the village that there’s trouble uppards, and people gets talking agen the king. Ah! I’d talk ’em if I had my way, and make some of ’em squirm.—Yes, I will tidy things up a bit. Startle some on ’em if we was to fire off a gun or two over the village.”

“They’d burst, Ben. Haven’t been fired for a hundred years, I should say. Those brass guns were made in Queen Elizabeth’s time.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t burst, sir; I shouldn’t be afraid of that.—But this is not learning to thrust, is it?”

“No. Come on,” cried Roy, and he took one of the stout ash rods. “Here, hadn’t I better put on this helmet?”

“Not yet, sir. You can practise thrusting without that. Now then, here I am, sir. All ready for you on my guard. Now, thrust.”

Ben dropped into an easy position, with his legs a little bent, one foot advanced, his left hand behind him, and his stick held diagonally across his breast.

Roy imitated him, dropping into the same position.

“Where shall I stab you?” he cried.

“Just wherever you like, sir,—if you can.”

The boy made a quick dart forward with his stick, and it passed by his teacher, who parried with the slightest movement of his wrist.

“I said thrust, sir.”

“Well, I did thrust.”

“That wasn’t a thrust, sir; that was only a poke. It wouldn’t have gone through a man’s coat, let alone his skin. Now, again!”

The boy made another push forward with his stick, which was also parried.

“Nay, that won’t do, my lad; so let’s get to something better. Now, I’m going to thrust at you right in the chest. Enemies don’t tell you where they’re going to hit you, but I’m going to tell you. Now, look out!”

Roy prepared to guard the thrust, but the point of the old man’s stick struck him sharply in the chest, and he winced a little, but smiled.

“Now, sir, you do that, but harder.”

Roy obeyed, but failed dismally.

“Of course,” said Ben. “Now that’s because you didn’t try the right way, sir. Don’t poke at a man, but throw your arm right back till you get your hand level with your shoulder, and sword and arm just in a line. Then thrust right out, and let your body follow your arm,—then you get some strength into it. Now, once more.”

Roy followed his teacher’s instructions.

“Better—ever so much, sir. Now again—good; again—good. You’ll soon do it. Now, can’t you see what a lot of weight you get into a thrust like that? One of your pokes would have done nothing. One like that last would have sent your blade through a man. Now again.”

Roy was now fully upon his mettle, and he tried hard to acquire some portion of the old soldier’s skill, till his arm ached, and Ben cried “Halt!” and began to chat about the old-fashioned armour.

“Lots of it was too clumsy, sir. Strong men were regularly loaded down; and I’ve thought for a long time that all a man wants is a steel cap and steel gloves. All the rest he ought to be able to do with his sword.”

“But you can’t ward off bullets with a sword, Ben,” said Roy.

“No, sir; nor you can’t ward ’em off with armour. They find out the jyntes, if they don’t go through.”

“Would that suit of half-armour be much too big for me, Ben?” said Roy, pausing before a bronzed ornamental set of defensive weapons, which had evidently been the work of some Italian artist.

“No, sir, I shouldn’t think it would. You see that was made for a small man, and you’re a big lad. If you were to put that on, and used a bit o’ stuffing here and there, you wouldn’t be so much amiss. It’s in fine condition, too, with its leather lining, and that’s all as lissome and good as when it was first made.”

“I should like to try that on some day, Ben,” said the boy, eagerly examining the handsome suit.

“Well, I don’t see why not, sir. You’d look fine in that. Wants three or four white ostrich feathers in the little gilt holder of the helmet. White uns would look well with that dark armour. Looks just like copper, don’t it?”

“How long would it take to put it on?” said Roy.

“Hour, sir; and you’d want some high buff boots to wear with it.”

“An hour?” said Roy. “There wouldn’t be time before breakfast.”

“No, sir. But I tell you what—I’ve only cleaned and polished and iled the straps. If you feels as if you’d like to put it on, I’ll go over it well, and see to the buckles and studs: shall I?”

“Yes, do, Ben.”

“That I will, sir. And I say, if, when you’re ready, I was to saddle one of the horses proper, and you was to mount and her ladyship see you, she’d be sorry as ever she wanted you to be a statesman.”

Roy shook his head dubiously.

“Oh, but she would, sir. Man looks grand in his armour and feathers.”

“But I’m only a boy,” said Roy, sadly.

“Who’s to know that when you’re in armour and your visor down, sir? A suit of armour like that, and you on a grand horse, would make a man of you. It’s fine, and no mistake.”

“But you were sneering at armour a little while ago, Ben,” said Roy.

“For fighting in, sir, but not for show. You see, there’s something about armour and feathers and flags that gets hold of people, and a soldier’s a man who likes to look well. I’m an old un now, but I wouldn’t say no to a good new uniform, with a bit o’ colour in it; but if you want me to fight, I don’t want to be all plates and things like a lobster, and not able to move. I want to be free to use my arms. Right enough for show, sir, and make a regiment look handsome; but fighting’s like gardening,—want to take your coat off when you go to work.”

“But you will get that armour ready, Ben?”

“Course I will, sir. On’y too glad to see you take a liking to a bit o’ armour and a sword. Now, then, what do you say to beginning again?”

“I’m ready,” said Roy, but with a longing look at the armour.

“Then you shall just put that helmet on, and have the visor down. You won’t be able to see so well, but it will save your face from an accidental cut.”

He placed the helmet on the boy’s head, adjusted the cheek straps, and drew back.

“Find it heavy, sir?”

“Rather! Feels as if it would topple off as soon as I begin to move.”

“But it won’t, sir. The leather cap inside will stop that. Now, then, if you please, we’ll begin. I’m going to cut at you slowly and softly, and you’ve got to guard yourself, and then turn off. I shall be very slow, but after a bit I shall cut like lightning, and before I’ve done I shan’t be no more able to hit you than you’re able now to hit me.”

Roy said nothing, and the man began cutting at him to right and to left, upward from the same direction and downward, as if bent upon cleaving his shoulders; and for every cut Ben showed him how to make the proper guard, holding his weapon so that the stroke should glance off, and laying especial weight upon the necessity for catching the blow aimed upon the forte of the blade toward the hilt, and not upon the faible near the point.

Then came the turn of the head, and the horizontal and down right cuts were, after further instruction, received so that they, too, glanced off. Roy gaining more and more confidence at every stroke. But that helmet was an utter nuisance, and half buried the wearer.

“I’m beginning to think you’re right, Ben, about the armour,” said the lad, at last.

“Yes, ’tis a bit awkward, sir; but you’ll get used to it. If you can defend yourself well with that on, why, of course, you can without. Now, then, suppose, for a change, you have a cut at me.”

“Why, what tomfoolery is this?” said a highly-pitched voice; and Roy tried to snatch off his helmet as he caught sight of the secretary standing in the door-way looking on.

But the helmet would not come off easily, and, after a tug or two, Roy was fain to turn to the old soldier.

“Here,” he said, hastily, “unfasten this, Ben, quick!”

“Yes, sir; but I don’t see as you’ve any call to be in such a hurry. You’ve a right to learn to use a sword if you like. Only the strap fastened over this stud, and there you are.”

Red-faced and annoyed, Roy faced the secretary, who had walked slowly into the armoury, to stand looking about him with a sneer of contempt upon his lip.


“Only practising a little sword-play, sir,” said the boy, as soon as his head was relieved.

“Sword-play! Is there no other kind of play a boy like you can take to? What do you want with sword-play?”

“My father’s a soldier,” said Roy.

“Yes; but you are not going to be a fighting man, sir; and, behindhand as you are with your studies, I think you might try a little more to do your instructor credit, and not waste time with one of the servants in such a barbaric pursuit as this. Lady Royland is waiting breakfast. You had better come at once.”

Feeling humbled and abashed before the old soldier, Roy followed the secretary without a word, and they entered the breakfast-room together, Lady Royland looking up pale and disturbed, and, upon seeing her son’s face, exclaiming—

“Why, Roy, how hot and tired you look! Have you been running?”

The secretary laughed contemptuously.

“No, mother; practising fencing with Ben.”

“Oh, Roy!” cried his mother, reproachfully; “what can you want with fencing? My dear boy, pray think more of your books.”

Master Pawson gave the lad a peculiar look, and Roy felt as if he should like to kick out under the table so viciously that the sneering smile might give place to a contraction expressing pain.

But Roy did not speak, and the breakfast went on.

Chapter Four.
The Use of a Sword.
Several days passed away, but Lady Royland always put off sending in search of news, and seemed to be more cheerful, so that Roy soon forgot his anxiety in the many things he had to think about,—amusements, studies, and the like. But he had a few words with his father’s old follower on the subject of the absence of news, one day, when Ben was busy, as usual, in the armoury.

“Not heard lately from the master, sir? Pish, that’s nothing; soldiers have got their swords and pistols to think about, not their pens. Best soldiers I ever knew couldn’t write at all. Enough for them to do to fight. You’ll hear from him some day, and when you do, you’ll know as he has been pretty busy putting the people straight,—more straight than some on ’em’ll like to be, I know. Sarve ’em right; nobody’s a right to fight agen the king.—Looks right, don’t it?”

He held up an old sword which he had rubbed and polished till it flashed in the light.

“Splendid!” said Roy. “Is it sharp?”

“Sharp enough to take your head off at one sweep.”

“Nonsense!” said the boy, laughing.

“Oh, it’s true enough, Master Roy. Here, you stand all quite stiff and straight, and I’ll show you.”

“No, thank you, Ben. Suppose I try it on you.”

“There you are, then,” said the man; “but I must have one, too, for a guard.”

He handed the boy the sword, and took up another waiting to be cleaned from galling rust, and, throwing himself on guard, he cried—

“Now then, cut!”

“No; too dangerous,” said Roy.

“Not a bit, my lad, because you couldn’t touch me.”

“I could,” said Roy, “where I liked.”

“Try, then.”

“Not with this sharp sword.”

“Very well, then, take one of those; they’ve no more edge than a wooden one. It’s time you did know how to use a sword, sir.”

Ben exchanged his glittering blade, too, and once more stood on guard.

“I won’t bother you now about how you ought to stand, sir,” he said; “that’ll come when I begin to give you some lessons. You go just as you like, and hit where you can.”

“No, no,” said the boy. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ben.”

“Won’t hurt me, sir; more likely to hurt yourself. But do you know you’re standing just as badly as you possibly could? and if I was your enemy, I could take off your head, either of your ears, or your legs, as easily as look at you.”

Roy laughed, but he did not seem to believe the old soldier’s assertion, and, giving his blunt sword a whirl through the air, he cried—

“Now, then, Ben; which leg shall I cut off?”

“Which you like, sir.”

Roy made a feint at the right leg, and, quickly changing the direction of his weapon, struck with it softly at the old soldier’s left.

“Tchah!” cried the old man, as blade met blade, his sword, in the most effortless way, being edge outward exactly where Roy struck. “Why, do you know, sir, if I’d been in arnest with you, that you would have been spitted like a cockchafer on a pin before you got your blade round to cut?”

“Not I,” said the boy, contemptuously.

“Very well, sir; you’ll see. Now, try again, and cut hard. Don’t let your blade stop to get a bit of hay and a drop of water on the way, but give it me quick.”

“But I don’t want to hurt you, Ben.”

“Well, I don’t, either; and, what’s more, I don’t mean to let you.”

“But I shall, I’m sure, if I strike hard.”

“You think so, my lad; but do you know what a good sword is?”

