.dt My Lady Peggy Goes to Town by Frances Aymar Mathews

.de div.tnotes { padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;background-color:#E3E4FA;border:1px solid silver; margin:1em 5% 0 5%; text-align: justify;}
.de div.hang   { text-indent: -0.25in; text-align: justify; }
// Begin Poetry
.dm start_poem
.fs 95%
.nf b
.dm-

// End Poetry
.dm end_poem
.nf-
.fs 100%
.dm-
.dv class='tnotes'

.ce
Transcriber’s Note:

Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silently
corrected. Please see the transcriber’s #note:endnote# at the end of this
text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues
encountered during its preparation.

.if t
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical
effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.
.if-

The full-page illustrations are referred to, in the list provided, by a
quote from the text, and the page reference is to the quote, rather than
the position of the illustration in the text. In some cases, these were
re-positioned to fall nearer the scene referenced.

.if t
These illustrations also had no captions. They are distinguished, here, by
the first few words of the quoted text.
.if-

.dv-

.bn 001.png
.il id=frontis fn=i_frontis.jpg w=354px ew=90% alt='Then Lady Peggy, laughing...'
.bn 002.png

.hr 100%
.h1
MY LADY PEGGY | GOES TO TOWN
.hr 100%
.nf c
<s><em>By</em></s>

<l>FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS</l>
.nf-

.hr 100%
.ce
ILLUSTRATED BY HARRISON FISHER
.hr 100%

.il fn=i_ii.jpg w=300px ew=60%

.hr 100%
.ce 2
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK
.hr 100%
.bn 003.png
.pb

.ce 2
<em>Copyright, 1901,
By The Bowen-Merrill Company</em>
.bn 004.png
.pb
.il fn=i_iv.jpg w=400px ew=75% alt='MY LADY PEGGY GOES TO TOWN'

.nf b
THE DECORATIONS DESIGNED BY VIRGINIA KEEP
THE COVER DESIGNED BY FRANCIS HAZENPLUG
.nf-
.bn 005.png
.pb

.il fn=i_v_a.jpg w=400px ew=80% alt='ILLUSTRATIONS'

.ta h:50 r:20 w=80%
<em>Then Lady Peggy, laughing, humming\
such a gay snatch of a song, comes\
tripping down the stairs.</em>   |   #<em>Frontispiece</em>:frontis#

<em>And Lady Peggy and her woman found\
themselves on the road to town.</em>   |   <em>#Page 40:i_040fp#</em>

<em>“A touch, a hit!” cry all at once as a\
spurt of blood darts up the supposed\
Sir Robin’s blade.</em>   |   <em>#Page 68:i_068fp#</em>

<em>Two watched her as she came in on Beau\
Brummell’s arm.</em>   |   <em>#Page 112:i_112fp#</em>

<em>At the table sat Kennaston, inky-fingered,\
scribbling; eyes now rolling to\
the ceiling, now roving hither and\
yon.</em>    |  <em>#Page 158:i_158fp#</em>
.ta-
.il fn=i_v_b.jpg w=400px ew=80%

.bn 006.png
.pb
.il fn=i_v_b.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ta h:50 rb:20 w=80%
<em>The instant that Lady Peggy felt herself\
in the highwayman’s saddle, she knew\
that her wrists had met their\
match.</em>    |  <em>#Page 186:i_180fp#</em>


<em>“I am Sir Robin McTart! Who, the\
devil, are you?”</em>  |    <em>#Page 278:i_278fp#</em>


<em>“Ah, Peggy, my adored one,” says he,\
devouring her pale face with his happy\
eyes.</em>  |    <em>#Page 336:i_336fp#</em>

.ta-
.il fn=i_v_b.jpg w=400px ew=80%

.bn 007.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
ENVOI


.pm start_poem
When gay postillions cracked their whips,
And gallants gemmed their chat with quips;
When patches nestled o’er sweet lips
At choc’late times; and, ’twixt the sips,
Fair Ladies gave their gossips tips;
Then, in Levantine gown and brooch,
My Lady Peggy took the coach,
          For London Town!
.pm end_poem
.bn 008.png
.pn 1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='I—In the which My Lady Peggy sends off her lover broken-hearted...'

.il fn=i_001.jpg w=400px ew=90% alt='MY LADY PEGGY GOES TO TOWN'
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_001.jpg w=400px ew=90% alt='MY LADY PEGGY GOES TO TOWN'
.sp 4
.if-
.nf c
<em>In the which My Lady Peggy sends off her
lover broken-hearted and promptly
falls into a swoon.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Kennaston Castle lies in Surrey. The Earl of
Exham is master of the picturesque old pile and
of the estate, and decidedly the slave of the very
considerable number of debts which were up to
His Lordship’s ears when he came of age, some
four and fifty years ago, and by this time have
reached almost to the crown of his head. He is
also father to his son and heir, Kennaston of Kennaston,
and to the heir’s tall twin, My Lady Peggy.
.bn 009.png
.pn +1

My Lady Peggy at this particular moment sits
a-swinging on the top branch of a plum tree at the
foot of the kitchen garden whence she commands
a tolerable view of the highway.

“Impertinent sun!” cries Peggy, shading her
handsome eyes with her hand as she stares off along
the dusty road. “How is’t you dare shine when
there’s no fine gentleman a-comin’ from the east;
no gallant with disheveled locks, powdered shoulders,
disordered mien, distracted looks, spurs a-digging
into his beast, lips apart, heart beating like
spent rabbit’s, and ‘Peggy, lovely Peggy,’ the clapper
to his eager tongue at every jolt of his saddle,
every rut of his way? Go cloud yourself, I say!
since Sir Percy tarries. I’d have the skies weep,
even if I can’t.” A peal of merriest laughter concludes
this sally, and an apronful of plums comes
tumbling down all over the other young woman
who stands under the tree in waiting on her mistress.

“Is His Lordship not yet in sight, My Lady?”
asks this one.

“Nay! that is not he, Chockey, and whisk me!
but when His Lordship does come, he’ll find a very
.bn 010.png
.pn +1
sorry entertainment. I swear, as dad says, I’ll not
see him when he does appear, that will not I. Nay,
shake not your head, girl. Is’t not true that Lady
Peggy had once a lover?”

“’Twere truer say a dozen of that sort of gentry,
Madam,” replies the buxom Chockey, as she sorts
the plums, the best in her bonnet, the flaws over
the wall where the chickens and hens cackle to the
refuse.

“Well, well, twenty if you like! but one more
favored than the rest? the properest sort of
man at saddle, gun, line, wrestle, toast, song, or
dance? honest, straightforward, beautiful, as dad
says the angels are he saw painted on the walls at
Rome. Speak I truth, eh, Chockey?”

“Madam, that you do.”

“And this paragon so worshiped his Peggy as,
when she went off a-three months since to visit her
godmother in Kent, he vowed by all the saints in
the calendar he’d scarce survive until her return.
False or true, eh, Chockey?”

My Lady Peggy punctuated this query by an
accurate aim and hit, on the top of her waiting
woman’s head, with an especially large plum.
.bn 011.png
.pn +1

“True, Madam,” dodging the fruit, and still
with an eye on the road.

“And then, back comes My Lady Peggy, cutting
short her stay in Kent, where she had much pleasure,
to tell the truth, in the society of a very fine
young nobleman.”

“Lawk, Madam! another?” interrupted the
faithful Chockey.

“Another, Chock,” vouchsafes her mistress.
“Sweet, sweet Sir Robin McTart!”

“Oh, My Lady!” cries the girl, vainly endeavoring
to conceal a smile.

“Aye, Chock,” proceeds Peggy, “I say again, a
sweet and most entrapping young man.”

“Madam, a squint eye, a wry nose, an underlip
that hangs, a pair of fox-teeth, and a chin that’s
gone a-huntin’ for his throat!”

“Tut, tut! Chock,” laughs Lady Peggy, leaning
back in her leafy bower, “what’s all that to a
nimble wit, a galloping conversation, and a faithful
heart?” Lady Peggy’s tone is as light as the
May breeze blowing her soft locks about her lovely
blooming face, full of mockery, witchery,—and
then a bit of a sigh, low as flowers’ whispers, and
.bn 012.png
.pn +1
up with her drooped head higher than before, as in
the half mannish tone her twinship and long play-fellowship
with her brother have given her, she
adds curtly—

“D’ye see aught coming yet, Chock?”

“No, My Lady, not yet,” answers the girl ruefully.

Peggy bites her lips until they hurt.

“As I was a-sayin’, Chock, your mistress cuts
short her visit, sends word to her lover she’ll be
home o’-Thursday, and, as I live! to-day’s the Monday
after, and him still on the way! See him!”
Peggy’s white teeth close tight, and her eyes flash,
and her little hands clench. “Not I! Let him
come now an’ he goes again faster than he ever
traveled. The vain coxcomb! the deceitful, cozening,
graceless poppet! He’ll ne’er set eyes on her
he used to call his Peg again, or I die for’t.”  And
Peggy jumped to the ground.

“Madam! Madam!” exclaims Chockey, pointing
joyfully to a cloud of dust far up the highway.
“Look! Yonder comes Sir Percy! Don’t I know?
Ain’t I watched his long roan any day this twelve
month a-turnin’ by the lodge?”
.bn 013.png
.pn +1

Lady Peggy seizes Chockey’s arm, and runs
breathless to the house; in, a-scrambling up the
broad stairs to her chamber; a-pulling out of drawers
from their chests; a-hunting of ribbons and
fallals, combs, brushes, kerchiefs, perfumes,
patches, powder, whatever else besides!

“Hurry, Chock, do my hair as he likes it!” urges
Lady Peggy.

“Lawk, Madam! I thought you swore just now
you’d never set eyes on Sir Percy again?”

“You thought! Bless you, Chock, never be a-wastin’
your time a-thinking where a woman’s concerned.
When her heart steps up and lays hold the
reins, the steed gallops to the goal; she’s always
time to think after she’s acted.”

“Yes, Madam,” concurs Chockey, with a mental
reservation back of her mouthful of pins. “There,
My Lady, Your Ladyship’s hair is lovely; your
Levantine gown becomes you like a pheasant do its
plumage, and your eyes is a-shinin’ with love
and—”

“Tut, girl! It’s anger, wrath, temper,—so!”
Peggy marches up and down before the mirror,
tossing her lovely head. “Thus attired, Chock, a
.bn 014.png
.pn +1
lady can flout, deride, harass, and madden one of
the opposite sex, as can she not do in cotton frock
and fruit-stained apron. Give me my comfit box,
I pray. Tell me how long Sir Percy now hath
been cooling his heels in the drawing-room?”

“But little lacking the hour, Madam.”

“Good! I’d keep him there until Thursday, an
I could. Now go tell him I’ll be with him presently.”

Chockey went.

Lady Peggy stood at the door ajar; she heard
the impatient footsteps of her lover below, but yet
she tarried, tapping her high red heel on the sill.

“Lud!” cried she, “an I show no proper spirit,
Percy’s uncle’ll have the right of it when he says
of one he’s never seen yet, ‘She’s a-hunting your
bank-notes, boy! She’s heiress to debts, Sir, and by
my life, Sir! I’ll never father-in-law her, so long
as I’m above the sod, Sir!’ Despicable old wretch!
as if ’twere not Percy I adored, without a care if
he have a farthing to his fortune, or a roof to his
head!”

And then Chockey, her palm warm with a
sovereign, came with a rush.
.bn 015.png
.pn +1

“My Lady!” cries she, “’f you could see Sir
Percy! White as milk, tremblin’, shakin’, chatterin’,
a-begging and a-praying as you’ll condescend
to go to him inside of another hour!”

“White, said you Chock?”

The girl nods vehemently.

“Shaking?”

“Aye, Madam.”

“Like to faint, think you?”

“Like to die, My Lady!”

Then Lady Peggy, laughing, humming such a
gay snatch of a song, comes tripping down the
stairs, pulling out her petticoats, stopping her
lover’s outstretched arms of eagerness with such a
splendid curtsy as any Court lady might have
envied.

Still laughing.—“Lud! Sir Percy! is’t you?”
amazed.

“Aye!” returns he, more amazed than she, and
standing off with dropped arms. “Whom did you
think it was?”

“Another. My woman’s stupid, and when she
described the gallant that she did, it matched a
different sort of him than you, methinks. However,
.bn 016.png
.pn +1
let’s be civil; the crops are good, the game
likely to be, later; the King in health,—prithee
have a chair.” And Peggy swept a second curtsy,
motioning toward a seat.

“Peggy! Sweet lips! Joy of my soul, what’s it?
Not one warm word for him who only lives for
thee? Who’s counted every hour since he parted
from you, eh?” The young man draws nearer to
her, and bends upon his knee, venturing, as he does
so, to take her hand in his.

“Since you spent your time a-counting the hours,
Sir, pray you, how many hours have passed since
in this same room we parted, now three months,
three weeks, and a few days since?”

Sir Percy sprang to his feet.

“Zounds! Peggy, and you flout me so?”

“Zounds! Sir Percy, did not I write you—and
very well you know writing’s not my forte,—that
I’d be home o’-Thursday?”

“Aye, but I never got it until this morning; then
did I put spurs and leave my uncle in the lurch
to fly to you.”

“What, Sir! not get my letter? An idle, silly,
and foolish excuse. I sent it by Bickers, and trustier
.bn 017.png
.pn +1
man ne’er breathed. He vowed me he’d put it
in your hands.”

“Peggy, believe whichever of the two you like;
but, in mercy tell me! What kept you so long
away? I’ve heard rumors of another. Eh, Peg,
’tis not true, swear me ’tis not true? Oh, by the
hue of my visage must you know what jealous
pangs have racked me!”

Lady Peggy nods her head maliciously.

“Jealous pangs, forsooth! and you thought to
medicine them, I dare be sworn, with vaulting the
country over in the wake of Lady Diana Weston,
the greatest heiress in the market! Bah, Sir, and
you’ve heard rumors! I’ll match ’em. I’ve seen
the minx from afar. She is handsome, Sir; your
taste does you credit.”

“Peg, I swear ’twas but to please my uncle!”
cries Sir Percy.

“Aye, and so displease me!”

“Nay, you know too well that I’ll never do that
of my will; but my uncle, as I’ve told you, must
be coaxed, and then when once I gain his consent
to seeing you, our battle’s won. To see thee, Peg
.bn 018.png
.pn +1
’s to worship thee! Lord Gower’ll kneel when he
beholds thee!”

“Our me no ours, Sir!” returned Peggy. “Let’s
here and now make an end on’t all. You go pound
the roads after your new mistress with her acres
and notes, and I—”

“Well, you what?” asks the young man impetuously
and yet with a certain grave dignity.

“Oh, I’ll acquit myself to a certainty with one
that’s faithful as the sun, and gallant from his
head to his heels.”

“What’s his name?” inquires Sir Percy in a hard,
strained voice. “If he’s a better man, Peg, and you
can say you love him—God keep me!”

“His name’s a very honorable and ancient one,
he’s Sir Robin McTart, twenty-third Baronet!”

“Peggy!”

If a thunderbolt had fallen betwixt Peggy’s red
shoes and his brown ones, Percy could not have
been more astounded.

“Well, Sir?” returns she, scarce controlling the
twitching of her lips.

“A milk-sop, molly-coddle! Oh Peggy, an you
drop me, take a better man! Peg, you’re a-joking.
.bn 019.png
.pn +1
Not that bumpkin! I’ve never seen him, but report
has it he’s afeard if one of his own dogs looks
him in the eye and bays!”

“Sir Percy, have you finished?” inquires Peggy
with dignity.

“No, have I not! By my soul, Peg, an you
pitch me to hell for that jackanapes, I’ll go to hell
as fast as wine and dice, and cards and brawls, and
usurers, and all that sort of crew can carry me!
I’ll up to London, and one morning when your
brother sends you word he’s found me with a rapier
stuck in my throat, my pockets empty, and ‘Peggy’
writ on the scrap o’ paper a-lying over my heart,
then you’ll believe Percy loved you!”

“Lud, Sir! Men are apt at such chatter, and a
fortnight after, the vicar’s a-publishing their banns
with the other lady!”

“Peg!” He takes her kerchief end, as it droops
away from her pretty long throat, in his fingers;
he looks down deep into her eyes; his voice shakes,
so does his hand.

“Whatever betides, my bonny sweetheart, there’s
only one that’ll ever have banns read with me, and
that’s—” He takes her by surprise and by the
.bn 020.png
.pn +1
shoulders, and squares her to the mirror in its
niche.

“Farewell, Peg—since you send me, it’s the devil
and dice, for by the Lord! I can’t live a quiet life
lacking your smiles.”

In two minutes more Chockey, from the upper
window, saw the long roan flying away from Kennaston
faster than she ever galloped to it; and
went down to find her young mistress a-lying prone
in a fine wrinkled heap of silken gown, lace frills
and furbelows, on the threadbare carpet of the big
drawing-room.

To rush across the wide hall to the dining-room,
seize a game-knife, back again; cut her mistress’s
stays; pour a glass of cider down Lady Peggy’s
throat, willy-nilly; clap her palms; pound her
back; set her on her feet; and half carry her to her
chamber, occupied not many minutes for stout
Chockey.

“Lawk, My Lady,” said she, surveying the prostrate
form on the couch, arms a-kimbo, eyes saucer-wide,
“who’d ever have thought to see your haughty
Ladyship so mauled for the sake of any gentleman
as lives!”
.bn 021.png
.pn +1

Lady Peggy lay still, but presently, from the
depths of the pillows she spoke.

“I ain’t mauled, Chock, not I!” Her Ladyship
now sat up and stared around the big room. “It’s
only for sorrow for havin’ had to disappoint Sir
Percy, on account of dear Sir Robin.”

“Oh!” ejaculates the worthy Chockey in a tone
of undisguised and sarcastic disbelief.

“Chockey!” exclaimed her mistress in the tone
of a drill sergeant, now rising to her feet.

“Lawk! My Lady, I didn’t mean nothin’.”

“Chockey,” echoes Lady Peggy faintly, sinking
to her knees, “whatever’ll I do? Oh Chock! Chock!
and Sir Percy just the centre of my heart, and me
to behave to him like a brute! Out of my sight,
away with you! There’s the first bell a-ringin’ for
dinner. Say to daddy I’m too deep in my hand-writin’
lessons to eat to-day! Say to him I’m gone
out to break the new colt and not got back. Say
to him I’m gone to the devil!”

And Lady Peggy fell a-weeping with such violence
as Chockey had never seen; and, being a
wise damsel, she left her mistress alone and went
.bn 022.png
.pn +1
down to soothe the gouty Earl, tied to his chair,
as best she could for the absence of his daughter
Peg from dinner.

.il fn=i_015.jpg w=400px ew=90%
.bn 023.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='II—In the which Her Ladyship wheedles her noble father...'

.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=90%
.ce
<l>II</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=90%
.sp 4
.h2
II
.if-

.ce 2
<em>In the which Her Ladyship wheedles her
noble father and makes up her mind.</em>

.sp 2
The Earl forsooth was a testy gentleman, and
his girl was his plague and his pride; on her,
rather than on his heir, the old man’s fancy was
set, for the reason that Kennaston, disclaiming
all the country sports, the half wild outdoor life,
the lusty joys and racing bumps and cups that had
been vastly helpful in reducing the little his parent
had started his career with, had elected instead to
try his luck at that most inscrutable, vile trade of
scribbling!

Peg’s twin, her fellow in height and build, which
made a slender youth of him indeed, had gone up
to London quill-armed, ink-fingered, brain-possessed
.bn 024.png
.pn +1
with rhymes; empty-pursed, determined to
carve with such unlikely weapons as that apt bird,
the goose, furnishes, a fame and fortune for himself,
that should dazzle the world and recoup the
fortunes of his well-nigh fallen house.

While the Earl jeered, Peg, herself scarce able
to spell a two-syllabled word, looked up to her
brother as nothing short of whatever stood in her
mind for Shakespeare; for, low be it spoke, the
fair Peggy had small notion of books, their makers
or their pleasurable usage. To her they represented
waste time almost, and only as a means of
communication with Kennaston did she, since his
absence began, pore daily over a dictionary, a
speller, and a copy-book.

So sat she now, a couple of months after the
parting betwixt her and Sir Percy; lips pursed,
brows knit, goose-feather in finger, poring over a
blank sheet of paper first, and from it turning to
the closely-writ page of a letter from her twin.

Chockey sat on a stool hard by,—they were both
in the buttery, for Lady Peggy was apt with all
the mysteries of housekeeping, and had as fine a
churning, as big cheeses, as fat chickens, as nice
.bn 025.png
.pn +1
eggs, as good hams as any other in the county,—had
she not, the Earl, her father, had lacked something
or all of his comfort. Chockey, then, sat
working butter, squeezing all the white milky bubbles
back and forth in the wooden bowl, and printing
the pats in the trays, while her mistress sighed,
swallowed, and at last burst forth in speech.

“Chockey, I shall fall into a fit, an I’ve ever
another letter to write in this world. The last I
writ was for Sir Robin to introduce him to Lord
Kennaston when he should go up to town—and belike,
I forgot to give it to him as I promised and
have it safe here. It took me a week to finish, and
I’ve copied all the words out of it I can, yet do I
lack thousands more, methinks, to say what I
would to my brother. Lud! Learning’s a wonderful
thing! Look at that, Chock!”

Lady Peggy holds up the well covered pages of
Kennaston’s letter before the eyes of the Abigail.

“Aye, Madam,” giggles this one, “it has the air
to me of where spiders has been a-fightin’! Now,
for true, My Lady, do it say words as has a meanin’?”

“Listen,” replies the mistress, reading off quite
.bn 026.png
.pn +1
glibly, since ’tis the one hundredth time since she
got it that she’s rehearsed the same to herself.

.sp 2
“<sc>Sweet Sister Peggy</sc>: I’d have written before
but that literature pays ill until a man hath contrived
by preference and patronage, the rather
than by his wits, to place himself at evens with the
Great and the Distinguished. So far I find Fame’s
hill hard in the Climbing, but do I not complain,
for there’s that spirit reigning in my breast as bids
me welcome Poverty, even Starvation, lead it but
to the sometime recognition of my Talents. I take
up my pen not to riddle your ears with plaints,
but on another matter, which is Sir Percy.”

Lady Peggy’s head droops a bit to match her
voice, whilst Chockey’s bright little eyes sparkle,
and she twists the yellow butter into heart shapes
as she pricks her ears and sighs.

“Sir Percy,” continues My Lady Peggy, reading,
“as you know came up to town, now these seven
weeks agone, straight as a die to my meagre chambers,
where welcome was spelled, I can assure thee,
all over the bare floor, barer board, and barer master
thereof,—for of a truth I love him as should
.bn 027.png
.pn +1
I the brother I had hoped he’d be! Peg, what’s
this thou’st done to the lad? Thrown him, a gallant
with as big a heart as God ever made, over
into the Devil’s own mire, for sake of that little
tow-haired sprat, Robin McTart! with his pate
full of himself and none other,—so I’ve heard say,
for never set I eyes upon the blackguard from
Kent! Zounds! twin! What are ye women made
of? And I write to say Percy, what with carousals
and brawls, and drink and fights, and all night
at the gaming-table, and all day God knows where,
’s fast a-throwing himself piecemeal into the grave
he’s a-digging daily for your cruel sake. Could
you but see him! A ghost! Wan, with eyes full
of blood-spots, and hair unkempt! Madam, there’s
love for you—and love’s what ladies like. Go
match him, Sister, with McTart if you can, but
twin me no more ever again an you and I wear
black ribbons for Percy de Bohun!”
.sp 2

Lady Peggy’s lip quivers; so does Chockey’s.

“Lawk, My Lady!” cries the girl, splashing tears
into the butter, reckless.

“‘Black ribbons,’ Chock! ‘A ghost,’ Chock! ‘McTart,’
.bn 028.png
.pn +1
Chock! Lord ha’ mercy! What’s to become
o’ me?” Peggy’s tears smart her eyes as she flings
the goose-quill over to a cheese on the shelf, where
it sticks, and one day surprises the Vicar at his
supper.

“Get out of my sight!” she flings after it. “I
can’t write! Who can write out her heart and
soul, when it’s devilish hard even to speak it. Oh!
Would I were my brother for one fine half-hour!”
cries Peggy, rising and stamping up and down the
stone floor of the buttery.

“An’ if you were, Madam?” asks Chockey
meekly, “what then?”

“I’d swear! Yea, would I! Such a lot of splendid
oaths as’d ease my mind and let me hear from
my own lips what a fool’s part I’d played with my
own—my adored Percy! Could I but see him!
as Kennaston says.” Peggy in her progress now
upsets a pan of cream, and has genuine pleasure in
splashing it about over her slippers as she speaks.

“But I! What am I? A girl! swaddled in petticoats
and fallals; tethered to an apron, and a
besom, and a harpsichord, and a needle,—yet can
I snap a rapier, fire a pistol, jump a ditch, land a
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
fish, for my brother taught me. Still it’s girl!
girl! sit by the fire and spin! dawdle! dally!”
The cream now spots up as far as Peggy’s chin and
flecks its dimple.

“Stop-at-home, nor stir-abroad! Smile, ogle!”
each word emphasized with heel and toe.

“And—” Lady Peggy now flops back into her
chair, breathless, “wait on man’s will and whims,—that,
Chock, ’s what ’tis to be a woman.”

“Aye, ’tis,” assents the waiting woman. “But
yet, My Lady, if I dared make bold, there’s summat
Your Ladyship might do, an My Lady, Your
Ladyship’s mother, came back home again from
her visit to your uncle in York.”

“Out with it!” says Peggy hopelessly, folding
up her attempted letter and tucking it in her
reticule.

“Mayhap you could persuade, by much weeping
and praying, falling into swoons and such like,
that Her Ladyship would take you up to London!
Once there, Sir Percy couldn’t keep his distance
from you.”

Peggy looks at Chockey as if she were a vision
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
sent from on high; then, quickly succeeding derision
curls her lip.

“My Lady mother take a squealing chit like me
up to town! Never! She’d say my manners
weren’t fit, or my figger, or my wardrobe. Lud!
Chock! Bethink thee, lass, of my gowns in London
town! and me no more acquainted with the
ways yonder, than our Brindle is with the family
pew!”

Lady Peggy walked out into the paddock,
rubbed the cream from her slippers on the turf;
caressed the ponies; munched the sweet cake she
had in her apron-pocket, felt the keen sweet air
blow over her hot forehead, and saw, dancing ever
before her mind’s eye, that insidious sweet suggestion
of “going up to London.”

How did one go up to London?

In the coach: aye to be sure; and the coach left
the “Mermaid” in the village every Tuesday and
Thursday at five in the morning. The coach! The
splendid coach, a-swinging on its springs like a
gigantic cradle; the postillions a-snapping their
whips, the coachman a-cracking his long lash and a-shouting
“All h’up for London!” and the ladies
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
and gentlemen—well armed, these last, in dread of
the highwaymen on the heath—all a-piling in and
a-settling themselves; and the guards a-tooting
their horns, the landlady and the boots and the
maids and the hostlers all a-bowing and a-scraping
and—off they go! for London town—where
Percy was a-pining and a-dying for her, so her
twin writ in his letter.

Well, Lady Peggy went in, clapt on a fresh gown
and shoes, and never was daughter more tender
and patient with crabbed, gouty, crusty dad than
she all through that lovely day. Playing backgammon;
spelling out the newspaper; trouncing
the cat when it jumped on His Lordship’s leg;
blowing the fire; wheeling his chair from hither to
yon; stroking the bald head; combing the white
whiskers; and finally said she,

“Daddy, London’s a very big sort of a place,
now, isn’t it?”

The Earl nods, coddling his leg into the slip
of sunshine that’s walking westerly away from
him.

“My brother lodges, so he says, at the corner of
Holywell Road and Lark Lane; tell me, dad,
.bn 032.png
.pn +1
where should that be now?” Lady Peggy has a
careless air, and flecks a buzzing fly out of His
Lordship’s bowl of porridge.

“Eh?” pursues she, “is’t for instance, in the
city, or nigh London Bridge, or where the quality
lives, or toward Southwark, or where?”

“Rot me!” cries His Lordship, looking up at his
daughter in surprise, “what’s my poppet got into
her pretty head now, forsooth? Tut, tut, girl,
what’s town to thee, or its bearings? hey? stick
thy eye into thy churn an’ keep thy hand on the
dasher,—’twere better’n all the shops in Piccadilly,
or all the fops at Court.”

“Slow, dad! I was only askin’ of my twin’s
whereabouts. Shops and fops are not dizzyin’ your
Peggy, you may swear; ’tis my brother, Sir, of
whom I’d learn!”

“’Twere better chase the scoundrel out’n my
head, Peg, than hammer him in! A lad with every
chance here in the county to raise his house, and
make a good match with a nice plump girl, havin’
land joining his own; but no! Up and off to town
to starve and scratch!”
.bn 033.png
.pn +1

The Earl pommels the floor with his stick, causing
the cat to leap into the air.

“Let him die in want! Let him freeze, thirst,
come to the gallows, say I! For such as leaves
plenty to pursue want, gets no sympathy from
me!”

“He ain’t begged for’t yet, dad,” says Peggy
very mildly. “All I was a-wonderin’ was this:
When my brother took the coach at the Mermaid
that mornin’ you mind? how far off the inn where
he alighted was the lodgin’ at the corner of Holywell
Road and Lark Lane?—eh, dad? Surely”—and
here Lady Peggy knelt and stroked his lordship’s
gouty member, and her voice positively
trembled, doubtless with excess of filial zeal and
devotion.

“Surely,” resumed she, “you, who were, I dare
be sworn”—such arch eyes as Lady Peggy now
made!—“a fine gallant not so many years ago,
must remember that,—don’t you?”

“Let’s see, let’s see,” responds His Lordship, rubbing
his head. “They set ye down at the King’s
Arms, nigh the Bridge, Southwark Bridge, yes;
Well! Damme! I ought to know! Lark Lane?
.bn 034.png
.pn +1
A devil of a hole; why, girl! it’s not a quarter
hour’s trot from the inn, but it’s a beastly environment.
Gad! that son of mine chooses pens,
ink and writing-paper there, rather than—”

“Lady Belinda here, weight fourteen stone;
acres two thousand; guineas, countless; temper,
amazin’; years, untold! ha! ha! ha! Oh, daddy!”
Lady Peggy springs up and dances about a minute
in most genuine gaiety, then she seizes her father’s
head between her palms and hugs and kisses him
with much grateful warmth; then flops down
a-coddling of the gout again; laughing, giggling,
pinching puss, and saying,—

“Daddy, drop London! Care I no more for’t.
Know I quite enough. Let’s chat of aught else in
the world, until you fall a-napping, which will be
soon now, guessing by the shadows.”

’Twas very soon.

Then Lady Peggy tiptoed off to her chamber;
then she pulled the rope that rang in the kitchen,
and presently Chockey came, chopper and bowl
in hand, checkered apron over white one; for serving
maids were scarce in Kennaston Hall, footmen
there were none; butler there was when he
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
was not doing t’other half his duty at the stables.

“Come hither, Chockey,” says her mistress in a
whisper, with a beckon. “Shut the door; go on
with choppin’ your leeks and carrots, cook’ll want
’em for the soup,—but listen, Chock; unlock your
ears Jane Chockey, as never you did before in your
life.”

Chockey bobs as she chops, leaning against the
headpost, for support of her occupation, and also
of her curiosity.

“You know my mother’s box, the small one that
was re-covered last spring with the skin of the
red calf that died natural? Bickers put it on with
a gross of brass nails?”

Chockey again bobs.

“Put into it,” continues Lady Peggy, “a change
of linen for yourself and me, two night-rails,”
Chockey’s eyes dilate, “my gray taffeta gown with
the flowered petticoat, my green hood and kerchief;
powder, patch-box, lavender, musk, pins, needles;
my red silken hose; your Sunday cap and sleeves”—Chockey’s
chopper ceases to work, and the bed-post
creaks. “All of which,” continues her mistress,
“is but prelude to saying: ‘I’m going up to
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
London by to-morrow’s coach, and I’m takin’ you
with me!’”

“Madam!” Down goes the bowl, leeks, carrots,
chopper and all a-spilling over the floor.

“Aye,” says Peggy calmly, “gather up thy mess,
Chock, and to work with the duds. Lay out my
Levantine gown, my blue kerchief, my black silk
hose, my brown cloak; and, from my mother’s
press, take the thick fall of Brussels lace and the
brown bonnet it’s tied to, and bring ’em hither;
put them under the bed beside thy trundle so’s
my father’ll not see ’em when he stops to bid me
good-night. Borrow cook’s hat she bought at the
Fair when she was young, and her delaine veil
for thyself; for, so appareled as not to be recognized,
will you, dear Chock, and my Lady Peggy
take the coach on April the twelfth. But, Chock,
remember, mum’s the word, an you let your tongue
wag to my undoing, but the thousandth part of a
syllable, your mistress and you part company forever!
Go.”

Chockey picked up Lady Peggy’s waving hand
between a pinch of her apron, lest her onion-smelling
fingers should foul so dainty a morsel,
.bn 037.png
.pn +1
kissed it, and off and obeyed, speechless from surprise
and veneration, both.

At night’s fall,—the Earl, somnolent again
from fire’s warmth and the port he would take,
despite the surgeon’s orders to the contrary,—Lady
Peggy, Chockey in her wake, purse in hand, went
scouting through the kitchen-garden, the paddocks,
the cowyard to the stable where Bickers’s pipe
shone in the gloaming like a fire-gem as he dodged
and lurched after a refractory colt.

Bickers, albeit sometimes the slave of beer, was
all times Lady Peggy’s abject, and it took no effort
nor persuasion to gain him to her will. He
took his orders amiably,—they were to secure
two places in the London mail for to-morrow morning,
and strictly to hold his peace both now and
forever about the whole concern.

Peggy gave him the price of the seats and with
wise Castle-mistress foresight, she showed Bickers
a sovereign beside.

“And Bickers,” said Lady Peggy, “considering
that the devil walks abroad often in the Mermaid’s
tap-room, I am told, I’ll keep the sovereign for
you ’til you come back, lest he rob you of it, eh?”
.bn 038.png
.pn +1

“Well, My Lady,” said Bickers; “a whole sovereign,
My Lady, ain’t often seen out of the quality’s
pockets, and the devil might think I’d stole it, My
Lady, and try to get it from me. Keep it, My
Lady, keep it!”

With which the old man, having conquered the
colt, set off for the village by a side-path all too
well known to his tread. Presently by the spark
in his pipe-bowl the two women saw that he had
turned back; that, as he came close to them, he
clapped his thumb over the glow, and,

“My Lady Peggy,” mumbled he sheepishly.

“Whatever is’t, Bickers?” cries his mistress in
alarm.

“Naught to fright ye, My Lady, only it’s been on
my mind these many days to tell you as the letter
you sent me with to Sir Percy de Bohun—”

“Well, well?” Lady Peggy’s words came with
a gasp, as the old man dead stops.

“Go on Bickers, I say!” the mistress’s foot stamps
with a thud on the damp earth.

“Askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding, the devil
caught me that time at the Kennaston Arms, My
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
Lady, and he clawed that tight, My Lady, that I
couldn’t stir, and—and—”

Peggy now stooped, seized a billet of wood as
big as her arm and gave Bickers a sound drub
across his hands. The pipe fell in bits, the ash
glowed; Bickers jumped, so did Chockey.

“‘And, and’ what?” drubbed Peggy with a will.
“Not so much as ha’ penny of the sovereign, unless
you out with the whole truth!”

“I will! I will!” cried the old man. “Sir Percy
never got the letter, My Lady, until the very day I
seen him on the long roan a-ridin’ for’s life away
from the Castle yonder,” and Bickers jerked his
thumb toward the house as he now made off.

The devil did not catch Bickers that night; he
earned his sovereign before the moon rose.

As he sped, Lady Peggy took Chockey’s proffered
arm.

“You see, Chock, you see, how we that are born
to wear petticoats are no better’n puppets! a-dancin’
and a-cryin’; or a-kneelin’ and a-weepin’, as
it happens to suit the whim of what, Chock? Who,
Chock? Tell me, Chock!” cries Lady Peggy excitedly.
.bn 040.png
.pn +1

“Lawk, My Lady, that can I not!”

“A man, Chock, a man! it’s a him that pulls the
strings, girl, and all we’ve to do is to simper and
jerk this way, that way. To think,” here Peggy’s
voice falters, for they’ve gained the house and
are clambering the back stairs in the dark. “To
think that Bickers, Bickers! should ha’ made me
treat my worshiped Percy like a hog! Yes, Chockey,
like a hog! even that name ain’t vile enough
for me. But, oh, an I reach London in safety,
and gain my brother’s chambers, and learn from
him that ’tis for very love of me Sir Percy’s canterin’
to perdition, then, Chock, Lady Peggy’ll
know how to spell paradise for him she’s riskin’
much to hear the truth about.”

