Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Distributed Proofreading Team

ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL

BY GEORGE MACDONALD

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

LONDON

1876

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAPTER XVII. THE FIRE-ENGINE.

CHAPTER XVIII. MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOSSOMS.

CHAPTER XIX. THE ENCHANTED CHAIR.

CHAPTER XX. MOLLY AND THE WHITE HORSE.

CHAPTER XXI. THE DAMSEL WHICH FELL SICK.

CHAPTER XXII. THE CATARACT.

CHAPTER XXIII. AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE GREAT MOGUL.

CHAPTER XXV. RICHARD HEYWOOD.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE WITCH'S COTTAGE.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE MOAT OF THE KEEP.

CHAPTER XXVIII. RAGLAN STABLES.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE APPARITION.

CHAPTER XXX. RICHARD ANDTHE MARQUIS.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE SLEEPLESS.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE TURRET CHAMBER.

CHAPTER XXXIII. JUDGE GOUT.

CHAPTER XXXIV. AN EVIL TIME.

CHAPTER XXXV. THE DELIVERER.

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE DISCOVERY.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE HOROSCOPE.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE EXORCISM.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FIRE-ENGINE.

As soon as supper was over in the housekeeper's room, Dorothy sped
to the keep, where she found Caspar at work.

'My lord is not yet from supper, mistress,' he said. 'Will it please
you wait while he comes?'

Had it been till midnight, so long as there was a chance of his
appearing, Dorothy would have waited. Caspar did his best to amuse
her, and succeeded,--showing her one curious thing after
another,--amongst the rest a watch that seemed to want no winding
after being once set agoing, but was in fact wound up a little by
every opening of the case to see the dial. All the while the
fire-engine was at work on its mysterious task, with but now and
then a moment's attention from Caspar, a billet of wood or a
shovelful of sea-coal on the fire, a pull at a cord, or a hint from
the hooked rod. The time went rapidly.

Twilight was over, Caspar had lighted his lamp, and the moon had
risen, before lord Herbert came.

'I am glad to find you have patience as well as punctuality in the
catalogue of your virtues, mistress Dorothy,' he said as he entered.
'I too am punctual, and am therefore sorry to have failed now, but
it is not my fault: I had to attend my father. For his sake pardon
me.'

'It were but a small matter, my lord, even had it been uncompelled,
to keep an idle girl waiting.'

'I think not so,' returned lord Herbert. 'But come now, I will
explain to you my wonderful fire-engine.'

As he spoke, he took her by the hand, and led her towards it. The
creature blazed, groaned, and puffed, but there was no motion to be
seen about it save that of the flames through the cracks in the door
of the furnace, neither was there any clanking noise of metal. A
great rushing sound somewhere in the distance, that seemed to belong
to it, yet appeared too far off to have any connection with it.

'It is a noisy thing,' he said, as they stood before it, 'but when I
make another, it shall do its work that thou wouldst not hear it
outside the door. Now listen to me for a moment, cousin. Should it
come to a siege and I not at Raglan--the wise man will always
provide for the worst--Caspar will be wanted everywhere. Now this
engine is essential to the health and comfort, if not to the
absolute life of the castle, and there is no one at present capable
of managing it save us two. A very little instruction, however,
would enable any one to do so: will you undertake it, cousin, in
case of need?'

'Make me assured that I can, and I will, my lord,' answered Dorothy.

'A good and sufficing answer,' returned his lordship, with a smile
of satisfaction. 'First then,' he went on, 'I will show you wherein
lies its necessity to the good of the castle. Come with me, cousin
Dorothy.'

He led the way from the room, and began to ascend the stair which
rose just outside it. Dorothy followed, winding up through the
thickness of the wall. And now she could not hear the engine. As she
went up, however, certain sounds of it came again, and grew louder
till they seemed close to her ears, then gradually died away and
once more ceased. But ever, as they ascended, the rushing sound
which had seemed connected with it, although so distant, drew nearer
and nearer, until, having surmounted three of the five lofty stories
of the building, they could scarcely hear each other speak for the
roar of water, falling in intermittent jets. At last they came out
on the top of the wall, with nothing between them and the moat below
but the battlemented parapet, and behold! the mighty tower was
roofed with water: a little tarn filled all the space within the
surrounding walk. It undulated in the moonlight like a subsiding
storm, and beat the encircling banks. For into its depths shot
rather than poured a great volume of water from a huge orifice in
the wall, and the roar and the rush were tremendous. It was like the
birth of a river, bounding at once from its mountain rock, and the
sound of its fall indicated the great depth of the water into which
it plunged. Solid indeed must be the walls that sustained the
outpush of such a weight of water!

'You see now, cousin, what yon fire-souled slave below is labouring
at,' said his lordship. 'His task is to fill this cistern, and that
he can in a few hours; and yet, such a slave is he, a child who
understands his fetters and the joints of his bones can guide him at
will.'

'But, my lord,' questioned Dorothy, 'is there not water here to
supply the castle for months? And there is the draw-well in the
pitched court besides.'

'Enough, I grant you,' he replied, 'for the mere necessities of
life. But what would come of its pleasures? Would not the
beleaguered ladies miss the bounty of the marble horse? Whence comes
the water he gives so freely that he needeth not to drink himself?
He would thirst indeed but for my water-commanding fiend below. Or
how would the birds fare, were the fountains on the islands dry in
the hot summer? And what would the children say if he ceased to
spout? And how would my lord's tables fare, with the armed men
besetting every gate, the fish-ponds dry, and the fish rotting in
the sun? See you, mistress Dorothy? And for the draw-well, know you
not wherein lies the good of a tower stronger than all the rest? Is
it not built for final retreat, the rest of the castle being at
length in the hands of the enemy? Where then is your draw-well?'

'But this tower, large as it is, could not receive those now within
the walls of the castle,' said Dorothy.

'They will be fewer ere its shelter is needful.'

It was his tone quite as much as the words that drove a sudden
sickness to the heart of the girl: for one moment she knew what
siege and battle meant. But she recovered herself with a strong
effort, and escaped from the thought by another question.

'And whence comes all this water, my lord?' she said, for she was
one who would ask until she knew all that concerned her.

'Have you not chanced to observe a well in my workshop below, on the
left-hand side of the door, not far from the great chest?'

'I have observed it, my lord.'

'That is a very deep well, with a powerful spring. Large pipes lead
from all but the very bottom of that to my fire-engine. The fuller
the well, the more rapid the flow into the cistern, for the
shallower the water, the more labour falls to my giant. He is
finding it harder work now. But you see the cistern is nearly full.'

'Forgive me, my lord, if I am troubling you,' said Dorothy, about to
ask another question.

'I delight in the questions of the docile,' said his lordship. 'They
are the little children of wisdom. There! that might be out of the
book of Ecclesiasticus,' he added, with a merry laugh. 'I might pass
that off on Dr. Bayly for my father's: he hath already begun to
gather my father's sayings into a book, as I have discovered. But,
prithee, cousin, let not my father know of it.'

'Fear not me, my lord,' returned Dorothy. 'Having no secrets of my
own to house, it were evil indeed to turn my friends' out of doors.'

'Why, that also would do for Dr. Bayly! Well said, Dorothy! Now for
thy next question.'

'It is this, my lord: having such a well in your foundations, whence
the need of such a cistern on your roof? I mean now as regards the
provision of the keep itself in case of ultimate resort.'

'In coming to deal with a place of such strength as this,' replied
his lordship, '--I mean the keep whereon we now stand, not the
castle, which, alas! hath many weak points--the enemy would
assuredly change the siege into a blockade; that is, he would try to
starve instead of fire us out; and, procuring information
sufficiently to the point, would be like enough to dig deep and cut
the water-veins which supply that well; and thereafter all would
depend on the cistern. From the moment therefore when the first
signs of siege appear, it will be wisdom and duty on the part of the
person in charge to keep it constantly full--full as a cup to the
health of the king. I trust however that such will be the good
success of his majesty's arms that the worst will only have to be
provided against, not encountered.--But there is more in it yet.
Come hither, cousin. Look down through this battlement upon the
moat. You see the moon in it? No? That is because it is covered so
thick with weeds. When you go down, mark how low it is. There is
little defence in the moat that a boy might wade through. I have
allowed it to get shallow in order to try upon its sides a new
cement I have lately discovered; but weeks and weeks have passed,
and I have never found the leisure, and now I am sure I never shall
until this rebellion is crushed. It is time I filled it. Pray look
down upon it, cousin. In summer it will be full of the loveliest
white water-lilies, though now you can see nothing but green weeds.'

He had left her side and gone a few paces away, but kept on
speaking.

'One strange thing I can tell you about them, cousin--the roots of
that whitest of flowers make a fine black dye! What apophthegm
founded upon that, thinkest thou, my father would drop for Dr
Bayly?'

'You perplex me much, my lord,' said Dorothy. 'I cannot at all
perceive your lordship's drift.'

'Lay a hand on each side of the battlement where you now stand; lean
through it and look down. Hold fast and fear nothing.' Dorothy did
as she was desired, and thus supported gazed upon the moat below,
where it lay a mere ditch at the foot of the lofty wall.

'My lord, I see nothing,' she said, turning to him, as she thought;
but he had vanished.

Again she looked at the moat, and then her eyes wandered away over
the castle. The two courts and their many roofs, even those of all
the towers, except only the lofty watch-tower on the western side,
lay bare beneath her, in bright moonlight, flecked and blotted with
shadows, all wondrous in shape and black as Erebus.

Suddenly, she knew not whence, arose a frightful roaring, a hollow
bellowing, a pent-up rumbling. Seized by a vague terror, she clung
to the parapet and trembled. But even the great wall beneath her,
solid as the earth itself, seemed to tremble under her feet, as with
some inward commotion or dismay. The next moment the water in the
moat appeared to rush swiftly upwards, in wild uproar, fiercely
confused, and covered with foam and spray. To her bewildered eyes,
it seemed to heap itself up, wave upon furious wave, to reach the
spot where she stood, greedy to engulf her. For an instant she
fancied the storming billows pouring over the edge of the
battlement, and started back in such momentary agony as we suffer in
dreams. Then, by a sudden rectification of her vision, she perceived
that what she saw was in reality a multitude of fountain jets
rushing high towards their parent-cistern, but far-failing ere they
reached it. The roar of their onset was mingled with the despairing
tumult of their defeat, and both with the deep tumble and wallowing
splash of the water from the fire-engine, which grew louder and
louder as the surface of the water in the reservoir sank. The uproar
ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, but the moat mirrored a
thousand moons in the agitated waters which had overwhelmed its
mantle of weeds.

'You see now,' said lord Herbert, rejoining her while still she
gazed, 'how necessary the cistern is to the keep? Without it, the
few poor springs in the moat would but sustain it as you saw it.
From here I can fill it to the brim.'

'I see,' answered Dorothy. 'But would not a simple overflow serve,
carried from the well through the wall?'

'It would, were there no other advantages with which this mode
harmonised. I must mention one thing more--which I was almost
forgetting, and which I cannot well show you to-night--namely, that
I can use this water not only as a means of defence in the moat, but
as an engine of offence also against any one setting unlawful or
hostile foot upon the stone bridge over it. I can, when I please,
turn that bridge, the same by which you cross to come here, into a
rushing aqueduct, and with a torrent of water sweep from it a whole
company of invaders.'

'But would they not have only to wait until the cistern was empty?'

'As soon and so long as the bridge is clear, the outflow ceases. One
sweep, and my water-broom would stop, and the rubbish lie sprawling
under the arch, or half-way over the court. And more still,' he
added with emphasis: 'I COULD make it boiling!'

'But your lordship would not?' faltered Dorothy.

'That might depend,' he answered with a smile. Then changing his
tone in absolute and impressive seriousness, 'But this is all
nothing but child's play,' he said, 'compared with what is involved
in the matter of this reservoir. The real origin of it was its
needfulness to the perfecting of my fire-engine.'

'Pardon me, my lord, but it seems to me that without the cistern
there would be no need for the engine. How should you want or how
could you use the unhandsome thing? Then how should the cistern be
necessary to the engine?'

'Handsome is that handsome does,' returned his lordship. 'Truly,
cousin Dorothy, you speak well, but you must learn to hear better. I
did not say that the cistern existed for the sake of the engine, but
for the sake of the perfecting of the engine. Cousin Dorothy, I will
give you the largest possible proof of my confidence in you, by not
only explaining to you the working of my fire-engine, but
acquainting you--only you must not betray me!'

'I, in my turn,' said Dorothy, 'will give your lordship, if not the
strongest, yet a very strong proof of my confidence: I promise to
keep your secret before knowing what it is.'