“A sword.”

“Yes, and a lot more. When a man can use it properly, it’s a shield, and a breastplate, helmet, brasses, and everything else. Now, I’ll just show you. Helmet, say. Now, you cut straight down at my head, just as if you were going to cut me in two pieces.”

“Put on one of the old helmets, then.”

“Tchah! I don’t want any helmets. You cut.”

“And suppose I hurt you?”

“S’pose you can’t.”

“Well, I don’t want to,” said Roy; “so look out.”

“Right, sir; chop away.”

Roy raised his sword slowly, and the old soldier dropped the point of his and began to laugh.

“That won’t do, my lad; lift your blade as if you were going to bring it down again, not as if you meant to hang it up for an ornament on a peg.”

“Oh, very well,” said Roy. “Now, then, I’m going to cut at you sharp.”

“Oh, are you, sir?” said Ben. “Now, if ever you’re a soldier, and meet a man who means to kill you, shall you tell him you’re going to cut at him sharply? because, if you do, you’ll have his blade through you before you’ve half said it.”

“You are precious fond of your banter,” cried Roy, who was a little put out now. “Serve you right if I do hurt you. But this blade won’t cut, will it?”

“Cut through the air if you move it sharp; that’s about all, my lad.”

“Then take that,” cried the boy.

Clang—cling—clatter!

Roy stared, for his sword had come in contact with that of the old soldier, and then was twisted out of his grasp and went rattling along the floor, Ben going after it to fetch it back.

“Try again, sir.”

Roy was on his mettle now, and, grasping the hilt more firmly, he essayed to deliver a few blows at his opponent’s legs, sides, and arms. But Ben’s sword was always there first, and held at such an angle that his weapon glided off violently, as if from his own strength in delivering the blow; and, try hard as he could, he could not get near enough to make one touch.

“Arms and head, my lad; sharp.”

Better satisfied now that he would not hurt his adversary, Roy struck down at the near shoulder, but his sword glanced away. Then at the head, the legs, everywhere that seemed to offer for a blow, but always for his blade to glance off with a harsh grating sound.

“There, it’s of no use; you can’t get near me, my lad,” said Ben, at last.

“Oh, yes, I can. I was afraid of hurting you. I shall hit hard as hard,” cried Roy, who felt nettled. “But I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s have sticks.”

“I’ll get sticks directly, sir. You hit me first with the sword.”

“Oh, very well; if you will have it, you shall,” cried Roy, and, without giving any warning now, he delivered a horizontal blow at the old soldier’s side; but it was turned off just as the dozen or so which followed were thrown aside, and then, with a quiet laugh, the old fellow said—

“Now, every time you hit at me, I could have run you through.”

“No, you couldn’t,” said Roy, sharply.

“Well, we’ll see, sir. Put that down, and use this; or, no, keep your sword; the hilt will protect your hand in case I come down upon it.”

He took up a stout ash stick and threw himself on guard again, waiting for Roy’s blow, which he turned off, but before the next could descend, the boy’s aim was disordered by a sharp dig in the chest from the end of the ash stick; and so it was as he went on: before he could strike he always received a prod in the chest, ribs, arms, or shoulders.

“Oh, I say, Ben,” he cried at last; “I didn’t know you could use a stick like that.”

“Suppose not, my lad; but I knew you couldn’t use a sword like that. Now, I tell you what: you’d better come to me for an hour every morning before breakfast, and I’ll begin to make such a man of you as your father would like to see when he comes back.”

“Well, I will come, Ben,” said the lad; “but my arm does not ache so much now, and I don’t feel quite beaten. Let’s have another try.”

“Oh, I’ll try all day with you, if you like, sir,” said the old soldier; “only, suppose now you stand on guard and let me attack.”

“With swords?” said Roy, blankly.

“No, no,” said Ben, laughing; “I don’t want to hurt you. We’ll keep to sticks. Better still: I want you to get used to handling a sword, so I’ll have the stick and you shall defend yourself with a blade.”

“But that wouldn’t be fair to you,” cried Roy. “I might hurt you, while you couldn’t hurt me.”

“Couldn’t I?” said the old fellow, drily. “I’m afraid I could, and more than you could me. Now, then, take that blade.”

He took one from the wall, a handsome-looking sword, upon which the armourer who made it had bestowed a good deal of ingenious labour, carving the sides, and ornamenting the hilt with a couple of beautifully fluted representations in steel of the scallop shell, so placed that they formed as complete a protection to the hand of the user as that provided in the basket-hilted Scottish claymore.

“Find that too heavy for you, sir?”

“It is heavy,” said Roy; “but one seems to be able to handle it easily.”

“Yes, sir; you’ll find that will move lightly. You see it’s so well balanced by the hilt being made heavy. The blade comes up lightly, and, with a fair chance, I believe I could cut a man in two with it after a few touches on a grindstone.”

“Ugh!” ejaculated Roy; “horrid!”

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. Much more horrid if he cut you in two. It’s of no use to be thin-skinned over fighting in earnest. Man’s got to defend himself. Now, then, let’s give you a word or two of advice to begin with. A good swordsman makes his blade move so sharply that you can hardly see it go through the air. You must make it fly about like lightning. Now then, ready?”

“Yes; but you won’t mind if I hurt you?”

“Don’t you be afraid of doing that, sir. If you hurt me, it’ll serve me right for being such a bungler. En garde!”

Roy threw himself into position, and the old soldier attacked him very slowly, cutting at his neck on either side, then down straight at his head, next at his arms and legs; and in every case, though in a bungling way, Roy interposed his blade after the fashion shown by his adversary.

Then the old fellow drew back and rested the point of his ash stick upon his toe, while Roy panted a little, and smiled with satisfaction.

“Come,” he said; “I wasn’t so bad there.”

“Oh, no, you weren’t so bad there, because you showed that you’d got some idea of what a sword’s for; but when you’re ready we’ll begin again. May as well have something to think about till to-morrow morning. First man you fight with won’t stop to ask whether you’re ready, you know.”

“I suppose not; but wait a minute.”

“Hour, if you like, sir; but your arms’ll soon get hard. Seems a pity, though, that they’re not harder now. I often asked the master to let me teach you how to use a sword.”

“Yes, I know; but my mother always objected. She doesn’t like swords. I do.”

“Of course you do, sir. It’s a lad’s nature to like one. Ready?”

“Yes,” cried Roy, standing on his guard; “but look out this time, Ben, because I mean you to have something.”

“That’s right, sir; but mind this: I’m not going to let my stick travel like a snail after a cabbage-leaf this time. I’m going to cut as I should with a sword, only I’m going to hit as if you were made of glass, so as not to break you. Now!”

The old soldier’s eyes flashed as he threw one foot forward, Roy doing the same; but it was his newly polished sword that flashed as he prepared to guard the cuts, taking care, or meaning to take care, to hold his blade at such an angle that the stick would glance off. The encounter ended in a few seconds. Whizz, whirr, pat, pat, pat, and the elastic ash sapling came down smartly upon the boy’s arms, legs, sides, shoulders, and finished off with a rap on the head, with the result that Roy angrily threw the sword jangling upon the floor, and stood rubbing his arms and sides viciously.

“You said you were going to hit at me as if I were made of glass,” cried the boy.

“So I did. Don’t mean to say those taps hurt you?”

“Hurt? They sting horribly.”

“Why, those cuts would hardly have killed flies, sir. But why didn’t you guard?”

“Guard? I did guard,” cried Roy, angrily, as he rubbed away; “but you were so quick.”

“Oh, I can cut quicker than that, sir. You see I got in before you did every time. I’d cut, and was on my way to give another before you were ready for the first. Come, they don’t tingle now, do they?”

“Tingle? Yes. Here, I want a stick. I’m not going to leave off without showing you how it does hurt.”

“Better leave off now, sir,” said the man, grinning.

“But I don’t want to,” cried Roy; and picking up the sword which he had handled with a feeling of pride, he took the other stick, and, crying “Ready!” attacked in his turn, striking hard and as swiftly as he could, but crack, crack, crack, wherever he struck, there was the defensive sapling; and at last, with his arm and shoulder aching, the boy lowered his point and stood panting, with his brow moist with beads of perspiration.

“Well done!” cried Ben. “Now that’s something like a first lesson. Why, those last were twice as good as any you gave before.”

“Yes,” said Roy, proudly; “I thought I could make you feel. Some of those went home.”

“Not one of them, my lad,” said Ben, smiling; “you didn’t touch me once.”

“Not once?”

“No, sir; not once.”

“Is that the truth, Ben?”

“Every word of it, sir. But never you mind that; you did fine; and if you’ll come to me every morning, I’ll make you so that in three months I shall have to look out for myself.”

“I don’t seem to have done any good at all,” said Roy, pettishly.

“Not done no good, sir? Why, you’ve done wonders; you’ve taken all the conceit out of yourself, and learned in one lesson that you don’t know anything whatever about a sword, except that it has a blade and a hilt and a scabbard. And all the time you’d been thinking that all you had to do was to chop and stab with it as easy as could be, and that there was nothing more to learn. Now didn’t you?”

“Something like it,” said Roy, who was now cooling down; “but, of course, I knew that you had to parry.”

“But you didn’t know how to, my lad; and look here, you haven’t tried to thrust yet. Here, give me a sharp one now.”

“No, I can’t do any more,” said Roy, sulkily. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s a true word, sir; but you’re going to try?”

“No, I’m not,” said Roy, whom a sharp sting in one leg from the worst cut made a little vicious again.

“Come, come, come,” said the old soldier, reproachfully. “That aren’t like my master’s son talking; that’s like a foolish boy without anything in his head.”

“Look here, Ben; don’t you be insolent.”

“Not I, Master Roy. I wouldn’t be to you. Only I speak out because I’m proud of you, my lad, and I want to see you grow up into a man like your father. I tried hard not to hurt you, sir, but I suppose I did. But I can’t say I’m sorry.”

“Then you ought to be, for you cut at me like a brute.”

The old soldier shook his head sadly.

“You don’t mean that, Master Roy,” he said; “and it’s only because you’re tingling a bit; that’s all.”

The man’s words disarmed Roy, and the angry frown passed away, as he said, frankly—

“No, I don’t mean it now, Ben. The places don’t tingle so; but I say, there’ll be black marks wherever you cut at me.”

“Never mind, sir; they’ll soon come white again, and you’ll know next time that you’ve got to have your weapon ready to save yourself. Well, I dunno. I meant it right, but you’ve had enough of it. Some day Sir Granby’ll let you go to a big fencing-master as never faced a bit o’ steel drawn in anger in his life, and he’ll put you on leather pads and things, and tap you soft like, and show you how to bow, s’loot, and cut capers like a Frenchman, and when he’s done with you I could cut you up into mincemeat without you being able to give me a scratch.”

“Get out!” cried Roy. “You don’t think anything of the sort. What time shall I come to-morrow morning—six?”

“No, sir, no. Bed’s very nice at six o’clock in the morning. You stop there, and then you won’t be hurt.”

“Five, then?” said Roy, sharply.

“Nay, sir; you wait for the big fencing-master.”

“Five o’clock, I said,” cried Roy.

The old soldier took the sword Roy had held, and fetching a piece of leather from a drawer began to polish off the finger-marks left upon the steel.

“I said five o’clock, Ben,” cried the boy, very decisively.

“Nay, Master Roy, you give it up, sir. I’m too rough an old chap for you.”