“But, My Lady,” ventures Chockey, who, notwithstanding
the blissful prospect of seeing London,
still had a practical eye toward the dangers
that beset the path, both thereto, and once there.

“But, My Lady, supposin’ we can’t find Lord
Kennaston’s lodgin’s; supposin’ he’s away from
home when we get there; or, a-havin’ a party, or
ain’t got no place for us to sleep; or suppose—”

“Suppose me no supposes, Chock!” Lady Peggy
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
shakes out the Levantine gown from its wrinkles.
“If London were the black pit, and an army of
Satans a-sittin’ grinnin’ around the brim, still
would I go and find out for myself if it’s for me
he pines—or, if Lady Diana Weston is up in London
too!” With which Her Ladyship gives the petticoat,
she takes from its peg against the morrow,
a somewhat emphatic, not to say malicious shake.

.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=90%
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='III—Wherein is recounted how Her Ladyship set forth...'

.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=90%
.ce
<l>III</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=90%
.sp 4
.h2
III
.if-

.nf c
<em>Wherein is recounted how Her Ladyship set
forth, accompanied by her faithful
woman, for London Town.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Whoever knows the rare delights of an English
dawn nowadays can figure for himself, to the letter,
how ’twas when Lady Peggy and Chockey, after
a make-haste toilet in the dark, slipped out into
the sweetness that long-ago spring morning. The
mists were rolling and creeping slowly back and
over from the river-meadows; the brawl of the
stream tinkled in their ears; the scents of the
flower-garden next the court-yard of the Castle,
came potently, lured by the flush that by now was
tingeing all the pallid east with rose; the yellow
moon hung low to her setting, and two stars for
handmaidens still shone, of all her million troupe,
.bn 043.png
.pn +1
at either side the disk; yonder, the steeple of the
church pricked up to heaven; hither, the oaks,
greening to their full leafage; there a brown rabbit
scurried across the road; here the rooks hopped
and ha-ha-ed to their fellows. Else, ’twas all a-hush
with that recurring fond expectancy of hope,
with which every day of every year so waits and
wonders for “to-morrow” to be born.

Lady Peggy took the lead, kirtle high upheld,
shoes soon bedrabbled in the dust and dew. Chockey,
bearing the newly-covered box in her stout
arms, followed close at heel. Both women, veiled
double, and being wholly unused to such matters,
sighting the path much the worse for the covering;
in fact Peggy stumbled along like some old crone,
and yet laughed under her breath merrily back at
floundering Chockey.

“Hist! Chock, had I now but brought dad’s
cane and snuff-box, I must sure be taken for some
three-score dame come yawning out of bed before
her hour, to overtake, mayhap, a recreant grandson!
Zounds! as my twin’d say, were he here,” and
hauling at the mischievous Brussels veil, down
.bn 044.png
.pn +1
flopped Her Ladyship, on her knees betwixt two
villainous ruts.

“Oh, My Lady!” moaned the waiting-woman
panting under cook’s delaine and the calf-skin
box. “Lord ha’ mercy! an this be the way to London.
I’d liefer be sittin’ in the kitchen chimney
a-blessin’ my porridge and spoonin’ of’t, than
this!” assisting her mistress to her feet.

“Fie upon thee, Chock! Remember you’re waiting-woman
now to a lady of fashion, to wit myself,
and well used to journeys up to town in coaches
every season! Lud!” Here Peggy stood in a puddle
to take breath. “I wonder if we’ll ever pass
muster at the inn; and yet I’m sure, landlord, or
dame, or hostler’d never think o’ me.”

“Haste, Madam,” returns Chockey, “for do not
forget the coach starts at five on the stroke, and
we’ve still the quarter-mile to go.”

So on they went. My Lady Peggy unable to
restrain, from time to time, however, the keen
relishful overflow of her spirits. When one’s young
and not ailing, a new day whips the blood and
brain to such a pinnacle of unquestioning gladness
as breaks bonds, be they never so weighty, and,
.bn 045.png
.pn +1
pro tem., sweet few-years comrades him with the
happiness of earth and air and sky.

But once the curl of cheerful smoke from the
“Mermaid” chimney full in view above the oak-tops,
My Lady sobered much, and, clutching Chockey’s
arm, both fell a-trembling; stood stock-still,
and stared into each other’s eyes, as lace and wool
would let.

“Lady Peggy,” cries Chockey, “an it please
Your Ladyship,” with tell-tale gasps of throat,
“let’s go back home!”

“Jane Chockey!” answered her mistress, only
needing this spur to set her a-panting the more
to her purpose, “we’ll go on.”

And on they went. Peggy with a measured tread;
Chockey plodding after. Into the inn-yard, where
even now the great coach with its four bays waited
the signal to start.

The passengers were piling on; and, atop already,
quipped a trio of college lads in beavers. There
stood mine host and hostess, maids, men, boys,
cooks, and scullions; tips were tossed, baggage
packed in the boot; farewells spoken; candles held
.bn 046.png
.pn +1
high, lashes cracked; prancing, pawing; a rattle,
a door-bang, curtsies, bows,—

“All h’up for the London mail!” shouted the
coachman merrily.

And Lady Peggy and her woman, neatly sandwiched
between a fat, fussy dowager and a swearing,
tearing old gentleman who together absorbed
the most of the vehicle and all the attention of
their fellow passengers, found themselves on the
road to town.

No one paid the least heed to them, save that,
at the stops, the guard came civilly to ask Chockey
if her mistress required any refreshment, to the
which Chockey, well prepared, always answered
“no”; since, to raise their veils might betray their
identity. So ’twas in hunger, silence and oblivion
that the momentous journey was taken.

When they crossed the heath, the testy old gentleman
did turn toward Peggy, thereby flattening
her the more, and, pulling out a brace of pistols,
said:

“Have no fears, Madam, I’ve traveled this road
these sixty years, probably you have yourself”—thus
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
paying tribute to Peggy’s now trembling agitation,
which he pleasantly mistook for age.

“And the damned rascals, Madam, know better’n
to attack the coach when I’m aboard. You’re
not in fear?” now bending a pair of sharp old eyes
on the Brussels lace.

Lady Peggy, smothering her laughter, and recalling
how often, half-a-score years ago, she’s sat
on this old gentleman’s knee (he was a friend of
her father’s), puts hand to ear, and nudges Chockey
behind the broad back of the dowager.

The old gentleman nods comprehendingly, turns
square to Chockey, and says “deaf?”

And Chockey, divided between terror and mirth,
nods back again.

Without other incident, the journey up to the
great city is accomplished, and, by three in the
afternoon, up pull the four horses before the door
of the King’s Arms in the Strand, and Lady Peggy,
and her woman, and her box, are set down in
the yard, amid the din and bustle incident always
to the arrival of travelers.

.il id=i_040fp fn=i_040fp.jpg w=374px ew=90% alt='And Lady Peggy and her woman...'

Not much attention is bestowed on them. A
couple of unpretending appearing women, evidently
.bn 048.png
.bn 049.png
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
not persons of quality, as the meek little calf-skin
box is their sole belonging; coming up to
London too without even one man-servant,—bespeak
but little consideration in the throng of
ladies of fashion, gallants over their coffee, courtiers
popping in for the news, sparks intent on
ogling a pretty face or noting a trim ankle, that
much o’er crowded the yard, ordinary and parlor
of the King’s Arms.

Just here once, for an instant, Lady Peggy’s
brave heart failed her; most, when she espied at
the door, just getting into her silken-curtained
chair, a lady, so young and beautiful, so richly
girt, so spick and span, with such wonderful
patches and such snowy powdered locks, such
sparkling eyes, such begemmed fingers glistening
through her mitts,—and knew at once that Lady
Diana Weston was indeed “in town”!

She faltered a bit, indeed sank down on the box
which Chockey had set in a corner of the yard, and,
for a brief moment, both mistress and maid bedewed
their masking falls with a few splashing
tears.

Then spoke Lady Peggy, rising and plucking
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
up her spirits,—“Chock,” said she, “beckon me a
boy from yonder group; inquire the path to the
corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; order
him shoulder the box and lead the way. Speak
with a swagger, Chock; knock the drops out of your
lashes with a laugh, girl! Let ’em think we’re old
hands at the town and used to bein’ waited upon!”
Lady Peggy straightened herself in her grimy
shoes, and gave the Levantine a twitch which she
hoped was quite the mode.

Meantime Chockey did her mistress’s bidding,
and in less time than it takes to set it down, the
two were following the lad, in and out of such a net
and mazework of streets and lanes as set their
heads a-whirling; now they wheeled around this
bend, now across that alley,—foul-smelling as a
ditch or a dirty dog; anon up a broader way where
knockers shone and chairs waited at the curb;
then a cut down here, and at last this was Holywell
Road and yonder the opening of Lark Lane.

Well, to be sure, ’twas a sorry spot. As Lady
Peggy paid the boy and stood on the step, she ruefully
surveyed the environment; the wig-maker’s
opposite, with a wig in the window, she half-laughingly
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
noted, the very yellow counterpart of
Sir Robin McTart’s round pate; a dingy chocolate-house
at t’other end of the row of dark, timbered,
nodding houses; and this one of the stretch, taller,
grimier even than its forlorn neighbors, was
where poor scribbling Kennaston hunted that jade
called Fame!

At double-knock, came hobbling the charwoman,
loath to be disturbed at her twilight pipe, but
brisking at sight of Lady Peggy’s now uncovered
face and shilling between fingers.

“Yes, indeed, here His Lordship lodged and ate;
was His Lordship at ’ome? Nay, that was he not!
but surely might be before cock-crow to-morrow!
His Lordship’s sister! Lawk! Would Her Ladyship
and Her Ladyship’s woman condescend to come
in and mount? What a beautiful surprise for ’is
young Lordship when he did get ’ome to be sure!
No, he ’adn’t gone out alone, a gay spark, a gentleman
of the first quality ’ad come, as often ’e
did, and fetched h’off His Lordship with ’im, last
night; ’is name? Was it Sir Robin McTart peradventure?
No, no, that was a name she ’ad never
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
’eard! ’Twas no Duke nor Earl neither, but a—Sir,
Sir—?”

And as the old woman and Chockey, carrying
the calf-skin box between them, reached the last
landing and set their burden down in thankfulness,
Lady Peggy, feeling the way, said:

“Sir Percy de Bohun, perchance? Methinks
my brother has a companion by some such title!”

“Aye, that’s ’im! Ah, My Lady, as splendid a
gentleman as ever sang ‘God save the King!’ free
with ’is sovereigns, My Lady, as trees is with their
nuts; and, to match ’im for oaths! there’s not that
Prince o’ the blood as can swear so beautiful when
’e’s dead drunk. These is ‘is Lordship’s your
brother’s chambers, My Lady!” throwing open the
door and ushering Peggy and her servitor into
as dingy, dirty, empty, sad, bare, and unkempt an
appearing place as ever mortal and intrepid lady
set two tired feet within.

But Lady Peggy, for the nonce, was only eager
on one point.

“Drunk, say you, dame? and wherefore should
so generous a young gentleman be a-gallopin‘ that
silly road, eh?”
.bn 054.png
.pn +1

“Lawk! Your Ladyship! ‘ow should I know? but
His Lordship’s own gentleman, My Lady, what
‘olds ‘im up and steadies His Lordship in ‘is cups,
do say”—the old charwoman, whisking the dust of
ages from a wooden chair, sets it for Lady Peggy
and bends to tidy the hearth and gather together
the few shingles and faggots strewn about.

“‘Say’ what?” urges Peggy, with eager eyes
and a sixpence shining in her hand (another shilling’s
more than she dare hazard of her slender
store).

“Do say, My Lady,—God bless Your Ladyship’s
sweet face! as it’s h’all on account of a young
lady!”

Lady Peggy’s eyes sparkle and all at once the
smoky room seems cheerful, and the tardy blaze
in the fire-place glows and thaws her chilled bones
and blood.

“Ah?” she says, smiling.

“Yes, My Lady, a splendid young lady of fashion,
an heiress, a beauty, with half London a-danglin’
after ’er; and ’er that ’aughty, as if she was
of the royal family, and ’im a-killin’ ’imself for
’er sake!”
.bn 055.png
.pn +1

And back again slide Kennaston’s chambers into
their original depravity of dirt and dreariness;
and down goes the charwoman to her pipe; and
Lady Peggy on the wooden chair, Chockey on the
box, spread their fingers to the reluctant warmth
and are silent; while the clock ticks on the mantel-shelf;
while the slit of blue that peers in at the
window, grays; while the noises that are all new
to these two, come rasping, roaring, shouting up
to them through the broken pane—the dizzying,
multitudinous, incoherent surge of London town,
as it first smites ears not yet wonted to its fascination
or its meaning—merely lonely, forlorn, dispirited
new-comers who have not yet learned the
passion and the melody that lie hidden in its
Babel.

The waiting-woman is the first to move; with
the homely excellent instincts of her class, she
rises, and, after a slow glance around the place,
falls “a-reddin’ of it up” as she mentally designated
her attempt. She seized the stumpy broom
from its corner and swept the floor, brushed the
maze of cobwebs from ceiling and walls; beat the
mats; wiped the stools and table, the broad window-sills
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
and the shelves; shook out the dingy,
ink-stained cloth; straightened the litter of books
and papers, quills and horns; and finally went a-peering
into the cupboards. A grimy coffee-pot
and a well-matching kettle were fished out and
rubbed; the kettle filled with water from the tubfull
on the landing and straightway hung upon
the crane; plates and cups and saucers and spoons
brought forth; a paper of coffee, a jug of milk
and a bottle of sugar discovered, and presently
Chockey handed her mistress a cup of steaming
mocha and modestly poured one for herself.

“Oh, Chock!” cries Lady Peggy, setting down
the empty cup. “What a fool was I to come!
What am I, forsooth, in all this great desert but
a grain of sand! And Percy, not,” Lady Peggy
stamps her muddy red-heeled shoe fiercely, “a-dyin’
for me in the least! and my twin a-livin’ in
such a hole! wherever does he sleep, Chock?” Surveying
the barn-like apartment in disgust and dismay,
her gaze finally arrested by a ladder slanting
in the darkest corner and reaching up to an
opening in the ceiling.

“Up there, I dare be sworn! Lud! If this ’tis
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
to be an author,” flouts Peggy, “God ha’ mercy on
’em! I tell you what, Chock. I’ll tarry a little,
have a word with Kennaston; then we’ll back, girl,
whence we came, quick; I’ll send word to Sir Robin
McTart, and then let weddin’-bells ring as soon as
ever he sees fit. No more o’ love for me, Chock.
I’m done with it forever in this world; I’ll take
marriage instead!”

Chockey shakes her head ruefully as her mistress,
more to emphasize her latest resolve than
from any other motive, flings wide open the
cracked doors of the clothes-press next the chimney-piece
and gives a tempestuous shake-out to
the garments a-hanging on the pegs.

“Lud! look! Kennaston’s suit of gray velvets,
not much the worse for wear! Small need has
the poor lad for fine clothes, I warrant ye; most
like a-keepin’ of ’em for pawn-shop use and bread
and butter! Chock, unlock the box, and get out
the waistcoat I broidered for my twin, at much expense
of temper, against his birthday. So! Smooth
it out! it’s brave, eh, Chock? Fit for Court, I
should fancy, and, that’s right, the laced cravat!
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
poor duck, I do misdoubt me, if he’s seen a frill
on his wrist since quittin’ home! There!”

Lady Peggy surveys the gifts she’s brought, as
Chockey takes them out.

“Lawk, Madam, ’twere better, were’t not, I bundle
all Your Ladyship’s duds and mine up yonder
against His Lordship’s comin’?”

“Right, Chock! up with ’em, and I’ll steady the
road while you climb!” Suiting action to word,
as Chockey, bearing the calf-skin box, cautiously
mounts the rickety ladder.

“What’s it like, Chock?”

“Nothin’ I ever seed afore, My Lady; dark,
stuffy; a mattress a-sprawlin’ on the bare boards,
and a pair of torn quilts, and a piller no bigger’n
my fist, that’s all!”

“Enough, Chock; you and I can sleep our one
night in London there as soundly,” Lady Peggy’s
proud lip quivers, “as I could on down or ’twixt
my mother’s best lamb’s wool! Come down, Chock,
by the fire; and list, to-morrow, at first crow, we’ll
back to Kennaston. We’ll ’a’ been up to town,
Chock! and, savin’ my twin, never will Lady Peggy
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
look again on face of any man who now treads
London street. I swear!”

“Hark, Madam!”

Chockey jumps from the ladder, eyes a-popping,
while the hubbub in the street below cuts short
her mistress’s valiant speech. Such a hullaballoo;
such a shouting, echoing from one end of the precinct
to t’other, as speeds mistress and maid both
to the window, a-craning their necks far out; as
sends the charwoman from her ingle-nook under
ground, a-hobbling up the steep four flights.

.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='IV—In the which is rehearsed how Her Ladyship did nimbly slip...'

.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%

.ce
<l>IV</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
IV
.if-

.nf c
<em>In the which is rehearsed how Her Ladyship
did nimbly slip into man’s
attire and estate.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Through the fast gathering mist, through the
smoke that’s London’s own, the two women leaning
behold a gay company of gallants rounding the
far corner, two hundred feet away; linked arms,
swords a-touching, heels a-clattering; one voice
high and young, uplifted in a lilt like this: Lady
Peggy had heard that voice before.

.pm start_poem
<em>In years to come when gallants sing,
In praise of ladies fair,
All will allow, I pledge you square,
That brighter eyes n’er banished care,
Than those that bade us do and dare,
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
When George the Third was King!
Let roof and rafter chime and ring,
Let echo shout it back: we sing
The merry days, My Lords and Sirs!
When George the Third is King!</em>
.pm end_poem

And at the chorus, a brave dozen more of pairs
of lusty lungs to take it up and urge it on with
flashing rapiers, knocking points, in the flare of
the lights from the coffee-house at hand; and good
twelve of plumed hats a-tossing in the air, and
catch-again; and laughter loud and long, then
dying down as that fresh sweet voice begins its
second verse, and just so the old charwoman
knocks hastily at the door, calling in Lady Peggy’s
head and Chockey’s from the open.

“’H’askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding,” says she,
“but I thought it no more’n my duty to acquaint
Your Ladyship, as can’t see from this ’eight, that
Your Ladyship’s brother, Lord Kennaston’s a-comin’
’ome, and a-bringin’ with ’im ’is comrades,
among ’em, Sir Percy de Bohun, and mayhap ’er
Ladyship’d like best,”—now addressing Chockey, as
Lady Peggy paced the floor in a too-evident agitation—“like
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
best,” continued the dame, “to ’ide
’erself, and h’if so, the noble gentlemen h’all of
’em, I’m thinkin’, bein’ summat raised with wine,
my ’umble bit of a place h’is h’at Her Ladyship’s
service for the night or as long as Her Ladyship
sees fit, for I am this minute sent for to go down
into the country immediate, where, God help us
all! my tenth daughter what’s married to her
second husband lies at death’s door!”

And all the while the old charwoman is speaking
between her bits of broken teeth, Peggy hears that
other voice uplifted, ringing, gay, glad, care-free,
as it seems to her strained ears, up and down the
darkening little street, tapping at the window-panes,
tapping at her heart-strings and stretching
them to such a tension of anger, outraged pride,
and wounded affection as never Lady suffered before.

She thanks the old woman and hastily dismisses
her; then facing about from the window whence
she has been able to descry the merry group making
a rush into the coffee-house, Her Ladyship,
seized by a sudden mad impulse, says to her
woman:
.bn 063.png
.pn +1

“Chock, take my purse, tumble as fast as your
two legs can carry you down, out, across to the
wigmaker’s we laughed at when we came in, buy
me the yellow wig, Chock, that adorns the front,
an’ come not back without it, an you love me,
Chock; wheedle, coax, promise more’n there is
here,” sticking the purse in the astounded woman’s
hand, “but get me the wig that is the very double
of dear Sir Robin’s own sweet pate!” She pushes
Chockey out on the landing with an impetus that
sends her well on her errand, and then, shutting
and buttoning the door, Lady Peggy gets herself
out of her furbelows and petticoats, her stays, her
bodice, her collar, brooch, kerchief, pocket, hoop
and hair pins, and into her brother’s suit of grays,
the new waistcoat and cravat she’s brought him
for a gift; she tips the coffee-pot and washes her
face and pretty throat and hands in the brown
liquid; she plaits her long hair and winds it close
and tight about her head; she buckles on Kennaston’s
Court-rapier, she fetches his gray plumed hat
with its paste buckle from the press; she ogles
herself in the six-inch mirror; she swaggers, swings,
struts; and, says she, dipping her finger in the
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
soot of the old chimney and marking out two black
beetling brows over her own slender ones,—

“An I know not how to play at being Sir Robin,
Lady Peggy’s chosen sweetheart, boldly and with
a loud voice; know not how to swear and prance
and pick a pretty quarrel, crying ‘Match me your
Lady Diana with my Lady Peggy!’ then never did
I dozen times for sport don my twin’s breeches
and coat and masquerade at being that sweet
creature,—a man! Ha! I have it all at fingers’
ends!” cries Peggy, fumbling in her discarded
pocket. “Here’s the very letter I writ for Sir
Robin to take and present to my brother. ’Twill
stand me in good stead to-night that I forgot to
give it to him. If Chockey but succeed in cajoling
the man out of his wig, an’ if the gallants come
not ere I can fit it to my head!”—opening the door
impetuously almost to bump against the returning
Chockey’s nose.

“Thou hast it! Oh Chock! ’Tis I! be not afraid.
Come in; adjust it to my poll,—so! Lose not a
moment; pick up my petticoats, leave not a scrap
that bespeaks a woman; there! You’re dropping
a hair-pin; now, up with ye to the loft! an’ no
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
matter if rats nibble your toes, Chock, or mice
come play bo-peep with your eye-winkers, or
spiders weave across your mouth, an you stir, cry
out, move an inch to the creaking of a board, I’ll
leave you here your lone self to shift as best you
may! Up girl!” touching the speechless Chockey
with the rapier-tip urgingly, “and ’tis Sir Robin
McTart that bids you!”

The obedient and trembling waiting-woman was
not much sooner out of sight in the loft, than
again the voice echoed up to where Lady Peggy
stood in the gruesome ambush of the landing,
well back in the darkest corner behind a pile of
boards and débris, bricks and dust, and what-not-else
tumbled there from the chimney during the
last and many previous storms.

Nearer came the song, then the chorus, broken
now with more of chat and laughter; the footsteps
sound upon the street, the house-door opens, slams,
and up they troop, stumbling in the blackness but
knowing well the way, it seems; merry, jocund,
up, up, with the refrain of the song still lingering
amid their talk in snatches, until they gain the
top.
.bn 066.png
.pn +1

“Are we then indeed at your door, Kennaston?”
cries the first to reach, as he feels at the latch.

“Split me, Escombe, you’re there if you can
go no farther. Egad! Sirs,” cries the young host,
“an I never reach to pinnacle of Fame’s ladder,
at the least do I lodge as high as I could get:—a
roof that suits my empty purse!”

“Nay, Kennaston.” Peggy, in her man’s gear,
trembles at sound of that tone, for ’tis Percy who
speaks now, whiles they all push pell-mell into her
twin’s chambers, strike lights, pull out candles
from cupboard, stir the fire.

“Nay, Kennaston,” says this one, “while De
Bohun lives there’s ever a full purse lad, t’ exchange
for thy empty one,—and well thou know’st
it.”

“Tut, tut!” answers the young man of letters,
adding as he glances about, “’pon my soul, gentlemen,
my Hebe has been outdoing herself. Saw
we ever before in this room, stools lacking dust?
floor, riff-raff? walls their festoons? hearth its
ashes? coffee-pot its rust? and, by my life, the
kettle filled and steaming!”

A peal of mirth greets this nimble sally, as the
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
host pulls from the table drawer a pack of cards
and his guests from their pockets a dozen bottles
of Falernian.

“Dead broke, am I, My Lords and Gentlemen,”
says he, “but here’s the whole Court and the
deuce,” flinging the pack in the midst of his guests,
“play away an ye’ve a shilling left amongst ye.
Let it be Commerce or Hazard; I’ll hold the
counters; fill the glasses, as long as there’s a drop
to pour; keep a lookout for sharpers,” laughing,
“and thank God I’ve even a garret wherein to welcome
men of vogue like yourselves!”

A burst of applause follows this; plumed hats
are tossed aside, wrist-frills upturned; His Grace
of Escombe is shuffling the pack; Sir Percy stands
with his back to the fire, coat-skirts held from the
cheerful blaze he’s made; stools are drawn up;
the host takes his silk kerchief from his throat
and polishes the mugs. Chockey has her eye glued
to a chink in the cover that divides her loft from
the scene of revelry below;—when, a bold knock
sounds at the door, and the master with a cheery:

“Come along!” throws wide the portal.
.bn 068.png
.pn +1

The fine gentleman who stands before him
makes a profound bow, to which he responds with
one not less magnificent.

“Allow me, Lord Kennaston of Kennaston, since
it is, I am persuaded, the brother of Lady Peggy
Burgoyne whom I have the pleasure of addressing—?”
and at her name, Sir Percy lets his
brocaded skirts flop and starts forward eagerly—“of
addressing, to present to you this note
in the hand-writing of Your Lordship’s adorable
sister, the which she gave me, wherewith to present
and commend me to Your Lordship’s good offices
while I am up in town!”

Another salaam given and returned, while Kennaston,
with grace, ushers his new acquaintance
in, sets him a stool, all the while eye quick-perusing
Lady Peggy’s scrawl.

“Gentlemen!” says their host, “allow me to
introduce to you, and, Sir, these gentlemen to you,
Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, His Grace
of Escombe, Sir Percy de Bohun, the Honorable
Jack Chalmers, Sir Wyatt Lovell,” etc., etc., etc.
The which ceremony being concluded amid many
bows and all due forms of mutual delight, the
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
new-comer was cordially invited to take a hand in
the game.

Now, as true ’twas that Lady Peggy had never
been in a coach until the morning to which this
was evening, so true was it that Her Ladyship had
not a farthing to her pocket left, and although a
good gamester’s daughter, she hesitated, making
pretense of hanging her hat and of settling to its
proper place her rapier, and pinching her ruffles.
While she did so, the rest chatting, Sir Percy
crossed the room, and, in a tone that was not
heard save by the one he addressed, said to Kennaston:

“As I live, Sir, now’s my chance; I’ll pick a
quarrel with this jackanapes that’s dared to oust
me from Peggy’s heart. Aye, will I! the sooner
the better; blood’ll spill, Kennaston, or ever that
puppet and I are thirty minutes older! Mark me!
Your sister shall know and hear I’m willing to die
for her sake, or—to kill!”

Peggy, meantime, in this second, got her courage
well screwed up, and, with a laugh, fitly disguising
her voice, said she, seating herself with
her legs well under the table—for, at this particular
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
juncture, Her Ladyship, looking down, had
beheld with dismay the womanish and forgotten
fashion of her shoes.

“Rot me! Gentlemen, your humble servant’s fresh
from Will’s, where, ’pon my life! such an apt company
of wits and beaux encountered I, as swept
my pockets clean and left me not the jingle of a
shilling wherewith to bless myself. Your Grace,
My Lords, Sirs, and Gentlemen,” quoth Peggy
with a fine inclusive wave of her hand, “will, I’m
sure, thus excuse me from the game to-night.”

But she had counted without either host or
guests, for all of these save Sir Percy de Bohun
on the instant pulled purses out and tendered
them, crying, as with a single voice,—

“Fie! Fie! Sir Robin! Are we highwaymen?
tricksters? Honor us by using our sovereigns as
they were your own, eh, Sir Percy, have we not
the right of the matter?” asked Jack Chalmers,
turning to the tall young man, who, having crossed
the room again, now stood leaning moodily against
the chimney-piece, frowning, tapping hearth with
heel in too evident impatience of the subject of
discussion.
.bn 071.png
.pn +1

“I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Chalmers,” he
replies, “both for differing with you all, and for
expressing the same. To my way of thinking”—adds
Sir Percy, with deliberation, ill-matched by
the flash of his eyes as they take a scornful measure
of the supposed Sir Robin—“to my way
of thinking, any gentleman who carries his
company into any other gentleman’s chambers
without the means of a paltry game of
loo or écarté in ’s pocket’s not quite such a proper
young man ’s he might be!” And with this, Sir
Percy laid his hand upon his sword hilt, and Kennaston
laid his upon that, attempting to stay the
torrent.

“Tut! tut!” cried this one and that.

“His Lordship’s dead drunk with Cupid, Sir
Robin, mind him not,” whispers another.

“De Bohun breaks a joke,” exclaims a third, all
at once.

And in the same moment, also, upsprings my
Lady Peggy, hand on hilt too, and says she loudly,
same time as the rest:

“A pox on ye for a libeler! Sir Percy de Bohun,
mayhap it’s the errand Your Lordship’s up in town
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
a-pursuing hath turned Your Lordship’s brain?”
Here Lady Peggy laughs in derision and stands full
height updrawn upon her girl’s red heels.

“Curse me! but you are impertinent, Sir,” responds
Percy, taking a step forward, his anger
rising as he beholds his purpose galloping to the
goal of its quick fulfilment. “What then, an it
please you, is my ‘errand up in town?’ since you
are thus familiar with my gaits; tell ’em off, Sir
Robin McTart, I give ye leave!”

“With your leave, or without it,” cries Peggy
in a voice that causes Chockey to lift the loft-cover
an inch higher, and so, kneeling with nose
flattened against floor, to behold her mistress’s fine
and splendid show of valor. “I’d have you hear,
Sir, that to persons of fashion the matter of your
suit near Lady Diana Weston’s a jeer and jest of
the first flavour,—for ’twere easy seen a lady of her
quality, Sir, ’d not be a-wasting her time on
you.”

“Damme! Sir!” cries Sir Percy, now thoroughly
aroused and far more in earnest than ever he was
at the beginning. “You lie! Aye, My Lords, Sirs,
and Gentlemen! Nay, ye can not stop my mouth,”
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
unsheathing his rapier; Peggy does likewise, each
pushing and warding from them the restraining
hands and words of their associates.

“A foul lie! My errand up in town, Sir Robin
McTart, is to try to drown my sorrows as I may,
because the only lady that ever I loved set me the
pace to the devil by a-refusing of my suit come
Easter-day, three months to an hour ago.”

Lady Peggy flushes under the coffee stains; her
arm trembles; but she is valiantly happy and confident,
and her heart goes beating the joyfullest
sort of a tune beneath the ’broidered waistcoat
she’d made for her twin.

“And her name,” cries Sir Percy with a glance
of imperious, aggressive temper shot right into
Peggy’s very face,—“her name’s not Lady Diana
Weston, but ’tis Lady Peggy Burgoyne!—”

Now Chock’s whole head slips leash, and she
bends with bated breath and heaving breast to
listen closer.

Lady Peggy starts, but waving her rapier over
her head, laughs loud, long and derisively.

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne, Sir,” shaking the hilt
of his weapon under Peg’s nose, repeats Sir Percy.
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
“And until you, Sir, with your damnable arts and
silly bumpkin ways, when she encountered you in
Kent, had turned her from me, she was to me kindest
of ladies and of loves. Your servant, Sir Robin
McTart,” concludes Percy with a low bow, sticking
the floor with his rapier-point, “when and
where you please!”

“Here and now!” cries Peg, her heart a-thumping
for joy, but so pleasured and alas! so puzzled
with the getting out of a scrape, which she has
found so little difficulty in getting into, that she
is feign on, and make the best cut she can with
her cloth.

“Here and now!” repeats Her Ladyship, “for
I do throw back into Your Lordship’s teeth the lie”—Peg
bows low to her opponent—“you gave me
whiles, and affirm that for these many years, or
ever you, Sir, set eyes upon her, Lady Peggy
Burgoyne’s been mine, heart and soul, Sir!”

“Damn you, Sir!” interrupts Percy hotly, unable
to contain his choler,—“to so defame the
noblest lady that ever was born!”

“I repeat,” cries Peggy, glowing with suppressed
delight at her lover’s fidelity, and eager for as
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
much more as he may have to vent. “Lady Peggy’s
eyes are glued fast of this face of mine! Peggy’s
hands are my hands! Peggy’s lips are my lips!
Peggy’s kisses have ever been my kisses!”

At this, Sir Percy tears off his coat, waistcoat,
cravat; flings them into the corner; rolls up his
sleeves, while a confused murmur circulates amid
the gallants over their cards and Falernian wine.

“Peggy’s heart beats in my breast!” continues
Her Ladyship, ranting and swashing up and down
the room; upsetting a couple of candles in her
path, and now all unrecking of her womanish
shoes. “Gentlemen,” panting, smiling, triumphant,
saluting her companions with her weapon,
“Lady Peggy and I do so adore, love and worship
one another that we are not two but one!”

“Here and now!” shouts Sir Percy. “Off with
your coat and ruffles, Sir, and choose any two of
these gentlemen to your seconds, Sir; I’ll take
who’s left!”

Chalmers and Kennaston press forward to Lady
Peggy, while His Grace of Escombe and Mr. Wyatt
cross to Sir Percy.

“Lord Kennaston, I pray you pace off the distance,”
.bn 076.png
.bn 077.png
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
says Lady Peggy, now at the top of her
bent and delirious with joy over Percy’s love of
her, with no least intention of touching him, good
fencer though she be, and willing enough—such a
woman is she—to risk a prick at his hands for sake
of the after-salve of the mighty gratitude and passion
the minx is now sure of.

“Off with your trappings, Sir,” cries Percy.

“That will I not!” cries Peggy, taking the first
position on the field of honor in all the bravery of
her twin’s suit of gray velvets. “You’ll kill me,
an you do’t at all, with my clothes on ready to
my burial, and I swear ye all, with my latest
breath, Lady Peggy and I’ll lie in the same coffin
when it comes to that ceremony.”

Then in the smoky flare from the dying fire and
the slovening candles stuck in their bottles; ’mid
the murmur and succeeding hush of the gallants,
some with cups, some with cards in their hands,
Peggy and her lover salute and take their stands.

Says she: “What’s the word, My Lord?”

Says he: “If you like, let Lord Kennaston shake
the dice-box; at the third throw, Sir, I’m here,
ready food for your steel to flesh in!”
.bn 079.png
.pn +1

“It suits me well,” answers Peg, as her twin
rattles the ivories. “Here’s for Lady Peggy!”
cries she.

“Here’s for Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” shouts he,
as Kennaston makes the third throw, and Chockey,
like to swoon and she a stout heart, never-ail or
afeard of even a churchyard on the darkest night,
shaking like an aspen-leaf, puts foot on the top
rung of the ladder; and Peg and Percy thrust,
lunge, withdraw, riposte, hither, yon, keen-eyed,
pitched to highest note, nerves strung to cracking—just
for a few seconds, shorter time’n it takes
to set it down, far.

“A touch, a hit!” cry all at once as a spurt of
blood darts up the supposed Sir Robin’s blade, and
Percy bows, declaring himself quite satisfied, as
he must, though ’tis a state of mind he’s very remote
from enjoying.

.il id=i_068fp fn=i_068fp.jpg w=356px ew=80% alt='A touch, a hit!...'

My Lady Peggy winces under her wound, but
she has not been Kennaston’s playfellow for
naught, and as ugly pricks as this one have been
her portion in the past; Chockey, nevertheless,
from her nest, pales and utters a smothered shriek
which is quite lost in the loud talking that follows,
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
while Chalmers winds the kerchief Sir Percy tenders
about the wrist of the wounded.

“Now to the cards, gentlemen,” cries His Grace
of Escombe, pulling out his purse. “To such a gallant
as our friend Sir Robin here, my fingers itch
to lose ten, twenty, nay as many pounds as his
skill can rid me of; for such a pretty play of the
steel as his must argue a lucky throw of the
dice.”

“Hear! hear! hear!” shout they all, drinking
brimming mugs to the two who have lately fought,
and settling themselves at the tables with a rattle
and a rush of laughter and merry humor.

Lady Peggy sits, gritting her teeth at the slit in
her white flesh, with her back to the door and,
betwixt the uproar and clinking and shuffling, she
hears footsteps coming up the stairs. Some intuition
bids her be the one to respond to the rapping
that presently sounds out.

“Asking your pardon,” murmurs Her Ladyship
to her companions as she quits the table. When,
as she opens, a new-caught street urchin speaks
sharp, with saucer eyes in-peering at the quality.
.bn 081.png
.pn +1

“An it please yer Lordships, there’s a fine gentlemen
below as his name is Sir Robin McTart.”

