If this were a mere¹ story to while away an idle hour, I, the scribe, would tie neatly² every knot and leave no Irish pennants³ hanging from my work. But life, alas⁴, is no pattern drawn⁵ to scale. The many interweaving threads are caught up in strange tangles⁶, and over them, darkly and inscrutably, Atropos presides. Who cannot recall to mind names and faces still alive with the friendship of a few weeks or months,—a friendship pleasant in memory,—a friendship that promised fruitful years, but that was lost for ever when a boy or man drifted out of sight for one reason or another, and on one tide or another of the projects that go to make up life? To Philip Marsham, tramping again the high roads of England, there came, mingled⁷ with many other desires, a longing⁸ to see once more the Scottish smith who had wrought⁹ the dirk that had tasted blood for his protection in those dark adventures at sea. But when he came to the smithy beside the heath he found it open and empty. The wind blew the door on rusty¹⁰ hinges; brown leaves had drifted in and lay about the cold forge; the coals were dead, the bellows¹¹ were broken, and the lonely man who had wrought iron on the now rusty anvil¹² had taken his tools and gone.  
The day was still young, for the wayfarer¹³, starting early and in the fullness of his strength, had this day covered three miles in the time that one had taken him when he walked that road before. So he left the smithy and pushed on across the heath and far beyond it, marking each familiar farm and village and country house, until night had fallen and the stars had come out, when he laid him down under a hedge and slept.
 
He was thinking, when he fell asleep, of Nell Entick. He remembered very well her handsome face, her head held so high, her white throat and bare arms. He was going back to the inn to claim fulfillment of her promise and he pictured her as waiting for him there. In most ways he was a bold, resolute¹⁴ youth who had seen much of life; but in some ways, nevertheless, he was a lad of small experience, and if he thought at all that she had been a little overbold, a little overwilling, he thought only that she was as honestly frank as he.
 
Waking that night upon his bed of leaves, he saw far away on a hill the dancing flames of a campfire, concerning which he greatly wondered. For, having been long out of England, he had small knowledge of the ups and downs of parliaments and kings; and in the brief time since his return, of which he had spent nearly all in prison, he had heard nothing of the tumultuous state of the kingdom, save a few words dropped here or there while he was passing through hamlets and villages, and seen nothing thereof save such show of arms as in one place or another had caught his eye but not his thought. Although he knew it not, since he was a plain lad with no gift of second-sight, he lay in a country poised¹⁶ on the brink¹⁷ of war and his bed was made in the field where a great battle was to be fought.
 
He went on at daylight, and going through a village at high noon saw a preacher in clipped hair and sober garb¹⁸, who was calling on the people to be valiant¹⁹ and of good courage against those wicked men who had incited²⁰ riot and rebellion among the Roman Catholics in Ireland, whereby the King might find pretext²¹ for raising a vast army to devastate²² and enslave England. Sorely perplexed²³ by this talk, of which he understood little, Phil besought²⁴ a sneering²⁵ young fellow, who stood at no great distance, for an explanation; to which the fellow replied that it was talk for them that wore short hair and long ears, and that unless a man kept watch upon his wits his own ears would grow as long from hearing it as those of any Roundhead ass¹⁵ in the country. At this Phil took umbrage²⁶; but the fellow cried Nay²⁷, that he would fight no such keen blade, who was, it seemed, a better man than he looked. And with a laugh he waved the matter off and strolled away.
 
So to the inn Phil came in due time, having meditated²⁸ much, meanwhile, on the talk of the King and war and the rights of Parliament, which was in the mouths and ears of all men. But he put such things ou............