“Sorry I was so disagreeable, Ben,” said the boy, offering his hand.

“Mean it, sir?”

“Why, of course, Ben.”

The hand was eagerly seized, and, it being understood that the sword practice was to begin punctually at six next morning, they separated.

Chapter Three.
Coming Events cast their Shadows before.
The wail on one string went on, and naturally sounded louder as Roy Royland opened a door to stand gazing in at the quaint octagonal room, lit by windows splayed to admit more light to the snug quarters hung with old tapestry, and made cosy with thick carpet and easy-chair, and intellectual with dwarf book-cases filled with choice works. These had overflowed upon the floor, others being piled upon the tops of chairs and stacked in corners wherever room could be found, while some were even ranged upon the narrow steps of the corkscrew stone staircase which led to the floor above, occupied by Master Palgrave Pawson for a bedchamber, the staircase being continued up to the leads, where it ended in a tiny turret.

“I wonder what father will say, my fine fellow, when he finds what a lot of his books you’ve brought up out of the library,” said Roy to himself, as he stood watching the plump, smooth-faced youngish man, who, with an oblong music-book open before him on the table, was seated upon a stool, with a ’cello between his legs, gravely sawing away at the strings, and frowning severely whenever, through bad stopping with his fingers—and that was pretty often—he produced notes “out of tune and harsh.” The musician was dressed, according to the fashion of the day, in dark velvet with a lace collar, and wore his hair long, so that it inconvenienced him; the oily curls, hanging down on either side of his fat face like the valance over an old-fashioned four-post bedstead, swaying to and fro with the motion of the man’s body, and needing, from time to time, a vigorous shake to force them back when they encroached too far forward and interfered with his view of the music.

The slow, solemn, dirge-like air went on, but the player did not turn his head, playing away with grave importance, and giving himself a gentle inclination now and then to make up for the sharp twitches caused by the tickling hair.

“You saw me,” said Roy, speaking to himself, but at the musician, “for one of your eyes turned this way; but you won’t speak till you’ve got to the end of that bit of noise. Oh, how I should like to shear off those long greasy curls! They make you look worse even than you do when they’re all twisted up in pieces of paper. It doesn’t suit your round, fat face. You don’t look a bit like a cavalier, Master P.P.; but I suppose you’re a very good sort of fellow, or else father would not have had you here.”

Just then the music ended with an awkwardly performed run up an octave and four scrapes across the first and second strings.

“Come in, boy,” said the player, taking up a piece of resin to apply to the hair of the bow, “and shut the door.”

He spoke in a highly-pitched girlish voice, which somehow always tickled Roy and made him inclined to laugh, and the desire increased upon this occasion as he said, solemnly—

“Saraband.”

“Oh! Who’s she?” said the boy, wonderingly.

The secretary threw his head back, shaking his curls over his broad turn-down collar, and smiled pityingly.

“Ah,” he said, “now this is another proof of your folly, Roy, in preferring the society of the servants to that of the noble works with which your father has stored his library. What ignorance! A saraband is a piece of dance music, Italian in origin; and that was a very beautiful composition.”

“Dance?” cried the boy. “People couldn’t dance to a tune like that. I thought it was an old dirge.”

“Want of taste and appreciation, boy. But I see you would prefer something light and sparkling. I will—sit down—play you a coranto.”

It was on Roy’s lips to say, “Oh, please don’t,” but he contented himself with crossing the room, lifting some books off an oaken window-seat, his tutor watching him keenly the while, and putting them on the floor; while, with his head still thrown back on one side, Master Palgrave Pawson slowly turned over the leaves of his music-book with the point of his bow.

Roy seated himself, with a sigh, after a glance down through the open window at the glistening moat dotted with the great silver blossoms and dark flat leaves of the water-lilies, seeing even from there the shadowy forms of the great fish which glided slowly among the slimy stalks.

“Ready?” said the musician, giving his hand a flourish.

“Yes, sir,” said Roy, aloud; and then to himself, “Oh, what an awful fib.” Then he wrinkled up his brows dismally, and began to think of old Ben polishing the armour and swords; but the next moment his face smoothed out stiffly, and he grew red in his efforts to keep from laughing aloud, for Master Pawson commenced jerking and snatching from the strings a remarkable series of notes, which followed one another in a jigging kind of fairly rapid sequence, running up and down the gamut and in and out, as if the notes of the composer had suddenly become animated, and, like some kind of tiny, big-headed, long-tailed goblins, were chasing one another in and out of the five lines of the stave, leaping from bar to bar, never stopping for a rest, making fun of the flats and sharps, and finally pausing, breathless and tired, as the player now finally laid down the bow, took out a fine laced handkerchief, and began to wipe his fingers and mop his brow.

“There,” he said, smiling; “you like that bright, sparkling composition better?”

“No,” said Roy, decisively; “no, I don’t think I do.”

“I am glad of it; very glad of it. I was afraid that you preferred the light and trivial coranto to the graceful saraband.”

“But, I say. Master Pawson, the Italians surely don’t dance to such music as that?”

“I have never been in Italy, my dear pupil, but I believe they do. Going?”

Roy had risen from his chair.

“Yes, sir; I thought, as you were practising, you would not want me to stop and read to-day, and you are writing a letter, too.”

“Letter?” said the secretary, hurriedly reaching towards an open sheet upon the table and turning it over with the point of his bow. “Oh, that? Yes, some notes—some notes. Well, it is a fine day, and exercise is good, and perhaps I shall run through a few more compositions. So you can go, and we will study a little in the evening, for we must not neglect our work, Roy, my dear pupil; we must not neglect our work.”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir,” said the boy; and, for fear of a change of decision, he hurried from the room and made his way out upon the old ramparts, to begin walking leisurely round the enclosed garden, and looking outward from the eminence upon which the castle was built across the moat at the foot, and away over the sunny forest towards the village and little church, whose spire rose about two miles away.

“I wish he wouldn’t always call me ‘my dear pupil,’ and smile at me as if he looked down from ever so high up. I don’t know how it is, but I always feel as if I don’t like him. I suppose it’s because he’s so plump and smooth.

“Seems hard,” mused the boy, seating himself in one of the crenellations of the rampart, and thinking deeply, “that he should get letters with news from London, and poor mother not have a line. That was a letter on the table, though he pretended it was not, for I could see it began like one. I didn’t want to read it. Perhaps he was ashamed of being always writing letters. Don’t matter to me. Afraid, perhaps, that he’ll be told that he ought to attend more to teaching me. Wish he’d be always writing letters. I can learn twice as much reading with mother.”

It was very beautiful in that sunny niche in the mouldering stones close to the tower farthest away from that occupied by the secretary, and a spot much favoured by the boy, for from there he could look right over the square gate-way with its flanking towers, and the drawbridge which was never drawn, and the portcullis which was never lowered.

“Can’t hear him playing here,” thought Roy that day; and he congratulated himself upon the fact, without pausing to think that the distance was so short that the notes should have been audible.

Roy had been successful in getting off his reading with the tutor, but he was very undecided what to do next, for there were so many things to tempt him, and his mind kept on running in different directions. One minute he was dwelling on his mother’s troubles and the want of news from his father, and from this it was a natural transition to thinking of how grand it would be if he could prevail upon her to let him go up to that far-away mysterious city, which it took days to reach on horseback, and then he could take her letter and find where his father was lying with his regiment, and see the army,—maybe see the king and queen, and perhaps his father might let him stay there,—at all events for a time.

Then he was off to thinking about the great moat, for twice over a splash rose to his ears, and he could see the rings of water which spread out and made the lily-leaves rise and fall.

“That was the big tench,” he said to himself. “Must catch that fellow some day. He must weigh six or seven pounds. It ought to be a good time now. Want a strong line, though, and a big hook, for he’d run in and out among the lily-stems and break mine. Now, if I knew where father was, I could write and ask him to buy me one and send it down by his next letter. No: he wouldn’t want to be bothered to buy me fishing-lines when he’s with his regiment. I know,” he said to himself, after a pause; “old Ben has got the one he caught the big eel with. I’ll make him lend me that. Poor old Ben! who’d ever have thought that he could cry. For it was crying just as a little boy would. Seems funny, because he has been a brave soldier, and saved father’s life once. Shouldn’t have thought a man like that could cry.”

Roy began to whistle softly, and then picked up a little cushion-like patch of velvety green moss and pitched it down towards a jackdaw that was sitting on a projecting stone just below a hole, watching him intently, first with one eye and then with the other, as if puzzled to know what he was doing so near to his private residence, where his wife was sitting upon a late batch of eggs, an accident connected with rats having happened to the first.

It did not occur to the bird that it was quite impossible for its nesting-place to be reached without a swing down from above by a rope; but, being still puzzled, it tried to sharpen its intellectual faculties by standing on one leg and scratching its grey poll with the claws of the other, a feat which made it unsteady and nearly topple over towards the deep moat below.

“Tah!” it cried, in resentment of the insult when the little green moss cushion was thrown; and, as the bird sailed away, Roy rose and walked slowly along the rampart, through the corner tower, and then on towards the front, where that over the outer gate-way stood tall, massive, and square. Here the boy left the rampart, entered through a low arched door, and stood in the great chamber over the main gate-way, where the rusty chains were wound round the two capstans, held fast now by their checks, and suspending the huge grated portcullis, with its spikes high enough to be clear of a coachman driving a carriage.

“Wonder whether we could let that down?” thought Roy.

He had often had the same thought, but it came very strongly now, and he began to calculate how many men it would take to lower the portcullis, and whether he, Ben, and a couple more could manage it.

“Looks as if everything must be set fast with rust,” he thought, and he was about to turn and descend; but as he reached the corner where the spiral steps led down, he stood where they also led up to another chamber in the massive stone-work, and again higher to the leads.

The result was that in his idle mood Roy began to ascend, to find half-way up, by the slit which gave light, that the jackdaws had been busy there too, coming in and out by the loop-hole, and building a nest which was supported upon a scaffolding of sticks which curved up from the stone step on which it rested, and from that to the splay and sill by the loop-hole.

“Only an old one,” said the boy to himself, and he brought the great edifice down with a sharp kick or two, thinking that it must be about a year since any one had come up that way.

“What a lot of the old place seems no use!” he said to himself, as, with the dry sticks crackling beneath his feet, he climbed up the dark stairway and entered the next chamber through its low arched door.

“Why, what a jolly private room this would make!” he said to himself; “only wants a casement in and some furniture. I’ll ask father to let me have it for my play—I mean study; no, I don’t—I mean odds and ends place.”

He paused—after glancing out at the beautiful view over the woodland country dotted with meadow-like pastures in which the ruddy cattle of the county grazed—by the open fireplace with the arms of the Roylands cut in stone beneath the narrow shelf, and the sight of this opening, with the narrow, well-made chimney and some projecting stone blocks from the fire-back, set him thinking.

“Fight differently now,” he said, as he recalled the object of the furnace before him, and how he had heard or read that it was used on purpose to melt lead ready for pouring down upon the besiegers who might have forced their way across the drawbridge to the portcullis. “Fancy melting lead here to pour down upon men’s heads! What wretches we must have been in the old days.”

He altered his mind, though, directly, as he went back to the stairway.

“Perhaps we never did pour any down, for I don’t think anybody ever did attack the castle.”

Thinking he might as well go a little higher, he mounted the spiral instead of descending, the dry elm twigs brought in by the jackdaws which made the untenanted corners their home crackling again beneath his feet.