Peggy draws in, bangs the door in the boy’s
face, squares about, and says:

“By your leave, gentlemen, a most particular
messenger awaits me below; for a few moments
only, I crave your indulgence for my absence. I’ll
be with you in ten minutes.”

“No! no! no!” cry they all, save De Bohun,
who is counting his cards, and Sir Wyatt who exclaims:

“Yes, an it be a messenger on business for a
fair lady; no, an it be otherwise. Gadzooks! Sir
Robin, make a half-clean breast of it. Comes
Mercury from Phyllis or from a mere man?”

Peg answers: “I swear to you, Sirs, I go down
on business of the gravest import to a lady,” and
makes for the door.

“Pledge her! Pledge her! a bumper! a bumper!”
cry they all in one voice with much pleasant
laughter.

“Here’s to Sir Robin’s nameless fair! Zounds!
but for so little yeared a personage to have two
strings to his bow!”
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='V—Wherein Lady Peggy doth encounter her flouted lover...'

.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%

.ce
<l>V</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
V
.if-
.nf c
<em>Wherein Lady Peggy doth encounter her flouted
lover, receiveth a rapier-prick: makes acquaintance
of her hated rival and
of Mr. Brummell.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
And much more of a like nature reaches Lady
Peggy as she plunges down the stairs and presently
finds herself, by the light of the lamp of
his chair, a-confronting Sir Robin McTart himself!

“Nay, nay, Sir! I am not Kennaston of Kennaston,”
responds Peg, looking grave, and making
excellent show of her blood-stained, linen-bound
wrist.

“’Tis here he dwells, and, as I know well by
reputation, you are a peaceful, law-abiding man,
I’d counsel you not to mount. Such a company
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
of cut-throat, cut-purse brawlers, Sir, as would not
leave a farthing in your pocket or lace upon your
shirt.”

Sir Robin, as Her Ladyship had shrewdly
guessed, drew back and shivered at this lively
description.

“Trust me, Sir Robin: hist!” Peg’s voice sinks
to a mere whisper. “I am Lady Peggy’s best
friend and neighbor at home; ’twould be her will,
an she stood here, that you should not adventure
your precious life in the unseemly crowd with
which her brother hath seen fit to surround himself.”

“Lud, Sir! Who are you,” chatters Sir Robin
trembling betwixt delight and terror, “that knows
so well the temper of Lady Peggy Burgoyne’s disposition?
What’s your name, Sir?”

“No matter for my name, Sir, I have Lady
Peggy’s best interests at heart, and yours. She
bade me, did ever I encounter you in evil neighborhood,
tell you, for her sake, eschew it. Hark
ye! Sir Robin, out of this hole as fast as your
men’s legs can carry you. Above yonder, ’s one
who’s sworn to kill you!”
.bn 084.png
.pn +1

“Who’s he?” demands Sir Robin, one foot now
in his sedan, his little eyes twinkling both ways
with fright.

“Sir Percy de Bohun,” replies Peg in a hollow
whisper. “Look you, Sir,” showing her bloody
wrist, “there’s a taste of his quality. I warn
you—’tis from Peggy’s own self—get back to Kent,
whence you came, and tarry not, for your life’s at
yonder desperado’s mercy while you linger up in
town.”

“Is My Lady Peggy returned to Kent to her godmother?”
quavers Sir Robin, now well inside his
chair.

“Nay, Sir; as her brother supposes, she’s at home
at Kennaston.”

“I’ll seek her there!” cries Sir Robin, tendering
his hand. “And, Sir, my humble duty and gratitude
to you for your admirable condescension. I
would I knew your name and station.”

“I’m up in town incognito, Sir, for a lady’s
sake,” smiles the minx.

“When I return, Sir, I’ll seek you out at White’s
or Will’s. I dare be sworn so fine a gentleman
must needs be a buck of the first order.”
.bn 085.png
.pn +1

“Seek me, Sir, and Godspeed you down to Kennaston
or Kent!”

At the word, Sir Robin in his chair sets forth
a-swinging round the corner, light of heart and
bright of hope, while the subject and object of his
thoughts and passion stands for a moment leaning,
sighing, betwixt laughter and tears, against the
door-frame.

My Lady Peggy’s first impulse is to cut and
run; indeed her slim legs are so stretched to begin,
when the remembrance of poor Chock in her garret
cage comes to her mind, and, with a grimace, she
turns in, jumps up the stairs, and is in the midst
of the group, now well on in their cups and more
hilarious than orderly in their conversation.

Peg was not her father’s girl for naught that
night. To the tune of three hundred pounds, fourteen
and six, was she the richer, and rewarded for
the many dreary evenings she had spent at Kennaston,
a-watching her father win and lose with
the Vicar and the Bishop, whenever the latter came
on his visits.

By dint of spilling her wine deftly under the
table, she had emptied as many mugs as the best
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
bibber among ’em, and at four in the morning
found herself the only one who was sober, or even
awake.

’Twas not a beautiful sight thus to behold, in
the pale pink of the dawn, a dozen or so of merry
gentlemen a-sprawling about on floor, tables,
chairs,—a-snoring and a-tossing in their sleep;
but ’twas of the fashion of the times when, to be a
fine gentleman, one must be drunk, at the least,
once in the twenty-four hours.

All save Sir Percy; almost at swords’ points he
had quitted the company hours before, a little in
his cups, but steady withal, murmuring to himself
as he fumbled on the rickety stairs—Peg, leaning
over the rail, unseen in the darkness, womanlike
to watch lest he trip and fall, heard him:

“’Sdeath! an what that popinjay say be true,
I’ll marry Lady Diana out of hand, and show the
minx I’m not to be cut out of a wife by such a
flea-bitten rotten-rod as Sir Robin McTart!”

“So easy taken then is my loss!” says Peggy,
with a renewed fire of jealousy burning at her
heart, as she returns to the scene of her winnings.

Sick at heart, for a single instant she surveys
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
the room, and then, finger on lip, it does not take
her long to signal up to Chockey, motion her down
with the calf-skin box, and to begin, with shamed
face, in the darkest corner, to strip off her man’s
attire.

Lady Peggy has laid aside the yellow wig;
Chockey weeping, praying that they may get away
in safety, is spreading out the Levantine fit for her
mistress to jump into it, when, for the second
time within the twelve hours, Her Ladyship’s
heart stands still to the patter and thump of footsteps
climbing the last flight.

“Hold, Chock!” cries she, clapping on the wig.
“Bundle up my duds, tie ’em tight; so! give me
it; pick up the box, put on your cloak and bonnet
and a bold face; follow and ape me. An you love
me, Chock, an’ I thrust, thrust too! an’ I knock
’em down, follow suit! I’d sooner die, Chock,
than be caught now!”

With which, My Lady Peggy flung wide the
door, pushed out the Abigail, drew her weapon,
and, with a rush, the two of them tumbled down
the stairs, taking on their way a giant of a man
who struggled and struck out, and dropped fruits
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
and flowers and curses, and yet gave in to the
splendid tweeks and pinches which the lusty
Chockey dealt him on his arms and legs, and, falling
headlong, on the lower stairs, darted up the
street crying:

“Watch!” at the top of his lungs, nor getting
any answer, for Watch was snoring in the tavern
and the sun now shining broad.

“Chock,” said her mistress, “go you on before
me to the King’s Arms, where we alighted, engage
the seats in the coach, and hark ye, child, an
aught betide I come not, get you home without me
and tell His Lordship I’m gone to Kent on a sick-call
from my godmother. Lud! it’s lies all the
way to being a man! I’ll not walk with you, lass;
’tis not seemly, and when I reach the inn I’ll
pretend I know you not, hire a room, change my
clothes and slip down to you, unseen if I can.
Now, off with you, quickly, for I ache to follow.
Would to God I could doff these garments and into
my petticoats again!” added Lady Peggy ruefully,
glancing at her hastily tied up bundle and, at the
same moment, with the broad of her sword,
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
pushing Chock into the street with a will that sent
her a-spinning on her way.

Indifferent then, as though the outgoing damsel
were no concern of hers, presently, with a swagger,
yet ill-concealing the anxiety she felt afresh as
now sobs and female voices assailed her ears, the
mock Sir Robin McTart emerged upon the street.

There halted a chair between the posts. In the
chair sat Lady Diana Weston accompanied by her
woman. Both wept and trembled, while still afar
the stout lungs of the terrified giant shouted:

“Watch!”

Peg stood still and stared; all the jealous blood
in her burned in her cheeks. Lady Diana here!
and wherefore? and at such an untoward hour;
veil displaced, eyes red, but still most undeniably
handsome, nay beautiful.

“Oh Sir!” cried Lady Diana beseechingly, raising
two imploring hands outside the chair door
toward Lady Peggy.

“I pray of your honor!” whimpered the Abigail
in concert.

“I implore your protection, Sir, as you are a
gentleman and man of honor, as your mien disposes
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
me. I came here but now and sent my footman
up to the rooms of a—a friend, who is ill,
Sir,—with a token of regard in the shape of fruit
and flowers, when the man must have been set upon
by thieves and beaten, for he—”

“I heard him,” finishes Peg, stepping nearer to
the chair. “And I assure you, Madam, I put the
varlet who attacked him to his pace with a prick.
If I can serve you further, command me.”

As My Lady bows low, she is conscious that it
now behooves her to state concisely her name and
station; and, loathing and hating the deception
more than she could express, she still adds (her
motive not unmixed with the natural curiosity to
discover who is the object of Lady Diana’s morning
call):

“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, at
Your Ladyship’s service.”

Diana bows, blushes, almost ogles, minx that she
is, noting well the fine eyes and beautiful mouth
of the gallant at her side.

“Lady Diana Weston, Sir Robin, daughter to
the Earl of Brookwood, at your service.”

Peg bows, hat in hand, bundle under arm. Swift
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
as youth’s impulse ever is, says she, taking lightning-like
measure of her chance and determined
to probe matters to their core:

“Your Ladyship’s name was on the lips above,”
nodding up at Kennaston’s windows. “I drank the
toast with a will, I do assure you, and would
double it now. Surely, if you’ll allow me to say
so, Sir Percy de Bohun’s a gentleman of a rare
good taste, likewise Lord Kennaston, Sir Wyatt
Lovell, half-a-dozen more a-pledging Your Ladyship
to the tune of <lang=fr><em>nonpareil</em></lang> all night long.”

“You flatter, Sir, I do protest!” cried the lady
in the chair, blushing like the reddest rose that
grows, but who might say for whose sake? since
Peg had named so many.

“Oh, Sir,” Lady Diana’s voice now lowered.
“Your countenance is one to inspire confidence. I
pray you judge me not harshly if I venture to inquire,
since you were of their company, how fares
poor Sir Percy de Bohun? The fruits and flowers
I fetched were for him, since I am informed he
pines, eats nothing, droops, mopes, and no longer
is to be enticed among the fair. Can you give
me news of him?—or of—Lord Kennaston?” adds
.bn 092.png
.pn +1
Lady Diana wilily and with another magnificent
accession of color. Thus did Slyboots pursue inquiry
on that lame horse which is named Subterfuge.

“Aye, Madam, that can I. ’Tis as you say; but
as you yourself, if report speak true, be the cause
of his distemper, methinks you should know how
to effect the cure. I see Your Ladyship’s man returning;
there is no more danger. I take my leave
of you, Madam,” hand to heart, bundle sticking
out under other arm. “It is to me one of the
most fortunate chances of life to have had this
encounter,” bending sweet eyes, which Diana returns
with a will. “Fear nothing! the cut-throats
have long since made off by a rear alley. The
shouter is doubtless ere this at his cover. Did you
need my further protection, ’twould be yours.”

“From my heart, Sir, I thank you,” cries Lady
Diana very sweetly. “May we meet again, and
soon!”

Peggy bowing, walks quickly off, her pretty
teeth gritted together.

“May we meet again! Never! Fruits and
flowers! forsooth! Pines and droops! forsooth!
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
’Slife! and how the minx reddened at his name.
A-seekin’ of him out like that at cock-crow too!
Lud! an these be town fashions and morals I’ll
be glad to get home! No I won’t! No I won’t!”
spake out Lady Peggy’s heart fit to burst bonds.
“Percy’s here, and my soul’s here, and ’tain’t no
use to talk about having a spirit, and a-stoppin’
lovin’ when you ain’t loved! You can’t do it!”

Peggy, recking not of her path, eyes glued to
ground, paced on, having forgot the whole world
else, in the misery of her discovery of Lady
Diana’s passion for Sir Percy.

There were few abroad at that early hour.
Some market wagons leisuring to the city; an occasional
chariot full of gallants getting home after
the night’s frolic; and just now, at the cross of two
streets, a handsome coach thrown open-windowed,
with a gentleman, the very pink and model of all
elegance, lolling back amid the cushions.

By the lead of his eyes ’twas plainly to be seen
he had not slept for forty-eight hours or so, but
otherwise his aspect was as if newly out of a perfumed
bandbox. Suddenly his gaze caught Peggy
at the crossing, fixed itself upon the lace cravat
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
at her throat, and then, with a spring as alert as
that of any monkey throwing himself out of tree by
his tail, this mirror of fashion thrust his head out
at window, jerked his coachman’s arm, said in a
voice not loud, but piercing:

“Worthing, run down the young gentleman at
the crossing; don’t hurt him, but run him down
an’ I’ll give you twenty shillings!” He then sank
back again amid the pillows.

No sooner said than done.

Just at the instant when Peggy recalled her
position and was bewilderedly wondering where
she had wandered to, clutching her bundle and all
of a muddle, click! grazed coach-wheels against
her shins, cock went her hat into the puddle, but,
heaven be praised! her wig clung, and she clung
to her bundle; out of coach the pink brocade gentleman,
down from the rumble his footman, pick
up Lady Peggy, hat and all, rubbing the mud out
of her silk stockings, clapping her hands; yet relented
she not from the bundle, and all a-breath
the loller cries:

“Into my coach, Sir! I do humbly crave pardon,
Sir, I do indeed. I’ll not take no for an
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
answer, Sir, not by my oath! Such a damage from
one gentleman to another, Sir, demands all the
reparation possible, Sir,” and forthwith Peggy is
lifted into the splendid coach and the splendid
gentleman springs in after her, and the footmen
jump up and the whip cracks, and off they whirl
before she can open her mouth.

“Mr. Brummell at your service, Sir,” continues
he, feeling of Peg’s palm, noting the wound at her
wrist, and the pallor of her face which shines
even though the coffee stains. “We’re en route
to Peter’s Court where my surgeon shall attend
you. ’Slife! Sir, you’re not hurt, I’m sure. I told
Worthing not to endanger a hair of your head and
it’s impossible he should have disobeyed me!”

Peggy hears this singular string of speeches and,
although stunned a bit and not a little alarmed in
her mind, she has country breeding at her back
and such a robust constitution as rallies on the
spot.

“I’d be obliged, Mr. Brummell, if you’d set me
down at once, Sir! I’m none the worse, and I’ve
business of import calling me far hence, and with
dispatch.”
.bn 096.png
.pn +1

“Never, Sir, never!” returns Beau Brummell,
with an impressive wave of his jeweled hand.
“Zounds! Sir, I had you spilled to get me the
pattern and fashion of tying your cravat from
you! and split me! if I let you go until I’ve mastered
that adorable knot! I’ve my reputation at
stake, Sir, for the tying of ’em. You’ve outdone
me at your throat, Sir, and ’tis Beau Brummell,
the best dressed and worst imitated man in Europe,
that has the honor of telling you so. Come, come,
Sir,” continues this nonesuch, famed alike at
Court and brawl for his finery and drollery, “out
with your name, Sir, I beg, and render me your
eternally grateful.”

Lady Peggy’s gaze falls inadvertently on the
bundle across her knees; it begins to bulge and
burst the paper and string, indeed a tape of her
petticoat is oozing out even now as she pokes it
back, hiding its tell-tale under the skirt of her
coat.

“’Slife!” says Peggy to herself in a terrible heat.
“An I must stop a man, I must. God’s will—or
the Devil’s, as dad says—be done!” and forthwith
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
she tucks up her knee, lays hand on sword-hilt,
laughs quite merrily and answers:

“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, at your
service, Mr. Brummell. I do protest, upon my
oath! ’twas a marvelous device to spill me to borrow
my tie. ’Tis yours, Sir, and the fashion of it,
an you’ll do me the honor to accept a lesson.”

“Sir Robin McTart!” echoes the Beau delightedly,
“my old friend Sir Hector’s son and heir? I
swear, boy, you favor not your sire. Peace to his
soul, ’twas an ugly gentleman, while you, Sir,—Zounds!
The ladies’ll make hay for you, I promise
you. Where do you stop? Are you up in town
long? What letters do you bring?”

“The King’s Arms, Sir, in the Strand,” replies
Peg glibly, while the Beau frowns. “I’m arrived
but yesterday. I brought not a letter, Sir. There
you have my history.”

“No King’s Arms for Sir Hector’s son. You’ll
home with me, lad; and I’ll show you what town
life is. I’ll put you up at the best clubs, introduce
you to the Prince; present you at Court; dine,
wine, mount you,—Gadzooks, Sir Robin, the man
that invented that tie of the lace!” tipping his
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
finger at Lady Peggy’s home-made cravat, “deserves
all and more than Brummell can do for
him!”

At which Peggy laughed the more heartily,
as that she felt the paper beneath her coat skirts
crack wider, and was spent wondering what she
should do when they should reach Peter’s Court,
and when she might be able to get into her Levantine
once again.

.il fn=i_015.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='VI—In the which Sir Percy de Bohun’s own man goes on his master’s errand...'

.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>VI</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
VI
.if-

.nf c
<em>In the which Sir Percy de Bohun’s own man
goes on his master’s errand to Kennaston
Castle, crossing Sir Robin
McTart on the road.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Somewhat later in the day, as the sun peeped in
at the narrow windows of Kennaston’s garret in
Lark Lane, it shone straight down upon the face
of Peg’s twin, and also upon that of Sir Percy de
Bohun, just returned, after a tub and a grooming
at the hands of his faithful man Grigson, who even
now was performing like offices for the young host.
The other gentlemen had long since been set upon
their legs and fetched off to their homes by their
men.

Percy held his chin between his palms, his elbows
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
resting upon the table where cards and
glasses still littered.

“’Sdeath, Kennaston,” cries he, without moving.
“I can live this fashion no longer! To be shot
like a partridge would be better. Flouted by
Peggy, derided by this upstart Sir Robin, who, by
my life! is a pretty fellow all said and done, is
past endurance! Give me a pistol, Grigson, and
I’ll put an end of myself now and here.”

To this passionate declaration, Kennaston merely
makes answer by lifting an arm above the tub,
waving it in the air, and, as Grigson scrubs him
down, wagging his wet head and remarking:

“Don’t be damned ridiculous, Percy, and pray
hold your peace, since I am at this moment composing
an ode to my mistress’s smile.”

“Your mistress be hanged, Sir! What know you
of love to sit in a tub and make verses to her?”

“I know enough of’t,” sighs the host, “to have
been in like case with yourself any time this twelve-month!
and ’tis a monstrous thing for you to thus
impeach me, when ’tis you whom My Lady Diana
favors rather than myself.”

“Lady Diana be damned!” cries Percy rising.
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
“She’s a coquette, Sir, and at bottom adores you,
as does the fish the bait the while she plays and
sidles ’round it, being sure in th’ end she’ll swallow
it, hook and all.”

“Very fine, i’ faith, yet while I sigh, you’re the
one she smiles upon. Oh, Percy! Had I but a
fortune! Could I but make my name in letters!
Then perchance I’d stand my chance; but as ’tis,”—Peg’s
twin fetches a sigh that sends the water
splashing about the wine-stained floor.

“As ’tis, Sir, counsel me, an you love me.
Shall I hie me to Kennaston and wait upon your
sister?”

“Write her a letter of fire and sword, and blood
and famine; stuff it full of oaths, protests, suicides,
murders, as is a Christmas pudding of
plums! There’s quill, ink and paper to your
hand.”

“I’ll do it and send it by Grigson on my fastest
horse this day. I should have the answer before
Friday?”

“Aye, you should,” allows the host with an evident
reservation. “Now, for God’s sake, Sir, stop
cackling and let me finish my ode.”
.bn 102.png
.pn +1

Which he did a-sitting in his bath, while Grigson
dressed his wig.

The toilet, and the letter, and the poem, were
all three finished at once, and, without more ado,
Sir Percy dispatched his man with the missive to
Lady Peggy.

“Come not back until you deliver it in person,”
quoth the lover; “an you show yourself minus an
answer, I’ll ship you to the Colonies by the next
packet.”

After seeing him off the two young men repaired
to the coffee-house they frequented, and there the
first news that greeted them was an account, exaggerated
to the last degree, as was the fashion of
those times as well as these, of “Lady D——
W——’s adventure with footpads in Lark Lane,
where her chair crossed en route to her mantua-maker’s;
of how Sir R——n McT——t had rescued
Her Ladyship and Her Ladyship’s Abigail
from the clutches of these villains at the hazard of
his own life; had, single-handed, put the whole
gang to flight; and this, although suffering from a
severe wound in the right wrist, the which this gallant
young scion of a noble name had received in
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
an affair of honor with Sir P——y de B——n only
that very night previous.” In point of fact gossip
cried, and print set forth, that “the town was ringing
with the valor of Sir R——n McT——t, whose
fame as a buck and man of fashion was no less
than his expertness at the saving of Beauty in distress.
For be it known that no other personage
than the renowned Beau B——l had set his seal
upon Sir R——n’s mould by begging from him
the pattern of his cravat and the mode of his
knot. That Sir R——n was now a guest at Mr.
B——l’s home, and, being up in town for the season,
let ladies fair beware and set their most adorable
caps, for ’twas well understood so fine a young
gentleman was nowhere else to be met with, nor
one of such courage and skill at cards, saddle, or
the dance.”

The which as he read it gave Sir Percy no great
food for congratulation, but the rather caused him
to sink into a kind of melancholy from which no
effort of his companion could arouse him. Like a
dullard he sat, staring at the print or the walls,
the livelong day, and far into the night, waiting
for Grigson’s return, and beside himself with a
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
silent jealous fury as each new entrance to the
coffee-room gave his own particular version of Sir
Robin’s vogue.

The real little Sir Robin, meanwhile, on his
journey down to Kennaston in search of My Lady
Peggy, had got some three hours’ start of the
faithful Grigson, and even now, he, for the first
time in his life, stood in the long, bare drawing-room
of Kennaston Castle, tip-toeing to the mirror,
pulling his wig this way and that in instant
expectation of beholding the object of his passion,
and rewarding her for her devotion to him, so
manifested in the person of the gentlemanly “Incognito”
of his last night’s experience.

Hark! Yes, her footstep on the stair, the swish
of female garments, a halt at the door. Sir Robin
minced the length of the room and, reaching the
entrance, found himself face to face with Chockey!

“Your mistress, bud, your mistress! Here!”
thriftily pressing a shilling into Chock’s palm.
“Go tell her I am consumed with impatience, and
eaten up with desire for a glimpse of Her Ladyship’s
form, and figure, and face. Go! Go!”

But Chockey does not budge.
.bn 105.png
.pn +1

“What ails the wench? Deaf?” cries Sir Robin,
pinching her arm, for which he gets back a smart
slap on his cheek.

“Tut! tut! What manners is that, and you
handsome enough to kiss,” adds the little Baronet
diplomatically. “Come now, off and implore Lady
Peggy to hasten.”

“Her Ladyship’s from home,” finally Chockey
says.

“What! Not at Kennaston?” Sir Robin’s sharp
eye can not help peering regretfully at the shilling
Chockey twirls in her fingers.

“In Kent, doubtless, a-visiting her godmother,
and a-hoping to see me there! eh, in Kent?”

“I don’t know, Sir,” replies the girl with a hint
of tears in her voice.

“Don’t know! What do you mean?” exclaims
Sir Robin suspiciously.

“I means, Sir,” fires up Chock, “that My Lady
ain’t by way of telling me her matters. His
Lordship, her father’s down with his leg; Her
Ladyship’s mother is a-visitin’ the sick in York.
As they supposes, Sir, Lady Peggy is in Kent,
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
also, a-visitin’ the sick, Her Ladyship’s godmother.”

Chockey curtsies and turns to the door, out of
which Sir Robin reluctantly goes, putting spurs
to his horse, dining at the Mermaid and then chartering
a post-chaise to take him, sans delay, to
Kent.

He crossed but one traveler on his way from
Kennaston Castle to the village inn; a man of stout
and comely build on a steed that took even Sir
Robin’s dull eye, so was its blood and lineage
marked in its long splendid gait.

This horseman too pulled rein at Kennaston,
sprang from his saddle, and, as Bickers hobbled
up to take his beast, Mr. Grigson, for ’twas he,
jumped up on the steps and caught Chockey’s
apron-string just as it was fluttering in the closing
door.

“Hey, missus!” cried he, twirling Chock about
and chucking her under the chin, which was rewarded
by as smart a slap as that which had erstwhile
burned Sir Robin’s cheek.

“I must see Lady Peggy Burgoyne on the spot,
without ceremony or a-waitin’ ’ere coolin’ my heels.
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
I’ve a letter for Her Ladyship meanin’ life and
death to my master, Sir Percy de Bohun.”

“Have you?” says Chock, looking with admiring
eyes upon the smart livery of Mr. Grigson,
dust and mud-stained though it was.

“Yes, straight from London town, where ’pon
my life, there’s no sweeter mug than hers I sees
before me now!”

“Lawk!” cries Chock, appeased. “But my mistress
is from home.”

“Not here! where is she then? A-visiting in
the neighborhood?” Mr. Grigson turns on his
heel and chirrups for his mount.

“No,” returns Chockey. “She ain’t.”

“Well, whereabouts is she? For if it’s as far as
the Injies, Grigson’s bound to find her and deliver
this love-letter!”

“I don’t know where she is, Sir,” whimpers
Chock.

“There, there! Don’t be a-cryin’ and a-sobbin’,
Duckie, I ain’t gone, yet! Go ask His Lordship
the address; bring me a mug of ale, and I’ll give
you a kiss.”

“Drat you, Sir,” cries Chockey. “Don’t you be
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
talkin’ like that!” Yet sidles she quite cozily in
the encircling arm of the admirable Grigson.

“His Lordship, nor Her Ladyship, nor no one
else knows where my mistress is.”

“What! eloped? Scuttled! Flown the nest!
When? How? Where?” cries Sir Percy’s man
thunder-struck. “She ain’t gone with Sir Percy!
Can it be with Sir Robin McTart?”

Chockey shook her head vigorously.

“Look a-here,” says Mr. Grigson, now regarding
the girl attentively. “Damme, but you knows
where she is. Tell me and I’ll give you two kisses
and ten pounds to boot.”

“Oh, Sir!” cries Chock, pushing away both kisses
and pounds with one and the same hand. “I does
know; leastways I knows my young lady’s up in
London, but whereabouts in that pit of sin and
willainy, I can’t say, nor who she’s with, nor how
long she’s goin’ to stop; only she charged me make
His Lordship and Her Lady mother believe she
was gone to Kent, back again to see her godmother.
There! I’ve been bursting to tell some
one, and you’ll swear you’ll keep it secret, won’t
you, Sir?”
.bn 109.png
.pn +1

Grigson obligingly nods and caresses Chock’s
arm.

“Thank the Lord it’s out o’ me!” adds she.

“Amen,” ejaculates Sir Percy’s man with
fervor, at the same time fixing a contemplative
and shrewd eye on his companion.

“Her Ladyship up in town,—where, with
whom, you doesn’t know; her father and mother
thinks she’s in Kent; and you’re cock-sure she
ain’t runned away with Sir Robin McTart?”

“That I am!” cries the girl, warmly. “Little
squint-eyed monster!”

“Eh?” exclaims Mr. Grigson, who had beheld
the supposed Sir Robin at Kennaston’s rooms the
night before last, and clearly recollected that no
such description fitted the slim, elegant, handsome
young buck who had got a prick in the wrist from
his own master’s rapier.

“Monster! I said,” repeats the girl. “Hist, I’ll
tell you more,” says she, drawing close, hand over
mouth. “You’ve seen the puppy. He was here
anon, a-askin’ and a-tearin’ as to where My Lady
was!”

Grigson stares.
.bn 110.png
.pn +1

“Aye, you must have met him on the road not
ten rods off the Castle gates, for, as you galloped
in, the undersized cockatrice cantered out. Lady
Peggy wed with him, indeed!”

Grigson is now (recalling his having crossed a
small squint-eyed gentleman as he came) morally
certain that Chockey has been well drilled in her
part, and that Lady Peggy has indeed run away
up to London with Sir Robin McTart. So much
for his thoughts; he says:

“I did. Fortunately I beheld the personage
what you describes. Your humble servant, missus.
I must be off and no time for love-makin’ to-day,”
turning quickly on his heel and tossing sixpence
to Bickers who holds his bridle at the stone.

“I ain’t ‘missus,’” remarks she plaintively.

“But you will be some day, lass, or my name
ain’t James Grigson. Here’s to you and many
thanks for putting me on the right track!”

“Tush, Sir! For the love of heaven and of anybody
else you thinks a deal of, find my young
lady!”

“Trust me,” flings Mr. Grigson from his saddle.
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
“I’ll find her and him as holds her in durance
wile!”

Kissing his fingers to Chockey, off puts Sir
Percy’s own man to the Mermaid; stables his
horse; hires a fresh one; claps spurs, and up to
town as fast as four spavined bay legs can carry
him, firmly convinced that he has solved the greater
portion of the mystery, and that his master’s
lady fair is indeed, beyond a doubt, the bride of the
gallant Sir Robin, or mayhap his unwilling prisoner.

.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='VII—In which is set down how My Lady is whisked off to a rout...'

.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>VII</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
VII
.if-

.nf c
<em>In which is set down how My Lady is whisked
off to a rout, willy-nilly, at the home
of her hated rival.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Mr. Brummell was a most shrewd and an altogether
kindly personage as well; he had easily, on
alighting from his carriage and assisting Lady
Peggy to do the same, espied the disreputable looking
parcel which the supposed son of his dear old
friend vainly tried to conceal; and the Beau was
not long of putting two and two together, and of
concluding that young Sir Robin had lost his all
at play, and had even perhaps pawned his wardrobe,—saving
the ill-looking bundle—for the price
of his last few days’ food. Therefore it was, that,
in the most obliging manner, he not only installed
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
Sir Robin in an elegant and spacious apartment,
but vowed he would at once send for both his tailor
and perruquier to wait upon him, and ended by
assuring his guest that his own man Tempers
would be up presently to make the young gentleman’s
toilet for him.

“Your pardon, Sir, Mr. Brummell,” quoth
Peggy, while her maiden heart set off at such a
race-horse flutter as it seemed must never quiet
down. “But, pray you, remember I am country-bred,
unused to town ways, have never had a man
to wait upon me in my life” (the solemn truth!)
“and should never know how to comport myself in
such altered conditions.”

The Beau shrugged his shoulders in the French
fashion, lifted his eyebrows, thought ’twas amazing
strange that Sir Hector’s son should have been
so ill educated; said:

“Your pleasure, Sir, whilst under my roof, shall
be mine; nor can I misdoubt but that one who has
had the genius to invent that tie is amply able to
array and perfume himself, even to the dressing
of his own wig.”

“You flatter, Sir, I protest!” answered the
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
guest. “I await with impatience the moment
when, in cleaner case, I may have the honor of
instructing you in the intricacies of the knot you
are good enough to admire.”

With any number of bows, the distinguished
host closed the door, and My Lady Peggy was
left to herself.

For a moment she stood quite still, her heart yet
a-clapping madly in her bosom, her eyes wandering
about the princely room in which she found
herself, and at last resting on the mirror wherein
was reflected her own slim figure, tricked out in
Kennaston’s suit of gray velvets, and in the yellow
wig, which was indeed the counterpart of the
real Sir Robin’s pate. Her countenance?—sure
none would recognize it since neither twin nor
quondam suitor had—was dark with the coffee-stains;
her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and
unaccustomed wine; her general aspect that of a
young gentleman very much the worse for whatever
his most recent experiences might have been.

Peg laughed, then she cried, then ran to the
door and fastened it securely; then untied her
bundle when out fell night-rail, green hood and
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
kerchief, powder, patch-box, lavender, musk, pins,
needles, red silken hose, Levantine gown, and veil
of Brussels lace. She shook the skirt out of its
wrinkles, laid off her wig and ’broidered waist-coat;
unpinned her long plaited hair from its coil,
and was stoutly making up her mind to brave all,
get into her petticoats, and confess everything to
Mr. Brummell. But, as she was about to wash
the dark stains from her face, comes there a “rap-a-tap”
at the door, and Peg, dropping the ewer,
calls out fiercely:

“Who’s there?”

“An it please you, Sir Robin, Mr. Brummell
bids me say to you that Mr. Chalk, the tailor, a
person of the best fashion, will have the honor of
waiting upon you for your measurements in a quarter
of an hour, if you’ll be pleased to see him then,
or later?”

Peg hesitated; there was a battle fought within
her those sixty seconds wherein all that was noblest
and best struggled and strove to know which was
the right thing to do; nor could she determine, save
that, at second thought of confiding her sex to Mr.
Brummell, it appeared to her she could not.
.bn 116.png
.pn +1

“I shall be ready to see Chalk, I thank you, in
fifteen minutes, more or less,” humming a tune
with elaborate carelessness, rolling up the Levantine,
the hood, veil, and night-rail into a ball, and
pitching them into the chest of drawers; disposing
the powder and perfumes and pins on the dressing-table;
throwing the needles and patches into the
fire; untying the kerchief and taking out soap,
scissors, brushes.

“’Tis clear as water, I’m to be a man yet
awhile,” whispered she. “Heaven grant it may not
be long! So!” seizing the scissors and shaking
out the locks. “Snip! clip, and away with you!
that I was once vain of, because a vile deceiver
named Percy vowed he loved you!”

And off came Peg’s hair, the which for silly
liking of she stuffed into the drawer beside the
Levantine and let fall a tear or two. Then snip,
clip again as she had often done for her twin; so
that, in no time at all, her head, with its short
curly locks brushed back at this side and that of
her broad forehead, had all the aspect of a man’s.

“There,” cried she, sweeping the last litter of
her black tresses into the flames. “An I be a gentleman,
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
I’ll be a gallant one. I sighed once to
taste the sweets of bein’ of t’other sex for only
one-half an hour.—Zounds! as daddy’d say, would
that I’d never quit my frocks. What hath it bettered
me? To behold with mine own eyes the
charms of her who’s routed me from his heart;
to hear him a-pledgin’ me just to please my brother,
and for the sake of spitin’ Sir Robin McTart;
to get myself into a position that makes me burstin’
with shame and feelin’ sure I can never hold
up my head again in this world. Me, that’s always
loathed a hoyden! and even have I the muscle of a
lad, and can I stride a horse, and jump any ditch
was ever dug,—yet, yet,—oh! How did I ever
bring myself to put on <em>these</em>?” And My Lady
Peggy slaps her breeches with a whack, and
promptly falls upon her knees a-praying for her
father and mother, and brother, and Sir Percy,
and Chock, and Bickers.

“And, Oh God, high up in Heaven, forgive me
for all my wilfulness and jealousy and foolhardiness,
and stealin’ my twin’s clothes; and deceit,
the which has got me into this foul station,
wherein I have told naught but lies—and I do
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
despise lies,—they are most disgustin’ and utterly
wicked. Forgive me for all the horrible sins I’ve
committed—”

Footsteps now resound in the corridor and the
voice of Mr. Brummell’s own man says blandly:

“This way, Mr. Chalk,” as he raps gently at the
door.

“—And for all those I shall have to commit!”
concludes Her Ladyship, as she springs to her feet
and unfastens the door, admitting the tailor <lang=fr><em>a
la mode</em></lang>.

That night, the suit of grays well brushed, her
wig re-curled, and her pocket-napkin richly perfumed,
her mother’s Brussels veil stripped up and
made into a cravat of so ravishing a device as
caused her host almost a spasm when he beheld
it, Sir Robin McTart sat at honor-place at dinner,
and was, to make a long story short, the cynosure
and toast of the occasion.

The duel with Sir Percy, the rescue of My Lady
Diana, the invention of a cravat, the nimble wit,
the handsome face, soon bespoke Peggy into a
favor, that, considering all other things, was well-nigh
incredible; and when, the following day; she
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
appeared in one of the suits Mr. Chalk had made,
with a dash of powder on her wig and a bronzed
complexion due to surreptitious purchase at the
players’ cosmetic shop in Drury Lane, of sundry
brown, red, and black pastes while making feint
of being a comedian, the satisfaction of her host
was unbounded.