'Thanks, cousin. Listen then: That engine is a mingling of discovery
and invention such as hath never had its equal since first the
mechanical powers were brought to the light. For this shall be as a
soul to animate those, all and each--lever, screw, pulley, wheel,
and axle--what you will. No engine of mightiest force ever for
defence or assault invented, let it be by Archimedes himself, but
could by my fire-engine be rendered tenfold more mighty for safety
or for destruction, although as yet I have applied it only to the
blissful operation of lifting water, thus removing the curse of it
where it is a curse, and carrying it where the parched soil cries
for its help to unfold the treasures of its thirsty bosom. My
fire-engine shall yet uplift the nation of England above the heads
of all richest and most powerful nations on the face of the whole
earth. For when the troubles of this rebellion are over, which press
so heavily on his majesty and all loyal subjects, compelling even a
peaceful man like myself to forsake invention for war, and the
workman's frock which I love, for the armour which I love not, when
peace shall smile again on the country, and I shall have time to
perfect the work of my hands, I shall present it to my royal master,
a magical supremacy of power, which shall for ever raise him and his
royal progeny above all use or need of subsidies, ship-money,
benevolences, or taxes of whatever sort or name, to rule his kingdom
as independent of his subjects in reality as he is in right; for
this water-commanding engine, which God hath given me to make, shall
be the source of such wealth as no accountant can calculate. For
herewith may marsh-land be thoroughly drained, or dry land perfectly
watered; great cities kept sweet and wholesome; mines rid of the
water gathering from springs therein, so as he may enrich himself
withal; houses be served plentifully on every stage; and gardens in
the dryest summer beautified and comforted with fountains. Which
engine when I found that it was in the power of my hands to do, as
well as of my heart to conceive that it might be done, I did kneel
down and give humble thanks from the bottom of my heart to the
omnipotent God whose mercies are fathomless, for his vouchsafing me
an insight into so great a secret of nature and so beneficial to all
mankind as this my engine.'

With all her devotion to the king, and all her hatred and contempt
of the parliament and the puritans, Dorothy could not help a doubt
whether such independence might be altogether good either for the
king himself or the people thus subjected to his will. But the
farther doubt did not occur to her whether a pre-eminence gained
chiefly by wealth was one to be on any grounds desired for the
nation, or, setting that aside, was one which carried a single
element favourable to perpetuity.

All this time they had been standing on the top of the keep, with
the moonlight around them, and in their ears the noise of the water
flowing from the dungeon well into the sky-roofed cistern. But now
it came in diminished flow.

'It is the earth that fails in giving, not my engine in taking,'
said lord Herbert as he turned to lead the way down the winding
stair. Ever as they went, the noise of the water grew fainter and
the noise of the engine grew louder, but just as they stepped from
the stair, it gave a failing stroke or two, and ceased. A dense
white cloud met them as they entered the vault.

'Stopped for the night, Caspar?' said his lordship.

'Yes, my lord; the well is nearly out.'

'Let it sleep,' returned his master; 'like a man's heart it will
fill in the night. Thank God for the night and darkness and sleep,
in which good things draw nigh like God's thieves, and steal
themselves in--water into wells, and peace and hope and courage into
the minds of men. Is it not so, my cousin?'

Dorothy did not answer in words, but she looked up in his face with
a reverence in her eyes that showed she understood him. And this was
one of the idolatrous catholics! It was neither the first nor the
last of many lessons she had to receive, in order to learn that a
man may be right although the creed for which he is and ought to be
ready to die, may contain much that is wrong. Alas! that so few,
even of such men, ever reflect, that it is the element common to all
the creeds which gives its central value to each.

'I cannot show you the working of the engine to-night,' said lord
Herbert. 'Caspar has decreed otherwise.'

'I can soon set her agoing again, my lord,' said Caspar.

'No, no. We must to the powder-mill, Caspar. Mistress Dorothy will
come again to-morrow, and you must yourself explain to her the
working and management of it, for I shall be away. And do not fear
to trust my cousin, Caspar, although she be a soft-handed lady. Let
her have the brute's halter in her own hold.'

Filled with gratitude for the trust he reposed in her, Dorothy took
her leave, and the two workmen immediately abandoned their shop for
the night, leaving the door wide open behind them to let out the
vapours of the fire-engine, in the confidence that no unlicensed
foot would dare to cross the threshold, and betook themselves to the
powder-mill, where they continued at work the greater part of the
night.

His lordship was unfavourable to the storing of powder because of
the danger, seeing they could, on his calculation, from the
materials lying ready for mixing, in one week prepare enough to keep
all the ordnance on the castle walls busy for two. But indeed he had
not such a high opinion of gunpowder but that he believed engines
for projection, more powerful as well as less expensive, could be
constructed, after the fashion of ballista or catapult, by the use
of a mode he had discovered of immeasurably increasing the strength
of springs, so that stones of a hundredweight might be thrown into a
city from a quarter of a mile's distance without any noise audible
to those within. It was this device he was brooding over when
Dorothy came upon him by the arblast. Nor did the conviction arise
from any prejudice against fire-arms, for he had, among many other
wonderful things of the sort, in cannons, sakers, harquebusses,
muskets, musquetoons, and all kinds, invented a pistol to discharge
a dozen times with one loading, and without so much as new priming
being once requisite, or the possessor having to change it out of
one hand into the other, or stop his horse.

One who had happened to see lord Herbert as he went about within his
father's walls, busy yet unhasting, earnest yet cheerful, rapid in
all his movements yet perfectly composed, would hardly have imagined
that a day at a time, or perhaps two, was all he was now able to
spend there, days which were to him as breathing-holes in the ice
to the wintered fishes. For not merely did he give himself to the
enlisting of large numbers of men, but commanded both horse and
foot, meeting all expenses from his own pocket, or with the
assistance of his father. A few months before the period at which my
story has arrived, he had in eight days raised six regiments,
fortified Monmouth and Chepstow, and garrisoned half-a-dozen smaller
but yet important places. About a hundred noblemen and gentlemen
whom he had enrolled as a troop of life-guards, he furnished with
the horses and arms which they were unable to provide with
sufficient haste for themselves. So prominenf indeed were his
services on behalf of the king, that his father was uneasy because
of the jealousy and hate it would certainly rouse in the minds of
some of his majesty's well-wishers--a just presentiment, as his son
had too good reason to acknowledge after he had spent a million of
money, besides the labour and thought and dangerous endeavour of
years, in the king's service.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOSSOMS.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, lord Herbert set out
for Chepstow first and then Monmouth, both which places belonged to
his father, and were principal sources of his great wealth.

Still, amid the rush of the changeful tides of war around them, and
the rumour of battle filling the air, all was peaceful within the
defences of Raglan, and its towers looked abroad over a quiet
country, where the cattle fed and the green wheat grew. On the far
outskirts of vision, indeed, a smoke might be seen at times from the
watch-tower, and across the air would come the dull boom of a great
gun from one of the fortresses, at which lady Margaret's cheek would
turn pale; but, although every day something was done to strengthen
the castle, although masons were at work here and there about the
walls like bees, and Caspar Kaltoff was busy in all directions, now
mounting fresh guns, now repairing steel cross-bows, now getting out
of the armoury the queerest oldest-fashioned engines to place
wherever available points could be found, there was no hurry and no
confusion, and indeed so little appearance of unusual activity, that
an unmilitary stranger might have passed a week in the castle
without discovering that preparations for defence were actively
going on. All around them the buds were creeping out, uncurling,
spreading abroad, straightening themselves, smoothing out the
creases of their unfolding, and breathing the air of heaven--in some
way very pleasant to creatures with roots as well as to creatures
with legs. The apple-blossoms came out, and the orchard was lovely
as with an upward-driven storm of roseate snow. Ladies were oftener
seen passing through the gates and walking in the gardens--where
the fountains had begun to play, and the swans and ducks on the
lakes felt the return of spring in every fibre of their webby feet
and cold scaly legs.

And Dorothy sat as it were at the spring-head of the waters, for,
through her dominion over the fire-engine, she had become the naiad
of Raglan. The same hour in which lord Herbert departed she went to
Kaltoff, and was by him instructed in its mysteries. On the third
day after, so entirely was the Dutchman satisfied with her
understanding and management of it, that he gave up to her the whole
water-business. And now, as I say, she sat at the source of all the
streams and fountains of the place, and governed them all. The horse
of marble spouted and ceased at her will, but in general she let the
stream from his mouth flow all day long. Every water-cock on the
great tower was subject to her. From the urn of her pleasure the
cistern was daily filled, and from the summit of defence her flood
went pouring into the moat around its feet, until it mantled to the
brim, turning the weeds into a cold shadowy pavement of green for a
foil to its pellucid depth. She understood all the secrets of the
aqueous catapult, at which its contriver had little more than hinted
on that memorable night when he disclosed so much, and believed she
could arrange it for action without assistance. At the same time her
new responsibilities required but a portion of her leisure, and lady
Margaret was not the less pleased with the wise-headed girl, whose
manners and mental ways were such a contrast to her own, that her
husband considered her fit to be put in charge of his darling
invention. But Dorothy kept silence concerning the trust to all but
her mistress, who, on her part, was prudent enough to avoid any
allusion which might raise yet higher the jealousy of her
associates, by whom she was already regarded as supplanting them in
the favour of their mistress.

One lovely evening in May, the moon at the full, the air warm yet
fresh, the apple-blossoms at their largest, with as yet no spot upon
their fair skin, and the nightingales singing out of their very
bones, the season, the hour, the blossoms, and the moon had invaded
every chamber in the castle, seized every heart of both man and
beast, and turned all into one congregation of which the
nightingales were the priests. The cocks were crowing as if it had
been the dawn itself instead of its ghost they saw; the dogs were
howling, but whether that was from love or hate of the moon, I
cannot tell; the pigeons were cooing; the peacock had turned his
train into a paralune, understanding well that the carnival could
not be complete without him and his; and the wild beasts were
restless, uttering a short yell now and then, at least aware that
something was going on. All the inhabitants of the castle were out
of doors, the ladies and gentlemen in groups here and there about
the gardens and lawns and islands, and the domestics, and such of
the garrison as were not on duty, wandering hither and thither where
they pleased, careful only not to intrude on their superiors.

Lady Margaret was walking with her step-son Henry on a lawn under
the northern window of the picture-gallery, and there the ladies
Elizabeth and Anne joined them--the former a cheerful woman, endowed
with a large share of her father's genial temperament; joke or jest
would moult no feather in lady Elizabeth's keeping; the latter
quiet, sincere, and reverent. The marquis himself, notwithstanding a
slight attack of the gout, had hobbled on his stick to a chair set
for him on the same lawn. Beside him sat lady Mary, younger than the
other two, and specially devoted to her father.

Their gentlewomen were also out, flitting in groups that now and
then mingled and changed. Rowland Scudamore joined lady Margaret's
people, and in a moment lady Broughton was laughing merrily. But
mistress Doughty walked on with straight neck, as if there were
nobody but herself in heaven or on the earth, although mortals were
merry by her side, and nightingales singing themselves to death over
her head. Behind them came Amanda Serafina, with her eyes on her
feet, and the corners of her pretty mouth drawn down in contempt of
nobody in particular. Now and then Scudamore, when satisfied with
his own pretty wit, would throw a glance behind him, and she,
somehow or other, would, without change of muscle, let him know that
she had heard him. This group sauntered into the orchard.

After them came Dorothy with Dr Bayly, talking of their common
friend Mr. Matthew Herbert, and following them into the orchard,
wandered about among the trees, under the curdled moonlight of the
apple-blossoms, amid the challenges and responses of five or six
nightingales, that sang as if their bodies had dwindled under the
sublimating influences of music, until, with more than cherubic
denudation, their sum of being was reduced to a soul and a throat.

Moonlight, apple-blossoms, nightingales, with the souls of men and
women for mirrors and reflectors! The picture is for the musician
not the painter, either him of words or him of colours. It was like
a lovely show in the land of dreams, even to the living souls that
moved in and made part of it. The earth is older now, colder at the
heart, a little nearer to the fate of cold-hearted things, which is
to be slaves and serve without love; but she has still the same
moonlight, the same apple-blossoms, the same nightingales, and we
have the same hearts, and so can understand it. But, alas! how
differently should we come in amongst the accessories of such a
picture! For we men at least are all but given over to ugliness,
and, artistically considered, even vulgarity, in the matter of
dress, wherein they, of all generations of English men and women,
were too easily supreme both as to form and colour. Hence, while
they are an admiration to us, we shall be but a laughter to those
that come behind us, and that whether their fashions be better than
ours or no, for nothing is so ridiculous as ugliness out of date.
The glimmer of gold and silver, the glitter of polished steel, the
flashing of jewels, and the flowing of plumes, went well. But, so
canopied with loveliness, so besung with winged passion, so clothed
that even with the heavenly delicacies enrounding them they blended
harmoniously, their moonlit orchard was an island beat by the waves
of war, its air would quiver and throb by fits, shaken with the roar
of cannon, and might soon gleam around them with the whirring sweep
of the troopers' broad blades; while all throughout the land, the
hateful demon of party spirit tore wide into gashes the wounds first
made by conscience in the best, and by prejudice in the good.

The elder ladies had floated away together between the mossy stems,
under the canopies of blossoms; Rowland had fallen behind and joined
the waiting Amanda, and the two were now flitting about like moths
in the moonshine; Dorothy and Dr. Bayly had halted in an open spot,
like a moonlight impluvium, the divine talking eagerly to the
maiden, and the maiden looking up at the moon, and heeding the
nightingales more than the divine.

'CAN they be English nightingales?' said Dorothy thoughtfully.

The doctor was bewildered for a moment. He had been talking about
himself, not the nightingales, but he recovered himself like a
gentleman.

'Assuredly, mistress Dorothy,' he replied; 'this is the land of
their birth. Hither they come again when the winter is over.'