Passing out of the corner turret, which supported a stout, new flag-pole, he was now on the leaded roof of the great square tower, which frowned down upon the drawbridge and gazed over the outer gate-way, in whose tower old Jenkin Bray, the porter, dwelt, and whom Roy could now see sitting beside the modern iron gate sunning himself, his long white hair and beard glistening in the light.

There were openings for heavy guns in front here, and a broad, level, projecting parapet with a place where the defenders could kneel, and which looked like a broad seat at the first glance, while at its foot was a series of longish, narrow, funnel-shaped openings, over which the boy stood, gazing down through them at the entrance to the main gate-way, noting how thoroughly they commanded the front of where the portcullis would stand when dropped, and where any enemies attacking and trying to break through would be exposed to a terrible shower of molten lead, brought up from the furnace in the chamber below to pour down upon the besiegers, while those who assailed them were in perfect safety.

“Horrid!” muttered Roy; “but I don’t know; the enemy should stop away and leave the people in the castle alone. But hot lead! Boiling water wouldn’t seem so bad. But surely Master Pawson’s friend is wrong; we can’t be going to have war here in England. Well, if we do, there’s nothing to bring them here.”

Roy left the machicolations and knelt upon the broad stone seat-like place to stretch himself across the parapet, and look down, over the narrow patch of stone paving, down into the deep moat, whose waters were lit up by the sunshine, so that the boy could see the lily and other water-plant stems and clumps of reed mace; at the farther edge the great water-docks and plantains, with the pink-blossomed rush. But his attention was wholly riveted by the fish which swarmed in the sunny depths, and for a time he lay there upon his breast, kicking up his heels and studying the broad-backed carp, some of which old age had decked with patches of greyish mould. There were fat tench, too, walloping about among the lilies, and appearing to enjoy the pleasure of forcing their way in and out among the leaves and stems; while the carp sailed about in the open water, basking in the sunshine, and seemed to find their satisfaction in leaping bodily out of the water to fall back with a splash.

There were roach, too, in shoals, and what seemed remarkable was that they kept swimming close up to where a great pike of nearly three feet long lay motionless, close to a patch of weed.

“Must be asleep,” thought Roy, “or not hungry, and they all know it, because he would soon snap up half a dozen of them.”

Then, as he lay lazily watching the fish in the drowsy sunshine which had warmed the stones, the political troubles of the nation and the great cloud of war, with its lightnings, destruction, and death, were unseen. He was surrounded by peace in the happiest days of boyhood, and trouble seemed as if it could not exist. But the trumpet-blast had rung out the call to arms, and men were flocking to that standard and to this, and the flash and thunder of guns had begun.

But not there down to that sleepy, retired part of Devon. There was the castle built for defence, and existing now as Sir Granby Royland’s happy country home, surrounded by its great estate with many tenants, while its heir was stretched out there in the sunshine upon his chest, kicking up his heels, and thinking at that moment that it would not be a bad amusement to bring up a very long line with a plummet at the end, to bait it, and then swing it to and fro till he could drop it right out where the great pike lay, ten or a dozen feet from the drawbridge.

“I will some day,” said the boy, half aloud; “but it’s too much trouble now.”

He swung himself round and lay there, looking back over the top of the spacious building, on whose roof he was, right across the now floral old court-yard, and between the two angle towers, to the wide-spreading acres of the farms and woodlands which formed his father’s estate.

The jackdaws flew about, and began to settle at the corners as he lay so still and languidly said to himself—

“Need to lie still; it wouldn’t do to slip over backward. I shouldn’t even go into the moat, for I should come down on those stones.”

“Stupid to be in dangerous places,” he said to himself directly after, and, rolling over, he let himself down upon the broad seat-like place, where he could lie and watch the prospect just as well.

“Rather stupid of me not to come up here oftener,” he thought. “It’s a capital place. I will ask father to let me have all this old empty tower to myself. What’s that? A fight?”

For there was a sudden rush upward of jackdaws from where they had blackened the farthest corner tower to the left, and, looking in that direction as he lay, he saw the reason of the sudden whirr of wings and outburst of sharp, harsh cries, for there upon the leads, and holding on by the little turret which covered the door-way of the spiral staircase, stood Master Pawson.

“Feels like I do, I suppose,” thought Roy, as the secretary cast his eyes round the old building, particularly watchful of the pleasaunce, but keeping right back by the outer crenelles as if not wishing to be seen.

At first Roy felt that the secretary saw him, and as his eyes roved on and he made no sign, the boy’s hand went to his pocket in search of his handkerchief to wave to him. He did not withdraw it, but lay lazily watching while the secretary now turned his back and stood gazing right away.

“Never saw him do anything of that kind before,” thought Roy. “What’s he looking after? I shouldn’t have thought he had ever been up there in his life.”

Roy lay quite still, with his eyes half closed, and all at once the secretary drew out his white laced handkerchief, wiped his forehead three times with a good deal of flourish, and returned it, after which he slowly stepped into the turret opening and backed out of sight.

“Mind you don’t slip,” said Roy, tauntingly, but quite conscious of the fact that his words could not be heard. “Why, he has gone down like a bear—backward. I could run down those stairs as fast as I came up.”

Perhaps it was the warm sunshine, perhaps it was from laziness, but, whatever the cause, Roy Royland went off fast asleep, and remained so for quite a couple of hours, when, starting up wonderingly, and not quite conscious of the reason why he was there, he looked about him, and finally over the great parapet, to see the secretary beyond the farther end of the drawbridge, talking in a very benign way to the old porter, who stood with bent head listening to his words.

“Why, it seems only a few moments ago that I saw him on the leads over his chamber staring out across country, and he must have been down since, and had a walk.—How time does go when you’re snoozing,” thought Roy, “and how stupid it is to go to sleep in the daytime! I won’t do it again.”

Chapter Two.
Roy’s Mother and Tutor.
“I had missed you, Roy,” said the lady, smiling proudly on the boy; and he looked with eyes full of pride at the beautiful woman, who now rested her arm upon his shoulder and walked by his side into the more homelike part of the old fortalice, whose grim interior had been transformed by wainscoting, hangings, carpets, stained glass, and massive oak furniture into the handsome mansion of the middle of the seventeenth century.

They passed down a broad staircase into a noble hall, and from thence into a library whose broad, low, mullioned stone window opened into what had been the inner court of the castle, whose ramparts and flanking corner towers were still there; but the echoing stones that had once paved it had given place to verdant lawn, trim flower-beds ablaze with bloom, quaintly-cut shrubs, and creepers which beautified the walls once so bare and grim.

“I want to talk to you, Roy,” said Lady Royland, sinking into a great formal chair. “Bring your stool and sit down.”

“Got too big for the stool, mother,” said the boy; “I can’t double up my legs close enough. I’ll sit here.”

He threw himself upon the thick carpet at her feet, and rested his arms upon her lap.

“Want to talk to me? I’d rather hear you read.”

“Not now, my dear.”

“Why, what’s the matter, mother?” said the boy, anxiously. “You’re as white as can be. Got one of your headaches?”

“No, my boy,—at least, my head does ache. But it is my heart, Roy,—my heart.”

“Then you’ve heard bad news,” cried the boy. “Oh, mother, tell me; what is it? Not about father?”

“No, no; Heaven forbid, my dear,” cried Lady Royland, wildly. “It is the absence of news that troubles me so.”

“I ought to say us,” said Roy, angrily; “but I’m so selfish and thoughtless.”

“Don’t think that, my boy. You are very young yet, but I do wish you would give more thought to your studies with Master Pawson.”

The boy frowned.

“I wish you’d let me read with you, mother,” he said. “I understand everything then, and I don’t forget it; but when that old—”

“Master Palgrave Pawson,” said Lady Royland, reprovingly, but with a smile.

“Oh, well, Master Palgrave Pawson. P.P., P.P. What a mouthful it seems to be!”

“Roy!”

“I’ve tried, mother; but I do get on so badly with him. I can’t help it; I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me, and it will always be the same.”

“But why? Why do you not like him?”

“Because—because—well, he always smiles at me so.”

“That does not seem as if he disliked you. Rather the reverse.”

“He’s so smooth and oily.”

“It is only his manner, my dear. He seems to be very sincere, and to have your welfare at heart.”

“Yes, that’s it, mother; he won’t let me alone.”

“But he is your tutor, my dear. You know perfectly well that he came to be your father’s secretary and your tutor combined.”

“Yes, I know, mother,” said the boy, impatiently; “but somehow he doesn’t seem to teach me.”

“But he is very studious, and tries hard.”

“Yes, I know. But he seems to think I’m about seven instead of nearly seventeen, and talks to me as if I were a very little boy, and—and—and we don’t get on.”

“This sounds very sad, Roy, and I cannot bear to have a fresh trouble now. Your studies are so important to us.”

Roy reached up to get his arms round his mother’s neck, drew her head down, and kissed her lovingly.

“And she shan’t have any more trouble,” he cried. “I’ll get wonderfully fond of old Paw.”

“Roy!”

“Master Palgrave Pawson, then; and I’ll work at my lessons and classics like a slave. But you will read with me, too, mother?”

“As much as you like, my son. Thank you. That has taken away part of my load.”

“I wish I could take away the rest; but I know you’re fidgeting because father hasn’t written, and think that something has happened to him. But don’t you get fancying that, because there can’t be anything. They’ve only gone after a mob of shoemakers and tailors with a counterpane for flag, and father will scatter them all like dead leaves.”

“Roy! My boy, these are not your words?”

“No, mother; old Ben Martlet said something of that kind to me this morning.”

“Does he not know, then, how serious it is?”

“Serious? What do you mean by serious?”

Lady Royland drew a deep breath, and laid her hand upon her side as if in pain.

“Why, mother,” repeated the boy, “what do you mean by serious?”

“This trouble—this rising, my dear. We have had no news, but Master Pawson has had letters from London, and he tells me that what was supposed to be a little petty discontent has grown into a serious revolution.”

Roy gazed in his mother’s troubled face as if he did not quite comprehend the full extent of her words.

“Well, and if it has, mother, what then?”

“What then, my boy?”

“Yes. You’ve nothing to fidget about. Father is there with his men, and he’ll soon put a stop to it all. You know how stern he can be when people misbehave.”

“My dear Roy, this, I am afraid, is going to be no little trouble that your father can put down with his men. Master Pawson tells me that there is every prospect of its being a civil war.”

“What! Englishmen fighting against Englishmen?”

“Yes; a terrible fratricidal war.”

“But who has quarrelled, mother? Oh, the king will soon stop it.”

“Roy, my boy, we have kept you so shut up here in this retired place for home study, instead of parting with you to send you to one of the great schools, that in some things you are as ignorant as I.”

“Oh, mother!” cried the boy, laughing. “You ignorant! I only wish I were half as learned and clever. Why, father said—”

“Yes, yes, dear; but that is only book-learning. We have been so happy here that the jarring troubles of politics and the court have not reached our ears; and I, for one, never gave them a thought till, after all these years of peacefulness, your father found himself compelled to obey the call of duty, and left us. We both thought that it was only for a week or two, and then the disturbance would be at an end; but every letter he has sent me has contained worse news, till now it is nearly a month since I have heard from him.”

“Then it is because he is putting down the rioters,” said Roy, quickly.

“Rioters, my boy! Rebels you should say, for I fear that a great attempt is to be made to overthrow the monarchy. Master Pawson’s informants assure him that this is the case, and before long, he says, there must be an encounter between the Royal and the Parliamentary troops.”

