The high back of the settle where I sat being between us, Captain Royston upon his return did not perceive me until, having dismissed the sentry and set his candlestick upon a table, he drew near the fire to warm himself; then, his eyes falling upon me—"Heyday, lad!" he cried, "I did think you abed and asleep by this. I scarce know how I came to forget you. Let me see—where should you lie to-night? The house is mighty full, and I would not put you with——"  
"Let me share your watch here an hour, Captain," I said. "I am very wakeful, and it will be company for us both."
 
"Will you do so?" he asked with some eagerness, and once more glancing at me with that same look, at once curious and shy, that I had before noted. "Indeed I shall be glad of your company, were it only to help me keep open eyes." And with that he flung himself wearily into a seat over against me, hitching round his belt so that his sword lay between the long legs that, to rest them the better, he stretched full before him. "I was in the saddle all last night," he went on, "and indeed it seems a week since I was in a bed. So here let us sit, you and I, with the fate of England in our hands,"—at which he pointed to the door of the Prince's stairway. "Hast recovered of the spleen?"
 
I answered him that I was recovered.
 
"How came he to anger you?" he then asked me.
 
"Why, sir," I replied, "he did give bad names to all things in England; and then he fell foul of the women—and—and I do not like him."
 
"De Rondiniacque," said Captain Royston, "is a good comrade and a brave soldier; and, faith, I did think all women were fair to him. He will fall in love and again fall out thrice in a day. But no woman is long fair in his eyes when his fortune has been ill. There was a lass in Flanders—" and here he broke into a laugh, and I into a yawn of subterfuge, in hope to put him off his tale. For I feared, unjustly enough, more talk of that kind that I had comprehended but sufficiently to dislike. Whereat he asked if he wearied me, and I answered that he did not so, but that I would know if he were of a like complexion with M. de Rondiniacque in matters of women and love.
 
"Nay, indeed, lad," he answered, laughing again; "De Rondiniacque and I are little akin in such matters. I have, as he would say, the slower temper—perhaps the more constant."
 
"Constant!" said I; and as I said the word I could feel the little tremor in my laughter which I hoped his ear would not detect. "Constant to what—to whom? Ah, there is doubtless some lady that looks out over the endless canals and ugly windmills of flat Holland for your return, Captain Royston."
 
"Nay, nay," he answered, "there is no broad Dutch face wet with tears of my causing." And then the mirth died out of his voice, as with a very tender hesitancy he continued: "But there is, or there was, a little maid—a child—but, plague on me! what do I babble of? And what does so young a lad as you know of these things?"
 
"H'm-m-m!" said I, as one that could, if he would but speak, lay claim to knowledge enough and to spare.
 
"What, what!" he cried, mocking me. "Is your heart even as tender as your years? Does the baby think he knows what love is?"
 
"On my conscience, yes," I answered; "but I may know and never feel it, I do suppose."
 
"What an outlandish boy it is!" said Ned, laughing; and, more gravely, "when you love, lad, and would have your lady look upon you, be as when you served us so well this day, and not the child that is disordered by the chance word of a jolly soldier. I have heard tell that women do love one that is a man, be his vows, even as De Rondiniacque's, never so brittle."
 
"Perhaps they do," I answered; and wondered, sickly a little in my heart, how it would fare with me if his were so. "But," I continued, "if men's vows are so light, what of that little maid?"
 
And my gallant Captain seemed to retire, as it were, again into his shell, saying he would speak of her no more, and that indeed he knew not wherefore he had called her to mind. Whereto I said that maybe I could tell him.
 
"'T is little likely," said he, smiling as one that suffers the gambols of a merry child, even to the peril of a wound but half healed.
 
"But tell you I can," I persisted; "you spoke of her, not because she did come to your mind, but because she is never out of it. Is it not so?"
 
Again he looked at me with that glance of enquiry.
 
"Indeed, I think it is so," he replied; "but how you should know it, Master——, by my life, here have I had all manner of converse with you, even to the telling things that have not passed my lips this three years, and yet I know not your name. Prithee, tell it me."
 
"My name is Drayton," I said.
 
"Is it even so?" cried Ned. "It is strange. Where do you live?"
 
"From here some five leagues on the great road, Salisbury way," I answered.
 
"At Drayton Manor, is it?" he asked with great eagerness.
 
"At Drayton Manor," I replied.
 
"But old Sir Michael," says Ned, "had no son of your youth."
 
"Nay," said I, "I am no son of Sir Michael. But he is my nearest of kin, and in his house do I live this many a day."
 
"Ah, so! I have heard," said Royston musingly, "of other branches of the family. But, if Drayton be your home, you can tell me of—of the child, your cousin; of Mistress Philippa Drayton, I mean, Sir Michael's daughter."
 
"Aha! the little maid! At last we come at his little maid!" I cried, clapping my hands together in a manner that suited but ill, as I suppose, with my boots and spurs.
 
But he, like the man he was, being much occupied in attempt to conceal the secret he was about revealing, did not mark me, but sternly stiffened his face and made straight his back, and replied: "I said not it was she. But I would have her news. Is she well, and is she now at Drayton?"
 
"Gad 's my life!" I answered, feeling very blusterous and naughty as I used my father's favorite oath, "it is so. She is well, and she is at Drayton. I would she were not. She does keep her heart safe for me, the baggage! Troth, I have little mind to her—a bouncing, overgrown country wench, of ill manners, loud tongue, and shrewish speech. Pah!" Whereat I twisted my mouth into a grimace very disgustful, and I saw the light of anger come into his eye.
 
"You shall not so speak of that lady," he said, in a tone that was not loud, yet had in it that which made one part of me shake with fear, while the rest of the woman was singing a little inward song of thanksgiving. Whereof it is like enough he saw in my face some sign, for he went on more gently to say he knew it was not so; that I but railed at her in mischief; that I mocked at him because, with something womanish that is in a half-grown boy, I had divined the secret of his love. "My heart," he said, rising from his seat with eyes that looked afar, as if none was by him, "has never left her keeping since she did ride upon my shoulder, but her little hands ever hold me fast, even as they did use to cling and grip me by the hair." With that he passed his hand over his head, as if he still did feel the clutching baby fingers. Then he came back to me. "You see, sir, I let you know at what it is you mock. Yet if you own the words were but spoken in jest, I will pass the matter by."
 
And then I knew that I had been playing with fire, and made all haste to quench it, owning with averted face that I had indeed but spoken out of mischief to anger him, and saying that the girl was well enough. It was, I suppose, from pride that he took no note of this grudging opinion, yet it did not control his curiosity.
 
"And does she keep me in mind?" he a............