'Yes; they take no part in our troubles. They will not sing to
comfort our hearts in the cold; but give them warmth enough, and
they sing as careless of battle-fields and dead men as if they were
but moonlight and apple-blossoms.'

'Is it not better so?' returned the divine after a moment's thought.
'How would it be if everything in nature but re-echoed our moan?'

Dorothy looked at the little man, and was in her turn a moment
silent.

'Then,' she said, 'we must see in these birds and blossoms, and that
great blossom in the sky, so many prophets of a peaceful time and a
better country, sent to remind us that we pass away and go to them.'

'Nay, my dear mistress Dorothy!' returned the all but obsequious
doctor; 'such thoughts do not well befit your age, or rather, I
would say, your youth. Life is before you, and life is good. These
evil times will go by, the king shall have his own again, the
fanatics will be scourged as they deserve, and the church will rise
like the phoenix from the ashes of her purification.'

'But how many will lie out in the fields all the year long, yet
never see blossoms or hear nightingales more!' said Dorothy.

'Such will have died martyrs,' rejoined the doctor.

'On both sides?' suggested Dorothy.

Again for a moment the good man stood checked. He had not even
thought of the dead on the other side.

'That cannot be,' he said. And Dorothy looked up again at the moon.

But she listened no more to the songs of the nightingales, and they
left the orchard together in silence.

'Come, Rowland, we must not be found here alone,' said Amanda, who
saw them go. 'But tell me one thing first: is mistress Dorothy
Vaughan indeed your cousin?'

'She is indeed. Her mother and mine were cousins german--sisters'
children.'

'I thought it could not be a near cousinship. You are not alike at
all. Hear me, Rowland, but let it die in your ear--I love not
mistress Dorothy.'

'And the reason, lovely hater? "Is not the maiden fair to see?" as
the old song says. I do not mean that she is fair as some are fair,
but she will pass; she offends not.'

'She is fair enough--not beautiful, not even pleasing; but, to be
just, the demure look she puts on may bear the fault of that.
Rowland, I would not speak evil of any one, but your cousin is a
hypocrite. She is false at heart, and she hates me. Trust me, she
but bides her time to let me know it--and you too, my Rowland.'

'I am sure you mistake her, Amanda,' said Scudamore. 'Her looks are
but modest, and her words but shy, for she came hither from a lonely
house. I believe she is honest and good.'

'Seest thou not then how that she makes friends with none but her
betters? Already hath she wound herself around my lady's heart,
forsooth! and now she pays her court to the puffing chaplain! Hast
thou never observed, my Rowland, how oft she crosses the bridge to
the yellow tower? What seeks she there? Old Kaltoff, the Dutchman,
it can hardly be. I know she thinks to curry with my lord by
pretending to love locks and screws and pistols and such like. "But
why should she haunt the place when my lord is not there?" you will
ask. Her pretence will hold the better for it, no doubt, and Caspar
will report concerning her. And if she pleases my lord well, who
knows but he may give her a pair of watches to hang at her ears, or
a box that Paracelsus himself could not open without the secret as
well as the key? I have heard of both such. They say my lord hath
twenty cartloads of quite as wonderful things in that vault he calls
his workshop. Hast thou never marked the huge cabinet of black
inlaid with silver, that stands by the wall--fitter indeed for my
lady's chamber than such a foul place?'

'I have seen it,' answered Scudamore.

'I warrant me it hath store of gewgaws fit for a duchess.'

'Like enough,' assented Rowland.

'If mistress Dorothy were to find the way through my lord's favour
into that cabinet--truly it were nothing to thee or me, Rowland.'

'Assuredly not. It would be my lord's own business.'

'Once upon a time I was sent to carry my young lady Raven
thither--to see my lord earn his bread, as said my lady: and what
should my lord but give her no less than a ball of silver which,
thrown into a vessel of water at any moment would plainly tell by
how much it rose above the top, the very hour and minute of the day
or night, as well and truly as the castle-clock itself. Tell me
not, Rowland, that the damsel hath no design in it. Her looks
betoken a better wisdom. Doth she not, I ask your honesty, far more
resemble a nose-pinched puritan than a loyal maiden?'

Thus amongst the apple-blossoms talked Amanda Serafina.

'Prithee, be not too severe with my cousin, Amanda,' pleaded
Scudamore. 'She is much too sober to please my fancy, but wherefore
should I for that hate her? And if she hath something the look of a
long-faced fanatic, thou must think, she hath but now, as it were,
lost her mother.'

'But now! And I never knew mine! Ah, Rowland, how lonely is the
world!'

'Lovely Amanda!' said Rowland.

So they passed from the orchard and parted, fearful of being missed.

How should such a pair do, but after its kind? Life was dull without
love-making, so they made it. And the more they made, the more they
wanted to make, until casual encounters would no longer serve their
turn.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ENCHANTED CHAIR.

In the castle things went on much the same, nor did the gathering
tumult without wake more than an echo within. Yet a cloud slowly
deepened upon the brow of the marquis, and a look of disquiet, to be
explained neither by the more frequent returns of his gout, nor by
the more lengthened absences of his favourite son. In his judgment
the king was losing ground, not only in England but in the deeper
England of its men. Lady Margaret also, for all her natural good
spirits and light-heartedness, showed a more continuous anxiety
than was to be accounted for by her lord's absences and the dangers
he had to encounter: little Molly, the treasure of her heart next to
her lord, had never been other than a delicate child, but now had
begun to show signs of worse than weakness of constitution, and the
heart of the mother was perpetually brooding over the ever-present
idea of her sickly darling.

But she always did her endeavour to clear the sky of her countenance
before sitting down with her father-in-law at the dinner-table,
where still the marquis had his jest almost as regularly as his
claret, although varying more in quality and quantity both--now
teasing his son Charles about the holes in his pasteboard, as he
styled the castle walls; now his daughter Anne about a design, he
and no one else attributed to her, of turning protestant and
marrying Dr. Bayly; now Dr. Bayly about his having been discovered
blowing the organ in the chapel at high mass, as he said; for when
no new joke was at hand he was fain to content himself with falling
back upon old ones. The first of these mentioned was founded on the
fact, as undeniable as deplorable, of the weakness of many portions
of the defences, to remedy which, as far as might be, was for the
present lord Charles's chief endeavour, wherein he had the best
possible adviser, engineer, superintendent, and workman, all in the
person of Caspar Kaltoff. The second jest of the marquis was a pure
invention upon the liking of lady Anne for the company and
conversation of the worthy chaplain. The last mentioned was but an
exaggeration of the following fact.

One evening the doctor came upon young Delaware, loitering about the
door of the chapel, with as disconsolate a look as his lovely
sightless face was ever seen to wear, and, inquiring what was amiss
with him, learned that he could find no one to blow the organ
bellows for him. The youth had for years, boy as he still was, found
the main solace of his blindness in the chapel-organ, upon which he
would have played from morning to night could he have got any one to
blow as long. The doctor, then, finding the poor boy panting for
music like the hart for the water-brooks, but with no Jacob to roll
the stone from the well's mouth that he might water the flocks of
his thirsty thoughts, made willing proffer of his own exertions to
blow the bellows of the organ, so long as the somewhat wheezy
bellows of his body would submit to the task.

By degrees however the good doctor had become so absorbed in the
sounds that rushed, now wailing, now jubilant, now tender as a
twilight wind, now imperious as the voice of the war-tempest, from
the fingers of the raptured boy, that the reading of the first
vesper-psalm had commenced while he was yet watching the slow rising
index, in the expectation that the organist was about to resume. The
voice of his Irish brother-chaplain, Sir Toby Mathews, roused him
from his reverie of delight, and as one ashamed he stole away
through the door that led from the little organ loft into the
minstrel's gallery in the great hall, and so escaped the catholic
service, but not the marquis's roasting. Whether the music had any
share in the fact that the good man died a good catholic at last, I
leave to the speculation of who list.

Lady Margaret continued unchangingly kind to Dorothy; and the
tireless efforts of the girl to amuse and please poor little Molly,
whom the growing warmth of the season seemed to have no power to
revive, awoke the deep gratitude of a mother. This, as well as her
husband's absences, may have had something to do with the interest
she began to take in the engine of which Dorothy had assumed the
charge, for which she had always hitherto expressed a special
dislike, professing to regard it as her rival in the affections of
her husband, but after which she would now inquire as Dorothy's
baby, and even listen with patience to her expositions of its
wonderful construction and capabilities. Ere long Dorothy had a tale
to tell her in connection with the engine, which, although simple
and uneventful enough, she yet found considerably more interesting,
as involving a good deal of at least mental adventure on the part of
her young cousin.

One evening, after playing with little Molly for an hour, then
putting her to bed and standing by her crib until she fell asleep,
Dorothy ran to see to her other baby; for the cistern had fallen
rather lower than she thought well, and she was going to fill it.
She found Caspar had lighted the furnace as she had requested; she
set the engine going, and it soon warmed to its work.

The place was hot, and Dorothy was tired. But where in that wide and
not over-clean place should she find anything fitter than a
grindstone to sit upon? Never yet, through all her acquaintance with
the workshop, had she once seated herself in it. Looking about,
however, she soon espied, almost hidden in the corner of a recess
behind the furnace, what seemed an ordinary chair, such as stood in
the great hall for the use of the family when anything special was
going on there. With some trouble she got it out, dusted it, and set
it as far from the furnace as might be, consistently with watching
the motions of the engine. But the moment she sat down in it, she
was caught and pinned so fast that she could scarcely stir hand or
foot, and could no more leave it again than if she had been
paralyzed in every limb. One scream she uttered of mingled
indignation and terror, fancying herself seized by human arms; but
when she found herself only in the power of one of her cousin's
curiosities, she speedily quieted herself and rested in peace, for
Caspar always paid a visit to the workshop the last thing before
going to bed. The pressure of the springs that had closed the trap
did not hurt her in the least--she was indeed hardly sensible of it;
but when she made the least attempt to stir, the thing showed itself
immovably locked, and she had too much confidence in the workmanship
of her cousin and Caspar to dream of attempting to open it: that she
knew must be impossible. The worst that threatened her was that the
engine might require some attention before the hour, or perhaps two,
which must elapse ere Caspar came would be over, and she did not
know what the consequences might be.

As it happened, however, something either in the powder-mill or
about the defences detained Caspar far beyond his usual hour for
retiring, and the sultriness of the weather having caused him a
headache, he represented to himself that, with mistress Dorothy
tending the engine, who knew where and would be sure to find him
upon the least occasion, there could be no harm in his going to bed
without paying his usual precautionary visit to the keep.

So Dorothy sat, and waited in vain. The last drops of the day
trickled down the side of the world, the night filled the crystal
globe from its bottom of rock to its cover of blue aether, and the
red glow of the furnace was all that lighted the place. She waited
and waited in her mind; but Caspar did not come. She began to feel
miserable. The furnace fire sank, and the rush of the water grew
slower and slower, and ceased. Caspar did not come. The fire sank
lower and lower, its red eye dimmed, darkened, went out. Still
Caspar did not come. Faint fears began to gather about poor
Dorothy's heart. It was clear at last that there she must be all the
night long, and who could tell how far into the morning? It was good
the night was warm, but it would be very dreary. And then to be
fixed in one position for so long! The thought of it grew in misery
faster than the thing itself. The greater torment lies always in the
foreboding. She felt almost as if she were buried alive. Having
their hands tied even, is enough to drive strong men almost crazy.
Nor, firm of heart as she was, did no evils of a more undefined and
less resistible character claim a share in her fast-rising
apprehensions; she began to discover that she too was assailable by
the terror of the night, although she had not hitherto been aware of
it, no one knowing what may lie unhatched in his mind, waiting the
concurrence of vital conditions.

But Dorothy was better able to bear up under such assaults than
thousands who believe nothing of many a hideous marvel commonly
accepted in her day; and anyhow the unavoidable must be encountered,
if not with indifference, yet with what courage may be found
responsive to the call of the will. So, with all her energy, a
larger store than she knew, she braced herself to endure. As to any
attempt to make herself heard, she knew from the first that was of
doubtful result, and now must certainly be of no avail when all but
the warders were asleep. But to spend the night thus was a far less
evil than to be discovered by the staring domestics, and exposed to
the open merriment of her friends, and the hidden mockery of her
enemies. As to Caspar, she was certain of his silence. So she sat
on, like the lady in Comus, 'in stony fetters fixed and motionless;'
only, as she said to herself, there was no attendant spirit to
summon Caspar, who alone could take the part of Sabrina, and 'unlock
the clasping charm.' Little did Dorothy think, as in her dreary
imprisonment she recalled that marvellous embodiment of unified
strength and tenderness, as yet unacknowledged of its author, that
it was the work of the same detestable fanatic who wrote those
appalling 'Animadversions, &c.'