“Robin, my boy,” said this one, with a side-glance
at his guest, “an you’re a bit short of
money, I’ll put a few hundreds to your account at
my banker’s. Young gentlemen will be wild and
spendthrift at times; London’s new to you I fancy,
and—”

“I thank you, Mr. Brummell, from my heart,”
returned Peg, “but I’ve three hundred pounds now
idle in my pocket. That will last me, I’m confident,
until I reach home, and, by your leave, I’m
thinking I’ll quit town this evening.”

But Mr. Brummell has no ears for any such
scheme. The Beau’s erratic fancy has not been
caught by a new object for the mere sake of losing
it; his joy in the dash and buoyancy, the originality
and naïvete of his latest discovery is genuine,
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
and no argument, of the very few Lady Peggy can
offer, but he breaks down at once.

“Zounds, Sir! Are you a fool, Sir? Your sire
was not one before you. To have half London a-talkin’
about you; all the prints a-chronicling your
movements; all the ladies a-dying for a glimpse of
you, and you only up in town these few days; and
a-proposing to go back and bury your talents for
tying Brussels, in Kent! Fie upon you, Sir! I
listen to no such whims. Here’s my basket loaded
with invitations for you already. Lady Brookwood’s
rout to-night!” with a sly glance at Peg’s
really blushing face; “Lady Diana Weston’s mother,
as you are doubtless aware? The Charity Bazaar
at Selwyn’s to-morrow; dinner at Holland House;
Almacks’s, and my own little plan for next Thursday
which is an outing to my seat in Surrey a-horseback;
dinner, bowls, a look over the stables,
and home by the light o’ the moon. ‘Back to Kent,’
forsooth! No, Sir, not yet.”

A few hours later, as Lady Peggy got into her
magnificent suit of crimson satin, gold embroidered;
as she beheld her image in the glass and
caught the hilt of her sword in her hand, the blood
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
that surged over her face and throat was ruby-red;
and, at her wits’ ends for what to do, the girl’s tears
forced themselves to her eyes once again.

She was to be off soon to Lady Brookwood’s; here
she should encounter not only Lady Diana, but
doubtless Percy himself; mayhap Kennaston, if he
had been able to get him a decent coat to wear in
place of the gray velvets! Doubtless, too, all those
others she had met in Lark Lane.

For the hundredth time she cast wildly about in
her mind as to how she could, now at this present
moment, rid herself of the hated disguise, get into
her Levantine, get home to her mother’s arms, hide
her head forever, and never, no never! look into
face of man again!

But Peggy saw no road. Every path seemed
barred, save those that would forever damn her in
the eyes of foes and friends alike.

“Oh,” cried she in desperation. “How easy ’tis
to get into breeches, a coat, a waist-coat, and a wig,
but God ha’ mercy! will I ever be able to get out
of ’em?”

It is to be put down to the credit of My Lady
Peggy’s up-bringing in the country with most
.bn 122.png
.bn 123.png
.bn 124.png
.pn +1
times only a lad for her playmate, that now she bore
herself with not only a fine ease and grace, but also
with as splendid a swagger and daring as any
young macaroni that carried a sword.

“An I’m to be a man, I’ll be one!” cried she,
“and if Lady Diana ogles, lud! I’ll give as good as
she sends. Little him as I love’ll know, ’tis of his
sometime Peggy he’ll be jealous!”

So it was with a prodigious fine flutter of her
napkin and a mightily impudent twirl of her eye-glass
(purchased not two hours since), that Her
Ladyship made her bows and kissed the finger-tips
of Lady Brookwood’s handsome daughter.

“I am your most grateful, Sir Robin!” cried this
one, “and more pleased than I can express to welcome
you. I only regret that Lord Brookwood is at
Brookwood Hall, and not here to thank you for
rescuing his daughter.” And so forth and on, with
presentations to a dozen of fine ladies, dowagers and
damsels, and a precious lot of fine gentlemen; and
it seemed to Peggy, in her simplicity, as if the whole
of Mayfair were a-bowing and scraping and making
her out a hero,—which indeed was not far off
the fact.

.il id=i_112fp fn=i_112fp.jpg w=347px ew=80% alt='Two watched her as she came in...'

.bn 125.png
.pn +1

Two watched her as she came in on Beau Brummell’s
arm. These were Sir Percy and Kennaston;
one green with anxiety for Grigson’s return from
his errand, jumping at every sound; having left
word both at Lark Lane, his coffee-house, as well as
at home where he had gone, that Grigson should report
to him at once he arrived; the other green
with envy of Peggy and any other who neared his
divinity, yet afraid and too diffident to approach
her closer than with the devouring gaze of his
eyes.

“That damned puppy again!” cries Percy, under
his breath, as he surveys Peg in her satins. “By
Gad, Sir, every lady in the room’s turning spite
eyes on t’other, your incomparable Diana included,
for fear he won’t stop and pay her a compliment.”

“Ah,” sighs the young poet. “Percy, an you
loved like me ’twould be bliss to even gaze upon
your fair. Think you I dare make bold now to
cross and make my bow?”

“Why not?” returns the other gloomily. “Forgive
my humor, Kennaston. Truth is, Sir, I’m
mad, mad for Peg, and my ears are cracking and
my brain splitting until that rascal, Grigson, gets
.bn 126.png
.pn +1
back with answer to my letter. He’s been gone
long enough to have made the journey four times
over!”

“Oh, Percy,” returns Peg’s twin. “I love you
as a brother, an could I but physic Your Lady
into complaisance, I’d give my life for it. What
owe I not to you?” adds the young man with deep
feeling. “You’ve fed me, and zooks! Sir, to-night
you’ve clothed me, for since the scurvy knaves that
frightened Lady Di stole my suit of grays and my
sword and hat, what had I left? Where would I
be now, were’t not for you?”

“Tush, Ken, lad, I love you for yourself,—and
ten thousand times more for her sake. Ken, I
love her so that as I told her, if Sir Robin were a
better man I’d cry off, an she said she loved
him.”

“What said she?”

“Not that she loved him, but that she might,”
he continues with sadness, as his eyes follow Peg
on her almost royal progress about the drawing-rooms.
“’Tis a proper fellow, enough, and I’d
always heard he was a fright and a coward.”

Kennaston presently took heart of grace and
.bn 127.png
.pn +1
crossed to pay his duty to Lady Diana, who, ’twas
plain to be seen by every other than this bashful
swain, was by no means the indifferent to him she
would feign play off. Her color came and went as
Kennaston, blushing to match his lady, ventured to
spout his ode to her; and, leaving the pair to gallop
on this pleasant path, Sir Percy at a distance unconsciously
followed Lady Peggy, at least with his
gaze.

Peggy meantime, denying right and left the
story of her prowess, with quips and jests and ogles
of the fair, still kept her eye on Percy. Not yet had
she seen him approach Lady Diana; yet hold!
even now, catching her own gaze fixed upon him,
he turned and was presently bending over the little
beauty’s fingers.

A pang shot through Peg’s heart, and the tears
were like to force their way; she made an excuse
and left the long drawing-room, taking refuge in a
small apartment where the tables were ready for
cards. She sank into a chair and buried her face
in her hands. The candles were not yet lighted
and she was totally unobserved. Dashing the salt
drops from her lashes with her hand,—
.bn 128.png
.pn +1

“What am I!” she cried in her bitterness, “that
I can not abide to even see him a-bending over her
hand! Ain’t you no spirit, Peg? No pride? He’s
not thinking of you, my dear; didn’t he say plain,
if Sir Robin was the better man he’d give up to
him! What kind of a suitor’s that, Peg? Lud!
I’d not give up him to any one, whether they were
my betters or no!”

Could My Lady but have postponed her exit for
a few brief moments she would have beheld Sir
Percy, at a word in his ear from a footman, quit
Lady Diana’s side with but the smallest ceremony,
dash out into the vestibule, seize with a vice-like
grip the man who stood there pale and trembling,
and gasp out:

“At last! the letter, the letter?”

Grigson shook his head and got even whiter.

“No letter?” Percy says in a dazed way.

“Only your own, Sir Percy,” handing back the
missive. “Her Ladyship was from home, Sir.”

“Well, what of that! you infernal, damned
rascal, did I not command you seek her, if ’twere
at the other end of the world!”

“Aye, Sir, and the quickest way of settin’ about
.bn 129.png
.pn +1
findin’ Her Ladyship was for me to get back to
town, Sir, as fast as the cursed beast I was cheated
into hirin’, Sir, would fetch me.”

“Speak out, for God’s sake! Is Her Ladyship up
in London?” asked Sir Percy, actually shaking
with impatience and astonishment.

Grigson nods and without more ado proceeds to
give an exact if somewhat rambling account of his
entire experiences, from the moment he had
quitted his master until the present.

’Twere idle to attempt to describe Sir Percy’s
state of mind. Up to now there had ever lingered
in his heart the hope, nay, one of those unconscious
beliefs men have, that in the end Peggy would be
his. This news that Grigson brought crushed
every such thought from his brain, but put in its
place such a hatred of the young man now tasting
the sweets of hero-worship (in little), in the adjoining
room, as caused his fingers to itch for his
steel and t’other’s flesh to meet once more, and to
the death.

He drew Grigson in from the vestibule and, unobserved
in the crush, down the corridor to the
.bn 130.png
.pn +1
darkness of the card-room where Peggy still sat
disconsolate in her far-off corner.

She, for the moment, is even unconscious that
any one has entered until the voices arrest her attention.

“By Gad!” Sir Percy cries in a low tone, falling
into a seat and clapping his brow. “Up in London!
The woman, vowing Sir Robin had crossed
your entrance, inquiring for Her Ladyship! Your
meeting, not Sir Robin, but an ill-conditioned little
popinjay with squint eyes and of the height of
the dwarf that waits upon my Lady Brookwood?”

“Aye, Sir Percy,” returns Grigson. “No more
like Sir Robin, which, Sir, begging your honor’s
parding, is a very pretty young nobleman, with a
good eye and a proper height.”

Sir Percy nods.

“Then,” speaking as if to himself and motioning
the man away, “since she’s up in town without
her parents’ knowledge and with a cock-and-bull
story stuck into her Abigail’s mouth, it must be
she’s eloped with the scoundrel out of Kent!”

Grigson going, ventures to ask: “Any more
.bn 131.png
.pn +1
h’orders, Sir Percy? Will I cover the town, all
the inns and taverns, Sir?”

The young man shakes his head and the servant
bows himself away.

.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 132.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='VIII—Wherein Lady Peggy picks a very pretty quarrel...'

.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>VIII</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
VIII
.if-

.nf c
<em>Wherein Lady Peggy picks a very pretty quarrel
with her presumed rival: and is
later bid to Beau Brummell’s
levee in her night rail.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
At this precise moment Lady Peggy, scarce able
to contain herself longer and, reckless of every possible
consequence, being about to cast herself upon
her quondam lover’s protection, and to be rid forever
of being a man, is stopped short of her purpose
by the words that now fall slowly from the
young man’s lips.

“To deceive! to lie! to scheme! and plot, and
bring shame and trouble upon her father and
mother! Gad’s life!” Sir Percy brings his
clenched hand down with a thump upon the card-table.
.bn 133.png
.pn +1
“I had never believed that of Peggy! I’d
have felled him that had hinted she could even
plan a lie, or run off to a secret marriage with the
best man that lives.”

At which speech My Lady’s color burned as
never before since she was born, and her choler
rose at the double charge, both the one that was
true as to her deceit, and the one that was not as
to her secret nuptials.

Palpitating with rage and wounded sensibility,
with remorse and wretchedness; brought to bay
with a situation she could not endure, Peg now
utterly forgot her breeches or her shame at these,
and, stepping boldly forth into the small circle of
light shed in at the doorway, from the candles in
the corridor, she saluted Sir Percy and spoke:

“I bid you good-evening, Sir Percy de Bohun,
and, having had either the good, or the ill fortune
to unintentionally overhear your remarks concerning
Lady Peggy Burgoyne, I feel it my duty and
pleasure alike to defend her from the unjust and
unworthy attack which you, Sir, have just been
pleased to make.”

“Sir Robin McTart!” exclaims Percy, with a
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
start and in a prodigious anger. “I deny your
charges, Sir, and would remind you that eaves-droppers
are ever the cumberers of dangerous
ground.”

“Sir!” responds Lady Peggy, her temper rising
the more at the sense of the injustice and falseness
of her whole tenure. “You coupled just now the
name of a lady with that of Sir Robin McTart. I
demand how you dare to assume such a responsibility,
Sir, until at least either the lady in question,
or I, gives you our confidence, or our leave.”

“‘Our’ forsooth! ‘Our!’” comes fiercely from
between Sir Percy’s clenched teeth, while his hand
flies to his sword-hilt.

“Why the devil, Sir—an you’ve been so lucky
as win the lady for your bride—make off with her
i’ the dark, shut her up in some unfindable hole?
cheat her parents, and go strutting like some vain
peacock up and down other ladies’ drawing-rooms?
Be a man, Sir, and publish your triumph broadcast,
nor let the town presently go gossiping and
countryside wagging with the scandal of an elopement!
Zounds! Sir Robin McTart, that!” flipping
a stray card from the table almost in Her Ladyship’s
.bn 135.png
.pn +1
face, “for your gallantry and your honor!”

“What do you mean, Sir?” cries Peggy, struck
with horror all a-heap, and with terror as well, yet
keeping up a brave show with her drawn rapier
and sparkling eyes.

“Whatever you damned please, Sir,” returns
Percy, now white-heat too, and most reckless of
time or place.

“I’ve too much regard for Lady Peggy, Sir, not
to postpone the climax of this matter until our
next meeting, let it be when you see fit!” cries Peg
with woman’s wit and wisdom too.

“’Slife, Sir, I ask you as one gentleman to another,
nay, I implore it of you,” cries Sir Percy,
rent betwixt choler, love and apprehension, “most
humbly, is Lady Peggy your wife?”

Her Ladyship was now like to laugh, so near
akin are mirth and sorrow, but she replied very
loftily:

“I decline to discuss the matter, Sir, and would
remind you that report hath your attentions engaged
in quite another direction.”

“You know where Lady Peggy Burgoyne is at
.bn 136.png
.pn +1
this moment?” says Sir Percy hotly, determined
to push his matter to its ending this very night,
and almost crazed by his passion and its balking.

“That I do, Sir,” returns Her Ladyship with a
covert smile.

“Tell me, or I’ll brain you where you stand.”
Percy makes an ugly lunge at his opponent with
his fist, but merely as a threat.

“That will I not,” says she firmly.

What might have further ensued is, at this
crisis, put out of the question by the entrance of
Kennaston, who, espying Percy the first, cries out
joyfully:

“Percy, Percy, Lady Diana hath given me leave
to tell you she consents—”

“Tush, Sir!” interrupts Percy, jerking his head
toward the other occupant of the room. “Sir Robin
McTart and I have come near to blows, and must
fight of a surety, on the subject of your sister, Sir;
and ’tis for you to know without more delay that
Lady Peggy is up in London, unknown to her parents;
that Sir Robin hath her whereabouts and
absolutely refuses to reveal the same.” Percy
.bn 137.png
.pn +1
crosses the room, strikes a tinder and lights the
candles on the mantel-shelf.

“You are cursedly badly mistook, gentlemen,
both of you,” says Kennaston, quietly enough. “I’ve
got a letter which I found upon my table this very
night, just come from my sister at Kennaston,”
with which her twin pulls My Lady’s most ill-spelled
and crumpled missive from his pocket and
holds it up before the four astonished eyes that are
staring at it.

Peggy in amaze recognizes the letter she had
written to her brother the day long since in the
buttery, and which she had taken up to town in her
reticule and must have dropped when she had paid
her ill-starred visit to Kennaston’s chambers in
Lark Lane.

“Frowse, the charwoman’s daughter, vowed she’d
found it a-lying in the entry under the water-tub.
There’s an end of your dispute, Sirs, I trust,”
glancing from one to the other. “Come, come, Sir
Percy, and you, Sir Robin, whom indeed the letter
you brought me from Lady Peggy the other night
doth most highly commend to my good offices,
must be friends,” taking a hand of each. “Nor let
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
Dame Rumor split ye asunder with her lies about
my little twin’s being up in town. Gadzooks, Sirs,
the child’s not a notion of a difference betwixt Mayfair
and—Drury Lane! I beg of you, Mr. Brummell,”
as this one now comes mincing in together
with Lord Escombe, Sir Wyatt, Mr. Jack Chalmers
and others for their game, “for you’ve the graces
I lack in such matters.—These two gallants have
had a difference, and ’tis you, Mr. Brummell, can
set ’em straight again.”

“Cards! cards! Spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts,”
exclaims the Beau, touching the Queen of Hearts
with the toe of his high-heeled shoe, as it lies on
the floor where it was shot from Sir Percy’s hand.

“Split me! but ’tis them that are at the bottom
of every quarrel, Sirs; whisk me, but if a spade,
or a club, or a heart, provided it be a lady’s, or a
diamond, which the Jews have a lien on, ain’t the
only causes for disagreement in this world!”

“Correct as your own toilet, Sir!” cries Wyatt.

“Now, ’twas hearts of course, damn ’em, and the
queen of ’em that’s roused both your tempers, but
for God’s sake, gentlemen,” taking now the hand
of each which has slipped clear of Kennaston’s
.bn 139.png
.pn +1
fingers, “bethink you, if the lady, whose name I
can’t even guess, whom you both adore, stood here,
what would her pleasure be, Robin, my lad, answer
me, for of brawling there can be none here and
fighting no more. Speak, Sir!”

“Faith!” answered Lady Peggy, with splendid
valor and a rise in her color and her heels, “to
my certain knowledge the lady’d have her name put
out of the matter wholly, and she’d sooner die, Sir,
than have any fighting over her preferences, by
either Sir Percy de Bohun or Sir Robin McTart.”

The which being taken to be, by all present, a
most prodigious and amazing gentlemanlike and
politic speech, Sir Percy was feign accept, mock-smile
and bow, while all the rest blew their lungs
hollow applauding and praising his still hated and
still suspected rival.

Peace restored outwardly, whatever else raged
in the breasts of the two opponents, the gallants
sat to their tables, Kennaston managing to whisper
to Sir Percy across the deal:

“As I was telling you when I entered, Percy,
Lady Di permits me to let you know she consents
to my dedicating the ode to her, and Lillie, at the
.bn 140.png
.pn +1
corner of Beanford Buildings in the Strand, hath
engaged to publish it at once!”

But this, Lady Peggy, at a distant table, engaged
in picquet with His Grace of Escombe, hears not;
there rings in her ears naught save the words Kennaston
uttered when he came into the card-room—“Lady
Diana hath given me leave to tell you she
<em>consents</em>.”

“Consents!” To what else but his suit? Which,
egged on by his noble uncle, has been pushing any
time these ten years, since boy and girl Sir Percy
and Lady Di had played, ridden, romped, quarreled
as brother and sister together.

“Consents!”

It echoes and resounds in Her Ladyship’s head
over and over again the night through, and ’tis
quite of a piece with her mood that she seeks out
Lady Diana when tea and cakes are passing, and,
with sly looks, congratulates Her Ladyship on the
happiness she has this night conferred on a very
gallant gentleman not so many miles away!

And quite in Lady Diana’s line of reasoning,
having heard from Kennaston that Sir Robin has
come up to town highly commended to him by his
.bn 141.png
.pn +1
sister, and that, although he had been sorely jealous
and distraught at the said Sir Robin’s good
fortune in the matter of the rescue of Her Ladyship,
he still believed him to be head over heels
in love with his twin, etc., etc., etc., and so, Her
Ladyship argued, Kennaston had doubtless confided
to the said Sir Robin such tokens of her
favor as the said Lady Diana had that evening
seen fit to manifest; never for a moment misdoubting
that any other swain was in the supposed
Robin’s mind any more than he was in her own!

“<em>Consents!</em>”

’Twas reverberating in Peg’s ears and a-knocking
at her heart for the hundredth time, when, returned
to the card-room, she learned that Mr.
Brummell was inviting the company for the Thursday
to his seat Ivy Dene. ’Twas to be a gentlemen’s
party only; out on horseback, the twenty
miles, leaving the White Horse at ten in the morning,
with luncheon en route at the Merry Rabbit
at Market Ossory; a look over the stables and paddocks
on arriving at Ivy Dene,—a quiet game,
maybe, and such a dinner as only, the Beau swore,
.bn 142.png
.pn +1
his country cook could get up; with the ride back
to town by the light of the near-full moon.

Lady Peggy was soon made aware that this festivity
was solely in her honor, and succumbed to
it as cheerfully as she might.

God keep her! All the while staring at the ribbon
of her twin’s wig, a-longing to cast her arms
about his neck and pray him cover her up in his
wraprascal and fetch her home; vowing she’d run
away from ’em all the next minute, but where?
How? Which way could it be done so that capture,
discovery, and humiliation would not follow?
Peggy could contrive no method, and the girl was
literally terrified both at the prospect before her
and by the realization that easy as it had been to
jump into man’s attire ’twas well-nigh impossible
to get out of it again. Should she on returning
to Peter’s Court lay off her satin suit, wig, and
rapier, and resume her Levantine gown, hood, petticoats,
patches, and reticule, how and of what hour
of the day or night could she in safety leave the
mansion and find her way unsuspected to the
King’s Arms and the coach? ’Twould be out of
the question; servants were up and about at all
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
hours, and were a woman seen emerging from her
room, what piece of scandal would not the next
day ring from one end of the town to t’other.

With “consents” tattooing in her brain, My Lady
recklessly put all the heart there was left in her
into the present moment, lost a hundred pounds
to Escombe with a fine grace; won five hundred
with no more ado; laughed, drank a little wine,
went home with her host at four in the morning,
and fell heavily asleep.

At two of the afternoon the Beau usually held
an informal levee attended by the more noted of
the bucks and macaronis of the town; vastly entertaining
half hours, wherein, while soundly abusing
the newspapers for their being stuffed with
lies, the company still eagerly devoured every scrap
of gossip they contained; where the amount of frizz
towering above Lady This’s brow was measured
and scanned, the better appearance of Lady That
in the new-fashioned gown discussed; and the horrid
aspect of the Hon. Miss So and So’s toupee and
her general resemblance to a malt-sack tied in the
middle, talked over. This couplet and that comedy
were torn to pieces by as many pretty wits as
.bn 144.png
.pn +1
chanced to be present, while Tempers dressed his
master’s wig in a corner and a footman and a
negro page handed chocolate round in silver trays.

The Beau, himself, reclined on his great bedstead
with its fine tester, a half dozen of pillows
richly laced at his head; a flowered gown about his
shoulders, his night-cap on, a coverlet embroidered
by the Chinese over him, his snuff-box at hand,
reading aloud from the damp and freshly arrived
print whilst Sir Wyatt, Lord Escombe, Mr. Jack
Chalmers, and a dozen more sat or stood, cup in
fingers, ’twixt lip and saucer, hearkening, eager,
to the news.

“’Tis by this on the tip of every tongue in town
that there occurred last night at Lady B——d’s
rout an encounter (the second within a se’ennight),
betwixt Sir P——y de B——n and a certain young
gentleman from Kent whose handsome face, genteel
manners, and dashing behavior, have conspired
to place him in so brief a time at the very height
of favor in society, and more especially in the eyes
of Lady D——a W——n. It had been supposed
that the affair recounted in these pages as having
taken place in the chambers of Lord K——n of
.bn 145.png
.pn +1
K——n was on account solely of the above mentioned
adorable young scion of a noble house. We
are in a position to assure the world of fashion
that such is not the case, and that both the unfortunate
disputes betwixt these two gallants are to
be laid to the door of Lady P——y B——e, sister
to Lord K——n. Report hath it that Her Ladyship
is in London; rumor contradicts report and
avers that the fair one has not stirred from home.
The issue is awaited with interest, as the verbatim
account of an unsuspected elopement may be
looked for at any moment. Safe to say the vivacious
Lady P——y B——e, whom the town hath
never had the pleasure of beholding, has succeeded
in stirring Mayfair to its depths and has been
the cause already of a very pretty pair of quarrels
between two young gentlemen of the first quality.”

“’Slife!” cried Beau Brummell. “Who now
the devil’s Lady P——y?”

“By the dragon, himself, I never heard that
Kennaston had a sister!” said Lord Wootton and
Mr. Vane at once.

“Yes!” exclaims Sir Wyatt, tapping his forehead,
.bn 146.png
.pn +1
recollectively, “I do recall that Sir Robin
McTart, the night we were at Kennaston’s chambers,
entered with the presentation of a letter of
introduction from ‘Lady Peggy Burgoyne to her
brother,’ and ’sdeath! ’twas, I believe, she about
whom they fought, too!”

“Ha! ’tis not only Lady Di, then, that’s at the
bottom of their quarrel after all,” says Mr. Brummell,
reflectively.

“Where is the fair one?” asks Escombe. “Who
knows that?”

“Faith! no one. Stop! Sir Robin must know,
since ’tis for her he unsheathes twice in a week,”
cries the host.

“Where is he?”

“Bring him in!”

“Send for Sir Robin!” is the cry of the company.

“Zooks! Sirs, but our reputations as gallants
are broken up, an we’ve not seen her of whom the
prints speak thus!” says the Beau, adding at once:

“Tempers, my compliments to Sir Robin McTart,
and beg of him to join us, for, at the least,
a few moments. I know he’s averse to early rising,
.bn 147.png
.pn +1
but pray inform him to skip across in his
dressing-gown and slippers, and night-cap, we’ve
no ladies here about to ogle him!”

The which message being conveyed to My Lady
Peggy a-sitting by the pulled-out chest of drawers,
mournfully contemplating her long shorn tresses
with barred door, arouses in her such a fever of
sorrow as well-nigh chokes her utterance.

“Say to Mr. Brummell I’m asleep, Tempers,
and crave to know his pleasure, the answer to
which I’ll send as faithfully as Morpheus will
permit, by you for Mercury! Off with you!” and
Her Ladyship softly stroked her locks, and for the
thousandth time went planning her escape.

Peels of laughter, rattling of rapiers, click of
heels, and now—

“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!” on the door.

“McTart! McTart! Up with you from betwixt
coverlets and into your Persian quilt!”

“Out with ye, Sir Robin, or by Gad! Sir, we’ll
in, the fifteen of us! and rout you up from
Morpheus’s arms.”

“Come, Sir Robin, dally no longer with sweet
sleep; up, Sir, and bethink you of Beauty spelled
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
with a P-E-G-G-Y!” shouts Sir Wyatt, chorused
by the rest.

At first clap of voices Peggy stuck her hair back
into the drawer, jumped up, and stood, hand upon
the dressing-table, her expression like nothing else
so much as that of a fawn caught in a thicket.

“’Sdeath! Gentlemen, I pray of you, a few
moments grace!” cries she, trembling from the
knees down, for ’tis quite of the temper of the
manners of the day that in a second more the
whole company should batter down the mahogany
and burst in.

“Three-and-thirty, an you like, Sir Robin!” says
Escombe, who is soberer than the rest.

“Give us the whereabouts of Lady Peggy Burgoyne,”
shouts Mr. Chalmers, “and we’ll trouble
you no more ’til doomsday!”

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne!”

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne!”

“Where’s Lady Peggy Burgoyne?”

“Where’s Lady Peggy Burgoyne?”

“Where is the fair one for whom you and Sir
Percy de Bohun have fought with blades and
tongues, twice now, since this day last week?”
.bn 149.png
.pn +1

“Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” cried they in hot concert,
joined in most lustily by the Beau from his
bed across the corridor, and accompanied by the
pounding of fifteen rapier points on the parquet,
and thirty fists on the woodwork, as well as the
demoniacal screams of the Beau’s little negro and
the parrot on his wrist.

“Tell us where she is!” came high staccato last
from Sir Wyatt’s exhausted lips.

“My Lords and Gentlemen!” answers Her
Ladyship, standing close to the door enveloped
from top to toe in a sheet over her night-rail.
“Would to God I could!”

There was a ring of heartfelt truth in the reply,
and its utterance was succeeded by a second’s surprised
pause.

The young bucks regarded each other with
shrugs, pursed mouths, and interrogation points
bristling in their eyes.

Mr. Chalmers, recovered of his surprise sooner
than the others, says:

“Do you mean to say, Sir Robin, that the whereabouts
of the lady with whose name the prints
and the coffee-houses are ringing; for whose sake
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
you came near to fighting Sir Percy only last night,
and did fight him in Lark Lane o’ Thursday last,
ain’t known to you?”

“Is she in London?” pipes the Beau, pinching
the little black till he squeaks again.

“That I can not tell,” responds Her Ladyship.
“I do know she’s not in Kent; and she’s not at
Kennaston Castle. ’Slife! Sirs,” adds she, “I
pray your consideration. Guess what you will;
this matter of Lady Peggy sticks me closer than
you dream, and I’d give my life to know her safe
at home with her mother.”

Silence ensues; the disappointed fifteen get
them back to the Beau’s bedside to talk over this
latest development as to the mysterious Lady
Peggy.
.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='IX—In the which Lady Peg overhears a horrible plot to murder...'

.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>IX</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
IX
.if-
.nf c
<em>In the which Lady Peg overhears a horrible
plot to murder; and wherein
Mr. Incognito encountereth
Sir Robin.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
She herself falls into such an immediate flood
of tears as shakes her well, and then up she rises
from her depths, and with all the courage of her
race and blood, she vows that, come another sunset
she will quit Peter’s Court as if for a walk,
and never return; that in small clothes, since it
must be, she will journey back to Kennaston
Castle, and risk all the discomfiture and disgrace
her doing so may bring upon her.

In point of fact, My Lady Peggy was at that
state of mind when it seemed to her no degradation
.bn 152.png
.pn +1
or humiliation, no sorrow that could be visited
upon her, would be too much punishment, or
enough, for the sins without number she had committed
since the luckless day she took the coach
for town.

When she emerged from her room for dinner,
’twas to learn that Mr. Brummell had been summoned
hastily to St. James’s on so important an
affair as to initiate His Royal Highness into the
mysteries of the new tie of Sir Robin’s own invention!
and that he trusted in this audience to obtain
permission to fetch Sir Robin to the Palace and
present him within a few days to several august
personages, etc., etc., etc.

Her Ladyship, therefore, dined alone, scantily
too; food choked her, wine burned her throat, and
to speak truth she was heartily glad not to have
to drink it, for Her Ladyship was an abstemious
young lady and believed milk, Bohea and Pekoe the
beverages for her sex, to the exclusion of any
stronger.

At twilight, having made her duds and her
tresses up into a reputable enough parcel, Lady
Peggy, in a suit of claret velvet, leaving all the
.bn 153.png
.pn +1
rest of her man’s attire hanging in the presses,
sauntered carelessly out of the house, declining
the footman’s offer of a chair, or even a hackney
chaise, or a page to carry her parcel, and set off at
a swinging pace across the square and toward the
river. It was her intention, by way of frustrating
any attempts at tracing her which might be set
afoot, the discovery of her flight once made, to so
double on her own tracks, and to seek out such unimagined
and unlikely streets to traverse, as must
puzzle both bell-man, watch, and redbird alike, as
well as her acquaintances.

She swaggered along toward St. Stephen’s where
a coach containing quality was occasionally met
even now; then down Horseferry Road, almost to
the river’s bank; then along Jackanapes Row, with
little idea of the cut-throat locality she was haunting;
back again toward better neighborhoods; then
a lurch to the Thames making into Farthing Alley
and Little Boy Yard, at the end of which she
found herself at the old Dove Pier.

Peg stood still, her heart beating both with her
quick walk, and at the strangeness of all that surrounded
her. She had no fear, because her arm
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
was stout, her aim sure, pistols at her belt and a
good sword at her side; and she was perfectly
ignorant of any harm here to be found, greater
than at the door of Beau Brummell’s house.

The dark dwellings of the yard frowned at one
another, with not an ell of sky to share between
’em at their roofs; the sign of the “Three Cups”
swung and creaked in the slow breeze; the river,
black and gruesome, lapped at the foot of the
stone pile against which she leaned. On the river
the tired bargemen rested at their oars, and the
dip of a water-bird was the only sound that struck
upon her ear. Peggy was casting about in her
mind whether to enter the inn and inquire her
road to the King’s Arms in the Strand, and had
just turned to do so, when in the cavernous doorway
of one of the gaunt-looking tenements she
beheld three figures. The faces of two were toward
her, and by the light of the fish-oil lamp swinging
at the next-door tavern, she beheld them, so sinister
and forbidding as to cause her to halt for a space,
and then, overcoming her dread, to pursue her
path, but slowly and by crossing the yard.

As she did so, her weapon caught in her heel
.bn 155.png
.pn +1
and as she bent to disengage it, a voice speaking
in low muffled tones arrested her gait.

It was the voice of Sir Robin McTart saying:

“If I make it ten guineas apiece on the spot,
you swear to leave him cold on the pier yonder,
come Sunday night, or to tie a stone about his
throat and throw him into the river?”

“Aye, aye,” grunts one of the two companions
of this most valorous gentleman. “’E’s h’always
’ulkin ’ereabouts o’ Sunday nights.”

Lady Peggy, with such a pull-string of terror
at her heart as she never had before, draws closer
to the wall of the tenement before which she has
halted, creeps nearer to the portal wherein these
cavaliers are quartered.

“Let it be five guineas apiece to-night,” squeaks
the Baronet, “and the remainder when the business
is done?”

“The devil knock you into hell with your, ‘when
the business is done!’” mutters the other. “We’s
doin’ your job for you for little enough. Tain’t
everyone as’d h’undertake the funeral of a h’Earl’s
heir like Sir Percy de Bohun——”

Her Ladyship’s like now to fall in a swoon; but
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
not she; only leans she a bit against the bricks,
her bosom heaving, her eyes dilating, her lips bitten
in until they are almost bleeding.

“Hush-h-h! no names, you varlets!” interrupts
Sir Robin.

“Hey?” responds the other, “the walls ain’t got
no h’ears, and if they ’ad wot I’m a-sayin’s the
cussid truth, eh, Bloksey?”

Bloksey grunts.

“The town’ll be afire when it’s out that a gallant
like ’im that’s heir to Lord Gower’s been done
fer; and then, my fine gentleman, who’s to pay
for’t, if we’s caught and if we ’appens to be seen
by any one when we’re a doin’ of your job? No,
money all down now, or Sir Percy lives as long as
’e likes, for us!”

Peg’s hand’s upon the hilt of her sword.

Shall she spring and run Sir Robin through?

Shall she hide and buy the rascals out at a higher
price than he has paid?

But no sooner do these thoughts rush through
her brain than the utter impossibility of compassing
the one, or of performing the other, undetected,
if even with her life, and she so at the mercy
.bn 157.png
.pn +1
of these cut-throats, comes to steady her, and she
realizes that her only part is to get away as fast
as she may, and unseen if she can.

Meantime Sir Robin concludes his bargain with
the two desperadoes, and as they withdraw into
their haunt, and he turns on his heel, he espies
Lady Peggy rounding the corner with her bundle
under her arm. The little Baronet with a sidelong
glance in at the hallway to make sure his men are
out of sight, darts to the opposite side of the court
on tiptoe, and then, putting hands to mouth, calls
across softly, but clearly, in a tone half of joy, half
anger.

“Mr. Incognito! Mr. Incognito! Ho! I say,
Incognito!”

Peg stops short. ’Twere wiser perhaps to try
to discover what had put Sir Robin McTart up to
the murder.

“By Gad, Sir!” cries this one, making a dash
now over to Peg’s side of the way. “Here have I
scoured the town for you day and night, and no
trace of you anywhere! ‘Incognito’ me no more,
Sir! Who are you, Sir? Damme! I’ll stand no
more such nonsense!” Sir Robin’s valor’s thoroughly
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
based on the knowledge that, were blade to
be unsheathed to his hurt, he could and would
shout for his hirelings to the rescue.

’Twas the first and only time in his life that he
was ever known to urge, or even hint, a quarrel <lang=la><em>in
propria persona</em></lang>.

“I’ll ‘incognito’ you to the end of the chapter,
Sir Robin McTart,” answers Lady Peggy, clapping
hand to hilt.

“Very well, Sir, very well,” says the Baronet,
reflecting that another corpse might cost him ten
guineas more, ere he were done with it; and besides
yearning for the news of His Lady which he thinks
he may glean. “I’ve small stomach for fightin’
any man. Religion don’t teach us that lesson, but
’tis a devilish trick you’ve played me, Sir.”

“In what way, Sir? Out with it,” replies
Peggy.

“You, Sir, sent me to Kennaston a-seeking Lady
Peggy Burgoyne, Sir; she was from home, and
not a word else could I buy or wring out of her
servant’s cursed mouth. Then I hied to Kent, believing,
from your fine messages to me from Her
Ladyship, that she must be there at her godmother’s.
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
No, Sir! she was not; nor could any one tell
but that she was at Kennaston Castle for all they
knew. Back in town post-haste, I seek Lark Lane,
where her brother lodges, so I had heard, only to
learn that he has gone to stop with Sir Percy de
Bohun, in Charlotte Street.”