“Is Master Pawson right, mother? Royal troops—Parliamentary troops? Why, they’re all the same.”

“No, Roy; there is a division—a great division, I fear, and discontented people are taking the side against the king.”

“Then I’m sorry for them,” said the boy, flushing. “They’ll get a most terrible beating, these discontented folks.”

“Let us hope so, my boy, so that there may be an end to this terrible anxiety. To those who have friends whom they love in the army, a foreign war is dreadful enough; but when I think of the possibility of a war here at home, with Englishmen striving against Englishmen, I shudder, and my heart seems to sink.”

“Look here,” cried the boy, as he rose and stood with his hand resting upon his mother’s shoulder, “you’ve been fidgeting and fancying all sorts of things, because you haven’t heard from father.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lady Royland, faintly.

“Then you mustn’t, mother. ’Tis as I say; he is too busy to write, or else he hasn’t found it easy to send you a letter. I’ll take the pony and ride over to Sidecombe and see when the Exeter wagon comes in. There are sure to be letters for you, and even if there are not, it will make you more easy for me to have been to see, and I can bring you back what news there is. I’ll go at once.”

Lady Royland took hold of her son’s hand and held it fast.

“No,” she said, making an effort to be firm. “We will wait another day. I have been fidgeting, dear, as you say, and it has made me nervous and low-spirited; but I’m better now for talking to you, my boy, and letting you share my trouble. I dare say I have been exaggerating.”

“But I should like to ride over, mother.”

“You shall go to-morrow, Roy; but even then I shall be loath to let you. There, you see I am quite cheerful again. You are perfectly right; your father is perhaps away with his men, and he may have sent, and the letter has miscarried in these troublous times.”

“I shouldn’t like to be the man who took it, if it has miscarried,” said the boy, laughing.

“Poor fellow! it may have been an accident. There, go to Master Pawson now; and Roy, my dear, don’t talk about our trouble to any one for the present.”

“Not to old Pawson?”

“Master Pawson.”

“Not to Master Pawson?” said Roy, smiling.

“Not unless he speaks to you about it; then, of course, you can.”

“But he won’t, mother. He only talks to me about the Greek and Latin poets and about music. I say, you don’t want to see me squeezing a big fiddle between my knees and sawing at it with a bow as if I wanted to cut all the strings, do you, mother?”

“My dear boy, not unless you wished to learn the violoncello.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Roy, pettishly; “but old Master Pawson is always bringing his out of its great green-baize bag and talking to me about it. He says that he will instruct me, and he is sure that my father would have one sent to me from London if I asked him. Just as if there are not noises enough in the west tower now without two of us sawing together. Thrrum, thrrum, throomp, throomp, throomp!”

Roy struck an attitude as if playing, running his left hand up and down imaginary strings while he scraped with his right, and produced no bad imitation of the vibrating strings with his mouth.

“I should not dislike for you to play some instrument to accompany my clavichord, Roy,” said Lady Royland, smiling at the boy’s antics.

“Very well, then; I’ll learn the trumpet,” cried the lad. “I’m off now to learn—not music.”

“One moment, Roy, my dear,” said Lady Royland, earnestly. “Don’t let your high spirits get the better of your discretion.”

“Of course not, mother.”

“You do not understand me, my dear. I am speaking very seriously now. I mean, do not let Master Pawson think that you ridicule his love of music. It would be very weak and foolish, and lower you in his eyes.”

“Oh, I’ll mind, mother.”

“Recollect that he is a scholar and a gentleman, and in your father’s confidence.”

Roy nodded, and his lips parted as if to speak, but he closed them again.

“What were you going to say, Roy?”

“Oh, nothing, mother.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, only—that—I was going to say, do you like Master Pawson?”

“As your tutor and your father’s secretary, yes. He is a very clever man, I know.”

“Yes, he’s a very clever man,” said Roy, as, after kissing his mother affectionately, he went off towards the west tower, which had been specially fitted up as study and bedchamber for the gentleman who had come straight from Oxford to reside at Sir Granby Royland’s seat a couple of years before this time. “Yes, he’s a very clever man,” said Roy to himself; “but I thought I shouldn’t like him the first day he came, and I’ve gone on thinking so ever since. I don’t know why, but—Oh, yes, I do,” cried the boy, screwing up his face with a look of disgust: “it’s because, as he says, I’ve no soul for music.”

For just at that moment a peculiar long-drawn wailing sound came from the open window of the west tower, and a dog lying curled up on the grass in the sun sprang up and began to bark, finishing off with a long, low howl, as it stretched out its neck towards the open window.

“Poor old Nibbs! he has no soul for it, either,” said the boy to himself, as his face lit up with a mirthful expression. “It woke him up, and he thought it was cats. Wonder what tune that is? He won’t want me to interrupt him now. Better see, though, and speak to him first, and then I’ll go and see old Ben polish the armour.”

This next installment is a chronicle of the English Civil War by George Manville Fenn:

The Young Castellan
A Tale of the English Civil War

“See these here spots o’ red rust, Master Roy?”

“I should be blind as poor old Jenkin if I couldn’t, Ben.”

“Ay, that you would, sir. Poor old Jenk, close upon ninety he be; and that’s another thing.”

“What do you mean?” said the boy addressed.

“What do I mean, sir? Why, I mean as that’s another thing as shows as old England’s wore out, and rustin’ and moulderin’ away.”

“Is this Dutch or English, Ben?” said the manly-looking boy, who had just arrived at the age when dark lads get teased about not having properly washed the sides of their faces and their upper lips, which begin to show traces of something “coming up.” “I don’t understand.”

“English, sir,” said the weather-beaten speaker, a decidedly ugly man of about sixty, grizzly of hair and beard, deeply-lined of countenance, and with a peculiar cicatrice extending from the upper part of his left cheek-bone diagonally down to the right corner of his lips, and making in its passage a deep notch across his nose. “English, sir; good old honest English.”

“You’re always grumbling, Ben, and you won’t get the rust off that morion with that.”

“That I shan’t, sir; and if I uses elber grease and sand, it’ll only come again. But it’s all a sign of poor old England rustin’ and moulderin’ away. The idea! And at a place like this. Old Jenk, as watch at the gate tower, and not got eyes enough to see across the moat, and even that’s getting full o’ mud!”

“Well, you wouldn’t have father turn the poor old man away because he’s blind and worn-out.”

“Not I, sir,” said the man, moistening a piece of flannel with oil, dipping it into some fine white sand, and then proceeding to scrub away at the rust spots upon the old helmet, which he now held between his knees; while several figures in armour, ranged down one side of the low, dark room in which the work was being carried on, seemed to be looking on and waiting to have their rust removed in turn.

“Then what do you mean?” said the boy.

“I mean, Master Roy, as it’s a pity to see the old towers going down hill as they are.”

“But they’re not,” cried the boy.

“Not, sir? Well, if you’ll excuse me for saying as you’re wrong, I’ll say it. Where’s your garrison? where’s your horses? and where’s your guns, and powder, and shot, and stores?”

“Fudge, then! We don’t want any garrison nowadays, and as for horses, why, it was a sin to keep ’em in those old underground stables that used to be their lodging. Any one would think you expected to have some one come and lay siege to the place.”

“More unlikely things than that, Master Roy. We live in strange times, and the king may get the worst of it any day.”

“Oh, you old croaker!” cried Roy. “I believe you’d like to have a lot more men in the place, and mount guard, and go on drilling and practising with the big guns.”

“Ay, sir, I should; and with a place like this, it’s what ought to be done.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be bad fun, Ben,” said the boy, thoughtfully.

“Fun, sir? Don’t you get calling serious work like that fun.—But look ye there. Soon chevy these spots off, don’t I?”

“Yes, it’s getting nice and bright,” said Roy, gazing down at the steel headpiece.

“And it’s going to get brighter and better before I’ve done. I’m going to let Sir Granby see when he comes back that I haven’t neglected nothing. I’m a-going to polish up all on ’em in turn, beginning with old Sir Murray Royland. Let me see: he was your greatest grandfather, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he lived in 1480,” said the boy, as the old man rose, set down the morion, and followed him to where the farthest suit of mail stood against the wall. “I say, Ben, this must have been very heavy to wear.”

“Ay, sir, tidy; but, my word, it was fine for a gentleman in those days to mount his horse, shining in the sun, and looking as noble as a man could look. He’s a bit spotty, though, it’s been so damp. But I’ll begin with Sir Murray and go right down ’em all, doing the steeliest ones first, and getting by degrees to the last on ’em as is only steel half-way down, and the rest being boots. Ah! it’s a dolesome change from Sir Murray to Sir Brian yonder at the end, and worse still, to your father, as wouldn’t put nothing on but a breast-piece and back-piece and a steel cap.”

“Why, it’s best,” said the boy; “steel armour isn’t wanted so much now they’ve got cannon and guns.”

“Ay, that’s a sad come-down too, sir. Why, even when I was out under your grandfather, things were better and fighting fairer. People tried to see who was best man then with their swords. Now men goes to hide behind hedges and haystacks, to try and shoot you like they would a hare.”

“Why, they did the same sort of thing with their bows and arrows, Ben, and their cross-bows and bolts.”

“Well, maybe, sir; but that was a clean kind o’ fighting, and none of your sulphur and brimstone, and charcoal and smoke.”

“I say, Ben, it’ll take you some time to get things straight. Mean to polish up the old swords and spears, too?”

“Every man jack of ’em, sir. I mean to have this armoury so as your father, when he comes back from scattering all that rabble, will look round and give me a bit of encouragement.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the boy; “so that’s what makes you so industrious.”

“Nay it aren’t, sir,” said the man, with a reproachful shake of his head. “I didn’t mean money, Master Roy, but good words, and a sort o’ disposition to make the towers what they should be again. He’s a fine soldier is your father, and I hear as the king puts a lot o’ trust in him; but it always seems to me as he thinks more about farming when he’s down here than he does about keeping up the old place as a good cavalier should.”

“Don’t you talk a lot of nonsense,” said Roy, hotly; “if my father likes to live here as country gentlemen do, and enjoy sport and gardening and farming, who has a better right to, I should like to know?”

“Oh, nobody, sir, nobody,” said the man, scouring away at the rusted steel.

“And besides, times are altered. When this castle was built, gentlemen used to have to protect themselves, and kept their retainers to fight for them. Now there’s a regular army, and the king does all that.”

That patch of rust must have been a little lighter on, for the man uttered a low grunt of satisfaction.

“It would be absurd to make the towers just as they used to be, and shut out the light and cover the narrow slits with iron bars.”

“Maybe, Master Roy; but Sir Granby might have the moat cleared of mud, and kept quite full.”

“What! I just hope it won’t be touched. Why, that would mean draining it, and then what would become of my carp and tench?”

“Ketch ’em and put ’em in tubs, sir, and put some little uns back.”

“Yes, and then it would take years for them to grow, and all the beautiful white and yellow water-lilies would be destroyed.”

“Yes; but see what a lot of fine, fat eels we should get, sir. There’s some thumpers there. I caught a four-pounder on a night-line last week.”

“Ah, you did, did you?” cried the lad; “then don’t you do it again without asking for leave.”

“All right, sir, I won’t; but you don’t grudge an old servant like me one eel?”

“Of course I don’t, Ben,” said the lad, importantly; “but the moat is mine. Father gave it to me as my own special fishing-place before he went away, and I don’t allow any one to fish there without my leave.”