She grew chilly and cramped. The night passed very slowly. She dozed
and woke, and dozed again. At last, from very weariness of both soul
and body, she fell into a troubled sleep, from which she woke
suddenly with the sound in her ears of voices whispering. The
confidence of lord Herbert, both in the evil renown of his wizard
cave and the character of his father's household, seemed mistaken.
Still the subdued manner of their conversation appeared to indicate
it was not without some awe that the speakers, whoever they were,
had ventured within the forbidden precincts; their whispers, indeed,
were so low that she could not say of either voice whether it
belonged to man or woman. Her first idea was to deliver herself from
the unpleasantness of her enforced espial by the utterance of some
frightful cry such as would at the same time punish with the pains
of terror their fool-hardy intrusion. But the spur of the moment was
seldom indeed so sharp with Dorothy as to drive her to act without
reflection, and a moment showed her that such persons being in the
marquis's household as would meet in the middle of the night, and on
prohibited ground, apparently for the sake of avoiding discovery,
and even then talked in whispers, he had a right to know who they
were: to act from her own feelings merely would be to fail in
loyalty to the head of the house. Who could tell what might not be
involved in it? For was it not thus that conspiracy and treason
walked? And any alarm given them now might destroy every chance of
their discovery. She compelled herself therefore to absolute
stillness, immeasurably wretched, with but one comfort--no small
one, however, although negative--that their words continued
inaudible, a fact which doubtless saved much dispute betwixt her
propriety and her loyalty.

Long time their talk lasted. Every now and then they would start and
listen--so Dorothy interpreted sudden silence and broken renewals.
The genius of the place, although braved, had yet his terrors. At
length she heard something like a half-conquered yawn, and soon
after the voices ceased.

Again a weary time, and once more she fell asleep. She woke in the
grey of the morning, and after yet two long hours, but of more
hopeful waiting, she heard Caspar's welcome footsteps, and summoned
all her strength to avoid breaking down on his entrance. His first
look of amazement she tried to answer with a smile, but at the
expression of pitiful dismay which followed when another glance had
revealed the cause of her presence, she burst into tears. The honest
man was full of compunctious distress at the sight of the suffering
his breach of custom had so cruelly prolonged.

'And I haf bin slap in mine bed!' he exclaimed with horror at the
contrast.

Had she been his daughter and his mistress both in one, he could not
have treated her with greater respect or tenderness. Of course he
set about relieving her at once, but this was by no means such an
easy matter as Dorothy had expected. For the key of the chair was in
the black cabinet; the black cabinet was secured with one of lord
Herbert's marvellous locks; the key of that lock was in lord
Herbert's pocket, and lord Herbert was either in bed at Chepstow or
Monmouth or Usk or Caerlyon, or on horseback somewhere else, nobody
in Raglan knew where. But Caspar lost no time in unavailing moan. He
proceeded at once to light a fire on his forge hearth, and in the
course of a few minutes had fashioned a pick-lock, by means of
which, after several trials and alterations, at length came the
welcome sound of the yielding bolts, and Dorothy rose from the
terrible chair. But so benumbed were all her limbs that she escaped
being relocked in it only by the quick interposition of Caspar's
arms. He led her about like a child, until at length she found them
sufficiently restored to adventure the journey to her chamber, and
thither she slowly crept. Few of the household were yet astir, and
she met no one. When she was covered up in bed, then first she knew
how cold she was, and felt as if she should never be warm again.

At last she fell asleep, and slept long and soundly. Her maid went
to call her, but finding it difficult to wake her, left her asleep,
and did not return until breakfast was over. Then finding her still
asleep she became a little anxious, and meeting mistress Amanda,
told her she was afraid mistress Dorothy was ill. But mistress
Amanda was herself sleepy and cross, and gave her a sharp answer,
whereupon the girl went to lady Broughton. She, however, being on
her way to morning mass, for it was Sunday, told her to let mistress
Dorothy have her sleep out.

The noise of horses' hoofs upon the paving of the stone court roused
her, and then in came the sounds of the organ from the chapel. She
rose confounded, and hurrying to the window drew back the curtain.
The same moment lord Herbert walked from the hall into the
fountain-court in riding dress, followed by some forty or fifty
officers, the noise of whose armour and feet and voices dispelled at
once the dim Sabbath feeling that hung vapour-like about the place.
They gathered around the white horse, leaning or sitting on the
marble basin, some talking in eager groups, others folding their
arms in silence, listening, or lost heedless in their own thoughts,
while their leader entered the staircase door at the right-hand
corner of the western gate, the nearest way to his wife's apartment
of the building.

Now Dorothy had gone to sleep in perplexity, and all through her
dreams had been trying to answer the question what course she should
take with regard to the nocturnal intrusion. If she told lady
Margaret she could but go with it to the marquis, and he was but
just recovering from an attack of the gout, and ought not to be
troubled except it were absolutely necessary. Was it, or was it not,
necessary? Or was there no one else to whom she might with propriety
betake herself in her doubt--lord Charles or Dr. Bayly? But here now
was lord Herbert come back, and doubt there was none any more. She
dressed herself in tremulous haste, and hurried to lady Margaret's
room, where she hoped to see him. No one was there, and she tried
the nursery, but finding only Molly and her attendant, returned to
the parlour, and there seated herself to wait, supposing lady
Margaret and he had gone together to morning service.

They had really gone to the oak parlour, whither the marquis
generally made his first move after an attack that had confined him
to his room; for in the large window of that parlour, occupying
nearly the whole side of it towards the moat, he generally sat when
well enough to be about and take cognizance of what wa's going on;
and there they now found him.

'Welcome home, Herbert!' he said, kindly, holding out his hand. 'And
how does my wild Irishwoman this morning? Crying her eyes out
because her husband is come back, eh?--But, Herbert, lad, whence is
all that noise of spurs and scabbards--and in the fountain court,
too? I heard them go clanking and clattering through the hall like a
torrent of steel! Here I sit, a poor gouty old man, deserted of my
children and servants--all gone to church--to serve a better
Master--not a page or a maid left me to send out to see and bring me
word what is the occasion thereof! I was on the point of hobbling to
the door myself when you came.'

'Being on my way to the forest of Dean, my lord, and coming round by
Raglan to inquire after you and my lady, I did bring with me some of
my officers to dine and drink your lordship's health on our way.'

'You shall all be welcome, though I fear I shall not make one,' said
the marquis, with a grimace, for just then he had a twinge of the
gout.

'I am sorry to see you suffer, sir,' said his son.

'Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,' returned the
marquis, giving a kick with the leg which contained his inheritance;
and then came a pause, during which lady Margaret left the room.

'My lord,' said Herbert at length, with embarrassment, and forcing
himself to speak, 'I am sorry to trouble you again, after all the
money, enough to build this castle from the foundations--'

'Ah! ha!' interjected the marquis, but lord Herbert went on--

'which you have already spent on behalf of the king, my master,
but--'

'YOUR master, Herbert!' said the marquis, testily. 'Well?'

'I must have some more money for his pressing necessities.' In his
self-compulsion he had stumbled upon the wrong word.

'MUST you?' cried the marquis angrily. 'Pray take it.'

And drawing the keys of his treasury from the pocket of his frieze
coat, he threw them down on the table before him. Lord Herbert
reddened like a girl, and looked as much abashed as if he had been
caught in something of which he was ashamed. One moment he stood
thus, then said,

'Sir, the word was out before I was aware. I do not intend to put it
into force. I pray will you put up your key again?'

'Truly, son,' replied the marquis, still testily, but in a milder
tone, 'I shall think my keys not safe in my pocket whilst you have
so many swords by your side; nor that I have the command of my house
whilst you have so many officers in it; nor that I am at my own
disposal, whilst you have so many commanders.'

'My lord,' replied Herbert, 'I do not intend that they shall stay in
the castle; I mean they shall be gone.'

'I pray, let them. And have care that MUST do not stay behind,' said
the marquis. 'But let them have their dinner first, lad.'

Lord Herbert bowed, and left the room. Thereupon, in the presence of
lady Margaret, who just then re-entered, good Dr. Bayly, who,
unperceived by lord Herbert in his pre-occupation, had been present
during the interview, stepped up to the marquis and said:

'My good lord, the honourable confidence your lordship has reposed
in me boldens me to do my duty as, in part at least, your lordship's
humble spiritual adviser.'

'Thou shouldst want no boldening to do thy duty, doctor,' said the
marquis, making a wry face.

'May I then beg of your lordship to consider whether you have not
been more severe with your noble son than the occasion demanded,
seeing not only was the word uttered by a lapse of the tongue, but
yourself heard my lord express much sorrow for the overslip?'

'What!' said lady Herbert, something merrily, but looking in the
face of her father-in-law with a little anxious questioning in her
eyes, 'has my lord been falling out with my Ned?'

'Hark ye, daughter!' answered the marquis, his face beaming with
restored good-humour, for the twinge in his toe had abated, 'and you
too, my good chaplain!--if my son be dejected, I can raise him when
I please; but it is a question, if he should once take a head,
whether I could bring him lower when I list. Ned was not wont to use
such courtship to me, and I believe he intended a better word for
his father; but MUST was for the king.'

Returning to her own room, lady Margaret found Dorothy waiting for
her.

'Well, my little lig-a-bed!' she said sweetly, 'what is amiss with
thee? Thou lookest but soberly.'

'I am well, madam; and that I look soberly,' said Dorothy, 'you will
not wonder when I tell you wherefore. But first, if it please you, I
would pray for my lord's presence, that he too may know all.'

'Holy mother! what is the matter, child?' cried lady Margaret, of
late easily fluttered. 'Is it my lord Herbert you mean, or my lord
of Worcester?'

'My lord Herbert, my lady. I dread lest he should be gone ere I have
found a time to tell him.'

'He rides again after dinner,' said lady Margaret.

'Then, dear my lady, if you would keep me from great doubt and
disquiet, let me have the ear of my lord for a few moments.'

Lady Margaret rang for her page, and sent him to find his master and
request his presence in her parlour.

Within five minutes lord Herbert was with them, and within five
more, Dorothy had ended her tale of the night, uninterrupted save by
lady Margaret's exclamations of sympathy.

'And now, my lord, what am I to do?' she asked in conclusion.

Lord Herbert made no answer for a few moments, but walked up and
down the room. Dorothy thought he looked angry as well as troubled.
He burst at length into a laugh, however, and said merrily,

'I have it, ladies! I see how we may save my father much annoyance
without concealment, for nothing must be concealed from him that in
any way concerns the house. But the annoyance arising from any
direct attempt at discovering the wrongdoers would be endless, and
its failure almost certain. But now, as I would plan it, instead of
trouble my father shall have laughter, and instead of annoyance such
a jest as may make him good amends for the wrong done him by the
breach of his household laws. Caspar has explained to you all
concerning the water-works, I believe, cousin?'

'All, my lord. I may without presumption affirm that I can, so long
as there arises no mishap, with my own hand govern them all. Caspar
has for many weeks left everything to me, save indeed the lighting
of the furnace-fire.'

'That is as I would have it, cousin. So soon then as it is dark this
evening, you will together, you and Caspar, set the springs which
lie under the first stone of the paving of the bridge. Thereafter,
as you know, the first foot set upon it will drop the drawbridge to
the stone bridge, and the same instant convert the two into an
aqueduct, filled with a rushing torrent from the reservoir, which
will sweep the intruders away. Before they shall have either
gathered their discomfited wits or raised their prostrate bones, my
father will be out upon them, nor shall they find shelter for their
shame ere every soul in the castle has witnessed their disgrace.'

'I had thought of the plan, my lord; but I dreaded the punishment
might be too severe, not knowing what the water might do upon them.'

'There will be no danger to life, and little to limb,' said his
lordship. 'The torrent will cease flowing the moment they are swept
from the bridge. But they shall be both bruised and shamed; and,'
added his lordship, with an oath such as seldom crossed his lips,
'in such times as these, they will well deserve what shall befall
them. Intruding hounds!--But you must take heed, cousin Dorothy,
that you forget not that you have yourself done. Should you have
occasion to go on the bridge after setting your vermin-trap, you
must not omit to place your feet precisely where Caspar will show
you, else you will have to ride a watery horse half-way, mayhap to
the marble one--except indeed he throw you from his back against
the chapel-door.'

When her husband talked in long sentences, as he was not
unfrequently given to do, lady Margaret, even when their sequences
were not very clear, seldom interrupted him: she had learned that
she gained more by letting him talk on; for however circuitous the
route he might take, he never forgot where he was going. He might
obscure his object, but there it always was. He was now again
walking up and down the room, and, perceiving that he had not yet
arranged all to his satisfaction, she watched him with merriment in
her Irish eyes, and waited.

'I have it!' he cried again. 'It shall be so, and my father shall
thus have immediate notice. The nights are weekly growing warmer,
and he will not therein be tempted to his hurt. Our trusty and
well-beloved cousin Dorothy, we herewith, in presence of our liege
and lovely lady, appoint thee our deputy during our absence. No one
but thyself hath a right to cross the bridge after dark, save Caspar
and the governor, whom with my father I shall inform and warn
concerning what is to be done. But I will myself adjust the escape,
so that the torrent shall not fall too powerful; Caspar must connect
it with the drawbridge, whose fall will then open it. And pray
remind him to see first that all the hinges and joints concerned be
well greased, that it may fall instantly.'

So saying, he left the room, and sought out Caspar, with whom he
contrived the ringing of a bell in the marquis's chamber by the
drawbridge in its fall, the arrangement for which Caspar was to
carry out that same evening after dark. He next sought his father,
and told him and his brother Charles the whole story; nor did he
find himself wrong in his expectation that the prospect of so good a
jest would go far to console the marquis for the annoyance of
finding that his household was not quite such a pattern one as he
had supposed. That there was anything of conspiracy or treachery
involved, he did not for a moment believe.