“Well, you sought him there?” inquires Peg
quivering with suppressed excitement.

“I did not, Sir!” replies Sir Robin with emphasis.

“Thank heaven!” says his companion fervently,
an exclamation which may do double duty, and is
well taken by the little gentleman from Kent.

“No, Sir; you do not suppose, Sir, that I’m a-going
to risk a life that’s dear to Lady Peggy, at
the hands of a ripping brawler and sure-kill like
Sir Percy, do you?”

“Ah, Sir Robin,” quoth Her Ladyship. “If you
knew what a consolation it would be to Lady Peggy
to hear of your unwillingness to hazard your
precious person in such company, ’twould ease
your mind and heart.”

“Look you!” whispers Sir Robin, plucking at
Peg’s sleeve. “But tell me where she is? This
.bn 160.png
.pn +1
mystery’s killing me! How fares she? Does she
pine for me? and is this true?” With shaking
hands Sir Robin takes from his pocket a copy of a
print of the day previous, and unfolding, reads
to the astonished Peg the following paragraphs.

“Town’s talk is all for the very pretty quarrel
betwixt Sir P——y de B——n, and the gallant and
handsome Sir R——n McT——t of Kent. ’Tis
all over Mayfair, and far beyond, that the cause
of the dispute’s the lovely but mysterious Lady
P——y B——e.”

“’Slife!” interrupts Peg, catching at straws.
“You now perceive, Sir Robin, why ’tis that Her
Ladyship must keep her whereabouts a secret,
even,” she adds with sentimental deflection, “from
you. Trust me, Sir, as you would trust her, and
be guided by my counsel!”

Sir Robin nods vigorously, fluttering his sheet
with anxious fingers. “Listen, Sir, listen, to this
further.” He reads on. “Sir P——y de B——n
has sworn by all that’s sacred, so ’tis said, to stick
Sir R——n McT——t to the death, and serious
consequences are feared.”

“Ah!” cries Lady Peggy, overjoyed to hear anything
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
that may serve to keep the little Baronet and
Sir Percy from meeting. “’Tis a gentleman of
his word, I promise you. Better get back at once
to Robinswold, and let London and Sir Percy gallop
to the devil, an they see fit!”

“Nay,” replies the one addressed. “Not I, Sir
Incognito. It is not for a McTart to turn his back
on danger, but the rather,” and here by the fish-oil
gleam, the little gentleman’s squint eyes leer
cunningly up into Her Ladyship’s face: “The
rather,” continues he, glancing cautiously around,
“take measures to protect myself.”

“Very commendable of you, Sir Robin, by my
faith,” cries Peggy, although she shudders, now
linking her arm in her companion’s, and assuming
an air of easy confidence, by the which she hopes
to ensnare him into a complete revelation of his
plans.

“Since you go armed, and are, I doubt not, a
master in the art of self-defense, what have you
to fear from Sir Percy de Bohun?”

“True,” responds the Baronet, with a reservation
to himself and no mind at all to proceed any
further with his revelations. “Gad! Sir, a fellow
.bn 162.png
.pn +1
like that,” clutching at the newspaper stuck among
his ruffles, “ain’t to be trusted as long as he’s
above the ground. I swear, Sir! I fear to walk
abroad and hold myself housed at my inn in
Pimlico, close, not daring to show my face. A
ruffian that’s publicly printed as seekin’ life’d
stick me in the back in the dark, an he got the
chance.”

“Nay, nay, Sir Robin,” says Peg, up for her
sweetheart, “he’s not that sort of a gentleman—but,
look you, keep close, frequent neither club,
coffee or chocolate-house, or rout or drum; eschew
Vauxhall, Richmond and the play-house, or any
likely place where bucks gather, for trust me, Sir,
an you do meet Sir Percy, there’ll be the devil to
pay, and his blade’s his obedient slave.”

Poor Peg! She has not only to protect Percy
of his life, but, as before, to prevent any discovery
of her usurpation of the little Baronet’s
name.

“Curse him! I fear him not!” responds this
one, his itching fingers twisting about the empty
purse in his pocket.

“But of Her Ladyship, Sir Go-between?” adds
.bn 163.png
.pn +1
he presently, as they emerge upon the broader and
better lighted road. “’Pon my life, but to so find
myself the hero of a romantic passion with the
Lady secluded in a mystery, a nobleman thirsting
for my blood, a nameless gentleman playin’ Mercury
betwixt me and my fair, ’tis amazing, Sir!
prodigious amazing!” Sir Robin struts and takes
snuff very comfortably, since he has got out of
a very dangerous environment.

Peg’s soul sickens within her as she listens to
him.

“Tell me now, how fares she?”

“Not so well,” answers she.

“You’ve seen her?”

“Not I.”

“Are like to?”

“No, Sir.”

“You can convey messages to her by some fond
way she’s planned to get her news of me, eh?”

“I can, Sir Robin.”

“Sir, whoever you are, for pity’s sake, tell me
where is she?”

“Not far, Sir.”

“Gad, Sir, to touch her hand, her cheek!
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
You’re in her sure confidence? She does favor
me? She will not give me hopes, Sir, to turn
around and break my heart by marryin’ of another?”

“Lady Peggy’ll never marry any man, Sir Robin,
I’m of the opinion, so I’d not give that for your
chances!” answers she.

“Think you she ever cared for Sir Percy?” asks
he.

“Sir, who can fathom a woman’s heart? ’Tis
deeper than the sea; so deep, methinks, ofttimes
she herself holds not that plummet that can sound
it. Sir Robin, I take my leave of you.”

“Hold! hold! Sir, not so fast. Where next may
I encounter you?”

“That must be as Her Ladyship says,” answers
Peggy. “Your inn’s in Pimlico?”

“Yes, the Puffled Hen, not far off Battersea
Bridge.”

“Farewell, Sir, and look you keep close in-doors,
and risk no quarrel with Sir Percy de Bohun.”

“Farewell, Sir,” watching Her Ladyship turn
down the street as he turns up. “Gad’s life! ’twas
well he happened when he did, and not earlier,
.bn 165.png
.pn +1
to eavesdrop my bargain with the wharf-rats!
’Sdeath! Risk no quarrel with Sir Percy! Not
so long as there’s guineas left to buy corpses with!”
and the little gentleman trots over to Pimlico,
tolerably well pleased with his evening’s work;
there, however, to be greeted with the reading of
more newspapers, including that one which had
earlier in the day so entertained Beau Brummell
and his familiars.

Not for a moment did the Baronet mistrust, or
have a suspicion, other than that his fame had
caused him to be made the subject of such a pack
of pretty stories as was then the custom of the
press, as now, regarding any gentleman of position
and gallantry. Sir Robin’s vanity easily swallowed
the dose, and he even slapped his thigh and
laughed his little dice-rattle laugh, as he reflected
how safe he really was with never a challenge or
a brawl to his cowardly credit since he got his
first flogging at Eton.

He actually mouthed over his prospective wooing,
and assured winning of Lady Peggy, and felt
a calm satisfaction in the knowledge that the one
rival he feared would so soon be beyond the reach
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
of ladies’ smiles or tears. No qualms came to
disturb his genial enjoyment of purposed assassination.
In those days to kill was nearer men’s tempers
than it is to-day. ’Twas with blackguard
and man of honor alike, the first redress for even
the pettiest sort of a dispute; with the difference
of method only, that the gallant blade fought out
his quarrel on the open field, while the craven
bought a hireling’s dagger to do it in the dark.

Meantime, My Lady, by as direct a route as she
can fathom out of the labyrinth of her ignorance
and her distracted state of mind, makes back to
Peter’s Court with her parcel of duds still under
her arm.

She enters, mounts the stair-case, seeks her
room, closes the door, and sits down.

“’Tis now not to be doubted,” she says to herself,
“but that the Devil’s at the helm of my ship—and
that I am to be a man for the rest of my life.
’Sdeath! as dad says, I’ll stop over till Sunday
night’s o’er past, and as surely as my name’s
Peggy Burgoyne I’ll foil that little dastardly
groat of a Baronet’s plot to murder him that I once
l-loved. Bah!” cries she half aloud. “What’s the
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
use of mincin’ matters that’s true? Him that I
love! Even if he’s dyin’ for Lady Diana, and
goin’ to be her husband instead of mine! ‘Consents!’”
murmurs she, flinging herself on the bed
in a flood of tempestuous tears.

In vain regretting, she now too fully realized
that her own wilful words, her jealousy, her falsehoods,
her deceits, were the sole causes for Sir
Robin’s terror, and, therefore, for the abominable
scheme which he had just concocted.

Presently she arose, tossed the bundle once
more back into its hiding-place, and set to pacing
up and down the floor as she’d seen her twin do at
home when he was looking high and low for a
rhyme.

’Twas weightier matters kept Peg moving for
an hour or more, and quick-spinning as were her
heart and temper, her brain bore a more even
balance.

First she had thought to warn Percy by a letter
unsigned; the which she knew he’d pitch into the
fire and think no more about. Then, that she’d
write one to Kennaston imploring him to keep
Percy from the pier Sunday night or any other;
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
this she soon recognized would have the fate of
t’other. Then, ’twas to contrive some plan to
fetch him to Richmond, Windsor, any place else
for Sunday; but to this arose the objection that
the blackguards cheated of one day, or place, would
not fail to wait upon their prey some other. At
the last, Her Ladyship’s shrewd common-sense and
indomitable pluck plainly showed her there was
but one safe plan out of the danger; and this must
be to go herself to the river Sunday night, and
there concealed, armed, await the coming of the
cut-throats from their den, and from the rear, put
a shot into each at one and the same moment.

Could she do it?

Her Ladyship had muscles of steel, no nerves,
as the fine ladies of her day comprehended them;
as brave and loyal a heart as ever beat in any
breast; good faith in God, for all her frowardness;
and that species of love burning within her for Sir
Percy de Bohun, which has, not a few times in the
world’s history, made frailest woman into man’s
equal for courage.

To Lady Peggy there seemed a divine compensation
in the fact that it had come to her, to save
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
the very one whom, by her lies and wilfulness, she
alone had been the means of endangering.

.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=80%

.bn 170.png
.il id=i_158fp fn=i_158fp.jpg w=354px ew=80% alt='At the table sat Kennaston...'
.bn 171.png
.bn 172.png
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='X—In this same Her Ladyship’s mount is shot dead under her...'

.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>X</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
IX
.if-
.nf c
<em>In this same Her Ladyship’s mount is shot
dead under her in Epstowe Forest, and
she makes off on Tom Kidde’s horse.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
This young gentleman now stood looking from
a window of his uncle’s house, upon all the dewy
leafing beauty of the Park at May. His brow was
knit, his lips tight shut, his hand amid his ruffles
clenched.

At the table sat Kennaston, inky-fingered, scribbling;
eyes now rolling to the ceiling, now roving
hither and yon.

“Ah!” sighs this one. “If the critics do not
find this canto to their taste, may I be damned!”

“You’re like to go to Court to the Devil, I’m
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
thinking then, dear lad,” speaks de Bohun over his
shoulder.

“Fame! Fame!” cries the young poet, pushing
back in his chair, wig awry and quill poised in
air. “I’ll hunt thee to my dying hour, and if
thou escap’st me then, ’twill all be Lady Diana’s
fault.”

“How’s that?” asks Percy, with, however, but
small ring of interest in his voice.

“Oh!” exclaimed Peg’s twin, “the minx mocks
me! ’Tis Monday, kindness and all smiles, to
wake on Tuesday for indifference; pouts on
Wednesday; lure-me-ons o’ Thursday; forgetfulness
for Friday; radiance for Saturday, and all a-jumble,
sweets-and-frowns! showers! sunshine!
what you will!—and will not!—for my Sunday
fare.”

Percy sighs and smiles.

“Percy, sometimes I think Diana does love
you!”

“No, Sir, never. We’re like brother and sister,
nothing else, save my uncle’s absurd, obstinate
(now-cured) whim, since childhood, to match his
heir with Brookwood’s heiress. Odzooks! Ken,
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
you’re like every other swain that ever sighed,
always looking for a rival to be jealous of! Lady
Di cares for you; an you doubted it before, ’tis
time to take up hope, since you are asked to
Brookwood for a visit, and go popping off to-night,
with me left home to think alone on Peggy.”

“Zounds! Sir, ’tis not you only that’s thinking
of her!” cries the young man rising and crossing
to the fire. “But, what would you! if I call out
the bell-man, publish her disappearance in the
newspapers; get word to my father and my mother;
what comes of’t all, but scandal? and like as
not dad an apoplexy, and My Lady mother a set of
fits and a death-bed!”

“Ken, I’m a damned fool ever to stop inside of
doors or to cease pacing streets, haunting inns,
shadowing Sir Robin McTart, until I find her!”

“Fie, Sir, if she’s gone off with Sir Robin McTart,
’tis, I promise you, with a wedding-ring on
her finger, and not else! An she loves him, what’s
to be said or done, if he’s her lawful lord?”

“Naught. I myself went down to Kennaston
yesterday. I said nothing to you, Ken,” he adds,
.bn 175.png
.pn +1
noting the other’s surprised and reproachful start,
with a hand upon his junior’s shoulder.

“I thought I’d not interrupt the epic and your
frenzies about Lady Di, with my troubles.”

“Well, what news of Peg? Any?” asks her
twin anxiously.

“None. I saw Chockey, and only got from her
what Grigson had, the positive assurance that her
mistress had gone up to London. ‘Of her own free
will?’ I asked. ‘Yes, Sir Percy,’ said she.
‘Alone?’ I inquired. ‘No, Sir Percy,’ was her
answer, nor could I force, frighten, or buy the
baggage into any further confidence. She did
beg of me, however, seek out Her Ladyship, if I
could, and find how she fared.”

“Gad’s life, Sir! She has eloped. ’Tis clear as
crystal!”

“One thing more, I asked Chock: Had Her
Ladyship money in her purse? ‘Lawk, Sir Percy!
cried she, ‘two hundred pounds I know of!’”

“‘Two hundred pounds!’” repeats Peg’s twin
in vast amazement. “’Tis sure more’n she ever
saw before in our whole lives put together. Oh,
the girl’s safely wedded, Sir, beyond a doubt!”
.bn 176.png
.pn +1

“Sir!” says Percy, sitting at the table, with his
head low in his hands. “The blackguard’s won
her from me!”

“I fear so, Sir.” The two men’s hands meet
and grasp in the silent fashion of their sex: ofttimes
more eloquent than any words e’er speeched.

“Would I had made a hole in his heart that
night in Lark Lane!” cried Sir Percy next.

“Sir Robin’s nimble, Sir, and knows a trick or
two with steel, as well as dice.”

“Aye: a gallant every inch; ’tis for that I hate
him all the more; and yet, Ken, sometimes, lad,
when I’ve been a-staring at him from afar, I’ve
caught something in his countenance resembling
Peg, and it’s that’s made me halt like a chit at provoking
of him further.”

Kennaston nods. “Aye: I’ve remarked it; but
held my peace, Percy, for ’tis said man and wife
often grow to look alike, and I doubt not, sometimes
begin after the same pattern.”

Sir Percy sighs again: turns up the room with
drooped lids; in silence getting that grip upon his
soul which noblest natures insist on with themselves,
even in crises like his. ’Tis a bitter battle,
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
closer fought and quicker, too, than any won or
lost with swords and guns. The struggle’s writ
upon his face as he goes; but when he comes his
victory’s writ there too.

“Kennaston,” says he, very quiet and off-hand,
“I’m thinking I’ll go to the Colonies, to Virginia.”

“What! no!” ejaculates the poet, placing a hand
on either of his friend’s shoulders.

“Yes, Ken, dear lad, I could not live in England
without her; perhaps yonder, over the sea, in
the new land that’s growing up, I may learn to
lead a new, better life, just for her sake that’s lost
to me forever. At the least I can strive, at such a
distance, to serve my country and my King like a
man—until the end I’ll pray for comes.”

Kennaston turns off, with tears in his eyes.

“Mostly,” says he brokenly, “were not Peggy my
twin, I’d be in a ripe mood for a-cursing of her!
When, Percy?” asks he, after a pause.

“As soon as may be,” is the reply. “I’ve the
promise of a commission by my uncle’s influence!
Come, come, lad o’ my heart,” laughs he through
his own misty eyes. “The wind’s not in my ship’s
sails yet. I promised Mr. Brummell for his expedition
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
to Ivy Dene for the morrow, and I’ll
hardly be ready in all points to get under way before
you’re back in town from your visit to Brookwood;
whence I foresee you’ll fly with Diana’s
‘yes’ betwixt her kiss on your cheek.”

’Twas now Mr. Brummell’s famous and long-talked-about
party to Ivy Dene this very next day
that dawned.

Now, Her Ladyship had vowed to herself that,
come what might, she would avoid this, even did
Fate keep her in London. ’Twas no part of her
program, although she could do it as well as
any sporting squire, to make for her future any
such memory as riding a horse astride for thirty
miles out and back, in the company a half-score
of gentlemen must furnish; yet, so is each of
us rather the creature of circumstance than will,
that the hour appointed found Peg mounted on a
gray with blood in his veins, and a-pacing down
Piccadilly to the White Horse beside Beau Brummell’s
bay.

She could not, with Sir Robin’s murderous pact
in her perpetual view, make up her mind to omit
a company that should include Sir Percy.
.bn 179.png
.pn +1

It seemed to her that any day spent by him out
of her sight might prove fatal; that Sir Robin’s
hirelings might conceive it better to their purpose
to put an end to their intended victim before the
Sunday. So, aching with an insane but not unnatural
impulse to pull rein and confess all; burning
with shame to remember ’twas of Lady Diana’s
sweetheart she was thinking; mortified beyond belief
every time her saddle grazed her breeches;
intent lest an unsuspected sword should flash
from the hedge-rows, the sheep-cotes, or the
shadows of Epstowe Forest, which they traversed
on their way; My Lady Peggy, wishing amidst all
this that she had never come to town, yet contrived
to display a very cheerful mien, to laugh as
loud as she dared, keeping her high notes cautiously
to herself, as she had in her speech ever
since the night, as Sir Robin, she had made her
first appearance in Lark Lane—to join in jest,
quip, prank, such as a gay cavalcade of jovial gentlemen
were then wont to indulge in.

Such are some of the strange vicissitudes incident
to being that most amazingly delicious compound,
a wilful and withal true-hearted woman.
.bn 180.png
.pn +1

As Mr. Brummell had planned, they halted for
refreshment at the Merry Rabbit at Market Ossory,
and left, after a game of bowls on the green, to
pursue their way. Percy lingered a bit in the
rear: truth to tell, his reflections were none of the
gayest, and the presence of the supposed Sir Robin
McTart, and the conclusion, which, together with
Ken, he had been forced to reach, that Lady Peggy
had run off with the Baronet, did not by any means
conspire to the lightening of his spirits. As he
watched his presumed rival, heard the ringing
laugh, the brilliant jest: noted the careless air,
and thought of this cavalier as Lady Peggy’s lord,
his choler knew no bounds, and it appeared to him
that, come what might, he must invent cause of
quarrel, and one or the other of ’em be left cold on
the field.

“Why,” a thousand times he asked himself,
“this mystery regarding her marriage? Why not
have wedded Sir Robin from her father’s home,
and with her father’s blessing, since,” Sir Percy
reluctantly admitted, “no fault could be found
with so fine a young gentleman; and his fortune,
he knew to be considerable.”
.bn 181.png
.pn +1

He was aware that Her Ladyship was romantic
to a degree, and he could but decide that this
predilection had caused her to elope and to preserve
the matter in a wrapping of secrecy for a
time; no doubt even now from her retirement
looking forward to the hour when she should
emerge as Lady McTart!

Sir Percy gritted his teeth together and struck
his spurs so deep that his horse gave a plunge
which brought him up, neck and neck, with the
gray of the supposed Baronet, and the black of
Mr. Chalmers.

“To the rescue, Sir Percy!” cried this one jocularly.
“Your assistance I beg, and the loan of
your wits in our argument.”

“With all my heart!” answers Percy, scenting a
possible chance to worst his rival, even in a battle
of words. “What’s the subject?”

“A truce to ’t!” exclaims the Beau, with an expressive
shake of his head at Mr. Chalmers, who,
however, seldom notes any obstacle to the pleasure
of his present moment.

“No truce at all, Mr. Brummell!” answers he
gaily. “’Tis—”
.bn 182.png
.pn +1

“’Tis nothing whatever, Sir Percy,” interrupts
Lord Escombe, putting his hand on Chalmers’s
rein, and adding in an undertone:  “Gadzooks!
man, hold your peace. The matter’s like tow and
tinder betwixt Percy and McTart.”

“’Pon my soul, Gentlemen!” now cries Percy,
“I insist upon Jack’s being allowed to proceed
with his remarks. If he wants my counsels,
they’re his. Come, Sir, speak.”

“’Tis but this,” says Mr. Chalmers. “I say to
Sir Robin that since the world’s busy with rumors
of his secret marriage to Lady Peggy Burgoyne;
since as I learn (by my man, who had it at the
gate of the very best authority—Gad! Sirs, ’tis a
fact, even if we don’t relish it, the gist of our
gossip comes from below stairs, up!) that Lady
Peggy is from home, her father believing her in
Kent at her godmother’s!” Mr. Chalmers smiles,
“her mother being in York, believing her safe at
Kennaston, I say, My Lords and Gentlemen, it
behooves Sir Robin confide the matter to his best
friends, and give them chances to congratulate
him and the Lady. Have I the right of’t, Percy,
yes or no?”
.bn 183.png
.pn +1

Percy is silent for a moment: it seems to him a
desecration of the sweet, modest and womanly girl
he has so long adored, thus to hear even her name,
much less a discussion of her most private matters,
made into mirthful subject on a morning’s ride.

His anger, too, is great that the man whose
name is coupled with hers has not already put a
stop to such a conversation, even were it at the
point of the sword.

Shall he, here and now, so reply to Mr. Chalmers
as shall breed an instant retort from Sir Robin,
and a challenge on the spot? The wild thought
even flashes through his brain that Sir Robin
might, by the grace of God! be left dead on the
ground, and that some time in the dim future he
might win Peggy back to himself.

But, with a tightening rein, he checks himself,
as well as his horse, as he answers.

“Mr. Chalmers, the Lady you name is one whom
I honor most deeply, and it seems to me if she has
seen fit to go into seclusion, or to marry secretly,
that, while I may wish to God it had been in open
church! I must continue to respect her preferences,
until she elects to change them;” with
.bn 184.png
.pn +1
which, breaking the little pause of silence which
follows, Sir Percy gallops ahead, joining Mr.
Brummell, who has put himself quickly out of the
commotion he had foreseen as likely to arrive.

Meantime, it may be correctly imagined that
Her Ladyship, with all her sex’s exquisite ingenuity
at plaguing itself whenever it possibly can,
had seized upon those words of Sir Percy’s most
easily twisted into a means of self-torture.

“I wish to God it had been in open church!”
instantly stuck itself in her thoughts beside “Consents;”
the two forming just that species of
flagellation which ladies so situated in mind are
wont to inflict upon themselves.

The supposed Sir Robin, from this on, until the
arrival of the party at Ivy Dene, became taciturn,
even morose, and not a syllable could be got
from him in answer to the wildest gibes.

Her eyes intent upon Sir Percy, who now kept
to the fore with his host, My Lady Peggy, on the
keen lookout for the possible assassin, and to the
tune of “consents,” and its running-mate, “I
would to God it had been in open church!” put in
a very dolorous twenty miles; but, on dismounting
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
at Mr. Brummell’s doorstep, she endeavored to
infuse a little joyousness into her looks and speech.

Indeed, ’twas difficult; yet no more so to-day
than any other since she had been coerced by circumstances
into an acceptance of the Beau’s hospitality.
Every mouthful of bread and meat
Peggy ate well-nigh choked her, as she remembered
’twas meant for Sir Robin McTart. She
felt herself a trickster, a villain of the deepest
dye, and yet saw no way out of her usurped character
with honor and repute; no way of keeping
in it save by the deeper dyeing of her soul in sin,
which she promised herself, and heaven, to expiate
as soon as Percy should be safe from Sir Robin’s
men.

The afternoon was spent as had been planned;
the country cook’s dinner was voted a perfect success:
Mr. Chalmers, slightly raised by wine, even
going so far as to send her down, with his compliments,
his favorite ruby heart-pin: when, on the
spot, not a gentleman present but whipped out a
jewel from ruffle, finger, pocket or fob, and Peggy
herself tying ’em up in a pocket-napkin laced
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
with Brussels and perfumed like the civet-cat, sent
them down to the astonished lass in the kitchen.

A game of cards was in order after the repast:
a tilt at politics: a wager on the question of tea
in the Colonies; Lady Peggy and Sir Percy keeping,
by the grace of each, well apart in all these
encounters; and at twelve o’clock, just as the moon
was rising behind a bank of splendid star-fringed
clouds, Mr. Brummell and his guests set forth on
their homeward road.

The beauty of the night was such as soothes and
casts its own mantle of peace over even those unquiet
spirits which may be abroad.

It reminded Lady Peggy, as she rode along, of
just such another when she and Percy had wandered
up and down together in the weedy gardens
at Kennaston. Of that identical night Percy also
was thinking, and of his wilful Lady’s bright
sallies, quick smiles, frowns; yea, even of one little
touch of her red lips, light as thistledown, which
now he seemed to feel the ghost of, on his forehead.

The cavalcade had left the highway some distance
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
behind; the moon was fast being overtaken
by the clouds whence she had, an hour or more
ago, emerged; the dews fell thick, and the scent
of the hawthorn was sweet in the air as they
plunged into Epstowe Forest.

“Ah, Gentlemen,” cried out Mr. Brummell,
snapping his whip, “by Gad, Sirs, what a night for
Tom Kidde and his merry men! the skies dark, the
moon playin’ hide and seek, fifteen watches and
purses, and as many rings, pins and seals between
us as you left not at Ivy Dene with my cook
Elizabeth!”

“Ha! ha! ha! No fears of Tom Kidde, an he
knows our caliber, jumping out upon us!” laughs
Lord Wootton.

“’Slife! Sir, he’s the sort of highwayman to
jump out on the best mettle that strides horse-flesh
or carries gold. The young devil’s afraid of
nothing that breathes, and has been the terror of
travelers now these three or four years gone,” says
Vane.

“He’s not above one-and-twenty, smooth-faced
as a girl, those say who’ve caught a glimpse of him
under his mask; dresses like a macaroni, voiced
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
like a choir-singer, and nimble as an Indian
monkey!”

“Frequents he this neighborhood?” queries Lady
Peggy, who at mention of the word “highwayman”
has tightened her rein, clapped a hand on her
holster, and felt her heart thump, as she involuntarily
connects it with possible danger to Percy.

“That he does,” said Mr. Chalmers. “His den,
or one of ’em’s somewhere in the depths of Epstowe;
and no one can tell when or where he’s like
to turn up next.”

“When did he turn up last?” says Sir Wyatt,
laughing.

“I can tell you,” returns Vane. “’Twas about
Candlemas. I was down at home on a visit from
town, when the news came, almost frightening
my mother out of her wits, and setting the maids
a-shivering like so many poppies in a storm. Tom
Kidde had pounced on Lord Brookwood not a mile
from his own gates, lifted him off his mount in
the politest fashion imaginable, rifled His Lordship’s
pockets, appropriated his weapons, and ridden
off on his victim’s horse, leaving His Lordship
tied to a tree at the roadside, where he was found
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
by Biggs, the J.P., the next morning, a-bellowin’
and a-cursin’ like a wild bull.”

A hearty laugh greets Mr. Vane’s description.

“Yes, but that ain’t all of’t, My Lords and Gentlemen,”
continues he.

“By no means!” cries Beau Brummell, out of
his fit of hilarity. “I recall now, that I rode over
from Lauriston Castle, where I was visiting, that
very morning, and heard the adventure from
Brookwood himself. I fancy he had the laugh, or
will have it some day, on Tom, or some of his men,
for the stolen mare was none other than His Lordship’s
famous ‘Homing Nell.’”

“Is it possible!” exclaims Sir Percy, “the mare
that’s been taken off a hundred miles, let loose,
and finds her way home again; the mare that’s
been sold and ridden fifty miles away, and then,
when she felt a hand at her mouth she could
master, has taken the bit between her teeth, and
the one in the saddle’s only sometimes been able to
keep his seat, and let her take him straight back
whence she came?”

“The very same ‘Homing Nell.’ Brookwood’s
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
sure of her getting back sooner or later,” says the
Beau.

“They’ll never catch Tom, though,” cries Escombe.

“If they do,” remarks Vane, “he’ll hang not two
hours after he’s bagged; his death-warrant’s been
lying signed in Mr. Biggs’s pocket-book any time
this twelvemonth; and there’s still a gibbet standing
on the hill above Brook-Armsleigh Village!”

“Zounds! Sirs!” exclaims Mr. Chalmers, “what
a life ’t must be, tho’; sleep o’ days, wake o’ nights,
prowling under the branches, harkening for game
from dusk till dawn, all seasons the same, one’s
heart in one’s mouth, till the hoof’s heard, and
then a masking dash, a brawl, a thrift quick as the
lightning’s flash; a corpse or two, and your purse
the heavier by as many guineas as the game’s had
under cover—and all to the tune of the owl’s cry,
and I doubt not for some sweet Maid Marian’s
sake!”

“’Slife! hear the boy!” cries Mr. Brummell.
“One would think him sired by a Jack Sheppard
rather than by the gentlest Sir that ever lived.
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
For your froward tendencies, Sir, you shall pay a
penalty.”

“Yea, yea! a penalty! a penalty!” cry they all.

“In what kind?” returns Jack, waving his hat
over his head.

“A song! a song!” they answer.

“Which one?” asks he, nothing loath, for his
lungs are lusty and his reputation for singing
above the ordinary.

“What you will,” they answer.

“Well, then, what say you to ‘Lady Betty Takes
the Air,’ since all can join me in the chorus?”

“Good!”

“Percy,” says Jack, “you’ve a pretty pipe in your
throat; give me the key, will you? not too high,
you rascal, I’m not vainglorious at my music.
So, and, so—there,” as Percy does as he is asked.

.pm start_poem
When all the May is deck’d about
  With hawthorn bud and blow;
When pinkly shows the heather’s tip,
  And harebells nod a-row—
.bn 192.png
.pn +1

    Lady Betty takes the air,
    Sing ah fa, la-la-la!
    With a rush hat on her hair:
    Sing ah fa, la-la-la!

When all the brown earth thrills to green,
  When rivers laugh and sing;
When lark and thrush cajole and coax,
  And all the wood’s a-wing—
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When Corydon most sad, forlorn,
  With wrinkled hose, distraught,
All flouted by his worshiped Fair,
  Walks forth as one that’s daft,
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When, at the turn-stile next the park,
  The sad swain stops to sigh—
“No lady ever lived so dear
  As she for whom I’d die!”
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When, as the sun walks up the glade,
  And as the milkmaid hies
Across the paddock with her pails,
  And as the lark doth rise—
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.
.bn 193.png
.pn +1

Cries Betty, flaunting past, “Oh fie!
  A gallant all unkempt,
Such ungenteel and woful sight
  Kind fortune me exempt!”
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

When speaking thus, the May-breeze blew
  Her rush hat o’er the stile,
And Corydon caught quick the gaze,
  And swift his sigh turned smile,
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

Thus, when the May is deck’d about
  With hawthorn bud and blow,
Sweet Betty ties her hat-strings fast,
  A gallant in the bow!
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.

’Twas ever thus, dear maids and men,
  Whene’er ye walk abroad—
’Tis e’er the little breeze that blows
  Each lady to her lord!
    Lady Betty takes the air, etc.
.pm end_poem

Every one joins in the chorus with a hearty good
will; all save Her Ladyship. Peggy dares not lift
her woman’s voice, lest Escombe at right, or
Wootton at her left, shall hear its most unmannish
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
lilt. She mouths the words, though, and listens,
as she has many a time before, to Sir Percy’s
tones, and wonders if the sentiment is making him
think of the Lady Diana.

The Lady Diana, however, is very far from Sir
Percy’s imagination. He has been moodily ruminating
on the possibilities of Tom Kidde (the
most renowned desperado in all England of that
day) suddenly bursting upon the party, and leaving
a corpse behind him—that of Sir Robin McTart!
He has been picturing to himself the profound
pleasure it would give him to assist in
fetching Sir Robin to the nearest church for decent
burial, and the almost hilarious joy that would be
his in attending his rival’s body to the grave!
These were, according to the strict code, most murderous
thoughts, and yet how pleasant, if how
altogether unprofitable they were also.

Mr. Chalmers is in the midst of his last verse,
his voice echoing into, and back, from the depths
of the great green wood; there is not a wisp of the
moon visible by this, and no light, save the halo
from her beauty which lines and rims the vast
masses of clouds above them.
.bn 195.png
.pn +1

Peggy is listening to the song; she hears it well:
also the crunch of her horse’s hoofs on the narrow
path; also, the crackle of the fresh twigs as they
snap before the advance; and too, so sharp are her
ears, the sleepy cheep of some disturbed bird in
its nest, and, what else?

What is this curious stealthy stir, far-off, and
creeping nearer in the wood?

And, hark! Peggy puts her hand to her ear to
hear a subdued whistle, sweet, tuneful, underbreath,
but patent to her sense, and too, to Sir
Percy’s.

Before either can move, or, indeed, had as yet
gathered the impulse of even self-defense, into the
midst of Mr. Chalmers and the rest, with their
chorus, dashes a company of riders in masks.

A shot, low-aimed, and merely intended as a
slight warning of what may be expected, should
occasion demand, strikes the ground at Her Ladyship’s
right.

With remorse and reparation at his heart-strings—’tis
the kind of man who could be but generous
to his worst enemy—Sir Percy’s horse is flung betwixt
the supposed Sir Robin and the band.
.bn 196.png
.pn +1

“Good evening, My Lords and Gentlemen,” says
the leader, in a voice like a lute. “I thank you
heartily for coming my way! Purses and watches,
merry Sirs, jewels, trinkets, snuff-boxes, if of gold,
pins, fobs, seals, these are all the toll I demand,
and shall be forced to collect, if you show any disposition
to deny.”

It might he wisely argued that, while this speech
was being made, any gentleman might have either
run the highwayman through, or put an ounce of
lead into his heart, but the fact of the matter was,
each gentleman found himself face to face with
another gentleman who held a blunderbuss up to
within three inches of his nose.

My Lady’s first thought had been that Sir
Robin’s men had not waited for the Sunday night
to come, but presently she recognized the truth,
and, stung by the fact that Sir Percy had put
himself between her and danger, she was the only
one of the whole company who stirred in her saddle
other than to do the bidding of Tom Kidde.

While the rest were busily engaged in emptying
their treasures, she, making feint to do the same,
says very low and tauntingly to Sir Percy:
.bn 197.png
.pn +1

“Had I but one to show fight with me, I’d ne’er
give in to these scoundrels.”

“As soon done as said, Sir Robin,” whispers
Percy. “No man can say I’m his lesser in courage!”
with which he wrests his bridle from the
blackguard whose hand’s upon it, whips out his
sword with one hand, picks out his pistol with the
other, grips his reins in his teeth, and strikes with
steel and shot, both at once.

Peg’s his match, imitating him with such a will
as sets every gentleman of ’em a-shooting, a-lunging
and a-cursing with all the arms and breath he’s
got; and sets the robbers for a second to their wits,
for they are not used to any sort of encounter, save
one that’s terror-stricken and submissive in the
opponent.

’Tis a bit of a mêlée quite in the dark; slashing
and pounding betwixt the branches: now a man
unhorsed, anon up again; shots resounding, powder
flashing, until in about ten minutes or less
the chief makes a plunge for Sir Percy, crying out,

“So ’twas you said ‘fight,’ was’t! Have a care;
no man can defy Tom Kidde and live to tell it!”

“Nay!” shouts Her Ladyship, with spurs all
.bn 198.png
.pn +1
inches into the gray’s sides, making him rear as
she puts herself between Percy and the highwayman,
“’twas I said ‘fight’!”

Whizz! and a ball intended for Sir Percy strikes
the gray dead under her.

Whizz! and her ball strikes Tom Kidde from
his mount.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Peg was
straight in the highwayman’s saddle; he was
picked up by two of his men, bleeding, set before
one of ’em, and off: My Lords and Gentlemen find
themselves once more alone in the midst of Epstowe
Forest, a-crawling about on their hands and
knees a-gathering up their spilled guineas and
trinkets by flash of tinder-box.

