“Trouthe is the heighest thing that men may kepe.”

—Chaucer.


“Truth is God’s child, and the fortunes of truth are God’s care as well

as ours.”

—Bishop Phillips Brooks.


The little room in the church tower had become curiously dear to Gabriel. Its bare walls, its bell ropes, its dusty rafters and the narrow window half veiled by ivy, were associated with those happy days when life and health gradually returned, and Hilary, with all her old winsomeness, and with that new and half-wistful humility which changed her from a self-willed child to a noble woman, grew hourly more precious to him.

One day, however, nearly six weeks after the Battle of. Ledbury, he noticed how thin her hands were growing, and, looking more searchingly into her face, thought less of its beauty and more of the dark shadows round her eyes.

“You are pale and weary, dear heart,” he said, caressing the hand that had done so much for him. “These long weeks have overtaxed you.”

“No, no; I shall be well enough when you are quite safe,” said Hilary, her voice faltering. “But—don’t laugh at me, Gabriel!—I feel as if you would be called on to suffer for my sin.”

“Your sin?” he questioned.

“’Tis no idle superstition,” she said, her eyes filling, “’tis an instinct that my punishment will come that way.”

“But what sin? That of playing good Samaritan to a rebel?” said Gabriel, smiling.

“I mean the lie that I told in the orchard,” she said, drooping her head.

“That was as much my fault as yours,” said Gabriel, tenderly. “I moved, and that affrighted you; but to listen to that villain was more than I could endure.”

“Oh, you’ll never know what it was to feel when you were carried here that, but for my cowardice, the duel need never have been fought,” said Hilary. “Had I only kept silence, Waghorn would have been present, and would at least have saved me from Colonel Norton.”

“You were not cowardly!” he protested.

“Yes; to lie is cowardly,” she said. “And it is the one thing I thought I never could do.”

“Dearest,” he said, drawing her nearer to him, “you are not the first who in a moment of peril has lost faith. Though silence would have been best, who would dare to judge you?”

“And yet silence might often betray—might seem to give consent,” she said, musingly.

“God has charge of consequences,” he said, quietly. “And I suppose we always do amiss when we take into human hands the guidance that belongs to Him alone.”

“You mean that at all costs we must be true?”

“Yes, dear heart. But a truce to disputations.”

“You and I have done with disputes,” she said, tenderley. “Love and danger and the shadow of death have lifted us above our old arguings.”

“We are somewhat nearer than the day you suggested that we might be friendly foes,” said Gabriel, putting his arm round her.

She laughed softly.

“The day when Mistress Helena roused my jealousy! No; you shall be a friendly foe to every honourable Royalist, but to me you are—all the world!

“Dearest, then must I share your troubles, but I fear you are keeping them back from me. Zachary tells me the Vicarage hath been searched!”

“Yes, the Governor of Canon Frome sent to search for you, but that was no great matter. He did not dare to come himself.”

“There is something else, then, that makes you anxious. What is it?”

“Only that on Saturday an order came from the High Sheriff for my uncle to go to-day to Hereford and sign Prince Rupert’s Protestation. Of course he refuses to go, but I fear it may lead to trouble.”

“I trust not,” said Gabriel, gravely. “We seem so nearly through our difficulties. To-morrow night my father and mother coming, and on Wednesday our marriage and escape. By-the-bye, what of Waghorn?”

“He has been quite quiet since the Directory was adopted. My uncle cannot make him out.”

Even as they spoke of him, Peter Waghorn, in the tiled cottage by the churchyard, was musing over the Vicar’s words the last time he had heard him preach. Against his will the man had been impressed by the way in which Dr. Coke had behaved during the past few weeks under great provocation; and now as he sat carving the delicate pattern of vine leaves on the cupboard door, he remembered how on the previous day the Vicar had made his carving into a parable, and had shown in the sermon that just as no two branches, and even no two leaves were precisely alike, yet all grew from the parent vine, so it was with Christians.

This was an astonishing notion to Waghorn; he doubted whether it was sound doctrine, yet it haunted him curiously. As he sat brooding over it that Monday afternoon, there came a peremptory knock, and his door was flung open by no less a person than the Governor of Canon Frome.

Norton was now quite recovered, and evidently in a very bad humour; the wood-carver noticed that the lines of cruelty about his mouth were much more clearly marked.

“Well, scarecrow,” he observed, flinging himself into a chair. “You have news, I hope, at last of Captain Harford.”

“No news, sir,” said Waghorn. “I have watched the Vicarage and have made close inquiry in the village, but can learn naught.”

“Yet I am certain he can’t be far,” said Norton. “And find him I will. If only you’d a head on your shoulders you would have trapped him long ago.”

“I have done my best, sir,” said Waghorn.

“I greatly doubt it,” sneered the Colonel. “But I have every intention of spurring you on to the work. Find out Captain Harford’s whereabouts, and you may ask what you will of me. Fail, and some fine night you mustn’t be surprised to find your house too hot to hold you. These little accidents will happen in war time.”

And with a mocking laugh he quitted the cottage, leaving Waghorn to uneasy thoughts.

The threat about the house had touched him to the quick, for if there was one thing on earth that he prized, it was this old home in which his father had died.

“I must bestir myself,” he reflected. “That malapert young captain shall not escape. Maybe Zachary can help me. I will ply him with cider this evening and w............