After dinner, while the horses were brought out, lord Herbert went
again to his wife's room. There was little Molly waiting to bid him
good-bye, and she sat upon his knee until it was time for him to go.
The child's looks made his heart sad, and his wife could not
restrain her tears when she saw him gaze upon her so mournfully. It
was with a heavy heart that, when the moment of departure came, he
rose, gave her into her mother's arms, clasped them both in one
embrace, and hurried from the room. He ought to be a noble king for
whom such men and women make such sacrifices.

To witness such devotion on the part of personages to whom she
looked up with such respect and confidence, would have been in
itself more than sufficient to secure for its object the
unquestioning partisanship of Dorothy; partisan already, it raised
her prejudice to a degree of worship which greatly narrowed what she
took for one of the widest gulfs separating her from the creed of
her friends. The favourite dogma of the school-master-king, the
offspring of his pride and weakness, had found fitting soil in
Dorothy. When, in the natural growth of the confidence reposed in
her by her protectors, she came to have some idea of the immensity
of the sums spent by them on behalf of his son, had, indeed, ere the
close of another year read the king's own handwriting and signature
in acknowledgment of a debt of a quarter of a million, she took it
only as an additional sign--for additional proof there was no
room--of their ever admirable devotion to his divine right. That the
marquis and his son were catholics served but to glorify the right
to which a hostile faith yielded such practical homage.

Immediately after nightfall she repaired to Caspar, and between them
everything was speedily arranged for the carrying out of lord
Herbert's counter-plot.

But night after night passed, and the bell in the marquis's room
remained voiceless.

CHAPTER XX.

MOLLY AND THE WHITE HORSE.

Meantime lord Herbert came and went. There was fighting here and
fighting there, castles taken, defended, re-taken, here a little
success and there a worse loss, now on this side and now on that;
but still, to say the best, the king's affairs made little progress;
and for Mary Somerset, her body and soul made progress in opposite
directions.

There was a strange pleasant mixture of sweet fretfulness and
trusting appeal in her. Children suffer less because they feel that
all is right when father or mother is with them; grown people from
whom this faith has vanished ere it has led them to its original
fact, may well be miserable in their sicknesses.

She lay moaning one night in her crib, when suddenly she opened her
eyes and saw her mother's hand pressed to her forehead. She was
imitative, like most children, and had some very old-fashioned ways
of speech.

'Have you got a headache, madam?' she asked.

'Yes, my Molly,' answered her mother.

'Then you will go to mother Mary. She will take you on her knee,
madam. Mothers is for headaches. Oh me! my headache, madam!'

The poor mother turned away. It was more than she could bear alone.
Dorothy entered the room, and she rose and left it, that she might
go to mother Mary as the child had said.

Dorothy's cares were divided between the duties of naiad and
nursemaid, for the child clung to her as to no one else except her
mother. The thing that pleased her best was to see the two
whale-like spouts rise suddenly from the nostrils of the great white
horse, curve away from each other aloft in the air, and fall back
into the basin on each side of him. 'See horse spout,' she would say
moanfully; and that instant, if Dorothy was not present, a messenger
would be despatched to her. On a bright day this would happen
repeatedly. For the sake of renewing her delight, the instant she
turned from it, satisfied for the moment, the fountain ceased to
play, and the horse remained spoutless, awaiting the revival of the
darling's desire; for she was not content to see him spouting: she
must see him spout. Then again she would be carried forth to the
verge of the marble basin, and gazing up at the rearing animal would
say, in a tone daintily wavering betwixt entreaty and command,
'Spout, horse, spout,' and Dorothy, looking down from the far-off
summit of the tower, and distinguishing by the attitude of the child
the moment when she uttered her desire, would instantly, with one
turn of her hand, send the captive water shooting down its dark
channel to reascend in sunny freedom.

If little Mary Somerset was counted a strange child, the wisdom with
which she was wise is no more unnatural because few possess it, than
the death of such is premature because they are yet children. They
are small fruits whose ripening has outstripped their growth. Of
such there are some who, by the hot-house assiduities of their
friends, heating them with sulphurous stoves, and watering them with
subacid solutions, ripen into insufferable prigs. For them and for
their families it is well that Death the gardener should speedily
remove them into the open air. But there are others who, ripening
from natural, that is divine causes and influences, are the
daintiest little men and women, gentle in the utmost peevishness of
their lassitude, generous to share the gifts they most prize, and
divinely childlike in their repentances. Their falling from the
stalk is but the passing from the arms of their mothers into those
of--God knows whom--which is more than enough.

The chief part of little Molly's religious lessons, I do not mean
training, consisted in a prayer or two in rhyme, and a few verses of
the kind then in use among catholics. Here is a prayer which her
nurse taught her, as old, I take it, as Chaucer's time at least:--

    Hail be thou, Mary, that high sittest in throne!
    I beseech thee, sweet lady, grant me my boon--
    Jesus to love and dread, and my life to amend soon,
    And bring me to that bliss that never shall be done.

And here are some verses quite as old, which her mother taught her.
I give them believing that in understanding and coming nearer to our
fathers and mothers who are dead, we understand and come nearer to
our brothers and sisters who are alive. I change nothing but the
spelling, and a few of the forms of the words.

    Jesu, Lord, that madest me,
      And with thy blessed blood hast bought,
    Forgive that I have grieved thee
      With word, with will, and eke with thought.

    Jesu, for thy wounds' smart,
      On feet and on thine hands two,
    Make me meek and low of heart,
      And thee to love as I should do.

    Jesu, grant me mine asking,
      Perfect patience in my disease,
    And never may I do that thing
      That should thee in any wise displease.

    Jesu, most comfort for to see
      Of thy saints every one,
    Comfort them that careful be,
      And help them that be woe-begone.

    Jesu, keep them that be good,
      And amend them that have grieved thee,
    And send them fruits of early food,
      As each man needeth in his degree.

    Jesu, that art, without lies,
      Almighty God in trinity,
    Cease these wars, and send us peace
      With lasting love and charity.

    Jesu, that art the ghostly stone
      Of all holy church in middle-earth,
    Bring thy folds and flocks in one,
      And rule them rightly with one herd.

    Jesu, for thy blissful blood,
      Bring, if thou wilt, those souls to bliss
    From whom I have had any good,
      And spare that they have done amiss.

This old-fashioned hymn lady Margaret had learned from her
grandmother, who was an Englishwoman of the pale. She also had
learned it from her grandmother.

One day, by some accident, Dorothy had not reached her post of naiad
before Molly arrived in presence of her idol, the white horse, her
usual application to which was thence for the moment in vain. Having
waited about three seconds in perfect patience, she turned her head
slowly round, and gazed in her nurse's countenance with large
questioning eyes, but said nothing. Then she turned again to the
horse. Presently a smile broke over her face, and she cried in the
tone of one who had made a great discovery,

'Horse has ears of stone: he cannot hear, Molly.'

Instantly thereupon she turned her face up to the sky, and said,

'Dear holy Mary, tell horse to spout.'

That moment up into the sun shot the two jets. Molly clapped her
little hands with delight and cried,

'Thanks, dear holy Mary! I knowed thou would do it for Molly.
Thanks, madam!'

The nurse told the story to her mistress, and she to Dorothy. It set
both of them feeling, and Dorothy thinking besides.

'It cannot be,' she thought, 'but that a child's prayer will reach
its goal, even should she turn her face to the west or the north
instead of up to the heavens! A prayer somewhat differs from a bolt
or a bullet.'

'How you protestants CAN live without a woman to pray to!' said lady
Margaret.

'Her son Jesus never refused to hear a woman, and I see not
wherefore I should go to his mother, madam,' said Dorothy, bravely.

'Thou and I will not quarrel, Dorothy,' returned lady Margaret
sweetly; 'for sure am I that would please neither the one nor the
other of them.'

Dorothy kissed her hand, and the subject dropped.

After that, Molly never asked the horse to spout, or if she happened
to do so, would correct herself instantly, and turn her request to
the mother Mary. Nor did the horse ever fail to spout,
notwithstanding an evil thought which arose in the protestant part
of Dorothy's mind--the temptation, namely, to try the effect upon
Molly of a second failure. All the rest of her being on the instant
turned so violently protestant against the suggestion, that no
parley with it was possible, and the conscience of her intellect
cowered before the conscience of her heart.

It was from this fancy of the child's for the spouting of the horse
that it came to be known in the castle that mistress Dorothy was
ruler of Raglan waters. In lord Herbert's absence not a person in
the place but she and Caspar understood their management, and except
lady Margaret, the marquis, and lord Charles, no one besides even
knew of the existence of such a contrivance as the water-shoot or
artificial cataract.

Every night Dorothy and Caspar together set the springs of it, and
every morning Caspar detached the lever connecting the stone with
the drawbridge.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE DAMSEL WHICH FELL SICK.

From within the great fortress, like the rough husk whence the green
lobe of a living tree was about to break forth, a lovely child-soul,
that knew neither of war nor ambition, knew indeed almost nothing
save love and pain, was gently rising as from the tomb. The bonds of
the earthly life that had for ever conferred upon it the rights and
privileges of humanity were giving way, and little, white-faced,
big-eyed Molly was leaving father and mother and grandfather and
spouting horse and all, to find--what?--To find what she wanted,
and wait a little for what she loved.

One sultry evening in the second week of June, the weather had again
got inside the inhabitants of the castle, forming different
combinations according to the local atmosphere it found in each.
Clouds had been slowly steaming up all day from several sides of the
horizon, and as the sun went down, they met in the zenith. Not a
wing seemed to be abroad under heaven, so still was the region of
storms. The air was hot and heavy and hard to breathe--whether from
lack of life, or too much of it, oppressing the narrow and weak
recipients thereof, as the sun oppresses and extinguishes earthly
fires, I at least cannot say. It was weather that made SOME dogs
bite their masters, made most of the maids quarrelsome, and all the
men but one or two more or less sullen, made Dorothy sad, Molly long
after she knew not what, her mother weep, her grandfather feel
himself growing old, and the hearts of all the lovers, within and
without the castle, throb for the comfort of each other's lonely
society. The fish lay still in the ponds, the pigeons sat motionless
on the roof-ridges, and the fountains did not play; for Dorothy's
heart was so heavy about Molly, that she had forgotten them.

The marquis, fond of all his grandchildren, had never taken special
notice of Molly beyond what she naturally claimed as youngest. But
when it appeared that she was one of the spring-flowers of the human
family, so soon withdrawing thither whence they come, he found that
she began to pull at his heart, not merely with the attraction
betwixt childhood and age, in which there is more than the poets
have yet sung, but with the dearness which the growing shadow of
death gives to all upon whom it gathers. The eyes of the child
seemed to nestle into his bosom. Every morning he paid her a visit,
and every morning it was clear that little Molly's big heart had
been waiting for him. The young as well as the old recognize that
they belong to each other, despite the unwelcome intervention of
wrinkles and baldness and toothlessness. Molly's eyes brightened
when she heard his steps at the door, and ere he had come within her
sight, where she lay half-dressed on her mother's bed, tented in its
tall carved posts and curtains of embroidered silk, the figures on
which gave her so much trouble all the half-delirious night long,
her arms would be stretched out to him, and the words would be
trembling on her lips, 'Prithee, tell me a tale, sir.'

'Which tale wouldst thou have, my Molly?' the grandsire would say:
it was the regular form of each day's fresh salutation; and the
little one would answer, 'Of the good Jesu,' generally adding, 'and
of the damsel which fell sick and died.'

Torn as the country was, all the good grandparents, catholic and
protestant, royalist and puritan, told their children the same tales
about the same man; and I suspect there was more then than there is
now of that kind of oral teaching, for which any amount of books
written for children is a sadly poor substitute.

Although Molly asked oftenest for the tale of the damsel who came
alive again at the word of the man who knew all about death, she did
not limit her desires to the repetition of what she knew already;
and in order to keep his treasure supplied with things new as well
as old, the marquis went the oftener to his Latin bible to refresh
his memory for Molly's use, and was in both ways, in receiving and
in giving, a gainer. When the old man came thus to pour out his
wealth to the child, lady Margaret then first became aware what a
depth both of religious knowledge and feeling there was in her
father-in-law. Neither sir Toby Mathews, nor Dr. Bayly, who also
visited her at times, ever, with the torch of their talk, lighted
the lamps behind those great eyes, whose glass was growing dull with
the vapours from the grave; but her grandfather's voice, the moment
he began to speak to her of the good Jesu, brought her soul to its
windows.

This sultry evening Molly was restless. 'Madam! madam!' she kept
calling to her mother--for, like so many of such children, her
manners and modes of speech resembled those of grown people, 'What
wouldst thou, chicken?' her mother would ask. 'Madam, I know not,'
the child would answer. Twenty times in an hour, as the evening went
on, almost the same words would pass between them. At length, once
more, 'Madam! madam!' cried the child. 'What would my heart's
treasure?' said the mother; and Molly answered, 'Madam, I would see
the white horse spout.'

With a glance and sign to her mistress. Dorothy rose and crept from
the room, crossed the court and the moat, and dragged her heavy
heart up the long stair to the top of the keep. Arrived there, she
looked down through a battlement, and fixed her eyes on a certain
window, whence presently she caught the wave of a
signal-handkerchief.