“I’ll remember, sir,” said the man, beginning to whistle softly.

“I don’t grudge you a few eels, Ben, and you shall have plenty; but next time you want to fish, you ask.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

“And what you say is all nonsense: the place is beautiful as it is. Why, I believe if you could do as you liked, you’d turn my mother’s pleasaunce and the kitchen-garden into drill-grounds.”

“That I would, sir,” said the man, flushing up. “The idea of a beautiful square of ground, where the men might be drilled, and practise with sword and gun, being used to grow cabbages in. Er! it’s horrid!”

Roy laughed.

“You’re a rum fellow, Ben,” he cried. “I believe you think that people were meant to do nothing else but fight and kill one another.”

“Deal better than spending all their time over books, sir,” said the man; “and you take my advice. You said something to me about being a statesman some day, and serving the king that way. Now, I s’pose I don’t know exactly what a statesman is, but I expect it’s something o’ the same sort o’ thing as Master Pawson is, and—You won’t go and tell him what I says, sir?”

“Do you want me to kick you, Ben?” said the boy, indignantly.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said the man, with a good-humoured smile lighting up his rugged features; “can, if you like. Wouldn’t be the first time by many a hundred.”

“What! When did I kick you?”

“Lots o’ times when you was a little un, and I wouldn’t let you drown yourself in the moat, or break your neck walking along the worsest parts o’ the ramparts, or get yourself trod upon by the horses. Why, I’ve known you kick, and squeal, and fight, and punch me as hard as ever you could.”

“And did it hurt you, Ben?”

“Hurt me, sir? Not it. I liked it. Showed you was made o’ good stuff, same good breed as your father; and I used to say to myself, ‘That young cub’ll turn out as fine a soldier as his father some day, and I shall have the job o’ training him.’ But deary me, deary me, old England’s a-wasting all away! You aren’t got the sperrit you had, my lad; and instead o’ coming to me cheery-like, and saying, ‘Now, Ben, get out the swords and let’s have a good fence, or a bit o’ back-sword or broad-sword-play, or a turn with the singlestick or staves,’ you’re always a-sticking your nose into musty old parchments, or dusty books, along o’ Master Palgrave Pawson. Brrr!”

The latter was a low growl, following a loud smack given to the side of the helmet, after which, as the lad stood fretting and fuming, the old servant scrubbed away at the steel furiously.

“It isn’t true, Ben,” the boy cried at last, indignantly; “and perhaps I’m going to be a soldier after all, especially if this trouble goes on.”

“Tchaw! trouble goes on!” said the man, changing the steel headpiece for a cuirass. “There won’t be no trouble. First time your father gets a sight of the mob of tailors, and shoemakers, and tinkers, with an old patch-work counterpane atop of a clothes-prop for their flag, he’ll ride along the front of his ridgement of cavaliers, and he’ll shout to ’em in that big voice of his as I’ve followed many’s the time; and ‘Don’t draw, gentlemen,’ he’ll say; ‘ride the scum down, and make the rest run;’ and then they’ll all roar with laughing loud enough to drown the trumpet charge. My word, I’d a gi’n something to ha’ been there to see the rebels fly like dead leaves before a wind in November. But it were a mean and a cruel thing, Master Roy. Look at that arm, look at these legs! I’m a better and a stronger man than ever I was, and could sit any horse they’d put me on. But to leave an old soldier, as had followed him as I have, at home here to rust like the rest o’ things, when there was a chance for a bit o’ fun, it went right to my ’art, sir, and it seemed to me as if it warn’t the master as I used to sit with in the ranks.”

The old fellow was bending now over the breastplate and rubbing hard, while as Roy listened to his excited words, wondering at the way in which he seemed to resent what he looked upon as a slight, something dropped upon the polished steel with a pat, and spread out; and Roy thought to himself that if that drop of hot salt water stayed there, it would make a deeper rust spot than anything.

But it did not stay, for the man hastily rubbed it away, and began with a rough show of indifference to hum over an old Devon song, something about “A morn in May, to hear birds whistle and see lambkins play.”

But he ceased as the boy laid a hand upon his shoulder, and bent over the breastplate and rubbed at it very slowly, listening intently the while.

“Don’t you get thinking that, Ben Martlet,” said the boy, gently; “father wanted to take you, and he said you were not too old.”

“Nay, nay, nay, sir; don’t you get trying to ile me over. I know.”

“But you don’t know,” said the boy, hotly; “he said he should take you, but my mother asked him not to.”

“Ay, she would, sir. She won’t let you be a soldier, and she comes over your father as I was too old and helpless to be any good.”

“You’re a stupid, pig-headed, old chump,” cried Roy, angrily.

“Yes, sir; that’s it; now you’re at me too. Rusty, and worn-out, and good for nothing; but it’ll soon be over. I used to think it must be very horrid to have to die, but I know better now, and I shan’t be sorry when my turn comes.”

“Will—you—listen to—what—I have—to say?” cried the boy.

“Oh, ay, sir, I’ll listen. You’re my master, now Sir Granby’s away, and nobody shan’t say as Ben Martlet didn’t do his dooty as a soldier to the end, even if he is set to dig in a garden as was once a castle court-yard.”

“Oh, you obstinate old mule!” cried Roy, gripping the man’s shoulders, as he stood behind him, sawing him to and fro, and driving his knee softly into the broad strong back. “Will you listen?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll listen; but that’s only your knee. Kick the old worn-out mule with your boot-toe, and—”

“I’ve a good mind to,” cried Roy. “Now listen: my mother begged of father to leave you here.”

“Oh, ay, of course.”

“Quiet!” roared Roy, “or I will really kick—hard; because she said she would feel safer, and that, if any trouble did arise with some of the men, Martlet would put it down at once, and everything would go right.”

The cuirass went down on the dark oaken boards with a loud clang, and the old soldier sprang to his feet panting heavily.

“Her ladyship said that?” he cried.

“Yes.”

“Say it again, sir; say it again!” he cried, in a husky voice.

Roy repeated the words.

“Yes, yes, sir; and what—what did Sir Granby say to that?”

“Said he was very sorry and very glad.”

“What?”

“Sorry to leave you, because it didn’t seem natural to go back to the regiment without his right-hand man.”

“Right-hand man?”

“Yes; but he was glad my mother felt so about you, for he could go away more contented now, and satisfied that all would be right. For though—ahem!—he had the fullest confidence in me, I was too young to have the management of men.”

“Wrong, wrong, sir—wrong. On’y want a bit o’ training, and you’d make as good a captain as ever stepped.—Then it was her ladyship’s doing, and she said all that?”

“Yes.”

“God bless her! my dear mistress. Here, don’t you take no notice o’ this here,” cried the rough fellow, changing his tone, and undisguisedly wiping the salt tears from his face. “I don’t work so much as I ought, sir, and this here’s only what you calls presperashum, sir, as collects, and will come out somewheres. And so her ladyship says that, did her?”

“Yes, Ben.”

“Then why haven’t I knowed this afore? Here’s three months gone by since the master went to take command of his ridgement, and I see him off. Ay, I did send him off looking fine, and here have I been eating my heart out ever since. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Yes, I do. Of course, I wasn’t going to tattle about what my father and mother said, but when I heard you talk as you did, and seem so cut up and unjust, why, I did.”

“Here, let me have it, my lad! Kick away! Jump on me for an old fool. Why, I’m as blind as old Jenk. Worse.—She’d feel safer if there was any trouble. Bless her! Oh, what an old fool I’ve been. No wonder I’ve got so weak and thin.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“What are you laughing at, sir?”

“You weak and thin! Why, you’re as strong as a horse.”

“Well, I am, Master Roy,” said the man, with a grim smile of pride. “But I have got a bit thin, sir.”

“Not a bit thinner.”

“Well, I aren’t enjoyed my vittles since the master went, sir. You can’t contradick that.”

“No, and don’t want to; but you did eat a four or five pound eel that you’d no right to catch.”

“That I didn’t, sir. I give it to poor old Jenk to make a pie. I never tasted it.”

“Then you may catch as many as you like, Ben, without asking.”

“Thank you, sir; but I don’t want to go eeling now. Here, let’s have all this fighting-tackle so as you can see your face in it. But I say, my lad, do ’ee, now do ’ee, alter your mind; leave being statesman to them soft, smooth kind o’ fellows like Master Pawson.”

“I don’t see why one couldn’t be a statesman and a soldier too,” said the boy.

“I don’t know nothing about that sort, sir; but I do know how to handle a sword or to load a gun. I do say, though, as you’re going wrong instead of right.”

“How?”

“How, sir? Just look at your hands.”

“Well, what’s the matter with them?” said the boy, holding them out.

Ben Martlet uttered a low, chuckling laugh.

“I’ll tell you, sir. S’pose any one’s badly, and the doctor comes; what does he do first?”

“Feels his pulse.”

“What else?”

“Looks at his tongue.”

“That’s it, my lad; and he knows directly from his tongue what’s the matter with him. Now, you see, Master Roy, I aren’t a doctor.”

“Not you, Ben; doctors cure people; soldiers kill ’em.”

“Not always, Master Roy,” said the old fellow, whose face during the last few minutes had lit up till he seemed in the highest of glee. “Aren’t it sometimes t’other way on? But look here: doctors look at people’s tongues to see whether they wants to be physicked, or to have their arms or legs cut off. I don’t. I looks at a man’s hand to see what’s the matter with him, and if I see as he’s got a soft, white hand like a gal’s, I know directly he’s got no muscles in his arms, no spring in his back, and no legs to nip a horse’s ribs or to march fifty mile in a day. Now, just look at yours.”

“Oh, I can’t help what my hands are like,” said the boy, impatiently.

“Oh, yes, you can, sir. You’ve been a-neglecting of ’em, sir, horrible; so just you come to me a little more and let me harden you up a bit. If you’ve got to be a statesman, you won’t be none the worse for being able to fight, and ride, and run. Now, will you? and—There’s some one a-calling you, my lad.”

“Yes, coming!” cried Roy; and he hurried out of the armoury into a long, dark passage, at the end of which a window full of stained glass admitted the sunbeams in a golden, scarlet, blue, and orange sheaf of rays which lit up the tall, stately figure of a lady, to whom the boy ran with a cry of—

“Yes, mother!”

"The coyote cries ...
He cries at daybreak ...
He cries ...
The coyote cries" ...
sang the Basket Woman, but all the spaces in between the words were filled with long howls,—weird, wicked noises that seemed to hunt and double in a half-human throat. It made the hair on Alan's neck stand up, and cold shivers creep along his back. He began to shake, for the wild howls drew near and louder, and he felt the bed under him tremble with his trembling.
"Mother, mother," he cried, "what is that?"[Pg 16]
"It is only the coyotes," said she; "they always howl about this time of night. It is nothing; go to sleep again."
"But I am afraid."
"They cannot hurt you," said his mother; "it is only the little gray beasts that you see trotting about the mesa of afternoons; hear them now."
"I am afraid," said Alan.
"Then you must come in my bed," said she; and in a few minutes he was fast asleep again.