Sir Percy, trying to explain to them who had
been the means of their recovering their valuables
and of putting the desperadoes to flight, cries out:

“I tell you! we owe’t all to Sir Robin here!
’Slife, Gentlemen, I’d not have ventured to think
of resistance had it not been for him. ’Twas he
said, close in my ear, ‘fight,’ and by Gad! Sirs,
he’s lost more’n any of us; the horse shot under
him.”
.bn 199.png
.pn +1

“The gray’s well lost teaching Tom Kidde he
can’t terrify all the men in England,” answers the
Beau from his sprawling search after his diamond
snuff-box.

“Ho, Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin!” Sir
Wyatt shouts it out, and the rest of the company
take it up with a long, mellow cadence that echoes
for a mile.

“Answer man, for, by the faith, if we can’t
pledge you here in anything but a lap of May-dew
out of a primrose leaf, we’ll drink you such a
bumper, an we reach the White Horse, as never
was filled before! London’ll toast you at every
dinner-table in Mayfair. Odzooks, Sir, were you
the fashion yesterday, what will you be to-morrow!”
This from Escombe.

“Where is Sir Robin?” asks Percy. “He was
beside me not five seconds since, but now, by my
tinder, nor yet by the coming dawn, can I descry
him,” shading his eyes with his hand and peering
about, for of a truth ’tis close to four o’clock, and,
notwithstanding the heavy clouds, the east begins
to thrill with the touch of day.

“Robin! Sir Robin! Ho, now! Think not to
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
play a trick on us and presently spring from a
greenwood tree,” says Wootton.

“Sir Robin,” exclaims Percy loudly, “I pray you
answer and leave not your friends to imagine evil.”

“Tut, tut, ‘evil’,” puffs the Beau, rising from his
knees. “Evil’ll never happen to him. Zounds!
but my legs ache! He’s laughing in his sleeve
now, hard by; Robin’s not one to court notice or
praise—as modest a youth as I ever beheld.”

“Worthy of Lady Peggy Burgoyne even, I suppose?”
says Mr. Chalmers mischievously, as he
adjusts his recovered fob. “I could embrace him
for the rendering of me back my watch, but I think
him a fool to eschew good company and make
home alone to town.”

“Jack,” says Percy, low, “I like not his quitting
of us. ’Twas too sudden. I believe I’ll go a-hunting
him,” pulling his rein as the cavalcade
once more prepared to start.

“Where?” asks Jack. “Bah! be not such a
ninny; belike he’s off to his Lady, to win kisses off
her lips by the rehearsal of his prowess. An a
man chooses to flee me, I let him: do you the same,
Percy; ’tis a good advice, I promise you!”
.bn 201.png
.pn +1

“But suppose those devils attack him again when
alone?” says this one, not all reassured, as he and
Jack linger a bit in the rear of their companions.

“Go to the devil!” remarks Mr. Chalmers,
blithely. “I’m for breakfast at the White Horse,
and for leavin’ the hero of the hour to eat his
where he sees fit. He’s safe enough.”

“I’ve a misgiving,” answers de Bohun, “and he
risked his life for mine to-night. I’ll strike off
here to the west and join you when I find him.”

“Good luck to you for a fool!” laughs Jack,
putting spurs and going on to tell this news to the
others.

.il id=i_180fp fn=i_180fp.jpg w=360px ew=80% alt='The instant that Lady Peggy...'

The instant that Lady Peggy felt herself in the
highwayman’s saddle, she knew from long acquaintance
with every colt Bickers had bred,
raised, or broke, since she was six, that her wrists
had met their match. Before she had time to
utter a word, turn her head, or think, she felt the
warm flesh under her quiver with that recovering
impulse which horsemen know so well; that streak
of untamed and untamable nature which lies,
however deep-hidden, in every four-foot that
.bn 202.png
.bn 203.png
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
breathes, and which never fails to spurt to the
front when it gets exactly the right chance.

Peggy’s light, nay, by this, weak hand, now gave
the big black its chance, and with a snort, a toss
of its head, and a vicious swell of its sides, it laid
back its ears, took the bit between its teeth as if it
had been a mess of oats, and reared a length on its
forelegs: when, finding its rider still on, it started
on a run which Her Ladyship had not the slightest
power to check. All she could do was to keep her
seat.

Like a flash, out of the forest on to the width of
the heath, plume waving, sword flapping, laces
rippling, curls flying; the mare’s mane slapping
in her face; legs and arms and will all at work to
stop the beast or bring it into some sort of subjection.
To no purpose. The black head now
low, as if picking up a scent from the turf it tore;
now up, as though snuffing its goal from afar, the
mare skirted the heath, gained the meadows; over
hedges where the birds rose in flocks behind its
heels; ditches, where the muddy waters splashed
over Her Ladyship’s satin clothes: here a bolt into
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
an orchard, leaving a ribbon a-hanging on a limb;
over the wall like a rocket, and, at breakneck gait,
through a hamlet, rousing the people out of their
beds to peep at pane, and wonder. Slap-dash into
a pasture, scattering ewes and lambs like wool before
the wind, taking a five-bar into a common,
thence to highway; scampering a footbridge to
leave it shivered behind them, and all Peg’s
thought just a brave prayer to be kept alive, so that
she might not fail of foiling Sir Robin’s men Sunday
night!

Where she was going, she knew not. Where she
was, she had no smallest idea when, as the sun
looked over the long low line of horizon before her,
she with a shudder beheld a gibbet outlined against
the morning sky. The black gave a lunge that
knocked her feet out of the stirrups (quick in
again), reared, whinnied like a devil, and, nose to
ground, now made her rider understand that up to
the present she had done nothing much in the way
of speed, or of efforts at emptying the saddle.

Yet Her Ladyship stuck on, with flying colors,
too, and no loss of either wig, hat, weapon or will,
and with grateful heart she now found herself
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
being spun across a magnificent park, where the
deer fled before her, it is true, but at the upper end
of which she saw looming the turrets and towers of
a fine castle.
.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 207.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XI—Wherein Lady Peggy is condemned to be hanged...'

.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XI</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XI
.if-
.nf c
<em>Wherein Lady Peggy is condemned to be
hanged, and sets forth, attended by the
clergy, for the gallows.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Although Sir Percy had cheerfully foretold for
Kennaston the roseate picture of Lady Diana’s
“Yes” crowning the young poet’s somewhat diffident
suit with untold happiness, the fact was quite
other. Her Ladyship, on the day of Mr. Brummell’s
party to Ivy Dene, having overheard the
Honorable Dolly Tarleton, in the library, laying
six to four to Lady Biddy O’Toole, that their
host’s daughter was “only waiting for the beautiful
young poet’s asking, to jump into his arms
immediately,” did, with such sudden change of
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
demeanor from sweets to sours, languishing eyes
to averted looks, smiles to pouts, corner chats to
open flouts, put her lover into a state of mind, the
like of which he presently described, as only he
could, in a copy of verses, which the next night at
White’s were pronounced to be, indeed, “the masterpiece
of one whose heart pants, whose whole
being’s but at the beck and call of her who wears a
smocked petticoat, ogles with a witching eye, and
should be vain that so much genius lays itself at
her feet, to wit, Lady D——a W——n.”

For, taking immediate fright at his Lady’s coldness,
Kennaston had ordered a post-chaise from
the Brookwood Arms, and without a word of farewell
to Lady Diana, save that embodied in an ode,
“To Chloe When Unkind,” which her woman
found pinned to Her Ladyship’s cloak when she
was putting it on her shoulders the following
morning, had gone to town, and just in time at the
White Horse to be haled into Mr. Brummell’s
party for breakfast, and to learn of the adventure
with Tom Kidde, the valor of Sir Robin McTart,
and the absence of that young gentleman, as also
Sir Percy, from the board.
.bn 209.png
.pn +1

When Lady Diana’s woman hooked her mistress’s
cloak about her ’twas at five o’clock in the morning,
and of the party at the Castle every lady’s woman
was performing the same office, adding hood over
curls and puffs, and sticking the finest of cambric
pocket-napkins into their mistress’ hands by the
half dozens; for ’twas easily seen that such early
rising could be for no other cause than to go forth
to bathe their Ladyships’ faces in the May-dew;
the which, when gathered from little copses and
shadowy nooks before the sun had yet shone
upon’t, was warranted to enhance that beauty
which was already evident, and to create those
charms which, alas! are occasionally lacking.

Lady Diana spelled out her lover’s verses as best
she could, tripping from door to door, and calling
her young companions from their mirrors; sending
a footman and a page to summon the gallants who
were to accompany them in their expedition, and
laughing heartily as she made out more from a
footman than from Kennaston’s muse that he had
betaken himself to town rather than longer incur
her displeasure and her frowns.

“Bless me, but my suitor’s in a fine pickle!
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
Lud! though, I’m not disposed to have these
hussies a-laying six to four on my bein’ ready to
jump at his offer; still, I’d rather he’d stopped
over, or else that some one most amusin’ were here;
for instance Sir Robin McTart, which is not to
be!”

Then a-rapping at the doors, and laughter
from girlish lips; pattering of heels down the
hall and stair-case; out to meet the gentlemen,
bowing and complimenting on the terrace; over
the lawns, and through the flower-gardens, and
past the offices and stables, where Lord Brookwood,
even thus early, was sunning himself in the yard,
and talking over county matters with Mr. Biggs,
J.P.

“Where to? Where to?” sings out His Lordship
cheerily with hat in hand, and Mr. Biggs
down to the ground before so much beauty, fashion
and rank.

“Off to the copse, father,” calls back Diana, “to
gather the May-dew and wash our faces; when we
come back you must tell us all how much more
beautiful we are to-day than we were yesterday!”

With which lively sally Lady Diana and the rest
.bn 211.png
.pn +1
of ’em are crossing the hill and laughing as they
pass out of sight on their two miles’ away walk to
Armsleigh Copse.

Lord Brookwood is about to resume his conversation
with Biggs, while the half-dozen grinning
stable boys, behind His Lordship’s back, are
rubbing their fists in the wet turf of a paddock,
and smearing their red faces with the dew, the
head-groom touching them up with a lash; when
a whinny, that sets every animal in the stalls and
out of ’em a-replying, sets all the cocks crowing,
hens cackling, chicks peeping, dogs barking, geese
squawking, smites their startled ears, and yonder,
hilly-o-ho! Sirs; in a cloud of upturned soil, in a
shower of splash from the river, with a thud on
the wooden bridge, a bound over the stone wall
of the kitchen garden; comes a black with nigh
every tooth in its mouth bared, foaming, smoking,
bloody; rider bent double to saddle’s bow, clinging
with legs and arms.

“Homing Nell and the highwayman! Tom
Kidde! Tom Kidde!”

“Homing Nell!” the shout goes up from every
.bn 212.png
.pn +1
throat there, from His Lordship to the ’ostlers and
boys.

“Tom Kidde! Tom Kidde!”

“By Gad! Sir,” cries the Earl. “I knew Nell’d
come back sooner or later! Surround him. Bag
him!”

Peggy hears the shouts as the ungovernable
steed lunges, lurches, rears beneath her spurs and
still tightly gripped reins; she takes in the situation,
but not to its full import, until she now hears
the voice of Biggs uplifted.

“Lord Brookwood! Lord Brookwood! mind her
heels, My Lord, mind her heels! Leave the takin’
of the damned cut-purse to me and the boys!”

At the word “Brookwood,” Her Ladyship realizes
that she is on the domains of Lady Diana’s
father! and being mistaken for a Knight of the
Road!

The latter she felt she could easily abide, and
as easily refute; but the former was more than even
her spent spirit could stand. So, as Biggs, His
Lordship, the grooms, the stable-boys and ’ostlers
and helpers all formed into a ring with whips,
canes, stones and halloos to take her prisoner, she
.bn 213.png
.pn +1
plucked up courage from the depths, and, raising
herself in her saddle and her head in the air, with
one superhuman tug at the bridle and prick with
the steels, she made to get off! and away! But Her
Ladyship’s nerve was not the equal of Homing
Nell’s, nor yet to be pitted with success against the
waving arms and jumping legs of a dozen stout
men. With the final crack of the head-groom’s
lash about her heels, with the pop in the air above
her hat of Mr. Biggs’s blunderbuss, caught from
the hand of one of the lads, “Homing Nell” was
brought to a quivering stand-still, and My Lady
Peggy to bay in the stable-yard of Brookwood
Castle!

“Ha!” cries the Earl, “my pretty fellow, you’re
trapped at last! The night you stole the black
mare from me I shouted after you, as well as the
gag at my mouth would permit, that she’d bring
you no luck, and that muscles of iron wouldn’t
hold her the day she made up her mind to get
home.”

Peggy, glad of the use of her lungs once more,
and now nigh bursting with laughter at being so
glibly mistook for one of the most reckless fellows
.bn 214.png
.pn +1
in all England, took off her hat, bowed low, and
said:

“My Lord Brookwood, ’tis, I believe, I have the
honor of addressing?”

“Ho! ho! ho!” Mr. Biggs, from a survey of the
saddle-bow now bursts out in triumphant joyfulness.

“’Od’s blood, My Lord! but here’s luck, here’s
justice, here’s what comes of my bein’ here when I
am!” and Mr. Biggs now holds aloft upon the
point of his stick the black mask of Master Tom
Kidde, which the rogue had dropped when he was
hit, and which had caught and hung by its riband
from that moment to this, unseen by Lady Peg.

“Highwayman! highwayman! highwayman!”
yells every lung in the place, while the whole dozen,
including His Lordship and the Justice, threaten
Lady Peggy with their cudgels, lashes and stones.

“I pray ye, My Lord, Gentlemen, and good fellows!”
cries she, remembering now the entire history
of the animal she bestrides, as rehearsed some
six hours earlier by Beau Brummell and Mr. Vane.
“I am no highwayman.”

A groan of derision greets this announcement.
.bn 215.png
.pn +1

“Nay, but the rather am I the victim of Tom
Kidde, than he himself! Together with a party
of my friends, being at mid-night last, on the
return from a visit to Mr. Brummell’s seat, Ivy
Dene, we were set upon by the rogues in the midst
of Epstowe Forest; I had the luck, both good and
bad, to put a ball into Tom, to get my horse shot
under me, and to mount the scoundrel’s steed, the
which has brought me to Your Lordship’s door,
and the mare, herself, to where she belongs, it
seems!”

“A damned fine story, ’fore George!” exclaims
Biggs, laughing triumphantly, now holding up two
watches, three rings, a diamond snuff-box, a seal,
two magnificent pins, and a most splendid jeweled
stomacher, high above his head in the tip of the
sunshine.

“’Sdeath!” cried Lord Brookwood, seizing one
of the trinkets and examining it with his spy-glass.
“What’s this? ‘Percy de Bohun, Christmas from
his aff. mother,’” reads His Lordship. Then another,
“‘Wyatt Lovell souvenir of Italy!’ Gad,
Biggs,” looking Her Ladyship over, where she still
sits atop of the steaming black, “we’ve got the
.bn 216.png
.pn +1
cursed blackguard this time! What else in his
saddle pockets? aught?”

These Biggs, assisted by the head-groom, is energetically
emptying of a miscellaneous collection of
valuables, while Lady Peggy looks on in amazement
as yet only flavored with amusement, and one
more vain regret for her abandoned petticoats.

“Yes, My Lord, these thousands of pounds’
worth,” replied the Justice, holding aloft his
treasure trove; “and it’ll be a short shrift for the
devil, I can say that.”

“Hark ye,” now says Her Ladyship, as she recalls
with a not unnatural tremor the death-warrant
she had heard was lying to hand in Mr.
Biggs’s pocket. “Lord Brookwood, I am no highwayman;
my story is true; I am”—the words
stuck in Peggy’s throat; she coughed, the stable
boys tittered; then the head-groom tilted the saddle
and spilled her out of it to the ground; at a
word from Biggs, a couple of the men tied her,
hand and foot, with a stout rope, and a pair of
farming reins about her middle.

“Now who do you call yourself, my fine fellow?”
says His Lordship.
.bn 217.png
.pn +1

“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent!” cries
Peggy, glad to be able to answer without the lie
direct. “And I demand instant freedom and immunity,”
cries she, tortured and quivering beneath
the rude hands and ruder gibes of the grooms and
’ostlers.

“Demand away! my pretty buck-skin, with your
jeweled hilt!” returns Biggs, stripping the weapon
from her thigh. “Your satin breeches and gold-laced
waistcoat! ’Tain’t no use denyin’ you your
speech, and your will to palaver on whatever matter
you will, for before the clock strikes eight,
you’ll be home with your father in hell.”

“Tut, tut, Mr. Biggs,” says His Lordship. “Call
Mr. Frewen, the Curate, he’s at his studies in the
library, we havin’ sat late over our cards last night;
and let him have his prayer-book to hand, open at
the page for malefactors after condemnation.”

“Go, you, Michael,” this to one of the now awestruck
lads hanging, staring at Peg over the paddock
paling. “Ask Mr. Frewen to come quickly.”

“But this is monstrous, Sir!” cries Her Ladyship,
now thoroughly alarmed, and near to losing
her wits betwixt her endeavors to keep up her man’s
.bn 218.png
.pn +1
estate, her contempt of her own frowardness, her
shame at being thus at the mercy of her rival’s
parent, and her actual terror of her position.

“I do beseech you, I am an honest person, my
tale is true. Is it not but the justice due to any
subject of His Majesty’s, however humble, that he
should not be condemned before he is tried, or
even his identity proven?”

“I’ll be sworn, My Lord,” exclaims Biggs, “’tis
a voice and air to wheedle fine ladies out of their
stomachers and chains, but not to tempt the law.
Sirrah!” he continues, addressing himself to Her
Ladyship, who is by this firmly tied to a post like
a colt about to be broken to harness. “’Tain’t no
use for you to be imaginin’ as justice and His
Majesty ain’t a-doing their best for you. Here
have you been a terror to all God-fearing, law-abiding
Englishmen any time these half-dozen of years.
A-poundin’ every heath in England, Hornslow,
Bagshott, and all the commons, Wimbledon,
Wandsworth, Finchley; a-hulking in Epstowe with
your mates, and making the lives of travelers a
burden most horrible; ain’t you secreted uncountable
pounds’ worth of plunder in your devilish
.bn 219.png
.pn +1
caves and dens? Haven’t you left the earth
strewed with corpses in your ugly path? Answer
me, Sir!” and Mr. Biggs stamps his foot on the
ground.

“No, Sir!” shouts Peg, “I ain’t and haven’t, and
I’m not! ’Slife, My Lord Brookwood,” cries she
in a terrible way, twisting her tied hands together.
“For God’s sake, send up to town post-haste, and
find out Mr. Brummell, Mr. Vane, Mr. Chalmers,
Lord Escombe, Sir Lovell Wyatt!”

But His Lordship has turned up the path toward
the Castle and met Mr. Frewen, to whom he is
explaining the necessities of the situation.

’Tis such a fair May day, with bud and blossom,
bough and bird; fowls, men, beasts, all free of
tether, and My Lady is like to weep; cry out her
sex, her very name and estate, as she feels the gall
upon her wrists and ankles, and knows what fate
awaits her.

She even, for one weak moment, thinks she will
implore Lord Brookwood to send up to London
for her rival, his own daughter, Lady Diana, and
let her come down and tell him who is Sir Robin
.bn 220.png
.pn +1
McTart—for Lady Peggy believes Lady Di to be
in town and has no knowledge to the contrary.

Yet, there in the stable-yard, with imprisonment
as she supposes, and even death dangling for her
at no great loss of time, with her liberty gone;
her word no better than a thief’s; with no earthly
hand upraised to sustain her, My Lady Peggy’s
stout heart does not flutter to dismay. For that
one brief instant ’tis, without doubt, in her mind
to confess and fling herself upon the mercy of the
Earl and the Curate, who now draw nigh; but
when she reflects upon the monstrous tissue of her
deceits, and the unutterable shame of the exposure
of the cause of them, ’tis then she is like to whimper,
but for naught else.

Mr. Frewen approaches; ’tis a young man of a
pale cadaverous countenance, whose first bow to a
highwayman is indeed, though he find him in
durance vile, a timid one.

The supposed Tom Kidde gives the man of the
cloth eye for eye, so that this one quails and
stumbles in his speech; and finally, leaving in the
rear all his preconceived plans for a hasty reformation,
.bn 221.png
.pn +1
he promptly remarks, opening his prayer-book
to the riband:

“You know your doom, Mr. Kidde; shall I pray
for you here?”

“Faith!” says Lady Peggy, plucking up heart,
once her resolution is taken not to reveal her secret,
come what may. “I do not know my doom, Sir!
It seems sufficient ‘doom’ for an honest English
gentleman, who has met with a mishap, to be
brought to a nobleman’s threshold and get foul
treatment rather than welcome. Pray for me, Sir,
an you will, there’s none so much deserves or needs
it. Pray on!”

“Frewen!” beckons His Lordship, as he watches
the ’ostlers rubbing down the restored Homing
Nell, and confers with Mr. Biggs as to the plunder
and the meting out of justice. “Frewen, gain the
wretch’s confidence an you can, the whereabouts of
all the gold and jewels he has stolen; my watch.
And also, if he have wife or child, it might not be
amiss, eh, Biggs? to inquire if he have any message
for them?”

“Aye, My Lord” puts in the pompous Biggs,
.bn 222.png
.pn +1
up-looking from his perusal of a long, sealed, important-appearing
parchment, unrolled before his
eyes. “By ascertaining their whereabouts, we
should perhaps get the clue to all the bloody rascal’s
pelf.”

A combination of Christian charity and official
shrewdness, which commended itself highly to His
Lordship, as he sent the Curate back to the comforting
of the malefactor across the yard.

“Hark ye, Mr. Kidde,” says Mr. Frewen, lowering
his voice, and, for the credit of his soul, with
gentleness at his heartstrings.

“I’m not Mr. Kidde, I tell you, I swear’t!” says
Her Ladyship firmly.

“Well, well,” says the man of the Church, “mayhap
that’s an assumed name; but surely, now, Sir,
with not two hours of life left you, to me, me alone,
Sir, it were wiser drop all disguises. Surely now
you are not Sir Robin McTart?” in a soothing
and sorrowful tone.

Peggy winces.

“Go seek and ask all the noblemen and gentlemen
I’ve named, Sir, they’ll quickly set me to
.bn 223.png
.pn +1
rights in your eyes, I pledge you. Oh, Sir, for
the love of God!” cries she, whispering very low.
“I speak the truth! I am no highwayman.”

“I am used to quibbles, Mr. Kidde; I know that
now you are no robber, but merely a prisoner under
sentence of death.”

“What!” cries she. “’Tis not possible that a
man is taken, tried, disallowed to prove himself,
and put out of the world, betwixt sunrise and
breakfast, in the reign of His Majesty George the
Third!”

“’Tis so,” answers the Curate, pulling the rope
and leathers, and pushing Her Ladyship around a
bit toward the east, as he points what he considers
a salutary finger. “Yonder’s the gibbet, Mr.
Kidde, and from it you must hang by eight. I
implore of you now—”

Lady Peggy’s eyes are fastened upon the arms
and cross-beams of the gallows, which are outlined
clearly against the deep blue sky, and full in the
shine of the spring sun.

“Well,” says she to herself, all in a flash, as
thoughts can travel three abreast ofttimes, and
twelve times quicker than the scrivener can set
.bn 224.png
.pn +1
’em down—“I’ve been a very accursedly wicked
girl; but, thank God! my pride ain’t all gone yet.
I’ll hang! but I’ll never give up my secret! When
I’m gone, if they find it out—I won’t be here to be
a-hearin’ of the taunts and jeers and sympathies;
and of my mother’s and father’s sorrows!” At
this point Peggy is very near to tears, when the
Curate says, interrupting their possible flow:

“Now, Mr. Kidde, if you have any message for—your
wife—perhaps?” he ejaculates hesitatingly,
and with good knowledge that the marriage ceremony
was one usually omitted from the code of
gentlemen of the road.

“I have no wife!” cries Her Ladyship, in a heat
betwixt her remorse for her parents and the unconscious
ridiculousness of Mr. Frewen’s question.

“Or it might be,” suggests this one with a sigh,
“you have a little child, Mr. Kidde—?”

“No, Sir,” says My Lady very low and quick.
“That I haven’t.”

“A dear friend and comrade?” pursues the
Curate.

“Yes, I have,” answers she, for during all this
.bn 225.png
.pn +1
hour just past, a thousand thoughts have come to
Peggy about Sir Percy.

“Ah,” responds Frewen joyously. “Now tell
me where he’s to be found, and entrust me with the
message, and be assured all will be carried out to
your wishes.”

“Thank you,” says Peggy. “Free my right hand
if you will; give me something to write with, and
the leaf out of your prayer-book, and I’ll ask you
the favor.”

The Curate, under the strict superintendence of
Biggs, who has all this while been dispatching boys
on horses, hither and yon, to notify the quality and
the country side both, that Tom Kidde’s been taken
and will hang at eight from the gibbet a-top of
Armsleigh Hill, loosens Her Ladyship’s arm of the
thong, and gives her a leaf and a pencil with the
top of the post for a support.

“To Sir Percy de Bohun, Charlotte Street, London,”
writes she. “plese An you lov God And The
Kinge goe not evar Again toe walke onne The dove
peere at The Bottomme of littel Boye yarde
Their isse onne swares Toe Kille you & you doe
This isse writ bye onne now noe more.”
.bn 226.png
.pn +1

Her Ladyship folds the scrap of paper over and
over; hands back the pencil to Mr. Frewen; and
then she says:

“Sir, will you promise me on that Book you’re
holding in your hand, you’ll not look at this or
send it until I’m dead?”

“I will,” answers the young man, more touched
than he cares to admit, even to himself.

“And further,” says she, “will you pledge me
your word it shall reach him it’s intended for before
this time Sunday?”

“I will,” is the reply, “unless it be in the depths
of Epstowe and inaccessible to my horse or myself.”

“’Tis in London, Sir, and quite accessible. ’Tis
a warning for life and death, and I’ll count you
fail me not, nor him whose life you’d be the
means of saving.”

“I pledge my word, Mr. Kidde,” replies the
Curate, backing away to make room for Justice
Biggs, and with the very laudable sensation in his
mind that he is to be the instrument of preserving
some unknown from the clutches of the doubtless
repentant outlaw’s own men.
.bn 227.png
.pn +1

In less than five minutes after, Biggs had marshaled
his cavalcade and rode forth of the stable-yard
of Brookwood Castle; his white cob at the
head, a-holding in his left hand the duly signed
warrant for the execution of one Thomas Kidde.
Following him, strode the hastily summoned Master
William Lambe, the butcher, who was to do
duty as hangman (sooth to say, hangings were
rare in this county, and there was no one appointed
by law to the office, it being thus left to the discretion
of the Justice).

The Earl, mounted, rode next with a dozen of
his servants, and in the midst of these My Lady
Peggy, astride of the black once more, but with
face to tail, hands tied together, and no hat to her
head; Mr. Frewen at her side walking; a motley
crowd growing and gathering at every step, about
her, of gaping, wondering, jubilant and curious
persons of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

Never a whimper out of My Lord, the Earl of
Exham’s only daughter. A set rigid look about the
drawn lips, and an unearthly pallor shining
through all the dark stains Her Ladyship had
been a-using of late.
.bn 228.png
.pn +1

Not a word did she say, save to ask Mr. Frewen
to read the Declaration of Absolution or Remission
of Sins out of his prayer-book as they went; which
he did under his breath, and much jolted by the
rough highway, which now the procession had
gained; and likewise laying much unction to his
soul that, in so short a space of time, his comfortable
ministrations had produced so seeming
abundant godly results!

When he had finished Her Ladyship said,
“Amen,” and thereafter held up her head with that
courage which is born of one of two things, conscious
innocence or a profound repentance for sins,
which, while to others they may appear puerile,
to the offender are worthy of the wrath of the
Creator and the condemnation of man.

She noted the hawthorn in the hedges, the dew
upon the turf; the tall mawkin swaying in the
wind in the middle of a newly sown field; and, as
her lids raised, the mustering crowds, all with
steps bent, and greedy eyes fixed, yonder to the
hill-top where the gibbet stood, and where the new
rope dangled for her neck.

Yet she made no sign.
.bn 229.png
.pn +1

Not even when she heard the rabble laying their
groats and sixpences, that Kidde would, or
wouldn’t “die game.”

.il fn=i_015.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XII—Rehearseth how, in the very nick o’ time'

.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XII</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XII
.if-
.nf c
<em>Rehearseth how, in the very nick o’ time,
Her Ladyship’s neck is saved from
the noose by Sir Percy.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
As yet, in the depths of Armsleigh Copse, no
news of the supposed highwayman’s capture had
penetrated, although the Earl, with commendable
foresight in behalf of the entertainment of his
young daughter and her companions, had sent a
messenger to impart the sight shortly to be had;
the messenger, having a sweetheart in the other direction,
must needs go apprise her first! So the
gay Ladies and their cavaliers sat on fallen logs,
strolled hither and yon, knelt to sop their bits of
linen in the dewy hollows, laughed, chatted, dabbed
their faces, now lacking any coat of crimson, save
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
that which Nature might have vouchsafed, and
made great show of a fine rural simplicity.

“La!” cried the Honorable Dolly. “Water
hasn’t touched my face before since know I not
when!” pecking at her cheeks with the corner of
her pocket-napkin. “But it has a monstrous refreshing
sensation!”

“Oh, Doll, ’tis not thus and so you must apply
it, as ’twere some French essence worth its weight
in guineas; but look!” cried Lady Diana, flopping
down and burying her face in a bath of the dew-drops,
and laughing as she looks up dripping.

“That’s the way, faith,” coincides Lady Biddy,
scrubbing her own round cheeks with her wrung
out linen, then both fists into her blue eyes to dry
off the winkers.

“’Slife, Ladies!” exclaims one of the gentlemen,
“but you almost tempt us to follow your example.”

“Hither, ye gossoon,” answers Lady Biddy, “an’
I’ll be afther makin’ your countenance shine.
Hark! Hoofs!”

“Hoofs! Hoofs!” cry all these fair ones, a-darting
this way and that, stuffing their napkins into
their bodices, as a courteous voice, with a—
.bn 232.png
.pn +1

“By your leave, Ladies and Sirs!” greets them,
and none other than Sir Percy, self and horse
spent in his fruitless search for the supposed Sir
Robin, emerges from the bridle-path across the
common, at the edge of the copse.

“The top of the morning to you, Sir Percy de
Bohun,” laughs Lady Biddy.

“Percy!” exclaims Lady Diana, “prithee, what
are you doing out of doors at this hour?”

“Seeking May-dew! mayhap,” suggests the Honorable
Dolly.

“But nay, Your Ladyships,” returns he. “I am
seeking Sir Robin McTart.”

And forthwith Sir Percy proceeds to give them
a history of the adventures of the night, omitting
no smallest detail of the prowess of Sir Robin.
He has just concluded his recital amid a burst of
tumultuous “Ohs! ahs! Luds!” and a vast deal of
commiserating sympathy, and a monstrous collection
of pretty oaths and curses for Tom Kidde,
when into the center of this colloquy jumps Lord
Brookwood’s messenger, nudging his sweetheart
behind a tree, to tell as best he can his errand. To
bid all the company at once to see the sight, it now
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
not lacking more than the quarter to the hour
when Mr. Lambe will adjust the noose, and send
one of the boldest and most courtly young outlaws
of his day a-swinging to his deserts.

This information, it may be imagined, was received
with acclaim of all, and by Sir Percy with
positive joy; his only regret, as, dismounting and
leading his jaded horse, he walked at Lady Diana’s
side, being that Sir Robin had so contrived to give
them the slip, and not even to have the happiness
of witnessing justice done the rogue who had so
near deprived him of existence.

“Here’s to drive off the vapors an any one had
’em!” cried the lively Lady Biddy, swinging her
hat by its ribands. “And sure’n it’s not believed
I’ll be, when I get home to County Cork and tell
’em I saw a highwayman strung up!”

“Faith, Di,” says Sir Percy, “’twas a lucky
chance for the whole country when the rascal made
off with your father’s famous black!”

“That was it!” answered she. “The time always
comes when no man’s muscle on earth can hold
Homing Nell; and ’twas a fine fortune, by my
life! when Tom Kidde essayed to ride her. ’Twas
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
a wonder he didn’t jump and run for his life,
though,” adds she thoughtfully.

“Zounds! there’s a sort of devil-may-care humor
in the composition of those fellows that keeps ’em
sticking in any saddle they leap into, until the
beast’s bestridden that can throw them out of it.
They’re so used to taking chances, I doubt if they
ever dream of danger until it’s too late!”

“When’ll we see the gibbet?” asks the Honorable
Dolly, panting with her quick pace.

“Soon,” answers Lady Di.

“Ochone, an’ I hope we’ll not be afther bein’ too
late to see it all!” chimes in Lady Biddy short-breathed
too.

“Percy,” says Diana, “up in your saddle and
spy, for I’d not have us miss so fine a sight for a
hundred pounds!”

“No sooner said than done!” answers Sir Percy
de Bohun, from atop of his horse, where he shades
his eyes with his hand and gazes off to the hill
where the gibbet stands.

“Good God!” cries he, clapping spurs that send
spurts of blood into the eyes of one of the gentlemen,
and a shower of sand all over the whole
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
party, and away with him! Tearing up the turf
as he goes; into the midst of the strings of gaping,
jostling, hurrying folk; scattering ’em right and
left, leaving ’em in his wake dumfounded, picking
each other up. Through the high street of
Brook-Armsleigh Village, clatter! dash! plunge!
with prick and urge, and goad of thigh and lash!
and straining, starting eyes fixed on the face he
sees outlined against the fair blue morning sky;
the brave undaunted face, dark, under its yellow
hair, bearing the strange likeness to His Lady—His
Lady! nay, this is His Lady’s lord and love,
for whom he rides,—and with noose about his
neck now, and man-of-cloth and man-of-blood
both at hand; this one with book, that one with
cap, the sea of open faces seething breathless all
around.

“On! on!” whispers Percy bending to the bow,
and whispering hoarsely to the long roan, his very
soul in tremor, his lips parched, his forehead and
lip dripping sweat.

Into the midst of ’em; nearly throwing Lord
Brookwood from his seat; off his beast like a
thunderbolt, and with a long leap up on the
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
boards beside Lambe, the butcher, and Biggs, the
Justice, and Frewen, the Curate.

“By God! Sirs,” cries he, “what’s this ye’re doing?
This gentleman’s Sir Robin McTart of
Robinswold, Kent!” tearing the hemp from Her
Ladyship’s throat, from her wrists; pushing away
the three of ’em, and half lifting the supposed
Baronet in his lusty arms, he drags, carries, swings
Peg down to the ground, and up into his own
saddle.

And then the explanations! the astonishments;
the monstrous wonder of it. The humility, the
subjection, the apologies; the supplications of all
these Lords, Gentlemen, Ladies, worthies, worships,
vagabonds and multitudes.

Woman-like, as she sits there for a few moments,
dazed, so sudden fetched from death to life, she
has but the thought that ’tis to him she loves she
owes deliverance.

But none of their hospitality or amends will she
have, or even listen to; no tarrying at Brookwood
Castle; no smallest glance back for all the wheedles
and coaxes of Lady Diana, Lady Biddy, the Honorable
.bn 237.png
.pn +1
Dolly and the rest. All she asks, and gets,
is her scrawl from Mr. Frewen.

Courtly acceptance of Lord Brookwood’s abject
attempts at amends; gracious bows, hands, words,
laughter at last; and My Lady in a hastily procured
post-chaise bids the gibbet at Brook-Armsleigh
Village farewell, and starts for London,
where she swears she’s due and must not fail of
being, for to-morrow, Sunday.

Sir Percy, too, affirms, he must up to town without
delay, to have the honor and pleasure of himself
rehearsing at Will’s the splendid courage of
Sir Robin, and his almost miraculous escape from
a horrible and ignominious death.

In truth Percy longed, after the excitements of
the past four-and-twenty hours, to be alone; to
seek, as was his wont of late, in some unfrequented,
obscure part of the town, such as the desolate
neighborhood of the Dove Pier, an opportunity to
ponder upon Lady Peggy; to guess fruitlessly of
her whereabouts; to curse himself, and Sir Robin
who had, with a good cause, he generously allowed,
so known how to win her from him; to marvel
how, at ev’ry turn, this same Baronet appeared to
.bn 238.png
.pn +1
become entangled in his own matters; to question
if Peggy were indeed now the lawful wedded wife
of this gentleman from Kent. In brief, to pester
Fate with queries and surmises far too numerous
and intricate to set down.