At the open window stood lady Margaret with Molly in her arms. The
night was so warm that the child could take no hurt; and indeed what
could hurt her, with the nameless fever-moth within, fretting a
passage for the new winged body which, in the pains of a second
birth, struggled to break from its dying chrysalis.

'Now, Molly, tell the horse to spout,' said lady Margaret, with such
well-simulated cheerfulness as only mothers can put on with hearts
ready to break.

'Mother Mary, tell the horse to spout,' said Molly; and up went the
watery parabolas.

The old flame of delight flushed the child's cheek, like the flush
in the heart of a white rose. But it died almost instantly, and
murmuring, 'Thanks, good madam!' whether to mother Mary or mother
Margaret little mattered, Molly turned towards the bed, and her
mother knew at her heart that the child sought her last sleep--as we
call it, God forgive us our little faith! 'Madam!' panted the child,
as she laid her down. 'Darling?' said the mother. 'Madam, I would
see my lord marquis.' 'I will send and ask him to come.' 'Let Robert
say that Molly is going--going--where is Molly going, madam?' 'Going
to mother Mary, child,' answered lady Margaret, choking back the
sobs that would have kept the tears company. 'And the good Jesu ?'
'Yes.'--'And the good God over all ?' 'Yes, yes.' 'I want to tell
my lord marquis. Pray, madam, let him come, and quickly.'

His lordship entered, pale and panting. He knew the end was
approaching. Molly stretched out to him one hand instead of two, as
if her hold upon earth were half yielded. He sat down by the
bedside, and wiped his forehead with a sigh.

'Thee tired too, marquis?' asked the odd little love-bird.

'Yes, I am tired, my Molly. Thou seest I am so fat.'

'Shall I ask the good mother, when I go to her, to make thee spare
like Molly?'

'No, Molly, thou need'st not trouble her about that. Ask her to make
me good.'

'Would it then be easier to make thee good than to make thee spare,
marquis?'

'No, child--much harder, alas!'

'Then why--?' began Molly; but the marquis perceiving her thought,
made haste to prevent it, for her breath was coming quick and weak.

'But it is so much better worth doing, you see. If she makes me
good, she will have another in heaven to be good to.'

'Then I know she will. But I will ask her. Mother Mary has so many
to mind, she might be forgetting.'

After this she lay very quiet with her hand in his. All the windows
of the room were open, and from the chapel came the mellow sounds of
the organ. Delaware had captured Tom Fool and got him to blow the
bellows, and through the heavy air the music surged in. Molly was
dozing a little, and she spoke as one that speaks in a dream.

'The white horse is spouting music,' she said. 'Look! See how it
goes up to mother Mary. She twists it round her distaff and spins it
with her spindle. See, marquis, see! Spout, horse, spout.'

She lay silent again for a long time. The old man sat holding her
hand; her mother sat on the farther side of the bed, leaning against
one of the foot-posts, and watching the white face of her darling
with eyes in which love ruled distraction. Dorothy sat in one of the
window-seats, and listened to the music, which still came surging
in, for still the fool blew the bellows, and the blind youth struck
the keys. And still the clouds gathered overhead and sunk towards
the earth; and still the horse, which Dorothy had left spouting,
threw up his twin-fountain, whose musical plash in the basin as it
fell mingled with the sounds of the organ.

'What is it?' said Molly, waking up. 'My head doth not ache, and my
heart doth not beat, and I am not affrighted. What is it? I am not
tired. Marquis, are you no longer tired? Ah, now I know! He cometh!
He is here!--Marquis, the good Jesu wants Molly's hand. Let him have
it, marquis. He is lifting me up. I am quite well--quite--'

The sentence remained broken. The hand which the marquis had
yielded, with the awe of one in bodily presence of the Holy, and
which he saw raised as if in the grasp of one invisible, fell back
on the bed, and little Molly was quite well.

But she left sick hearts behind. The mother threw herself on the
bed, and wailed aloud. The marquis burst into tears, left the room,
and sought his study. Mechanically he took his Confessio Amantis,
and sat down, but never opened it; rose again and took his
Shakespere, opened it, but could not read; rose once more, took his
Vulgate, and read:

'Quid turbamini, et ploratis? puella non est mortua, sed dormit.'

He laid that book also down, fell on his knees, and prayed for her
who was not dead but sleeping.

Dorothy, filled with awe, rather from the presence of the mother of
the dead than death itself, and feeling that the mother would rather
be alone with her dead, also left the room, and sought her chamber,
where she threw herself upon the bed. All was still save the
plashing of the fountain, for the music from the chapel had ceased.

The storm burst in a glare and a peal. The rain fell in straight
lines and huge drops, which came faster and faster, drowning the
noise of the fountain, till the sound of it on the many roofs of the
place was like the trampling of an army of horsemen, and every spout
was gurgling musically with full throat. The one court was filled
with a clashing upon its pavement, and the other with a soft singing
upon its grass, with which mingled a sound as of little castanets
from the broad leaves of the water-lilies in the moat. Ever and anon
came the lightning, and the great bass of the thunder to fill up the
psalm.

At the first thunderclap lady Margaret fell on her knees and prayed
in an agony for the little soul that had gone forth into the midst
of the storm. Like many women she had a horror of lightning and
thunder, and it never came into her mind that she who had so loved
to see the horse spout was far more likely to be revelling in the
elemental tumult, with all the added ecstasy of newborn freedom and
health, than to be trembling like her mortal mother below.

Dorothy was not afraid, but she was heavy and weary; the thunder
seemed to stun her and the lightning to take the power of motion
from the shut eyelids through which it shone. She lay without
moving, and at length fell fast asleep.

To the marquis alone of the mourners the storm came as a relief to
his overcharged spirit. He had again opened his New Testament, and
tried to read; but if the truths which alone can comfort are not at
such a time present to the spirit, the words that embody them will
seldom be of much avail. When the thunder burst he closed the book
and went to the window, flung it wide, and looked out into the
court. Like a tide from the plains of innocent heaven through the
sultry passionate air of the world, came the coolness to his brow
and heart. Oxygen, ozone, nitrogen, water, carbonic acid, is it?
Doubtless--and other things, perhaps, which chemistry cannot
detect. Nevertheless, give its parts what names you will, its whole
is yet the wind of the living God to the bodies of men, his spirit
to their spirits, his breath to their hearts. When I learn that
there is no primal intent--only chance--in the unspeakable joy that
it gives, I shall cease to believe in poetry, in music, in woman, in
God. Nay, I must have already ceased to believe in God ere I could
believe that the wind that bloweth where it listeth is free because
God hath forgotten it, and that it bears from him no message to me.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE CATARACT.

In the midst of a great psalm, on the geyser column of which his
spirit was borne heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found
the keys dumb beneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty,
the singing thing dead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed
through the empty chapel, but no living response came back. Tom Fool
had grown weary and forsaken him. Disappointed and baffled, he rose
and left the chapel, not immediately from the organ loft, by a door
and a few upward steps through the wall to the minstrels' gallery,
as he had entered, but by the south door into the court, his
readiest way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near
the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever
made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered
flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed
charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason
why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove
the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the lock
retained no hold.

Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken
as to the cause and mode of his desertion: oppressed like every one
else with the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep,
leaning against the organ. The thunder only waked him sufficiently
to render him capable of slipping from the stool on which he had
lazily seated himself as he worked the lever of the bellows, and
stretching himself at full length upon the floor; while the coolness
that by degrees filled the air as the rain kept pouring, made his
sleep sweeter and deeper. He lay and snored till midnight.

A bell rang in the marquis's chamber.

It was one of his lordship's smaller economic maxims that in every
house, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance,
the master thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from
each other as might, with due respect to general fitness, be
arranged for, in order that, to use his own figure, he might spread
his skirts the wider over the place, and chiefly the part occupied
by his own family and immediate attendants--thereby to give himself,
without paying more attention to such matters than he could afford,
a better chance of coming upon the trace of anything that happened
to be going amiss. 'For,' he said, 'let a man have ever so many
responsible persons about him, the final responsibility of his
affairs yet returns upon himself.' Hence, while his bedroom was
close to the main entrance, that is the gate to the stone court, the
room he chose for retirement and study was over the western gate,
that of the fountain-court, nearly a whole side of the double
quadrangle away from his bedroom, and still farther from the
library, which was on the other side of the main entrance--whence,
notwithstanding, he would himself, gout permitting, always fetch any
book he wanted. It was, therefore, no wonder that, being now in his
study, the marquis, although it rang loud, never heard the bell
which Caspar had hung in his bedchamber. He was, however, at the
moment, looking from a window which commanded the very spot--namely,
the mouth of the archway--towards which the bell would have drawn
his attention.

The night was still, the rain was over, and although the moon was
clouded, there was light enough to recognise a known figure in any
part of the court, except the shadowed recess where the door of the
chapel and the archway faced each other, and the door of the hall
stood at right angles to both.

Came a great clang that echoed loud through the court, followed by
the roar of water. It sounded as if a captive river had broken
loose, and grown suddenly frantic with freedom. The marquis could
not help starting violently, for his nerves were a good deal shaken.
The same instant, ere there was time for a single conjecture, a
torrent, visible by the light of its foam, shot from the archway,
hurled itself against the chapel door, and vanished. Sad and
startled as he was, lord Worcester, requiring no explanation of the
phenomenon now that it was completed, laughed aloud and hurried from
the room.

When he had screwed his unwieldy form to the bottom of the stair,
and came out into the court, there was Tom Fool flying across the
turf in mortal terror, his face white as another moon, and his hair
standing on end--visibly in the dull moonshine.

His terror had either deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of his
obedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stop
him. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to
him trembling, and stood before him speechless. But when the
marquis, to satisfy himself that he was really as dry as he seemed,
laid his hand on his arm, the touch brought him to himself, and,
assisted by his master's questions, he was able to tell how he had
fallen asleep in the chapel, had waked but a minute ago, had left it
by the minstrels' gallery, had reached the floor of the hall, and
was approaching the western door, which was open, in order to cross
the court to his lodging near the watch-tower, when a hellish
explosion, followed by the most frightful roaring, mingled with
shrieks and demoniacal laughter, arrested him; and the same instant,
through the open door, he saw, as plainly as he now saw his noble
master, a torrent rush from the archway, full of dim figures,
wallowing and shouting. The same moment they all vanished, and the
flood poured into the hall, wetting him to the knees, and almost
carrying him off his legs.

Here the marquis professed profound astonishment, remarking that the
water must indeed have been thickened with devils to be able to lay
hold of Tom's legs.

'Then,' pursued Tom, reviving a little, 'I summoned up all my
courage--'

'No great feat,' said the marquis.

But Tom went on unabashed.

'I summoned up the whole of my courage,' he repeated, 'stepped out
of the hall, carefully examined the ground, looked through the
arch-way, saw nothing, and was walking slowly across the court to my
lodging, pondering with myself whether to call my lord governor or
sir Toby Mathews, when I heard your lordship call me.'

'Tom! Tom! thou liest,' said the marquis. 'Thou wast running as if
all the devils in hell had been at thy heels.'

Tom turned deadly pale, a fresh access of terror overcoming his
new-born hardihood.

'Who were they, thinkest thou, whom thou sawest in the water, Tom?'
resumed his master. 'For what didst thou take them?'

Tom shook his head with an awful significance, looked behind him,
and said nothing.

Perceiving there was no more to be got out of him, the marquis sent
him to bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he
reached the watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as
he went. The next day he did not appear. He thought himself he was
doomed, but his illness was only the prostration following upon
terror.

In the version of the story which he gave his fellow-servants, he
doubtless mingled the after visions of his bed with what he had when
half-awake seen and heard through the mists of his startled
imagination. His tale was this--that he saw the moat swell and rise,
boil over in a mass, and tumble into the court as full of devils as
it could hold, swimming in it, floating on it, riding it aloft as if
it had been a horse; that in a moment they had all vanished again,
and that he had not a doubt the castle was now swarming with
them--in fact, he had heard them all the night long.

The marquis walked up to the archway, saw nothing save the grim wall
of the keep, impassive as granite crag, and the ground wet a long
way towards the white horse; and never doubting he had lost his
chance by taking Tom for the culprit, contented himself with the
reflection that, whoever the night-walkers were, they had received
both a fright and a ducking, and betook himself to bed, where,
falling asleep at length, he saw little Molly in the arms of mother
Mary, who, presently changing to his own lady Anne that left him
about a year before little Molly came, held out a hand to him to
help him up beside them, whereupon the bubble sleep, unable to hold
the swelling of his gladness, burst, and he woke just as the first
rays of the sun smote the gilded cock on the bell-tower.

The noise of the falling drawbridge and the out-rushing water had
roused Dorothy also, with most of the lighter sleepers in the
castle; but when she and all the rest whose windows were to the
fountain court, ran to them and looked out, they saw nothing but the
flight of Tom Fool across the turf, its arrest by his master, and
their following conference. The moon had broken through the clouds,
and there was no mistaking either of their persons.

Meantime, inside the chapel door stood Amanda and Rowland, both
dripping, and one of them crying as well. Thither, as into a safe
harbour, the sudden flood had cast them; and it indicated no small
amount of ready faculty in Scudamore that, half-stunned as he was,
he yet had the sense, almost ere he knew where he was, to put up the
long bar that secured the door.