"Do they do nothing but play?" said Alan.
"You shall see," said the Basket Woman.[Pg 12]
Away up the mountain sounded a faint halloo. In a moment all the camp was bustle and delight. The children clapped their hands; they left off playing and began to drag up brushwood for the fires. The women put away their weaving and brought out the cooking pots; they heard the men returning from the hunt. The young men brought deer upon their shoulders; one had grouse and one held up a great basket of trout. The women made the meat ready for cooking. Some of them took meal and made cakes for baking in the ashes. The men rested in the glow of the fires, feathering arrows and restringing their bows.
"That is well," said the Basket Woman, "to make ready for to-morrow's meat before to-day's is eaten."
"How happy they are!" said the boy.
"They will be happier when they have eaten," said she.
After supper the Indians gathered together for singing and dancing. The old men told tales one after the other, and the children[Pg 13] thought each one was the best. Between the tales the Indians all sang together, or one sang a new song that he had made. There was one of them who did better than all. He had streaked his body with colored earth and had a band of eagle feathers in his hair. In his hand was a rattle of wild sheep's horn and small stones; he kept time with it as he leapt and sang in the light of the fire. He sang of old wars, sang of the deer that was killed, sang of the dove and the young grass that grew on the mountain; and the people were well pleased, for when the heart is in the singing it does not matter much what the song is about. The men beat their hands together to keep time to his dancing, and the earth under his feet was stamped to a fine dust.
"He is one that has found the wolf's song," said the Basket Woman.
"What is that?" asked Alan.
"It is an old tale of my people," said she. "Once there was a man who could not make any songs, so he got no praise from the tribe,[Pg 14] and it troubled him much. Then, as he was gathering taboose by the river, a wolf went by, and the wolf said to him, 'What will you have me to give you for your taboose?' Then said the man, 'I will have you to give me a song.'
"'That will I gladly,' said the wolf. So the wolf taught him, and that night he sang the wolf's song in the presence of all the people, and it made their hearts to burn within them. Then the man fell down as if he were dead, for the pure joy of singing, and when deep sleep was upon him the wolf came in the night and stole his song away. Neither the man nor any one who had heard it remembered it any more. So we say when a man sings as no other sang before him, 'He has the wolf's song.' It is a good saying. Now we must go, for the children are all asleep by their mothers, and the day comes soon," said the Basket Woman.
"Shall we come again?" said Alan. "And will it all be as it is now?"
"My people come often to the valley of[Pg 15] Corn Water," said she, "but it is never as it is now except in dreams. Now we must go quickly." Far up the trail they saw a grayness in the eastern sky where the day was about to come in.
"Hark," said the Basket Woman, "they will sing together the coyote song. It is so that they sing it when the coyote goes home from his hunting, and the morning is near.

"I do not like Indians the way they are now," he said; and immediately saw that he had made a mistake, for he was standing directly in front of the Basket Woman's hut, and as she suddenly put her head out of the door he thought by the look of her mysterious, bright eyes that she had understood. He did not venture to say anything more, and all the way home kept looking back toward the campoodie to see if anything came of it.
"Why do you not eat your supper?" said his mother. "I am afraid the long walk in the hot sun was too much for you." Alan dared not say anything to her of what troubled him, though perhaps it would have been better if he had, for that night the Basket Woman came for him.
She did not pick him up and toss him over her shoulder as he expected; but let down the basket, and he stepped into it of his own accord. Alan was surprised to find that he was not so much afraid of her after all.[Pg 8]
"What will you do with me?" he said.
"I will show you Indians as they used to be," said she.
Alan could feel the play of her strong shoulders as they went out across the lower mesa and began to climb the hills.
"Where do you go?" said the boy.
"To Pahrump, the valley of Corn Water. It was there my people were happiest in old days."
They went on between the oaks, and smelled the musky sweet smell of the wild grapevines along the water borders. The sagebrush began to fail from the slopes, and buckthorn to grow up tall and thicker; the wind brought them a long sigh from the lowest pines. They came up with the silver firs and passed them, passed the drooping spruces, the wet meadows, and the wood of thimble-cone pines. The air under them had an earthy smell. Presently they came out upon a cleared space very high up where the rocks were sharp and steep.
"Why are there no trees here?" asked Alan.[Pg 9]
"I will tell you about that," said the Basket Woman. "In the old flood time, and that is longer ago than is worth counting, the water came up and covered the land, all but the high tops of mountains. Here then the Indians fled and lived, and with them the animals that escaped from the flood. There were trees growing then over all the high places, but because the waters were long on the earth the Indians were obliged to cut them down for firewood. Also they killed all the large animals for food, but the small ones hid in the rocks. After that the waters went down; trees and grass began to grow over all the earth, but never any more on the tops of high mountains. They had all been burned off. You can see that it is so."

The Basket Woman was the only Indian that he had seen. She would come walking across the mesa with a great cone-shaped carrier basket heaped with brushwood on her shoulders, stooping under it and easing the weight by a buckskin band about her forehead. Sometimes it would be a smaller basket carried in the same fashion, and she would be filling it with bulbs of wild hyacinth or[Pg 5] taboose; often she carried a bottle-necked water basket to and from the spring, and always wore a bowl-shaped basket on her head for a hat. Her long hair hung down from under it, and her black eyes glittered beadily below the rim. Alan had a fancy that any moment she might pick him up with a quick toss as if he had been a bit of brushwood, and drop him over her shoulder into the great carrier, and walk away across the mesa with him. So when he saw her that morning coming down the trail from the spring, he hung close by his mother's skirts.
"You must not be afraid of her, Alan," said his mother; "she is very kind, and no doubt has had a boy of her own."
The Basket Woman showed them her white, even teeth in a smile. "This one very pretty boy," she said; but Alan had made up his mind not to trust her. He was thinking of what the teamster had said when he had driven them up from the railroad station with their belongings the day they came to their new home and found the Basket Wo[Pg 6]man spying curiously in at the cabin windows.
"You wanter watch out how you behaves yourself, sonny," said the teamster, wagging a solemn jaw, "she's likely to pack you away in that basket o' her'n one of these days." And Alan had watched out very carefully indeed.
It was not a great while after they came to the foothill claim that the homesteader went over to the campoodie to get an Indian to help at fence building, and Alan went with him, holding fast by his father's hand. They found the Indians living in low, foul huts; their clothes were also dirty, and they sat about on the ground, fat and good-natured. The dogs and children lay sleeping in the sun. It was all very disappointing.
"Will they not hurt us, father?" Alan had said at starting.
"Oh, no, my boy; you must not get any such notion as that," said the homesteader; "Indians are not at all now what they were once."[Pg 7]
Alan thought of this as he looked at the campoodie, and pulled at his father's hand.

The homesteader's cabin stood in a moon-shaped hollow between the hills and the high mesa; and the land before it stretched away golden and dusky green, and was lost in a blue haze about where the river settlements began. The hills had a flowing outline and melted softly into each other and higher hills behind, until the range broke in a ragged crest of thin peaks white with snow. A clean, wide sky bent over that country, and the air that moved in it was warm and sweet.
The homesteader's son had run out on the trail that led toward the spring, with half a mind to go to it, but ran back again when he saw the Basket Woman coming. He was afraid of her, and ashamed because he was afraid, so he did not tell his mother that he had changed his mind.
"There is the mahala coming for the wash,"[Pg 4] said his mother; "now you will have company at the spring." But Alan only held tighter to a fold of her dress. This was the third time the Indian woman had come to wash for the homesteader's wife; and, though she was slow and quiet and had a pleasant smile, Alan was still afraid of her. All that he had heard of Indians before coming to this country was very frightful, and he did not understand yet that it was not so. Beyond a certain point of hills on clear days he could see smoke rising from the campoodie, and though he knew nothing but his dreams of what went on there, he would not so much as play in that direction.
The Basket Woman was the only Indian that he had seen. She would come walking across the mesa with a great cone-shaped carrier basket heaped with brushwood on her shoulders, stooping under it and easing the weight by a buckskin band about her forehead. Sometimes it would be a smaller basket carried in the same fashion, and she would be filling it with bulbs of wild hyacinth or[Pg 5] taboose; often she carried a bottle-necked water basket to and from the spring, and always wore a bowl-shaped basket on her head for a hat. Her long hair hung down from under it, and her black eyes glittered beadily below the rim. Alan had a fancy that any moment she might pick him up with a quick toss as if he had been a bit of brushwood, and drop him over her shoulder into the great carrier, and walk away across the mesa with him. So when he saw her that morning coming down the trail from the spring, he hung close by his mother's skirts.

There’s more where that came from! So...yeah!

He sees the tree and it is alive and sentient to him; you cut a stick horse from its boughs, and that is separately alive; cut the stick again into two horses, and they will prance whole and satisfying. Later when the game is played out, the stick may burn and furnish live flame to dance, live smoke to ascend, live ash to be[Pg v] treated with contumely; all of which arises not so much in the mere trick of invention as in the natural difficulty in thinking of objects freed from consciousness, almost as great as the philosopher's in conceiving empty space. There is a period in the life of every child when almost the only road to the understanding is the one blazed out by the myth-making spirit, kept open to the larger significance of things long after he is apprised that the thunder did not originate in the smithy of the gods nor the Walrus talk to the Carpenter. Any attempt, however, to hasten the proper distinctions of causes and powers by the suppression of myth making is likely to prove as disastrous as helping young puppies through their nine days' blindness by forcibly opening their eyes. You might get a few days' purchase of vision for some of them, but you would also have a good many cases of total blindness. What can be done by way of turning the myth-making period to advantage, this little book is partly to show.
Of the three sorts of myths included, about[Pg vi] a third are direct transcriptions from Indian myths current in the campodies of the West, but it must not be assumed that myths like The Crooked Fir and The White Barked Pine are in any sense "made up," or to be laid to the author's credit. Since the myth originates in an attitude of mind, it must be understood that, to the primitive mind, nearly the whole process of nature presents itself in mythical terms. It is not that the Indian imagines the tree having sentience—he simply isn't able to imagine its not having it. All his songs, his ceremonies, his daily speech, are full of the aspect of nature in terms of human endeavor. The story of The Crooked Fir was suggested to me in the humorous comment of my Indian guide on one of the forks of Kings River, the first time my attention was caught by the uniform curve of the trunks, and he explained it to me. The myth of The Stream That Ran Away might arise as simply as in the question of a child who has not lived long enough to understand the seasonal recession of waters, wishing to know[Pg vii] why a stream that ran full some weeks ago is now dry. And if his mother has had trouble with his straying too far from the camp she might say to him that it had run away and the White people had caught it and set it to work in an irrigating ditch, "and that is what will happen to you if you don't watch out" ... or she might draw a moral on the neglect of duty if the occasion demanded it ... or if she were gifted with fancy, tell him that that was it which fell on us as rain in Big Meadow, and it would return to its banks when it had watered the high places. But whatever she would tell him would have an acute observation of nature behind it and would be stated in personal terms. It is so that the child begins to understand the continuity of natural forces and their relativity to the life of man.
There is a third sort of story included with these, which aside from being of the stuff from which hero myths are made,—Mahala Joe is in point,—has a value which must be gone into more particularly.
What is important for the teacher to under[Pg viii]stand is that the myth, itself a living issue, will not bear too much handling; in the process of making it a part of the child's experience, the meaning of it must not be pulled up too often to learn if it has taken root. Unless it elucidates itself in the course of time,—and one must recall how long a period elapsed between the first reading of the Ugly Duckling, say, and its final revelation of itself,—unless its content is broadly human and personal, it has practically no educative value. It is not absolutely indispensable that the whole unfolding of it should be within the limited period of school life that affords it; some of the noblest human myths reveal as it were successive layers of insight and purport, taking change and color from the passing experience; but it remains true that the best time to insinuate the myth in the child's mind is when he is normally at the myth-making period.
To make it, then, part of the child's possession it should be read to or by him at convenient intervals, until he can give back a fairly succinct version of it. Along with this[Pg ix] must go the business of deepening and extending the background; and whether this is to be done at the time of the reading or intermediately, must depend largely on the local background. Children in schools on the Pacific slope should find themselves already tolerably furnished; any hill region in fact should yield suggestive material, without overlaying the content of the myth with trifling exactitudes of natural history.
It is very difficult to say in a word all that is implied in the extension of the background. One has only to consider the amount of time spent in teaching the so-called Classic Myths, tremendous in their power of vitalizing and coloring their own and related times, and reflect on their failure to effect anything beyond their mere story interest in modern life, to realize that the value of a myth is directly in proportion as its background is common and accessible. What would happen in a locality calculated to suggest and with a teacher properly equipped to interpret the background of Greek and Roman mythology, is not proven,[Pg x] but in practical school work the author has found it best to defer the teaching of it until by general reading a point of contact is established, which enables the child to read backward into its meaning, and for the actively myth-making period to use forms sprung naturally from the child's own environment. The better he can visualize and locate the objects mythically treated, the better they serve their purpose of rendering personal the influences of nature and sustaining him in that happy sense of the community of life and interest in the Wild.
It is for this purpose of extending the background that the introductory sketches and some others are included in this collection. The Golden Fortune could be read with The White Barked Pine, and The Christmas Tree with The Crooked Fir. Any hill country or wooded district should furnish additional color, but let it be cautioned here, that though all the nature references in these tales are entirely dependable, the child is not to be made unhappy thereby. Whatever branch of school work it[Pg xi] is found necessary to correlate with the myths, it should be in general recreative rather than instructive; for what is comprehended in the term Nature is after all not a miscellany of objects, but a state of mind set up by their happiest coincidences. The least that can be said to achieve a proper notion of a tree or a glacier is so much better than the most; a casual application to a known and neighboring circumstance goes further than any amount of explanation