Thus upon reflection, he purposely absented himself,
after his first visit to Will’s on reaching London,
from either of the chocolate or coffee-houses,
which he was accustomed to patronize, knowing
full well that the most pressing and absorbing
things he should hear would all have Sir Robin
McTart for text. He did not even repair to Mr.
Brummell’s house to give an account of the rescue
of the Beau’s protégé from the hangman, feeling
unwilling to recount his own part in the affair and
but too certain that long since the whole matter
would have traveled to Peter’s Court and into
every other precinct of the town. Having, also,
learned from Lady Diana that Kennaston had
quitted Brookwood Castle in a dense of a melancholy
humor, he did not either go to Lark Lane,
(not finding Peg’s twin at the house in Charlotte
Street), but moped the Sunday through, thankful
that his uncle was gone down into the country;
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
listening to the church-bells; thumbing a prayer-book
Lady Peggy had given him one Easter-day,
now five years since; finally flinging it from him;
pacing up and down the hall; side-curls awry,
waistcoat unbuttoned; ruffles tumbled; breeches
wrinkled; mind distract, and altogether as valiant
a young gentleman as ever made a wager or a toast,
unsheathed a blade, or mounted a horse, rendered
all of a-muddle by not knowing which way to turn
to find the whereabouts and wherefores of a certain
fair lady; which has been a state of affairs
not uncommon to young gentlemen before this
one’s day, and like to occur until the species is
extinct.

Yet, ’tis quite true, too, that Sir Percy’s case
was a bit out of the usual, inasmuch as the mystery
of Lady Peggy’s present abiding place remained
as deep to-day as ’twas a fortnight ago.

“Well, Grigson,” asked his master, as his man
appeared unsummoned, “what is it?”

“Asking Your Honor’s pardon,” replies this one,
“but I made bold during Your Honor’s absence
from town to go down to Kennaston Castle.”
.bn 240.png
.pn +1

“Well, well?” cries Sir Percy excitedly, “what
news?”

“With submission, Sir,” replies the man, sadly.
“None.”

“’Od’s blood! you fool!” exclaimed the master.
“Why do you seek me with your ‘none’! Is Her
Ladyship still from home?”

Grigson bows.

“And her mother still in York?”

Grigson bows.

“And the Earl still believing his daughter to be
in that damned Kent with her godmother?”

Grigson bows for the third time.

“And that cursed Abigail still affirming that
her mistress is up in London?”

Grigson bows for the fourth time.

“Asking your pardon, Sir Percy,” he adds,
noting with a keen and generous sympathy, which
not infrequently exists in the hearts of serving-men
for their masters, the deepening pallor of the
young gentleman’s countenance, and his most disheveled
appearance.

“Asking your pardon, Sir, but whiles I might
be doing your wig, which is most uncommon
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
tousled, I’d make bold to tell you, Sir, that Mistress
Jane Chockey, Lady Peggy’s own woman, Sir,
is in an awful way, Sir!”

“My wig may go to the devil, you idiot!” cries
Percy. “What’s the blabbing jade’s tantrums to
me! Get out of my sight.”

“With submission, Sir Percy, but Chockey does
nothing at all but cry out her eyes from morning
till night, and went on her knees a-beseechin’ me
to find Her Ladyship, which all I could coax out
of her by my best endeavors at wheedlin’ the
seck, Sir, was that she last saw Her Ladyship
standin’—”

“Where! where?” gasps Sir Percy, seizing Mr.
Grigson by the arm with a grip of steel.

“Before the door of Lord Kennaston’s lodgin’s,
Sir, in Lark Lane—a—”

“Yes? yes? go on!” with glaring, gazing eyes
fixed on his man’s ruddy visage.

“A-talkin’, Sir, to some one a-sittin’ inside of a
most elegant chair!”

“Did she see the man’s face?” he asks tensely.

“No, Sir Percy; but Her Ladyship bade Chockey
go home and not tarry for her, and make such excuse
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
to His Lordship as you have learned before.
And, asking your pardon humbly, Sir, Mistress
Chockey is of the opinion that her young Lady got
into that chair and was carried off, a willin’ wictim,
Sir, to the h’altar, and married to the contents
of the chair, Sir, afore that wery noon.”

“Damn Chockey and her opinions!” mutters
Sir Percy, under his breath, picking up his hat
from the table and rushing into the street, nigh
to choking with his emotions and his despair.

He turned the corner, almost knocking over a
couple of link-boys in his path, tossed them some
pennies for their tumble, and into Piccadilly.

“Fare, Sir? fare, Your Honor? fare, Your
Lordship?” cry a half-dozen of ’em, and he jumps
into a hackney chaise purposeless.

“Where to, My Lord?” asks the man.

“To the devil!” replies the passenger, “or anywhere
else, only drive fast and let me down within
walk of the river.”
.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XIII—In the hereinunder Her Ladyship doth shoot two varlets at one fire...'

.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XIII</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XIII
.if-
.nf c
<em>In the hereinunder Her Ladyship doth shoot
two varlets at one fire; and appointeth
a meeting with Sir Robin
at Vauxhall.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
The man, who is shrewd, and has, in his time,
fetched and carried many gentlemen of the first
quality hither and yon, takes this one’s measure
and sets off at a tearing pace down to the city, past
the Tower, across the Bridge, into Southwark, back
over Southwark, up to Westminster; to Pimlico,—past
the very Puffled Hen where, at this very moment,
Sir Robin McTart, himself, and not his <lang=fr><em>soidisant</em></lang>,
sits huddled in his upper room over a fire,
cheering his small soul with dreams of murder
and love. On to Chelsea, and a whirligig ’round
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
again to that region which froths foully over to
the Thames bank in Little Boy Yard, and the
jutting, rotting, creaking old Dove Pier.

“This be’s a young nobleman,” soliloquized the
cabman, “wot’s in love, or else is a-meditatin’ on
a-takin’ ’is own life, or a-runnin’ away from the
Jews, or from his gamin’ debts, or I’m not James
Finney. An’ this here’s the spot for him to be
dropped at; the river most ’andy, also deep, and
h’if he’s bound to make an end of hisself, no man
wot owns a hoss is as worthy of the reward wot’ll
be published for the recovery of His Lordship’s
corp, as me.” With which pious reflection the
chaise is brought to a sharp standstill, causing
Percy to start from his melancholy and look out
of the pane.

“Where are we?” asks he, not at first, such is
the depth of his suffering, recognizing a spot with
which, as Sir Robin had been at pains and expense
to have discovered for him, he was indeed of late
most familiar.

“This be Dove Pier, My Lord,” answered Mr.
James Finney, now descending from his box and
standing respectfully at the kennel.
.bn 245.png
.pn +1

“Ha! Yes, to be sure. I’ll get out.”

He does so and pays the fare with such a largess
as makes Mr. Finney, through his tanned hide,
almost blush to take it.

“Wot’s the odds, though?” remarks he to himself,
“three sovereigns is better off in my pocket
than actin’ as sinkers to a nobleman’s body.” To
Sir Percy he says:

“I thought Your Lordship’d fancy this bit of
the river; it’s lonesome and wery pleasant and
wery deep. Good-night to Your Lordship, and
good luck.”

“Good luck!” echoes Sir Percy, under his breath,
as he strides down the length of the rotten pier,
his gaze now fixed on the black and swiftly ebbing
tide, now raised to meet a sky no whit the brighter
than the sobbing waters beneath it. No stars, nor
moon; only a sickly thin gleam shot out of the
lamp that swings far up Little Boy Yard over the
door of the tavern.

Dark, sad, despairing, the whole of it, with but
the lap, lap of the Thames’s life beating against
the old piles, as it swirls and swings on its hurrying
way to fall once again into the sea.
.bn 246.png
.pn +1

Percy de Bohun is no cowardly sort, even to
think of ending his woes in a watery grave; he is
merely a brave, sore-stricken young man, whose
whole faith and heart have been pinned to one who
has forsaken him forever (as he thinks); and, with
the instincts of his kind, he is glad to be here,
away from mankind or woman either, to get his
grip once more on himself, to fight out for the last
time, he swears, the wild, jealous covetousness
which is tugging at his heartstrings, to quell the
tumult in his soul, and then to get back home to
his uncle’s house like a Christian; and, God helping
him! to lead a decent life and a brave life, for
King and country in the great new world across
the seas.

All this and more traverses his brain, the “more”
being mostly tantalizing visions of Lady Peggy in
all the gamut of her humors, slipping in and out
of every resolution he makes, every fond farewell
he swears he’ll take of her most dear, most faithless
memory forever!

His eyes are bent upon the ground. He neither
sees nor hears, nor would heed if he did, aught
about him.
.bn 247.png
.pn +1

In truth there is not anything to hear, save the
river on its journey.

But there is something to see.

Sir Robin’s two desperadoes, a-lurking yonder
up in the close shadow of the timbered tenements,
which line the precinct on the side where the oil-lamps
shine.

Across the narrow street, where the huddling
houses, with their broken chimneys, rag-stuffed
windows, flapping strings of bird-cages, old clothes,
and forlorn archways, are deeper in gloom even
than their opposites, there’s ambushed another.

One who, arrived in town the night before, and
set down at Mr. Brummell’s in Peter’s Court,
made a change of garments and off again, since
the master of the house was out, to a quiet inn in
High Holborn; spent there a few hours; then out
of doors and wandered as far as the Temple
Church; back again to the inn, and, with rising
excitement, and an almost frantic and curious impatience,
awaited the fall of night; then a hackney
coach to Westminster, alighting at Horseferry
Road; dismissing the vehicle; thence afoot to the
pier; hiring a boat; a pull alone down the river
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
to Dove Pier; tying the skiff to a rusty hook; a
quick run bent to ground; up, and across the yard
to her present place of concealment.

’Twas indeed Lady Peggy, her heart in her
mouth, her breath coming fiercely betwixt her
tight-shut lips, the drops standing on her forehead,
each hand grasping a pistol ready cocked,
and her dark eyes pinned to the two crouching
objects not three yards away from her; anon, following
the jerks of these worthies’ thumbs as they
indicate the tall figure with bent head still pacing
the pier back and forth, she knows her lover and
his doom are nearing each the other.

Will high Heaven help her?

Her Ladyship can not hear them, if indeed they
speak at all, which is unlikely; the language of
such gentry at such crises consisting usually of
signs. Luckily for her, the glint from the Three
Cups, meager though it be, falls athwart the cut-throats,
who now move stealthily down the yard
toward the pier, timing their pace so that they
shall reach t’other side of the rickety float when
their victim shall attain the hither. It falls out
as they have designed, and now, not ten paces separate
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
Sir Percy de Bohun from his end, when
Peggy darts light-footed, having cast aside her
shoes, down her side the kennel to the pier, bringing
her exactly behind the murderers.

With the slow, precise tread of beings accustomed
to such enterprises, not too hurried at the
performance of a not unsavory task, they slip over
into Sir Percy’s very wake, Peggy at their backs,
noting now, with her pretty nose within twelve
inches of their cat-like heels, the gleam of a dagger
in the hand of each.

Before she had thought, the two scoundrels
seized Percy from the rear, the one clapping his
hairy hand over the game’s mouth for a gag, the
other grasping the young man’s two hands which
had been hanging idly clasped at his back. Not
a word, a whisper, even a gasp—

But two shots! sounding like one, and striking
Sir Robin McTart’s hirelings in their flanks, laying
them on the ground, free Sir Percy de Bohun,
stunned, bewildered, to yet catch merely a glimpse
of a figure running to pier’s end, jumping into a
boat; then the flash of quick oars fading into the
silence and the blackness of the Thames.
.bn 250.png
.pn +1

With drawn sword he gave himself a rap on the
chest and believed he had been dreaming.

But no, for at his feet lay two prostrate forms,
each bleeding a bit, and feigning, as such apt
rogues will, to be stone dead.

Percy knelt, struck a tinder and essayed to look
at their faces; they were unknown to him, and perceiving
now their estate, he formed the conclusion
that a couple of footpads had nearly made an end
of him, and walked away.

But of his rescue? the manner of it? the mysterious
flight of his preserver? the boat ready at
the pier’s end? the twin shots just in the nick of
time! What of all this?

Bah! Some bargeman with an honest heart
a-passing by had seen the foul attempt, and paused
to thwart it; some gentleman, maybe, on his way
to rout or tryst, thinking to divert himself with a
couple of pistols and so save a human life; some
third desperado, envious of the chances of these
two, making shift to rob them of their prey, since
he was left out of their plot.

But no! None of these explanations bore the
least resemblance to probabilities, in fact showed
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
not an atom of reason in their suggestion, and
Percy was feign return to his uncle’s house, thrice
puzzled now, since he had not alone Lady Peggy’s
oblivion to unravel, but the miraculous saving of
his own life to match it!

Her Ladyship, once safe in the boat, pulled hard
to the upper pier, paid the boatman, and back by
devious ways to Peter’s Court and into her room;
shut door and latched; down on her knees, wig
thrown on the hearth, a-thanking God Percy was
safe!

Tears? A shower of ’em, and trembling legs
and arms, and heart beating to burst after the mad
strain of the past eight-and-forty hours.

“Now,” said Her Ladyship to herself, “now I
can go back to Kennaston and spend the remainder
of my life making cheeses for the Vicar to munch
o’ Sundays; brewing cider for daddy to accelerate
the pace of his gout withal; breeding chicks as
will win prizes, and pigs as will be the envy of all!
and—” a sob occurred here—“presently a-reading
in the London print of the grand marriage of Sir
Percy de Bohun with Lady Diana Weston! And
me without the chance of weddin’ even that little
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
ape, Sir Robin McTart! But it’s all right as
’tis,” adds Her Ladyship. “Had I hung on Armsleigh
Hill, ’twould not have been too bad for one
reared as I have been in a God-fearing fashion,
and who, for naught save jealousy, envy and all
uncharitableness, did go and so unsex myself!
Lud! Is’t I? Peggy Burgoyne, spinster, a-sittin’
here in breeches and waistcoat, a guest in Mr. Beau
Brummell’s house, without any other lady to keep
me in countenance! ’Tis said one gets broke in
to anything; but ’tis false! false! I’m not broke
in to bein’ a man, and I never should be! I detest,
abhor, and can’t endure the bein’ one! I that
had always figured to myself the happy day when
I’d be taken up to town!”

Lady Peggy is now pacing the room, a trick, as
has been set down earlier, that she’d borrowed from
her twin.

“I’d thought to be of the ton, a most genteel
young lady, monstrous fine, a lovely creature; a-taking
a dish of tea at Ranelagh; a-ridin’ to
Court in dad’s old coronet-coach and with all the
feathers I could borrow on top of my frizzes and
powder; and two sweet patches set just at the
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
corner of my dimples! That’s what I’d dreamed
of, with Percy a-staring at me, lost in admiration,
and—love!” Her Ladyship stamps her foot.
“But what ’tis, is this!” and she now picks up the
wig from the hearth and flings it on the couch beside
her coat and sword.

“’Taint no more in this world fine gentlemen
sighin’ and dyin’ for me! no wedding favors and
cake; no husband, no children; never! for there’s
no marryin’ in heaven, an I ever get there! Nay,
‘Peggy Burgoyne’ ’ll be writ on my tombstone, and
like as not the lines followin’ ’ll be ’a maker of
most uncommon fine sweetmeats and cheeses’!”

Another flood of tears, and then My Lady Peggy,
obeying that well-balanced head of hers, brushes
them away and proceeds to plan out her homeward
journey, and to administer a cunning retouch of
the cosmetics she had erstwhile bought of the
players’ apothecary in Drury Lane.

’Tis clear now, as it has been from the start, that
she may not quit Mr. Brummell’s house in other
than man’s attire, nor, so far as she can see, will it
be possible for her to resume her own garments at
any inn, or time, or place, before she reaches Kennaston,
.bn 254.png
.pn +1
which she means to do ere night falls;
and then the stableyard, where she knows Chockey
will be milking, once gained, a cloak, the casting
of Sir Robin’s wig, and Her Ladyship feels certain
she can enter her father’s home unnoticed
beneath the shelter of the faithful Chockey’s argus
eye.

But, though neatly laid, Her Ladyship’s project
was not quite yet to go into execution. Even as
she was once more taking out the bundle from its
hiding-place and tying up in it the long tail of her
cut hair, she heard a hum of noises, voices below,
inquiring if Sir Robin had as yet reached the
house, and evidently obtaining an affirmative answer,
for,—

“Where is the hero? Our hero! Our hero!”

“Where is our highwayman? Our highwayman!”

“Where is Tom Kidde, the gallant? The gallant
of gallants!”

And a lot of such merry cries came echoing up
the staircase and corridor toward her room.

Lady Peggy had utterly forgot the hanging.

The more recent matter of Percy and the assassins
.bn 255.png
.pn +1
had put her own adventure completely out of
her head. For the first time she realized that
she had not seen either Mr. Brummell or any of
his company since she had unwillingly been borne
away from them by Homing Nell in the midst of
Epstowe Forest.

’Twas a halt she had not counted on; but, clapping
on wig and coat, she flung wide the door, and
was presently raised on the shoulders of Sir Wyatt
and His Grace of Escombe and borne triumphantly
down to the dining-room and placed in a chair of
honor at the supper-table, whence, what with
toasts, songs, stories, acclaims, wonders, amazements,
applause, Florence wine, cards, etc., etc.,
this gallant company did not arise (or some of
them slip under) until seven on Monday morning.

Her Ladyship got up from the mahogany with
but one-pound-ten in her pockets, and a surmise
in her head as to how far this sum would take her
on her homeward way.

But homeward way there could be none just yet,
for before too many bumpers had been filled and
drunk, Beau Brummell had made proposition of a
.bn 256.png
.pn +1
most lively affair, which indeed he had already set
afoot, for the celebrating of Sir Robin’s restoration
to his friends by the timely arrival and prowess of
Sir Percy. This was nothing else than going to
Vauxhall by water on Tuesday night, and in
masques. A score of ladies and gentlemen had
been bidden to join, including the Ladies Diana
and Biddy, the Honorable Dolly, the Misses Lovell,
Lady Chelmsford, with Lady Brookwood to act as
duenna for the unmarried fair.

In vain Lady Peggy protested, swore she could
not, would not. These gentlemen would not take
no for an answer, and once again Her Ladyship
perceived, as she reluctantly acceded to the masquerade,
how far more difficult ’twas to be out of
breeches than into ’em.

Percy was to be there, at least he was invited; so
much she knew from Mr. Brummell, and, as Lady
Diana was positive to come up to town for such a
novelty as a party in masquerade, of course her
suitor was certain to attend her.

Very well! Why should she, whose whole life
was to be passed in the compounding of cream-cheeses
.bn 257.png
.pn +1
and the visiting of poor old women, not
give to herself one more cause of vain regretting?
one more glimpse of him she adored?

At that hour, when Mr. Brummell and his
guests were doing honor to the supposed Sir Robin,
the real Baronet was called upon to receive two
most lamentable-looking blackguards who followed
the Boots up to the gentleman’s room, unheeding
both remonstrances and ugly words on the way
thither.

At sight of Mr. Bloksey and his companion-in-arms,
each lame, bound-up and wound-up of leg
and back, with their bonnets pulled down over
their brows, Sir Robin skipped from his easy-chair
with a gasp, half terrified at the appearance, wholly
eager to learn the outcome of the plot.

“Hist!” cries he, under his breath, and pointing
to the door, finger on lip.

“Heh?” responds the villain. “There’s no fear
here. We’s well enough known down in our own
neighbor’ood, but up ’ere we passes for two pious
beggars wot lives by h’alms from the parish
church!”

A grim smile from his partner confirms this remark,
.bn 258.png
.pn +1
and Sir Robin, thus reassured, says tremblingly:

“Well, ’tis done?”

“’Tis done,” both nodding in concert, “and,”
adds Mr. Bloksey, “we’re both nigh done too!
Wot with bullets apiece h’inside of us from the
gentleman’s pistols, and wot with gettin’ our
h’eyes knocked h’out of us, and most bein’ caught
by the Watch when we was a-lowerin’ Lord Gower’s
heir h’into the Thames, we’re ’ere, Sir Robin McTart,
to ’umbly remind you that we wants more.”

The Baronet shakes his head, hands thrust in
pockets, clutching purse and pence.

“Oh, no,” answers he, “the job was paid for in
advance, my good men. Not another groat will
you get.”

“Werry good,” murmurs Bloksey, turning on his
slip-shod heel. “We’ll just go down to the round
house, and if it turns out as Your Lordship gets
h’admission to the Tower free, you needn’t be too
much surprised. We doesn’t mind a-tellin’ ’ow
we saw you a-prickin’ Sir Percy de Bohun last
night! and a-weightin’ of his mangled corp, and
a-throwin’ of the same h’into the river at the old
.bn 259.png
.pn +1
Dove Pier!—Oh, no! we doesn’t!” This at the
door-sill.

“What! what! you knaves! Here, come back!
Come back, I say!” shrieks the terrified little gentleman,
seizing a shoulder of each and forcing
them into seats.

After which simple application of primary
methods, Mr. Bloksey and his friend find no difficulties
whatever in the way of wresting from their
patron another hundred pounds, with which they
make off, again and again rehearsing to him how
great risks they had run in decently interring the
body of his hated rival.

Once rid of them, Sir Robin rose, stretched himself,
and yawned.

’Twas an abject soul, one of those creatures born
of a good and honest stock on either side, which
sometimes cumber the earth as if in ribald jest
against the accepted laws of birth and breeding.

With no misgiving, save that of a possible detection,
Sir Robin, now that this even had been
disposed of at an expense of a hundred guineas,
felt nothing if not jubilant, and on the morrow
proceeded to order him a suit of satins in crimson,
.bn 260.png
.pn +1
a hat of the latest fashion, ruffles, cravats, silk
hose, a muff, and a lot of other fallals at Monsieur
Jabot’s in Holborn. For the Baronet, freed, as he
fancied, of his enemy, and feeling positive that
Lady Peggy would soon, out of the overflow of her
vast affection for him, contrive a message through
her obliging Mr. Incognito, desired to be equipped
in the latest mode for that summons to his Lady’s
presence, which he believed must ultimately, and
perhaps presently, arrive.

It is true, he expected that his entrance into the
gay world of fashion, which, he promised himself
by way of introduction, should be at Vauxhall,
might be a bit hampered by the accounts he must
hear of the sudden disappearance of Sir Percy de
Bohun, but this seemed a trifle in the path of a
gentleman for whose sake Lady Peggy Burgoyne
had come up to town, remained invisible, employed
an Incognito as Mercury, and of whose name,
albeit falsely, the prints had made most marvelous
mention.

Now, Sir Robin had not seen the tenth part of
these last. No, not any of ’em, in truth, save the
one he had shown to Her Ladyship the evening
.bn 261.png
.pn +1
they had encountered each other at the Dove Pier.
To be entirely candid, Sir Robin was an indifferent
scholar; write he could not; to read was a plague
which he willingly deputed, when it was necessary,
to his former instructor—that patient, worthy
man, the Vicar of Friskingdean, incumbent of the
living next Robinswold.

This one was even now, so Sir Robin had got
word, up in London to consult a great man for the
benefit of his eyes, and ’twas presently agreed between
’em at the Bishop, where the Vicar stopped,
that they should proceed together to Vauxhall on
the Tuesday night.

“I have heard, my dear Robin,” observed the excellent
old man, “that there is to be a rare sight in
the gardens that evening, nothing less than a most
curious novelty just come into vogue in the world
of fashion.”

“Ha, and what’s that, Sir?” inquires the Baronet.

“A party of Beau Brummell’s to come by water
to the pier, every soul of ’em in masks,—Lords,
Ladies, and all persons of the first quality; some
of the names I heard in the coffee-room. There’s
.bn 262.png
.pn +1
to be Sir Wyatt Lovell, the Earl of Escombe, Lady
Diana Weston, Lady Chelmsford, Lord Kennaston
of Kennaston—”

“Hold, Sir!” cried the Baronet, jumping about
the room, like one demented, the idea bouncing
into his pate that if Kennaston is to be there, his
twin-sister will also form one of the distinguished
party. “What’s to prevent me buying a couple of
masks and, with our cloaks set out by our swords,
a-joining in this gay diversion?” The little gentleman’s
eyes twinkle with sweet anticipation.

“But,” hesitates the Vicar, “would such levity
be counted seemly for one of my years and profession?”

“Tut, tut, Sir,” cries Sir Robin, “I’ll not take a
refusal. Hark ye, I have reasons,” adds he mysteriously.
“There’s one of the Fair likely to be
present who pines to see me, Sir, and whom I yearn
to behold once more. There hath been an obstacle,”
continues the cold-blooded monkey, “but
Providence hath removed it. I pray of you accompany
me, Sir, and t’will lead mayhap to banns
bein’ read on Sunday se’ennight in the church at
Friskingdean.”
.bn 263.png
.pn +1

The Vicar, being carried away by two natural
and one of ’em a most laudable emotion, at last
consented. He was quite in fatherly sympathy
with his old pupil’s ambition to settle in life, and
he had that curious hankering after just a nibble
at the edge of the flesh-pots of Egypt, which is not
uncommon to gentlemen of even his sedate years
and failing sight.

Sir Robin bought masks and cloaks of black and
ordered them sent to the Bishop, where he had
agreed to sup on Tuesday and go thence by land to
Vauxhall. Indeed he had just now come out of
the draper’s shop and turned down toward the
Vicar’s inn, when he caught sight of Lady Peggy
walking swiftly from him. She had been buying
stains for her skin and eyebrows.

“Mr. Incognito!” cried he, scampering hither
and yon, into the kennel, onto the path, jostling
fair ladies’ chairs, running into a porter’s pack,
thumping a horse in the nose with his ill-worn
weapon, and, finally, gaining on the one he pursues,
and dealing Her Ladyship’s shoulder no
gentle blow.

“Ha, there!” cries she, turning, hand on hilt.
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
Then, perceiving who ’tis, she almost shudders and
draws up to her full height.

“Dear Mr. Incognito,” pants Sir Robin, “how
fares My Lady? Tell me, I beseech you!”

“She fares but ill, Sir,” answers she, making to
proceed.

“No, no, not so fast, I implore; oh, Sir, I die
for her!”

“Very well, Sir, she is willing. I am pressed
for time and must away.”

“One word. You say she’s willing I should die
for her?”

“Oh, Sir Robin, importune me no further. I
know not what she’s willing for!”

“Now, now,” soothes the Baronet. “We’re well
met, Mr. Incognito, that I’m assured of; and that
Lady Peggy’d far rather I’d live than die for her,”
leers he, “since for the sake of communicating with
me she’s at, no doubt, great expenses in maintaining
you?”

At this Her Ladyship laughs, as many a lady
may do any day, at the strange construction a man
who is blessed with vanity contrives to put upon
her actions.
.bn 265.png
.pn +1

“’Tis so, I know’t!” exclaims he, grinning unctuously.
“Now, Sir, tell me, goes she—” his voice
sinks to a whisper as he applies his mouth nigh to
Peg’s ear—“goes she to Vauxhall in Beau Brummell’s
party, along with her brother, o’ Tuesday
night?”

A thousand thoughts rush helter-skelter through
Her Ladyship’s brain, pro and con the answering
of this query.

Presently, sedately, at the corner of the street,
says she, with no smallest notion of the import or
the outcome of her words, merely uttered as a light
and easy means of make-off:

“Go and see!” and she disappears from view.

“By jingo!” rattles the gentleman from Kent
to himself, as he jumps into a hackney-coach and
tools out to the Puffled Hen. “But she loves me!
Curse me! but I believe she’s had that incognito
rascal at upwards probably of ten shillings a day,
just on purpose to watch for my appearance, and
so to glean tidings of my welfare! Without a
doubt ’tis by her commands he said that ‘go and
see.’ Zounds! I’ll do’t, with the Vicar to bear
me out,” adds this prudent lover, “should any disagreeable
.bn 266.png
.pn +1
incident occur between me and any one
of these coxcombs with their town ways. Damn
’em, tho’! with a secret affair going on betwixt me
and Peggy, I can snap my fingers at His Gracious
Majesty himself, should we encounter!”

Well pleased, therefore, with himself, Sir Robin
descended at the Puffled Hen and bestowed upon
the cabman out of that abundance of the heart
which occasionally causes the pocket, as well as the
heart, to speak—two-pence.

.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 267.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XIV—In this same Sir Robin believes he meets his Fair...'

.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XIV</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XIV
.if-

.nf c
<em>In this same Sir Robin believes he meets his
Fair: and Lady Biddy O’Toole is the
means of putting the whole Gardens
into a vast commotion.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
After quitting Sir Robin, Her Ladyship, jingling
the few shillings that now remained to her,
since purchasing unguents and the mask and cloak
necessary for the approaching festivity, suddenly
made up her mind to escape at once, to leave the
bundle of her clothes, her shorn tresses, and whatever
else beside to tell what tale they might, and,
here and now, to shake the dust of London from
her feet forever. And to this end she was about
to summon a chair to start her as far on her journey
as her purse would permit, when out comes
.bn 268.png
.pn +1
Mr. Brummell himself from the shop of Monsieur
Jabot, and links his arm in hers with his accustomed
pleasant familiarity and easy condescension.

“’Pon honor!” exclaims the Beau. “Well met,
Sir! Since you were nigh hanged, Sir, I’ve not
had too much of your agreeable company. I’d
have you know I’m just from Monsieur Jabot’s
back room, where, the whiles I took a dish of tea,
I explained the riddles of your most amazin’ twist
of the lace. Faith, Robin, ’twas a lucky hour for
me, when, having left a pile of failures, so high!
in the corner of my dressing-room, I beheld your
cravat and bade my man knock you down!”

Lady Peggy laughs. The cool audacity of Beau
Brummell is a relief after the mawkish sighs of
the little scoundrel she has just parted from, and,
hoping that Mr. Brummell will soon spy either
one of the Fair or a Royal Highness, and so be
diverted from her side, she bows and answers:

“Robin McTart must ever account that a lucky
day for him, Sir!”

“Hark ye, my young buck,” proceeds the Beau.
“Monsieur Jabot is so enchanted with your manner
of the cravat that to-day, with my compliments,
.bn 269.png
.pn +1
he introduces it at Court! And since I’ve
been seen with it,” adds he pompously, “’tis sure,
by this day week, to be the height of the mode!”

“Aye?” responds Her Ladyship, a-wondering
how she can best get away.

“Aye!” echoes her companion in a monstrous
amazement. “Rot me! Sir, but such a distinction’s
not often conferred upon a young gentleman
up in town for the first time. What’s the
matter with you, boy?” cries he, turning to observe
Her Ladyship’s somewhat absent-minded aspect.

“Naught, I swear!” cries she, recovering herself.

“’Sdeath! Robin, are ye in love?” asks the
Beau, taking a pinch of snuff and tendering his
box, as, attended by all eyes, the two make their
way down Piccadilly, betwixt ogling ladies in their
chairs and chariots, gallants, dowagers; each, all,
mincing and la-la-ing as they go.

Her Ladyship inclines her head. She is well
pleased to speak truth when she can.

“By Gad! Mr. Brummell, you’ve hit the mark,”
says she.

“Sleep not o’ nights? fickle at your meat? wake
sighing? dream of patches, smiles, and dainty
.bn 270.png
.pn +1
fingers? mistrust yourself? easily affronted? believe
the whole world’s pointing at you in raillery?
take no pleasure in horse, man, gun or dog? loathe
all the Fair, save one? love solitude?”

Her Ladyship’s feign to smile in the midst of
the snuff, which she abhors, and has only taken
because she had to. Sneezing, she nods as her
companion continues:

“Hate company? are cursin’ me now for an
addle-pated fool, and wishing I’d leave you to yourself,
eh? Don’t answer. I know it, Robin, well;
a thousand times, more or less, have I been where
you stand to-day, and had just cause, I fancied, to
damn the Prince himself, since that which I was
then pleased to dub his foolish prattle served to
distract my ruminations from whichever Lady
’twas at the moment claimed my fancy. I cursed
him then, Sir, for clinging to my arm, but now I
bless him, as you will me some future day—for,
Robin, hark ye, there’s not one of the jades but
deceives us, no, Sir! and I’m goin’ to hang on to
you, Sir, for keepin’ of you out of the vapors.
Zounds, Sir! I’ll not leave you to any such ill company
as himself proves to a young man in your
.bn 271.png
.pn +1
predicament. Come, Sir, come; we’ll up and into
Will’s, and there, me stickin’ faster than a burr,
we’ll home to Peter’s Court and with a merry lot
of gentlemen make a pretty night of’t against to-morrow
with its evening at Vauxhall.”

With which pleasant and most well-intentioned
sally, Lady Peggy again finds herself constrained
to put off that redemption of her true estate for
which she so deeply yearns.

Mr. Brummell’s party went by water to Vauxhall,
and ’twas indeed a heavenly night for such
an expedition, with no large lady-moon a-staring,
but the rather a thin slip of a silver damsel hanging
in the vault, and millions of stars a-waiting on
her, not any of these a-revealing too much or
a-telling any tales if a gentleman’s hand chanced
to come in contact with a lady’s amid the folds of
brocade, or under the long cloth of the black,
crimson or blue cloaks in which all these merry
masqueraders were enveloped.

Sir Percy de Bohun was beside Lady Diana
Weston; Peggy noted the same with jealous, despairing
eyes; while at the left of Lord Brookwood’s
daughter sat her own twin—only the second
.bn 272.png
.pn +1
time she had seen him since the memorable night
in Lark Lane; nor did she see him plainly now,
for all the company had set forth in their masks,
and only removed them between whiles to gain a
breath of fresh air. ’Twas expected that the
larger number of the party would meet them at
the Gardens, and thereafter the sport and mystification
would begin.

So it turned out; not only all the rest of Mr.
Brummell’s friends in their cloaks and masks,
with glimpse now and then of satins, taffetas, laces,
ribands, jeweled stomachers, bodices ablaze, and so
forth, but a vast assemblage of other folk also
awaited the arrival of the Beau’s barge at the
bottom of the Gardens.

Among these, two lurked in the shadow of the
trees; they were Sir Robin and the Vicar. The
former noted with deep joy that he had, by a happy
chance, chosen a crimson color for his new suit,
exactly corresponding to that of one of these gallants;
that his cloak of sable hue was also quite the
ton, and that he could thus, with ease, mingle
with the party, and presently, no doubt, either discover
Lady Peggy’s identity, or, more than likely,
.bn 273.png
.pn +1
she herself would disclose the same to him, and at
last reward his faithfulness and patience. No
qualm visited the little gentleman’s conscience-pocket
with regard to his supposed victim, although,
it is true, he had given him a vicious
thought as he had stood near the river’s bank
waiting for Mr. Brummell’s barge to come in
sight. So had Peggy, as she was being rowed past
the old Dove Pier; into her mind and into Sir
Percy’s had come the memory of the Sunday night,
but he spoke of it no more than, certes, did she.

Sir Robin, his cup overflowing with pleasurable
anticipation and the gratified sense that the one
who had sworn to take his life lay, fish-food, at
the bottom of the Thames, flitted hither and yon,
dragging the bewildered Vicar of Friskingdean in
his wake.

Wherever the company of Mr. Brummell wandered,
there followed, hanging on to the fringe, as
’twere, these two, whom presently one-half the
guests accepted as a matter of course to be of
themselves.

First, always followed by an admiring and gaping
crowd, ’twas up and down the formal Walks
.bn 274.png
.pn +1
somewhat sedately, for the masquerade, as has been
said before, was at that period but just coming
into vogue, and fine ladies and gentlemen were,
at the outset of an evening, not as easy in their
disguises as they became after a promenade in the
unaccustomed duds; then, they formed a circle of
mysterious appearance around the orchestra; then,
’twas into the Room to stare at the pictures
through the peepholes of their masks; then a rush
to gaze at the Cascade, which the whole of them,
save Lady Peggy, Sir Robin and the Vicar, had
seen a hundred times before; later, ’twas up and
down the Walks again; and here Sir Robin at last
made bold, having long since joined himself and
the somewhat reluctant Vicar to a group of the
Beau’s company, to address a few words, as it
chanced, to the lively Lady Biddy O’Toole!

It had seemed to him, after a careful survey of
all, and having been able, by dint of his ears, to
learn which was Kennaston, whose was the only
personality so far in his possession, that Lady
Biddy’s arch turn of the head was the most like to
belong to the object of his passion. So up he
springs, mincing, leaving the Vicar to huddle in
.bn 275.png
.pn +1
the shade, and, pulling Her Ladyship’s mask-riband
with a twitching finger and thumb, as he
had seen others do just now, he said, very low, in
her ear:

“I’m sure I know who Your Ladyship is!”

“Out with it,” says she, very low too.

“It’s she whose image is writ on my heart,” answers
he.

“Sure,” answers she, “that’s a thing that can
never be known until you’re dead, and maybe not
as soon, since the surgeons don’t cut up everybody!
Lud, Sir, give me your name, and we’ll
talk of your heart anon.”

“I am Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent,”
exclaims he, feeling positive that this saucy minx
is none other than his adored, for be it remembered
Lady Biddy spoke under her breath and with
a disguised tone to her voice.