All the time that the marquis was drawing his story from Tom, they
stood trembling, in great bewilderment yet very sensible misery,
bruised, drenched, and horribly frightened, more even at what might
be than by what had been. There was only one question, but that was
hard to answer: what were they to do next? Amanda could contribute
nothing towards its solution, for tears and reproaches resolve no
enigmas. There were many ways of issue, whereof Rowland knew
several; but their watery trail, if soon enough followed, would be
their ruin as certainly as Hop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles were safety to
himself and his brothers. He stood therefore the very bond slave of
perplexity, 'and, like a neutral to his will and matter, did
nothing.'

Presently they heard the approaching step of the marquis, which
every one in the castle knew. It stopped within a few feet of them,
and through the thick door they could hear his short asthmatic
breathing.

They kept as still as their trembling, and the mad beating of their
hearts, would permit. Amanda was nearly out of her senses, and
thought her heart was beating against the door, and not against her
own ribs. But the marquis never thought of the chapel, having at
once concluded that they had fled through the open hall. Had he not,
however, been so weary and sad and listless, he would probably have
found them, for he would at least have crossed the hall to look into
the next court, and, the moon now shining brightly, the absence of
all track on the floor where the traces of the brief inundation
ceased, would have surely indicated the direction in which they had
sought refuge.

The acme of terror happily endured but a moment. The sound of his
departing footsteps took the ghoul from their hearts; they began to
breathe, and to hope that the danger was gone. But they waited long
ere at last they ventured, like wild animals overtaken by the
daylight, to creep out of their shelter and steal back like
shadows--but separately, Amanda first, and Scudamore some slow
minutes after--to their different quarters. The tracks they could
not help leaving in-doors were dried up before the morning.

Rowland had greater reason to fear discovery than any one else in
the castle, save one, would in like circumstances have had, and that
one was his bedfellow in the ante-chamber to his master's bedroom.
Through this room his lordship had to pass to reach his own; but so
far was he from suspecting Rowland, or indeed any gentleman of his
retinue, that he never glanced in the direction of his bed, and so
could not discover that he was absent from it. Had Rowland but
caught a glimpse of his own figure as he sneaked into that room five
minutes after the marquis had passed through it, believing his
master was still in his study, where he had left his candles
burning, he could hardly for some time have had his usual success in
regarding himself as a fine gentleman.

Amanda Serafina did not show herself for several days. A bad cold in
her head luckily afforded sufficient pretext for the concealment of
a bad bruise upon her cheek. Other bruises she had also, but they,
although more severe, were of less consequence.

For a whole fortnight the lovers never dared exchange a word.

In the morning the marquis was in no mood to set any inquiry on
foot. His little lamb had vanished from his fold, and he was sad and
lonely. Had it been otherwise, possibly the shabby doublet in which
Scudamore stood behind his chair the next morning, might have set
him thinking; but as it was, it fell in so well with the gloom in
which his own spirit shrouded everything, that he never even marked
the change, and ere long Rowland began to feel himself safe.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.

So also did Amanda; but not the less did she cherish feelings of
revenge against her whom she more than suspected of having been the
contriver of her harmful discomfiture. She felt certain that Dorothy
had laid the snare into which they had fallen, with the hope if not
the certainty of catching just themselves two in it, and she read in
her, therefore, jealousy and cruelty as well as coldness and
treachery. Rowland on the other hand was inclined to attribute the
mishap to the displeasure of lord Herbert, whose supernatural
acquirements, he thought, had enabled him both to discover and
punish their intrusion. Amanda, nevertheless, kept her own opinion,
and made herself henceforth all eyes and ears for Dorothy, hoping
ever to find a chance of retaliating, if not in kind yet in
plentiful measure of vengeance. Dorothy's odd ways, lawless
movements, and what the rest of the ladies counted her vulgar
tastes, had for some time been the subject of remark to the
gossiping portion of the castle community; and it seemed to Amanda
that in watching and discovering what she was about when she
supposed herself safe from the eyes of her equals and superiors, lay
her best chance of finding a mode of requital. Nor was she satisfied
with observation, but kept her mind busy on the trail, now of one,
now of another vague-bodied revenge.

The charge of low tastes was founded upon the fact that there was
not an artisan about the castle, from Caspar downwards, whom Dorothy
did not know and address by his name; but her detractors, in drawing
their conclusions from it, never thought of finding any related
significance in another fact, namely, that there was not a single
animal either, of consequence enough to have a name, which did not
know by it. There were very few of the animals indeed which did not
know her in return, if not by her name, yet by her voice or her
presence--some of them even by her foot or her hand. She would
wander about the farmyard and stables for an hour at a time,
visiting all that were there, and specially her little horse, which
she had long, oh, so long ago! named Dick, nor had taken his name
from him any more than from Marquis.

The charge of lawlessness in her movements was founded on another
fact as well, namely, that she was often seen in the court after
dusk, and that not merely in running across to the keep, as she
would be doing at all hours, but loitering about, in full view of
the windows. It was not denied that this took place only when the
organ was playing--but then who played the organ? Was not the poor
afflicted boy, barring the blank of his eyes, beautiful as an angel?
And was not mistress Dorothy too deep to be fathomed? And so the
tattling streams flowed on, and the ears of mistress Amanda
willingly listened to their music, nor did she disdain herself to
contribute to the reservoir in which those of the castle whose souls
thirsted after the minutiae of live biography, accumulated their
stores of fact and fiction, conjecture and falsehood.

Lord Herbert came home to bury his little one, and all that was left
behind of her was borne to the church of St. Cadocus, the parish
church of Raglan, and there laid beside the marquis's father and
mother. He remained with them a fortnight, and his presence was much
needed to lighten the heavy gloom that had settled over both his
wife and his father.

As if it were not enough to bury the bodies of the departed, there
are many, and the marquis and his daughter-in-law were of the
number, who in a sense seek to bury their souls as well, making a
graveyard of their own spirits, and laying the stone of silence over
the memory of the dead. Such never speak of them but when compelled,
and then almost as if to utter their names were an act of impiety.
Not In Memoriam but In Oblivionem should be the inscription upon the
tombs they raise. The memory that forsakes the sunlight, like the
fishes in the underground river, loses its eyes; the cloud of its
grief carries no rainbow; behind the veil of its twin-future burns
no lamp fringing its edges with the light of hope. I can better,
however, understand the hopelessness of the hopeless than their
calmness along with it. Surely they must be upheld by the presence
within them of that very immortality, against whose aurora they shut
to their doors, then mourn as if there were no such thing.

Radiant as she was by nature, lady Margaret, when sorrow came, could
do little towards her own support. The marquis said to himself, 'I
am growing old, and cannot smile at grief so well as once on a day.
Sorrow is a hawk more fell than I had thought.' The name of little
Molly was never mentioned between them. But sudden floods of tears
were the signs of the mother's remembrance; and the outbreak of
ambushed sighs, which he would make haste to attribute to the gout,
the signs of the grandfather's.

Dorothy, too, belonged in tendency to the class of the unspeaking.
Her nature was not a bright one. Her spirit's day was evenly, softly
lucent, like one of those clouded calm grey mornings of summer,
which seem more likely to end in rain than sunshine.

Lord Herbert was of a very different temperament. He had hope enough
in his one single nature to serve the whole castle, if only it could
have been shared. The veil between him and the future glowed as if
on fire with mere radiance, and about to vanish in flame. It was not
that he more than one of the rest imagined he could see through it.
For him it was enough that beyond it lay the luminous. His eyes, to
those that looked on him, were lighted with its reflex.

Such as he, are, by those who love them not, misjudged as shallow.
Depth to some is indicated by gloom, and affection by a persistent
brooding--as if there were no homage to the past of love save sighs
and tears. When they meet a man whose eyes shine, whose step is
light, on whose lips hovers a smile, they shake their heads and say,
'There goes one who has never loved, and who therefore knows not
sorrow.' And the man is one of those over whom death has no power;
whom time nor space can part from those he loves; who lives in the
future more than in the past! Has not his being ever been for the
sake of that which was yet to come? Is not his being now for the
sake of that which it shall be? Has he not infinitely more to do
with the great future than the little past? The Past has descended
into hell, is even now ascending glorified, and will, in returning
cycle, ever and again greet our faith as the more and yet more
radiant Future.

But even lord Herbert had his moments of sad longing after his
dainty Molly. Such moments, however, came to him, not when he was at
home with his wife, but when he rode alone by his troops on a night
march, or when, upon the eve of an expected battle, he sought sleep
that he might fight the better on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE GREAT MOGUL.

One evening, Tom Fool, and a groom, his particular friend, were
taking their pastime after a somewhat selfish fashion, by no means
newly discovered in the castle--that of teasing the wild beasts.
There was one in particular, a panther, which, in a special dislike
to grimaces, had discovered a special capacity for being teased.
Betwixt two of the bars of his cage, therefore, Tom was busy
presenting him with one hideous puritanical face after another, in
full expectation of a satisfactory outburst of feline rancour. But
to their disappointment, the panther on this occasion seemed to have
resolved upon a dignified resistance to temptation, and had
withdrawn in sultry displeasure to the back of his cage, where he
lay sideways, deigning to turn neither his back nor his face towards
the inferior animal, at whom to cast but one glance, he knew, would
be to ruin his grand Oriental sulks, and fly at the hideous
ape-visage insulting him in his prison. It was tiresome of the
brute. Tom Fool grew more daring and threw little stones at him, but
the panther seemed only to grow the more imperturbable, and to heed
his missiles as little as his grimaces.

At length, proceeding from bad to worse, as is always the way with
fools, born or made, Tom betook himself to stronger measures.

The cages of the wild beasts were in the basement of the kitchen
tower, with a little semicircular yard of their own before them.
They were solid stone vaults, with open fronts grated with huge iron
bars--our ancestors, whatever were their faults, did not err in the
direction of flimsiness. Between two of these bars, then, Tom,
having procured a long pole, proceeded to poke at the beast; but he
soon found that the pole thickened too rapidly towards the end he
held, to pass through the bars far enough to reach him. Thereupon,
in utter fool-hardiness, backed by the groom, he undid the door a
little way, and, his companion undertaking to prevent it from
opening too far, pushed in the pole till it went right in the
creature's face. One hideous yell--and neither of them knew what was
occurring till they saw the tail of the panther disappearing over
the six-foot wall that separated the cages from the stableyard. Tom
fled at once for the stair leading up to the stone-court, while the
groom, whose training had given him a better courage, now
supplemented by the horror of possible consequences, ran to warn the
stablemen and get help to recapture the animal.

The uproariest tumult of maddest barking which immediately arose
from the chained dogs, entered the ears of all in the castle, at
least every one possessed of dog-sympathies, and penetrated even
those of the rather deaf host of the White Horse in Raglan village.
Dorothy, sitting in her room, of course, heard it, and hearing it,
equally of course, hurried to see what was the matter. The marquis
heard it where he sat in his study, but was in no such young haste
as Dorothy: it was only after a little, when he found the noise
increase, and certain other sounds mingle with it, that he rose in
some anxiety and went to discover the cause.

Halfway across the stone court, Dorothy met Tom running, and the
moment she saw his face, knew that something serious had happened.

'Get indoors, mistress,' he said, almost rudely, 'the devil is to
pay down in the yard.' and ran on. 'Shut your door, master cook,'
she heard him cry as he ran. 'The Great Mogul is out.'

And as she ran too, she heard the door of the kitchen close with a
great bang.

But Dorothy was not running after the fool, or making for any door
but that at the bottom of the library tower; for the first terror
that crossed her mind was the possible fate of Dick, and the first
comfort that followed, the thought of Marquis; so she was running
straight for the stable-yard, where the dogs, to judge by the way
they tore their throats with barking, seemed frantic with rage.

No doubt the panther, when he cleared the wall, hoped exultant to
find himself in the savage forest, instead of which he came down on
the top of a pump, fell on the stones, and the same instant was
caught in a hurricane of canine hate. A little hurt and a good deal
frightened, for he had not endured such long captivity without
debasement, he glared around him with sneaking enquiry. But the
walls were lofty and he saw no gate, and feeling unequal at the
moment to the necessary spring, he crept almost like a snake under
what covert seemed readiest, and disappeared--just as the groom
entering by a door in one of the walls began to look about for him
in a style wherein caution predominated. Seeing no trace of him, and
concluding that, as he had expected, the clamour of the dogs had
driven him further, he went on, crossing the yard to find the men,
whose voices he heard on the green at the back of the rick-yard,
when suddenly he found that his arm was both broken and torn. The
sight of the blood completed the mischief, and he fell down in a
swoon.

Meantime Dorothy had reached the same door in the wall of the
stableyard, and peeping in saw nothing but the dogs raging and
RUGGING at their chains as if they would drag the earth itself after
them to reach the enemy. She was one of those on whose wits, usually
sedate in their motions, all sorts of excitement, danger amongst the
rest, operate favourably. When she specially noticed the fury of
Marquis, the same moment she perceived the danger in which he, that
was, all the dogs, would be, if the panther should attack them one
by one on the chain; not one of them had a chance. With the thought,
she sped across the space between her and Marquis, who--I really
cannot say WHICH concerning such a dog--was fortunately not very far
from the door. Feeling him a little safer now that she stood by his
side, she resumed her ocular search for the panther, or any further
sign of his proximity, but with one hand on the dog's collar, ready
in an instant to seize it with both, and unclasp it.