THE BASKET WOMAN

In preparing this volume of western myths for school use the object has been not so much to provide authentic Indian Folk-tales, as to present certain aspects of nature as they appear in the myth-making mood, that is to say, in the form of strongest appeal to the child mind. Indian myths as they exist among Indians are too frequently sustained by coarse and cruel incidents comparable to the belly-ripping joke in Jack the Giant Killer, or the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear, and when presented in story form, too often fall under the misapprehension of the myth as something invented and added to the imaginative life. It is, in fact, the root and branch of man's normal intimacy with nature.
So slowly does the mind awaken to the realization of consciousness and personality as by-products of animal life only, that few escape carrying over into adult life some obsession[Pg iv] of its persistence in inanimate things, say of malevolence in opals or luckiness in a rabbit's foot, or the capacity of moral discrimination against their victims residing in hurricanes and earthquakes. The chief preoccupation of the child in his earlier years is the business of abstracting the items of his environment from this pervading sense, and ascribing to them their proper degrees of awareness. He arrives in a general way at knowing that it hurts the cat's tail to be stepped on because the cat cries, and that it does not hurt the stick. But if the stick were provided with a squeaking apparatus he would be much longer in the process, and if the stick becomes a steed or a doll it is quite possible for him to weep with sympathetic pain at the abuse of it.

Guys...I’m pretty sure I can find a thesis on the cultural impact of basket weaving. You’re asking for it!

You are just too silly :p

Just want the thread to stay on topic to the OP. If there's nothing left to say on that topic, then the thread can end.

I also learned that people who like to discuss philosophy love to turn any conversation into a different conversation that they’re already very practiced at having. ;p

Thanks! Yeah...I guess what I wanted was to learn if what I believed is already shared by enough people to have a name attached to it. It would be nice to have an easier, shorthand way to identify each other. And it would be nice to find out if others had somehow made more logical connections than I have.

Like you mentioned, I’ve just been over here reading texts and developing my beliefs on my own for my whole life. And it’s worked out ok. But a sense of community is also nice, and it’s always great to learn from others. :)

And I think this thread helped me out a lot! I think moral nihilism probably is most of what I was looking for. Thanks to everyone who helped me find it. <3 <3

We could talk about whether what I think is entailed by rejecting those two things really is entailed by it, but so far I've yet to get past even rejecting the "throw up our hands" option with you. — Pfhorrest

Was this aimed at me, or one of the other three?

Good lord, people. This is so far astray of the OP topic, why are you even writing it in this thread?

As soon as we're just posting to call someone stupid, for saying that we were stupid, for saying that they were stupid...ugh, no one's going to change their mind, and it's not helping anyone.

If you guys have pre-existing beefs with each other, please go fight it out in those threads. Or start a PM.

Please limit your comments here to things that are on topic.

Maybe it's more correct to call myself a moral skeptic, since I:

• don't believe that objective moral facts exist, because I haven't seen any compelling evidence that they do exist.
• believe that objective morals are not required for a logical model to explain the universe.
• things start to make a lot more sense when you remove objective morals from a model of the universe.

So if there's no evidence for something, and it's not required for things to make sense, then I don't have a reason to believe in it.

But that's different from saying that I know for sure that something doesn't exist. I just believe that it doesn't because of the absence of evidence. Similar to bigfoot, or humours.

And like bigfoot and humours, I don't feel a need to spend much time exploring what-if questions about what a world might look like if they do exist (beyond a sci-fi curiosity, like stories about time travel).

So I'm not sure where on the spectrum that puts me. But it's somewhere in those categories...probably...

Maybe not...but...I do believe that objective moral truths don't exist. Doesn't that make me a moral nihilist? Maybe I'm just not the kind you were arguing against.

I'm going to stop responding to you about this, because I don't think you're open to my viewpoint. You're assuming a lot of incorrect things about what I believe, and then arguing against those imagined arguments. I feel like I'm reading an argument between you and an imaginary third party.

I don't want to spend the next several hours pointing how how what I believe is different from what your imaginary opponent believes. That's not what I was hoping for.

It also makes me think you don't really want to know what I believe. And you can clearly continue this pattern fine without my involvement.

Thank you for responding!

Some responses to what you wrote:

I object to all nihilism on the pragmatic grounds that if such nihilism is true, then by its nature it cannot be known to be true, because to know it to be true we would need some means of objectively evaluating claims, so as to justifiably rule all such claims to be false. — Pfhorrest

I understand what you are saying here - I really do, and it's a very interesting way of framing the problem.

But I believe it may be based on a flawed assumption, which is that a moral nihilist would claim to know for a fact that objective morals aren't real.

If, instead, someone were to just say that they "believe" that moral facts don't exist, then it side-steps the issue. A means of objective evaluation is not necessary for it to be true that someone believes something.

In short, because moral nihilism amounts to just assuming that moral questions are unanswerable out of the gate, and merely not even trying to answer them. — Pfhorrest

I don't think this...makes sense...Let me rephrase it to illustrate what I mean:

"In short, because moral nihilism amounts to just assuming that floopblorp questions are unanswerable out of the gate, and merely not even trying to answer them."

if I'm walking along, and someone walks up and tells me that floopblorp is the key to understanding the universe, I'm going to be super interested! And I'm also going to need some evidence that floopblorp is real.

And similarly, I'm going to need some evidence that objective morals are real. Moral nihilism is just the position of the person saying "Wait - No one's shown good evidence that they are real yet."

We could either baselessly assume that there is nothing moral at all, and stop there, simply giving up any hope of ever finding out if we were wrong in that baseless assumption. Or else, instead, we could baselessly assume that there is something moral — as there certainly inevitably seems to be, since even if you deny their objectivity some things will still seem good or bad to you — and then proceed with the long hard work of figuring out what seems most likely to be moral, by attending closely and thoroughly to those seemings, those experiences. — Pfhorrest

Let me edit this to substitute floopblorp again:

"We could either baselessly assume that there is nothing floopblorp at all, and stop there, simply giving up any hope of ever finding out if we were wrong in that baseless assumption. Or else, instead, we could baselessly assume that there is something floopblorp — as there certainly inevitably seems to be, since even if you deny their objectivity some things will still seem floop or blorp to me — and then proceed with the long hard work of figuring out what seems most likely to be floopblorp, by attending closely and thoroughly to those seemings, those experiences."

Wait wait wait. No one has given evidence that floopblorp even exists yet!

It's not baseless to say that an unevidenced argument is unevidenced. So this:

"We could either baselessly assume that there is nothing floopblorp at all"

...is a straw man. It purports that moral nihilists are making one unproven claim, and moral realists are making another unproven claim. But that's not true. Realists are making one claim, and nihilists are saying that claim is unsubstantiated.

And if you disagree, then I await your thesis on the existence or nonexistence of floopblorp. Because it seems obvious that some things seem floop while other things seem blorp. So we could either not try to answer floopblorp questions at all, or we could get to work!

Howdy! I’d still love to hear from you about this, if you have time:

“ Which is almost (next to only nihilism) the least defensible position on morality there can be.”

I’m pretty sure moral nihilism describes what I believe. Why would you say it’s the least defensive position on morality?

Like a plumber comparing tools. I like it!

I like this plumber-based philosophy! :p <3

Hey, thank you for your response!

“ Do you avoid using the word "chair" just because defining "chair" in chemistry or quantum physics would be hellishly difficult?”

If it was a common point of misunderstanding, yeah totally! :p At least this is why I started doing it for other words.

If you look back through this thread, I think there are some good examples of confusions which have been avoided by asking for things to be clarified using different words.

“ even when we don't agree on what's right and what's wrong, there is little disagreement on which questions belong in the moral category in the first place.”

Would you mind saying this another way? I’d love to response, but I want to make sure I know what you mean here.

Well why not, if someone feels like it, and can get away with it, and no moral reasons count? — Pfhorrest

Oh, no - I meant that they would ask me why I don't do it. :/ Ah well. :)

You're right. And, I could have used better language. Let me rephrase the quote you were responding to, to try again:

"This philosophy encourages people to identify religious or philosophical concepts which aren't based in empirical evidence. When people take these unsupported concepts as fact, they can end up trying to force their understanding of reality to conform with these pre-existing beliefs. This can create unnecessary confusion, which can be very difficult to see beyond (even when it's self-imposed).

This philosophy encourages people to spot these unsupported beliefs, and to discard the requirements they impose on one's belief system."

Hopefully that mouthful is a better description of what I really meant.

How so?

I know that philosophy is self-defeating. — Olivier5

Are you saying that philosophy itself is self defeating, or that my philosophy is?

I don't know - I've been trying to do just that for many years...I think communication has improved a lot as a result! I think it's more doable that people might think. I'm still always working on it...

...Sometimes an iterative approach also works, in which you start with easier, common words, and only get more specific when a confusion is identified...That's what happened in this thread...BUT: spotting those confusions (or catching them before a dangerous impression is made) isn't always so easy. So I do generally try to avoid it up front.

You wouldn't believe the number of times people hear something like "Morals don't exist." and come back with "Well then why not just kill people then??". Sigh...so it pays to be specific or you might lose a friend or a job. :p

Understood! Thank you. :)

On an unrelated, non-argumentative soapbox: It's confusions like this that caused me to stop using the word "moral" altogether in most speech (unless I'm describing what I don't believe in). :p

This side conversation seems pretty far off topic from the OP. If you wouldn't mind, please start a new thread if you'd like to continue it. I mean no offense, and I'm happy that you're here. :)