Nor had she to look long, for all the dogs were straining their
chains in one direction, and all their lines converged upon a little
dark shed, where stood a cart: under the cart, between its lower
shafts, she caught a doubtful luminousness, as if the dark while yet
dark had begun to throb with coming light. This presently seemed to
resolve itself, and she saw, vaguely but with conviction, two huge
lamping cat-eyes. I will not say she felt no fear, but she was not
terrified, for she had great confidence in Marquis. One moment she
stood bethinking herself, and one glance she threw at the spot where
her mastiff's chain was attached to his collar: she would fain have
had him keep the latter to defend his neck and throat: but alas! it
was as she knew well enough before--the one was riveted to the
other, and the two must go together.

And now first, as she raised her head from the momentary inspection,
she saw the groom lying on the ground within a few yards of the
shed. Her first thought was that the panther had killed him, but ere
a second had time to rise in her mind, she saw the terrible animal
creeping out from under the cart, with his chin on the ground, like
the great cat he was, and making for the man.

The brute had got the better of his fall, and finding he was not
pursued, the barking of the dogs, to which in moderation he was
sufficiently accustomed, had ceased to confuse him, he had recovered
his awful self, and was now scenting prey. Had the man made a single
movement he would have been upon him like lightning; but the few
moments he took in creeping towards him, gave Dorothy all the time
she needed. With resolute, though trembling hands, she undid
Marquis's collar.

The instant he was free, the fine animal went at the panther
straight and fast like a bolt from a cross-bow. But Dorothy loved
him too well to lose a moment in sending even a glance after him.
Leaving him to his work, she flew to hers, which lay at the next
kennel, that of an Irish wolf-hound, whose curling lip showed his
long teeth to the very root, and whose fury had redoubled at the
sight of his rival shooting past him free for the fight. So wildly
did he strain upon his collar, that she found it took all her
strength to unclasp it. In a much shorter time, however, than she
fancied, O'Brien too was on the panther, and the sounds of
cano-feline battle seemed to fill every cranny of her brain.

But now she heard the welcome cries of men and clatter of weapons.
Some, alarmed by Tom Fool, came rushing from the guard-rooms down
the stair, and others, chiefly farm-servants and grooms, who had
heard the frightful news from two that were in the yard when the
panther bounded over the wall, were approaching from the opposite
side, armed with scythes and pitchforks, the former more dangerous
to their bearers than to the beast.

Dorothy, into whom, girl as she was, either Bellona or Diana, or
both, had entered, was now thoroughly excited by the conflict she
ruled, although she had not wasted a moment in watching it. Having
just undone the collar of the fourth dog, she was hounding him on
with a cry, little needed, as she flew to let go the fifth, a small
bull-terrier, mad with rage and jealousy, when the crowd swept
between her and her game. The beast was captured, and the dogs taken
off him, ere the terrier had had a taste or Dorothy a glimpse of the
battle.

As the men with cart-ropes dragged the panther away, terribly torn
by the teeth of the dogs, and Tom Fool was following them, with his
hands in his pockets, looking sheepish because of the share he had
had in letting him loose, and the share he had not had in securing
him again, Dorothy was looking about for her friend Marquis. All at
once he came bounding up to her, and, exultant in the sense of
accomplished duty, leaped up against her, at once turning her into a
sanguineous object frightful to behold; for his wounds were bad,
although none of them were serious except one in his throat. This
upon examination she found so severe that to replace his collar was
out of the question. Telling him therefore to follow her, in the
confidence that she might now ask for him what she would, she left
the yard, went up the stair, and was crossing the stone court with
the trusty fellow behind her, making a red track all the way, when
out of the hall came the marquis, looking a little frightened. He
started when he saw her, and turned pale, but perceiving instantly
from her look that, notwithstanding the condition of her garments,
she was unhurt, he cast a glance at her now rather
disreputable-looking attendant, and said,

'I told you so, mistress Dorothy! Now I understand! It is that
precious mastiff of yours, and no panther of mine, that has been
making this uproar in my quiet house! Nay, but he looks evil enough
for any devil's work! Prithee keep him off me.'

He drew back, for the dog, not liking the tone in which he addressed
his mistress, had taken a step nearer to him.

'My lord,' said Dorothy, as she laid hold of the animal, for the
first and only time in her life a little inclined to be angry with
her benefactor, 'you do my poor Marquis wrong. At the risk of his
own life he has just saved your lordship's groom, Shafto, from being
torn in pieces by the Great Mogul.'

While she spoke, some of those of the garrison who had been engaged
in securing the animal came up into the court, and attracted the
marquis's attraction by their approach, which, in the relaxation of
discipline consequent on excitement, was rather tumultuous. At their
head was lord Charles, who had led them to the capture, and without
whose ruling presence the enemy would not have been re-caged in
twice the time. As they drew near, and saw Dorothy stand in
battle-plight, with her dog beside her, even in their lord's
presence they could not resist the impulse to cheer her. Annoyed at
their breach of manners, the marquis had not however committed
himself to displeasure ere he spied a joke:

'I told you so, mistress Dorothy!' he said again. 'That rival of
mine has, as I feared, already made a party against me. You see how
my own knaves, before my very face, cheer my enemy! I presume, my
lord,' he went on, turning to the mastiff, and removing his hat, 'it
will be my wisdom to resign castle and title at once, and so
forestall deposition.'

Marquis replied with a growl, and amidst subdued yet merry laughter,
lord Charles hastened to enlighten his father.

'My lord,' he said, 'the dog has done nobly as ever dog, and
deserves reward, not mockery, which it is plain he understands, and
likes not. But it was not the mastiff, it was his fair mistress I
and my men presumed on saluting in your lordship's presence. No dog
ever yet shook off collar of Cranford's forging; nor is Marquis the
only dog that merits your lordship's acknowledgment: O'Brien and Tom
Fool--the lurcher, I mean--seconded him bravely, and perhaps
Strafford did best of all.'

'Prithee, now, take me with thee,' said the marquis. 'Was, or was
not the Great Mogul forth of his cage?'

'Indeed he was, my lord, and might be now in the fields but for
cousin Vaughan there by your side.'

The marquis turned and looked at her, but in his astonishment said
nothing, and lord Charles went on.

'When we got into the yard, there was the Great Mogul with three
dogs upon him, and mistress Dorothy uncollaring Tom Fool and
hounding him at the devilish brute; while poor Shafto, just waking
up, lay on the stones, about three yards off the combat. It was the
finest thing I ever saw, my lord.'

The marquis turned again to Dorothy, and stared without speech or
motion.

'Mean you--?' he said at length, addressing lord Charles, but still
staring at Dorothy; 'Mean you--?' he said again, half stammering,
and still staring.

'I mean, my lord,' answered his son, 'that mistress Dorothy, with
self-shown courage, and equal judgment as to time and order of
attack, when Tom Fool had fled, and poor Shafto, already evil torn,
had swooned from loss of blood, came to the rescue, stood her
ground, and loosed dog after dog, her own first, upon the animal.
And, by heaven! it is all owing to her that he is already secured
and carried back to his cage, nor any great harm done save to the
groom and the dogs, of which poor Strafford hath a hind leg crushed
by the jaws of the beast, and must be killed.'

'He shall live,' cried the marquis, 'as long as he hath legs enough
to eat and sleep with. Mistress Dorothy,' he went on, turning to her
once more, 'what is thy request? It shall be performed even to the
half of--of my marquisate.'

'My lord,' returned Dorothy, 'it is a small deed I have strewn to
gather such weighty thanks.'

'Be honest as well as brave, mistress. Mock me no modesty.' said the
marquis a little roughly.

'Indeed, my lord, I but spoke as I deemed. The thing HAD to be done,
and I did but do it. Had there been room to doubt, and I had yet
done well, then truly I might have earned your lordship's thanks.
But good my lord, do not therefore recall the word spoken,' she
added hurriedly, 'but grant me my boon. Your lordship sees my poor
dog can endure no collar: let him therefore be my chamber-fellow
until his throat be healed, when I shall again submit him to your
lordship's mandate.'

'What you will, cousin. He is a noble fellow, and hath a right noble
mistress.'

'Will you then, my lord Charles, order a bucket of water to be drawn
for me, that I may wash his wounds ere I take him to my chamber?'

Ten men at the word flew to the draw-well, but lord Charles ordered
them all back to the guard-room, except two whom he sent to fetch a
tub. With his own hands he then drew three bucketfuls of water,
which he poured into the tub, and by the side of the well, in the
open paved court, Dorothy washed her four-legged hero, and then
retired with him, to do a like office for herself.

The marquis stood for some time in the gathering dusk, looking on,
and smiling to see how the sullen animal allowed his mistress to
handle even his wounds without a whine, not to say a growl, at the
pain she must have caused him.

'I see, I see!' he said at length, 'I have no chance with a rival
like that!' and turning away he walked slowly into the oak parlour,
threw himself down in his great chair, and sat there, gazing at the
eyeless face of the keep, but thinking all the time of the courage
and patience of his rival, the mastiff.

'God made us both,' he said at length, 'and he can grant me patience
as well as him.' and so saying he went to bed.

His washing over, the dog showed himself much exhausted, and it was
with hanging head he followed his mistress up the grand staircase
and the second spiral one that led yet higher to her chamber.
Thither presently came lady Elizabeth, carrying a cushion and a
deerskin for him to lie upon, and it was with much apparent
satisfaction that the wounded and wearied animal, having followed
his tail but one turn, dropped like a log on his well-earned couch.

The night was hot, and Dorothy fell asleep with her door wide open.

In the morning Marquis was nowhere to be found. Dorothy searched for
him everywhere, but in vain.

'It is because you mocked him, my lord,' said the governor to his
father at breakfast. 'I doubt not he said to himself, "If I AM a
dog, my lord need not have mocked me, for I could not help it, and I
did my duty."'

'I would make him an apology,' returned the marquis, 'an' I had but
the opportunity. Truly it were evil minded knowingly to offer insult
to any being capable of so regarding it. But, Charles, I bethink me:
didst ever learn how our friend got into the castle? It was
assuredly thy part to discover that secret.'

'No, my lord. It hath never been found out in so far as I know.'

'That is an unworthy answer, lord Charles. As governor of the
castle, you ought to have had the matter thoroughly searched into.'

'I will see to it now, my lord,' said the governor, rising.

'Do, my lad,' returned his father.

And lord Charles did inquire; but not a ray of light did he succeed
in letting in upon the mystery. The inquiry might, however, have
lasted longer and been more successful, had not lord Herbert just
then come home, with the welcome news of the death of Hampden, from
a wound received in attacking prince Rupert at Chalgrove. He brought
news also of prince Maurice's brave fight at Bath, and lord Wilmot's
victory over sir William Waller at Devizes--which latter, lord
Herbert confessed, yielded him some personal satisfaction, seeing he
owed Waller more grudges than as a Christian he had well known how
to manage: now he was able to bear him a less bitter animosity. The
queen, too, had reached Oxford, bringing large reinforcement to her
husband, and prince Rupert had taken Bristol, castle and all. Things
were looking mighty hopeful, lord Herbert was radiant, and lady
Margaret, for the first time since Molly's death, was merry. The
castle was illuminated, and Marquis forgotten by all but Dorothy.

CHAPTER XXV.

RICHARD HEYWOOD.

So things looked ill for the puritans in general, and Richard
Heywood had his full portion in the distribution of the evils
allotted them. Following lord Fairfax, he had shared his defeat by
the marquis of Newcastle on Atherton moor, where of his score of men
he lost five, and was, along with his mare, pretty severely wounded.
Hence it had become absolutely necessary for both of them, if they
were to render good service at any near future, that they should
have rest and tending. Towards the middle of July, therefore,
Richard, followed by Stopchase, and several others of his men who
had also been wounded and were in need of nursing, rode up to his
father's door. Lady was taken off to her own stall, and Richard was
led into the house by his father--without a word of tenderness, but
with eyes and hands that waited and tended like those of a mother.

Roger Heywood was troubled in heart at the aspect of affairs. There
was now a strong peace-party in the parliament, and to him peace and
ruin seemed the same thing. If the parliament should now listen to
overtures of accommodation, all for which he and those with whom he
chiefly sympathised had striven, was in the greatest peril, and
might be, if not irrecoverably lost, at least lost sight of, perhaps
for a century. The thing that mainly comforted him in his anxiety
was that his son had showed himself worthy, not merely in the matter
of personal courage, which he took as a thing of course in a
Heywood, but in his understanding of and spiritual relation to the
questions really at issue,--not those only which filled the mouths
of men. For the best men and the weightiest questions are never seen
in the forefront of the battle of their time, save by "larger other
eyes than ours."

But now, from his wounds, as he thought, and the depression
belonging to the haunting sense of defeat, a doubt had come to life
in Richard's mind, which, because it was born IN weakness, he very
pardonably looked upon as born OF weakness, and therefore regarded
as itself weak and cowardly, whereas his mood had been but the
condition that favoured its development. It came and came again,
maugre all his self-recrimination because of it: what was all this
fighting for? It was well indeed that nor king nor bishop should
interfere with a man's rights, either in matters of taxation or
worship, but the war could set nothing right either betwixt him and
his neighbour, or betwixt him and his God.