“’Od’s blood!” now whispers Her Ladyship,
with an accent of mock terror, into Sir Robin’s
ear. “You! the highwayman! the cut-throat! the
robber! what, I’ve heard, sticks gentlemen in the
back, or has your men do it for you, and profits by
that same!” laughing fit to kill herself.
.bn 276.png
.pn +1

But the little man does not laugh; the cold
sweat stands out all over his sallow countenance,
and he’s so terrified, recalling the threats of Mr.
Bloksey, that he stands stock-still, and really can
not move a leg.

They are nigh the Dark Walks as Sir Robin
comes to his halt, and Lady Biddy, not pausing
even to note his silence, goes merrily on with her
most apt discourse.

“Oh,” proceeds she, “but you are the hero of the
day, Sir Robin, and it’s myself that’s proud to be
in your company, and faith! I’d like to have died
running to see you hang on Saturday last!”

“Hang!” gasps he, getting back the use of his
voice, but not of his shaking legs. “Saturday
last!”

“Don’t be that bashful, Sir Robin, making as if
you’d never heard of such before!” And Lady
Biddy gives the Baronet’s cloak a playful tweak.
“Lud, Sir! you and Sir Percy de Bohun’s the two
most talked about, of all the bucks in town!”

“Sir Percy de Bohun!” repeats he, his knees
knocking together.

“Sure’n didn’t he save you from the gibbet?
.bn 277.png
.pn +1
Oh, go-along with you, Sir Robin, you can’t palaver
Lady—”

“Lady who?” he contrives to ejaculate, struck
nearly dumb at this mention of his rival, while
Lady Biddy now bridles and is mute.

“You are Lady Peggy Burgoyne, are you not?”
he goes on more softly, bending toward his companion,
and concluding at last that the Lady’s
words must have been the mere hap-hazards of a
sparkling disposition.

Now Lady Biddy, in common with other ladies
of fashion and moving in certain high circles of
society, had heard a deal of the mysterious and all
unseen Lady Peggy. She well knew the supposition
that was rife as to Lady Peggy’s being secretly
the wife of Sir Robin McTart. She knew
from her bosom friend, Lady Diana Weston, who
had the same most direct from her suitor, Lord
Kennaston, Lady Peggy’s own twin-brother, that
his sister was from home, unknown her whereabouts
to father or mother, kith or kin, maid or
man, save that she was “up in London”; that Sir
Percy de Bohun was mad for love and loss of her;
.bn 278.png
.pn +1
that her brother, had he not been in like case by
means of Lady Diana, would long since have made
public search, as he was indeed making such privately,
for the discovery of the eloping Fair. She
likewise was aware that Sir Robin frequented the
gay world, was not adverse to ogling a lady, as she
herself could testify; stopped at Mr. Brummell’s
house; and, albeit ’twas said had fought a duel
with Sir Percy because of Lady Peggy, still did not
absent himself from any rout, ridotto, or ball, on
her always absent account.

So, equipped with such a fund of knowledge
and any amount of surmise, Her Ladyship replied
coyly beneath her mask:

“Why do you think so, Sir Robin, and pray if I
were Lady Peggy, what, now, would you be afther
saying to me?”

“Zounds! ’tis she!” exclaims the Baronet, carried
away by the fact that Lady Biddy’s hand beneath
her cloak has more than half-way met his
own moist and trembling fingers.

“Loveliest of women! Oh, ’twas indeed by your
express directions, was’t not, that Mr. Incognito
.bn 279.png
.pn +1
on Monday, watching for me in High Holborn
nigh the shop of Mounseer Jabot, bid me come here
to-night to meet you?”

Lady Biddy, although much averse to the clammy
touch of her cavalier, gives his fingers an assuring
pressure.

“Why, oh, why!” pursues Sir Robin, now as
much elated by this tacit confession of her passion
for him, as he was but lately overwhelmed by the
mention of such strange words as “hanging, highwayman,
Sir Percy de Bohun,” etc., etc., “why
have you seen fit to keep me in such a length of
suspense? Why have I not been allowed, before
this, to behold you, and renew the days of our
sojourn in Kent? Speak, my angel, speak!”

“La, Sir!” murmurs Lady Biddy, minx-like,
ever anxious to get at the heart of this now much
deepened enigma, “la, Sir, do you not know but
too well the whys and wherefores of my secrecy?”
Her Ladyship from Cork actually squeezes the
little Baronet’s crooked little hand.

“That do I not! Mr. Incognito never would tell
me aught, but thus and so; and bade me, from your
adorable lips, keep myself in seclusion and safety,—nor
.bn 280.png
.pn +1
ever,” continues he, his tone sinking to a
mere breath, “endanger my precious self,” now
stooping to imprint a chaste kiss on Her Ladyship’s
hand, “in the meeting even once of Sir
Percy de Bohun, for he had sworn to kill me on
beholding me. Dearest life,” proceeds Sir Robin,
withdrawing Lady Biddy a bit into the shade of
the great trees, “I have obeyed your commands.
I have never set eyes upon the scoundrel, but have
kept myself close housed at my inn in Pimlico,
awaiting your dear pleasure.”

“Have ye?” murmurs Lady Biddy, now more
bewildered than she ever was before in her life,
and seeing no clear way, either to read the puzzle
or, truth to tell, to elude the gentleman. Yet the
wits of a lady, especially if she happen to have
been born in Ireland, may usually be trusted to
extricate her from almost any dilemma; therefore,
when Sir Robin has done swearing of his impatient
probation passed at the Puffled Hen, says she,
tweaking her hoop and making a courtesy:

“Lud! Robin,” (the hussy!) “but you are a killing
creature! Nay, nay!” drawing out a few
steps, he after her, from the shade of the trees
.bn 281.png
.pn +1
and more in the flare of the twinkling globe lamps.
“Nay, tarry here but a moment; there are the same
reasons for your not accompanying me now that
have prevailed upon me to keep our matters secret
hitherto. I pray you, stir not from the neighborhood
of this wooden lion—see?—until I return,
which I will do presently.”

“Faith!” cries the Baronet, “I’ll not budge, my
divine Peggy! until you are once more at my
side!” and with a horrid leer through his peepholes,
he essays to take Lady Biddy’s hand once
more, but she’s off, balking him.

Quick as thought, she scampered across to the
edge of the orchestra, where she discovered a group
of masks and among ’em one, whom, by the rose
pinned to her bloom-colored bodice, she knew to be
Lady Diana, and she made certain that two of the
three bloods near her, canes dangling at their
button-holes, must be Sir Percy and Lord Kennaston.

“Hist!” exclaims Lady Biddy, panting partly
from speed, partly from the fright a lady alone
might experience in running the gauntlet of so
many macaronis and fops, not to speak of thieves
.bn 282.png
.pn +1
and pickpockets, as perforce was the case in progressing
about Vauxhall.

“What is’t Biddy, for I know you by your silver
heels,” answers Lady Di. “Mischief, I’ll dare be
sworn, or it’s not you! Speak your mind; there’s
none here but what can keep a secret, and the whole
of us have been a-watching you with some one, fie!
at the entrance to the Dark Alleys.”

“Is Sir Percy here? Is this he?” whispers
Biddy.

Sir Percy bows, for he is there; while the other
two gentlemen, inferring from her tone that she
seeks a private ear, instantly withdraw to one of
the boxes for a glass of Burgundy to refresh their
spirits.

“I’ve news for you, of one you’re a-dyin’ for, of
Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” exclaims she triumphantly.

“What! What!” comes simultaneously from
behind each of the masks she addresses.

“Aye; I’m after learning from, whom, think
you?”

“Proceed, for the love of God, Madam!” says
Percy, very low.
.bn 283.png
.pn +1

“From him that’s supposed to be her husband,
Sir Robin McTart, that mistook me for her,” Biddy
titters, “that she’s here to-night by an appointment
with him, made by a trusted servant of hers,
called 'Mr. Incognito’; sent to meet Sir Robin before
the shop of Monsieur Jabot in Holborn; and
he’s not seen Her Ladyship,—I mean Sir Robin’s
not seen her since they were sojourning in Kent
together! and there’s a mystery for you! And I
made excuses and left him a-standin’ by the lion,
for I could no longer contain the news, but must
run back to him now to extract the rest of it.
Pray heaven, Lady Peggy herself comes not by,
and lets out that I was not she at all, at all!”

“Good God!” murmurs Percy under his breath,
as Biddy rattles on. “Can this thing be? and what
does it all mean?”

Restraining Lady Biddy, both he and Lady
Diana endeavor to quiet her abounding spirits,
and to gain from her the detailed account of her
encounter with Sir Robin. Percy, in the midst
of her voluble tongue and her giggling, striving to
form some plan of action which shall this night
bring matters to the touch between himself and
.bn 284.png
.pn +1
the Baronet and leave one or t’other of ’em stiff
and stark.

Meantime, Sir Robin, with greedy eyes fixed on
Lady Biddy, so long as he can see her, and until
she and her companions withdraw into a box,
stands as if at one with the wooden lion; presently,
however, his gaze is diverted hither and yon, not
only by the playful and engaging remarks of various
young ladies who challenge his mask in the
most direct and obliging fashion, but by a certain
Figure which he beholds moving about aimlessly,
it would seem, and alone, beneath the dark shadows
of the trees toward the river.

There is something in this Figure’s motions, although
cloaked and masked,—therefore, the Baronet
notes, one of Mr. Brummell’s party,—which
strikes him as familiar, and when, presently, the
unknown lifts mask and reveals the countenance
behind it, Sir Robin sidles up, one eye on the
wooden lion of his tryst, however, and plucking
Lady Peggy by the arm, says:

“Ho! Mr. Incognito!”

Peggy turns, and betwixt disgust, dismay, horror,
and amusement, remains silent.
.bn 285.png
.pn +1

“’Tis I, Sir, Robin McTart,” lifting his own
mask a trifle to assure his companion of his identity.

“Soh!” returns she, “I do perceive.”

“Oh, Mr. Incognito, what do I not owe to your
being in My Lady’s employ! She is indeed here.”

Her Ladyship, taking this for a question, answers
thus, with emphasis: “Yes, she’s here—indeed.”

“I have seen her,” sighs the little Baronet, leaning
his head, just exactly the height of Her Ladyship’s
own, down on Peggy’s shoulder in an excess
of sensibility.

“Have you?” exclaims she, not daring to stir in
the embarrassment of believing it possible that the
scoundrel has discovered her identity.

“Oh, yes,” sighs Sir Robin, “I have received a
pressure, nay two of ’em, from her hand. I’ve
kissed her fingers; I await her return to meet me
at the wooden lion yonder.”

“Do you?” says Lady Peggy, mystified beyond
everything. “Did she look as you expected her
to?”

“Ah!” gasps Sir Robin, “she has not yet lifted
her mask for me to behold her countenance, but
.bn 286.png
.pn +1
when she returns, I shall beseech her for one
glimpse!”

“Ah!” returns Peggy, now fully persuaded that
some one has been making a jest of her companion,
but none the less disquieted on her own score.

“Hark ye, Sir Robin,” says she, “you have ever
found my counsels wise. Be advised by me now;
leave Vauxhall at once. Lady Peggy Burgoyne
is not safe, so long as you tarry here.”

The little Baronet, doughtily, although trembling,
puts his hand to his hilt.

“Nay, Sir!” continues Peg, “your weapon would
not avail for her preservation. She leaves town
this very night for Kennaston. Do you the same,
nor risk detection longer here.” Her Ladyship
uses the word advisedly, and has the satisfaction
of seeing Sir Robin shiver with terror, then steady
again as he reflects that Her Ladyship’s fears can
but be in connection with her own escapade; since,
’tis plain from all he can spy and eavesdrop, not a
soul as yet has missed Sir Percy de Bohun from his
accustomed haunts.

“But she swore me she’d be back in a few moments,
Mr. Incognito, and ’sdeath! Sir!” perceiving
.bn 287.png
.pn +1
Lady Biddy emerging from the box and
advancing toward the lion alone, “there she is!”

Off and away Sir Robin McTart to join his
Fair, while Lady Peggy, screened by the increasing
shadows, for the dripping lamps are one by
one, by this, dying down in their globes, beholds
one—she devines not which—of Beau Brummell’s
lady guests, courtesying and greeting the Baronet
with her finger-tips.

Now My Lady’s heart’s a-thumping monstrous
hard; she beholds, as well as Sir Robin and his
supposed Peggy, two others—alas! she knows too
well who they are, a-peeping out from the corner
of the box-entrance whence Lady Biddy came just
now, and watching her encounter with Sir Robin.

These are Lady Diana and Sir Percy.

Together? Aye and a-goin’ to be “together” for
all their lives, she sadly thinks, both of them,
quite forgetting, save perchance for a moment’s beguilement,
her very existence. But it behooves her,
if not for her own sake, of which she has come to
the pass of recking but little, then for her father’s
and mother’s, now to bid farewell forever to disguises,
.bn 288.png
.pn +1
falsehoods, cheatings, man’s estate, and
even the melancholy chance of seeing the countenance
of Sir Percy. She will off presently, and
reach home as best she may.

A few minutes, more or less, can make no odds,
and ’tis but too true that Her Ladyship stood
there in ambush of the branches in the vain hope
that Percy might lift his mask, if but for an instant,
and thus allow her parting gaze to rest upon
his features.

It is quite true that mortals, although in never
such haste to reach a desired crisis, still ofttimes
halt at the threshhold of its attainment; so Her
Ladyship, with now nothing to hinder her escape,
still stood leaning against an oak, listless, but for
the eager eyes fixed on the pair in the box entrance.
These presently crossed into the throng and, joining
others of the maskers, were lost to her view;
but the Baronet and Lady Biddy had not been idle
of their tongues this while.

Much simpering, angling for news, tittering,
and a neat show of wit in the manner of plying a
gentleman with questions on a matter about which
.bn 289.png
.pn +1
he was quite ignorant, on the lady’s side; ardor,
impatience, as much daring as his little spirit permitted,
on the gentleman’s. Finally said he:

“Mr. Incognito says you start for Kennaston
this very night, my dearest life, is’t so?”

“Tell me who is Mr. Incognito?” says she, “and
I’ll answer you straight.”

“He’s your paid servant, sworn slave, and the
bearer of all tender messages between us.—Now, go
you to Kennaston to-night?”

“As sure as I’m Lady Peggy Burgoyne,” returns
Biddy. “I start for home ere cock-crow!”

“I’ll follow you poste-haste, but,” cries Sir
Robin, “loveliest of created beings, I beseech, I
implore! one glimpse of your angelic countenance
before we part—to meet only when I can claim
you as my own!”

“No! No!” exclaims Biddy, restraining the
Baronet’s hand which is laid upon the lutestring
of her mask.

“But divine creature, I insist!” with one arm
seizing the buxom Lady Biddy about the waist,
while with the other he essays to untie the riband
which hides her charms from view.
.bn 290.png
.pn +1

Then Lady Biddy O’Toole, whose lungs were of
the best, let such a bawl as rang far up and down
the Thames, causing a score of red-stockinged boatmen
to leave their wherries and dash up the Gardens;
causing every tongue in Vauxhall to cease
clacking, every glass to jingle to its table, every
echo to resound; every other lady there to shriek;
the musicians to stop; the waiters to drop their
trays; each gentleman to draw sword; and a vast
number of persons of both sexes to shout:

“Watch! Watch! Murder! Thieves! Highwaymen!”
and whatever else beside.

While a concourse of people of every condition
at once closed in around Sir Robin and Lady
Biddy, at the outside rim of which, shivering betwixt
terror and that lively curiosity which overrides
even a desire for personal safety, gaped the
now unmasked Vicar of Friskingdean, unable to
find his natural protector and sometime pupil in
all this hurly-burly.

.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 291.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title=XV—Wherein Sir Percy and Sir Robin come face to face...'

.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XV</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XV
.if-

.nf c
<em>Wherein Sir Percy and Sir Robin come face
to face, to the unfeigned amazement of
each: and where My Lady takes
to her heels and a wherry.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
When Lady Diana and Percy quitted the box,
he, after conducting her to the care of Lady Brookwood,
strode off into the Dark Alleys, taking with
him, not Kennaston, for the hopeless youth, flouted
still by Diana, had gone a-mooning by the river’s
bank, but a company of valiant and merry gentlemen
all raised a bit by the partaking of the famous
Vauxhall punch; and to them he confided sufficient
of his reasons and intentions, as made plain
their course to them as his friends, to do aught
and all in their several powers toward the promoting
.bn 292.png
.pn +1
of a quarrel betwixt him and Sir Robin McTart;
whom, he would presently point out to them,
as they should stroll, seeming careless, the length
of the walk.

Thus, arm in arm, Sir Percy, Sir Wyatt Lovell,
His Grace of Escombe, and Mr. Jack Chalmers,
across the path, swaggering with sticks and tassels
hanging, hats at a cock, perfumed with Venus oil,
and most jocund of demeanor; with Beau Brummell
behind ’em spying, waving his little muff,
and chatting with Lord Wootton and one or two
more gay sparks, all disporting themselves carelessly,
but hilts eased for the drawing.

Just as they were nearing the wooden lion of Sir
Robin’s tryst, Lady Biddy’s shriek assailed their
ears, and Sir Percy, thanking Providence for so
opportune an occurrence, which, not to say that it
was in any way premeditated, yet continued to
ring out louder and louder, even after Sir Robin
had ceased to pull at her mask-string and stood,
held fast in Her Ladyship’s stout grasp, the very
center of a blaze of light from footmen’s flambeaux,—they
and the masses pushing every way,
screaming and cursing.
.bn 293.png
.pn +1

Into the thick of this mêlée dashed Sir Percy de
Bohun, with his friends on either side of him.

But a moment sufficed for him to wrest the Lady
from her assailant and to deliver her over to the
care of Diana and the Duchess, who carried her
swooning (whether with laughter or emotion
’twould be difficult to set down), to the Room.

In another second, taking his silver-fringed
gloves from his pocket he threw them into the
masked face of Sir Robin McTart.

The little Baronet, who had both temper and
vanity, which brace now got the upperhand of
his cowardice, and, believing that Lady Peggy’s
eyes were upon him, that Sir Percy was at the
bottom of the Thames, and with full foreknowledge
that he could run away before the meeting
could be arranged, caught the gloves as they struck
and flung them back into their owner’s covered
countenance.

“Take that! ’sdeath!” squeaked Sir Robin, now
much the more valiant as he beheld the Vicar
screwing his way toward him through the excited
crowds.

.il id=i_278fp fn=i_278fp.jpg w=352px ew=80% alt='I am Sir Robin McTart!...'

“Unmask, and show yourself for who you are!”
.bn 294.png
.pn +1
cried Percy, every one of his companions echoing:

“Unmask! Unmask! Unmask, or we’ll run
ye!”

“Willingly,” responded the trembling gentleman
from Kent, tugging at the slip-knot in his mask-string.

“I am Sir Robin McTart! Who, the devil, are
you?”

“I am Sir Percy de Bohun!” replied his opponent,
as both masks came off at the same instant,
and the two confronted one another, staring with
four eyes that fairly popped in their sockets.

’Twould be hard to say which of these two was
the more astounded, although Sir Percy’s amazement
had quite a different flavor from the Baronet’s
abject terror.

“You! Sir Percy de Bohun!” he quavered, turning
ashy pale. “I’ll not believe it. ’Tis a lie!”

“You! Sir Robin McTart!” replied Percy, hotly.
“Gentlemen,” turning to his friends, “I pray
you bear me out in this, not to the exclusion of
my challenge of this impostor, which holds good
until one or t’other of us sheds blood, but for the
preservation of the honor of a valiant gentleman,
.bn 295.png
.pn +1
who is not far off of us now. That this weazen
wretch may meet his dues, for not only does he
masquerade his face, but seeks to usurp the character
and name of one whom we all know to be
both handsome, brave and courageous.”

Percy’s blood runs high as he speaks these generous
words, while every soul about him stands
breathless, staring, struck dumb with the singularity
of the episode.

“But I am Sir Robin McTart,” cries the Baronet,
brandishing his weapon with a will, since there is
none to oppose him, and the Vicar, now, although
well-nigh choked, not above ten yards distant from
him.

“Tut, tut, Sir, whoever you are,” interposed
Lord Escombe. “Your game’s up, and you’d better
give your lies a rest.”

“Hold!” cries Sir Percy to Robin, “whoever
you are, I challenge you to fight me ten minutes
hence, yonder in the open, towards the river, and
those ten minutes my friends and I’ll spend in
calling the actual Sir Robin McTart into your
presence, and confronting your impudence with
his reality. Lend me your lungs, My Lords and
.bn 296.png
.bn 297.png
.bn 298.png
.pn +1
Gentlemen; Sir Robin’s in call somewhere in the
Gardens as we all know.”

And with one accord the shout went up, ringing
up and down the river and far across to the highway,
where it caused the horse-patrol to think that
every highwayman in the kingdom had broken
loose upon Vauxhall, and presently brought them
rearing, plunging, swearing, firing, thumping cutlasses
right and left, into the midst of the surging
thousands, by this all shouting:

“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir
Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin McTart!” at the
top of their voices.

But for all their bawling, no one answered, no
one came, and but one of the vast throng went.

This was Lady Peggy, at a loss to know the
meaning of the shouts, not having been near
enough to the scene of the encounter to learn its
purport, and only now realizing that ’twas herself
was sought and meant by the concerted cry that
rent the air. Scenting a new if unknown danger,
she followed her woman’s instinct, and, in the
waiting pause that succeeded the tumultuous call,
Peggy fled to the landing, pressed a handful of
.bn 299.png
.pn +1
shillings, almost her last, into the palm of the
only boatman there, jumped into the wherry and
bade him get her as swiftly as he could to Queenhithe
Stairs; for determined was she, now more
than ever, to leave no traces in her wake, and to
return, at all risks, to Mr. Brummell’s house for
her bundle of woman’s clothes.

For a long way down the Thames the renewed
cry of the Vauxhall crush rang in her distracted
ears:

“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir
Robin! Sir Robin! Where are you? Come forth!
Show yourself!”

But none other came forth, and the Baronet,
taking such courage as he might through his astonishment
at Sir Percy’s being alive,—and not forgetting,
even at this point, to reckon how much
the lying assassins had mulcted him of, now,
in the second breathless halt of the calling his own
name, waved his weapon and answered it, saying
again:

“I am Sir Robin McTart!”

“Prove it,” shouted Chalmers, with a derisive
shrug.
.bn 300.png
.pn +1

“Faith! and so he can by me!” exclaimed the
panting Vicar, as, borne rather by the surging of
the people than by his slender legs, the tenant of
the cloth was pitched somewhat unceremoniously
head-first into his pupil’s middle. Sputtering, but
yet winning the attention which truth and the
clergy usually and righteously obtain, the Vicar
raised his right hand, and, laying his left on the
Baronet’s shoulder, he spoke:

“This is Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent.
I have known him from his birth; his father before
him; he has been my pupil. Who dares use
his name than himself is an impostor and a thief!”

“What!” and now comes forward Mr. Brummell
with open hand. “And my old friend,” says he,
“’sdeath, Mr. What’s-your-name, you were a
curate when we met last, twenty years ago, but I
remember you, Sir, at Robinswold. So this,”
surveying the Baronet, “is my old friend’s son and
heir? Of a truth he favors his sire more than the
pretty young rapscallion that’s been a-fooling us
all for now these four weeks past; for gentlemen,”
adds the Beau, turning to Sir Percy, “’tis as well
we confess ourselves to have been duped. Gad,
.bn 301.png
.pn +1
Sir,” this <lang=it><em>sotto voce</em></lang> to Percy alone, “I always
wondered where Sir Hector found that handsome
lad, for he was as ugly a gentleman as ever was
wedded to wife.”

After the storm there came that calm which is
the inevitable successor, save that, in this case,
while the noise subsided, the wonder grew. Every
one of Mr. Brummell’s company and all of the
rest of the world beside, was rehearsing his and her
own surmise as to the identity of the young gentleman
who had, for above a month, been the town
toast, and who had now disappeared as suddenly
as he came. Some believed him to be Tom Kidde
himself; some, a Lord out of France; some, a
Prince of the blood; some, the Devil; some, an
astrologer; there was no lack of inventions as to
Her Ladyship’s identity by the time the ten minutes
of Sir Percy’s setting had come to an end.

He cast an eye about the place looking for Sir
Robin, and his veins were fairly on fire to know
the color of his rival’s blood and wring from his, he
hoped, dying lips, a confession of where Lady
Peggy was. Presently, not spying his opponent,
he begged Escombe and Chalmers to have the
.bn 302.png
.pn +1
goodness to seek him out; settle the spot; ask him
to choose his seconds; call a surgeon (of whom
there were always a score in attendance at Vauxhall,
ready for just such affairs), while he himself
swung down toward the river to look for Kennaston
and give him one last word for Peggy, should
Sir Robin run him through.

Peg’s twin lay on the turf sleeping. Such are
the effects of being at once a poet and a lover, not
yet twenty, and quite fagged with wide-awake
nights and days and a fair lady’s cruel caprices.
Sir Percy looked at him, smiled, and whispered
as he knelt:

“Dear lad, thou that art My Lady’s twin, when
next thou seest her, sure I know she’ll lay her dear
lips on thy brow, and there she’ll find, this.” Percy
kissed the boy as he spoke. “’Tis doubtless more
than she’d care to discover, but, if death comes,
’twill ease the blow and charm the pain while I
remember this message that I send her now.”

He turned away and left Peg’s brother lying
there to waken at his leisure.

When he reached the Walk again, another clamor
greeted him identical with its predecessor.
.bn 303.png
.pn +1

“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir
Robin! Sir Robin! Come forth of your seclusion.
The time is up. Sir Robin, I say-y-y-y!”

This Sir Robin McTart had vanished as mysteriously
as the other one, and though the entire
company made the welkin ring with the same cry
over again:

“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin!
Sir Robin McTart!” no Sir Robin appeared or
could be found, and they were fain be content,
reinforced by the ladies now well out of their
swoons and terrors, to finish up the night with
punch and loo in the boxes, all brains much of a
muddle with the strange adventures and miraculous
disappearances incident upon Beau Brummell’s
never-to-be-forgotten masquerade party at
Vauxhall.

.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 304.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XVI—Which doth set forth how My Lady Peg, Sir Percy and Sir Robin...'

.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%

.ce
<l>XVI</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XVI
.if-

.nf c
<em>Which doth set forth how My Lady Peg, Sir
Percy and Sir Robin all put up at the
“Queen and Artichoke:” and what a
fine hurly-burly thereupon ensues.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
The moment that the excitement of the Vicar’s
identification had subsided, the Baronet, leading
the worthy old man to the gates and there quitting
him under pretext of fetching a hackney coach,
skipped without, and, hiring one with a couple of
the horse-patrol at a squeezing price, jumped in
and made off for his inn at Pimlico, leaving his
whilom preceptor to shift for himself.

Sir Robin had no mind at all for duels with any
one, least of all with the resurrected Sir Percy de
Bohun, whom his guilty conscience suspected to be
.bn 305.png
.pn +1
fully cognizant of the author of his attempted
assassination. Terrified with all this and, if possible,
more so by the accounts he had listened to,
right and left, of his valorous and most mysterious
name-sake, the little gentleman at once made up
his mind as to the course wisest for him to pursue,
and forthwith pursued it.

Back to Pimlico, and into bed, shivering betwixt
the linen and feathers; up for a toilet of the best
and neatest; curling his wig thriftily himself by
the fire; a good breakfast; a coach at noon with
Kennaston Castle for goal; and himself and his
ardent and blissful hopes and beliefs for freight
and luggage.

For, not twelve hours since, had not My Lady
Peggy’s own emissary, the delightful “Mr. Incognito,”
told him that his mistress was leaving
for home last night? Nay, had not Peggy herself,
with her own lips, said that she started for
Kennaston “ere cock-crow”? and whatever could
such words mean but that he, the object of her
tenderest solicitude, should follow her at once?

Lady Biddy’s bawl, ’tis true, echoed in the
Baronet’s recollection, but ’twas, to his way of
.bn 306.png
.pn +1
thinking merely an index of the liveliness of her
disposition and the enchanting coyness of her
moods.

He adjusted his wig with a beaming smile,
snapped his crooked little fingers at the mere memory
of Sir Percy de Bohun, the Vicar, his spurious
name-sake, and all the rest of it, as he blithely
set off on his amorous quest, at high noon, from
the Puffled Hen in Pimlico.

That same morning toward dawn, Percy had
ridden home alone, leaving Kennaston, cheered
by a smile and a pressure of Lady Diana’s hand,
to return to his chambers in Grub street, whither
the young poet had removed some few days since
from Lark Lane, at the instance of having had a
piece of good fortune, in the way of a commendation
from no less a personage than the great Doctor
Johnson himself.

The reflections of Peggy’s adorer were various
and most tormenting; his brain, as he tossed in
his bed, was a labyrinth wherein he wandered, vainly
endeavoring to solve such riddles as—

“Where was Lady Peggy? Was she indeed the
bride of either of the Sir Robins? Who was the
.bn 307.png
.pn +1
comely young gentlemanly rogue who had for
weeks bewitched the fair and charmed the brave?
Where had he disappeared? To whom, in reality,
was he indebted for the saving of his own life
at the Dove Pier; and whose were the St. Giles’s
hirelings who had near made an end of him
there?”

Bewildered and at wits’ end, he finally, as the sun
was at meridian, sprang from his uneasy couch,
rang and rapped thrice for Grigson, made a sorry
pretense at conversing on politics with his uncle,
whom he presently encountered in the hall; inwardly
cursed the old gentleman; and at last, by
three o’clock, got his will, which was, astride of
the long roan, Grigson on the black, to cross to the
Surrey side of the river, and ride as fast as ever
he could to Kennaston Castle.

“By heavens!” cried he to himself, pounding
Battersea Bridge. “It is time her father knew, and
Her Lady mother too, that she is neither in Kent
or anywhere else in their reckoning; and if it puts
’em both into their shrouds, they’ll hear the truth,
and set about solving the riddle before sunrise to-morrow.
.bn 308.png
.pn +1
I’m sailing on Thursday for the Colonies,
but I go not until I am assured of her safety,—and
her happiness.”

Thus it happened that not above three hours
after Sir Robin had started from Pimlico with his
destination Kennaston, Sir Percy quitted Charlotte
Street with the same beacon in view; and
each, the one in his coach, t’other in his saddle,
brain full and heart bursting with but one thought,
and that Lady Peggy Burgoyne.

Her Ladyship meantime, on landing from the
wherry, fairly scampered her way to Mr. Brummell’s
for fear of desperadoes and Mohocks. At
one point wild cries of—

“Watch!” greeted her ears from the open window
of a gaming-house; at another a bullet whizzed
above her head, the outcome of a duel being fought
in a narrow street she traversed. In and out she
threaded her path, until presently the pink flush
of the dawn pierced the fog into a silvery mist
and she had gained the Beau’s threshhold. Passing
the sleepy servants, Peggy ran up to her room
and once again drew the bundle from its hiding
.bn 309.png
.pn +1
place, tucked the long tail of her dark hair well
inside, cast a glance of pitiable amusement about
the chamber, and says she, going:

“God knows if I ever get leave to put on a lady’s
garments again; but I’ll never come back here,
that’s certain, since now am I no one, not even Sir
Robin McTart!”

So, challenged merely by the still drowsy footman
who asks: “Beg pardon, and with submission,
Sir Robin, but will you be home for dinner, Sir, or
not until supper?”

“For neither, to-day,” answers Her Ladyship,
running out into Peter’s Court, and then coming
to a dead halt.

She drew a long deep breath, as deep as the fog
would let her, much as a dog does before he starts
on the scent; she jingled the little money left in
her purse, gave her hat the cock as she beheld a
passer-by, and struck out for London Bridge,
which, at this early hour of the day, she found
easy enough to cross afoot, barring the filth and
mud.

’Twas the first time she had been on it since the
memorable afternoon when she and Chockey had
.bn 310.png
.pn +1
first come up to town in the coach from the Kennaston
Arms. Now stalking along with a will,
and a swing to her bundle, My Lady had chance
to note the tall gaunt houses lining the bridge at
each side where the pin-makers dwelt and worked;
the gigantic water-wheel under the arches which
supplied the town with water; the increasing tide
of wagons, carts, pedestrians, porters, whoever else
(save the chairs or coaches of fine ladies and gentlemen
of which, at this time of day, there were
none). Arrived at Surrey side, Her Ladyship
paused to consider and, wrapping herself well in
her camlet cloak, the which she had used at the
masquerade so lately, thereby hiding her blue velvet
breeches, laced waistcoat, point ruffles, Mechlin
lace cravat, rich coat, and jeweled hilt, soon
obtained fare in the one-seated cart of a country
clown who was off for Tooting.

Her Ladyship decided very quickly that ’twas
but a necessary precaution for her to avoid highways,
stage-coaches, and inns of reputation, since
probably by this a full description of the supposed
Sir Robin would be word of mouth from Westminster
to Mile End, and a dozen miles out of
.bn 311.png
.pn +1
town with the Lord knows but a price set upon
his head!

Once arrived at Tooting, ’twas her intention to
double on her tracks, return with some bumpkin’s
load of vegetables to Garret Lane and thence to
foot it across country or by penny’s-worth rides
with village folk, reaching the neighborhood of
Kennaston, perhaps late that night; or, if she
should be compelled to sleep under some friendly
farmer’s roof, at least by the next high noon.

But Her Ladyship reckoned, if not without her
hosts, most decidedly without taking count of the
weary beast that dragged her, nor yet of any possible
fellow-guests she might encounter on arriving
at the Queen and Artichoke at Tooting.

It was nightfall, when, limp and unnerved, possibly
for the very first time in her life conscious
of such physical conditions, the clown pulled her
up before the inn in order to allow her to alight.
Bundle under arm; feet and legs, up to calves, well
bespattered with mud from the reek of her passage
across London Bridge afoot; wig somewhat tangled
for all that she had slipped her wig comb out
of pocket and essayed to smooth it a bit; sleeves
.bn 312.png
.pn +1
upturned, cloak dragging over her arm to heels,—a
sorry, disheveled-appearing young personage
jumped from among a pile of oat-bags, leathern
aprons, chairs, unsold produce, wilted flowers, and
under the askant eyes of ’ostler, boots, barmaid,
mistress, and host, marched boldly into the parlor
of the Queen and Artichoke.

“Was there a chamber to be had?” for Her Ladyship
plainly saw she must lie at Tooting and not
proceed on her homeward journey until the morrow.

There was a chamber; an admission hesitatingly
made, even at this modest hostelry, to a young
gentleman arriving without either servant, luggage,
box, horse, coach, or dog, and by means of a vile
rickety little cart. Yet, such was Her Ladyship’s
swagger, notwithstanding a full splash of mud on
the tip-end of her handsome little chin, she was
presently conducted to a decent chamber, up-stairs,
at the rear, it is true, yet overlooking the green,
where a game of bowls was in progress, and with a
fine trellis, thick with vines, beneath its small-paned
window.

“Was there an ordinary?”
.bn 313.png
.pn +1

Oh, the shame and humiliation of it! that the
daughter of the Earl of Exham should be put to
such an ebb, instead of ordering the best the house
afforded sent at once to her room.

Aye, there was an ordinary of two dishes and a
pastry at ten-pence, and it would be ready in the
quarter hour.

“Ten-pence.”

Her Ladyship had just eleven pence ha’penny
left in her purse.

Yet, thought she, refreshed by a good meal and
the leaving of her weapon as a hostage for her
lodging, she would better eat than faint to-night,
whatever might betide on the morrow.

While she washed her hands, after hiding the
bundle under the feather bed, Her Ladyship heard
the ring of horses’ hoofs on the stone pave of the
inn yard; and her quick ear even detected the fact
that one of the steeds went lame.

She peered out of window and beheld Sir Percy
astride of his own long roan, with Grigson just
dismounting from the smoking black.

“This is cursed luck!” mutters the master, as
.bn 314.png
.pn +1
he himself, out of saddle, stoops to examine the
roan’s much swollen off hind-leg.

“It is, Sir Percy,” returns the man, “but, by
your leave, Sir, it may be we can hire a mount here,
although it don’t look too promisin’.”

“Unlikely,” says Sir Percy. “The best we can
do is to lie in this hole for the night, and by a hot
poultice and a bandage, the roan may be in condition
by to-morrow forenoon.”

“Very well, Sir; it be a damn poor place of entertainment,
Sir Percy, with an ordinary at ten-pence,
Sir.” Grigson’s tone of derision is marked
by the guest who draws close about her face the
cotton curtain of the upper rear chamber window.

“Will you be pleased to be served in your room,
Sir Percy, at once, and of whatever can be had?
What wine, Sir?”

“Tut, tut, Grigson. I’ll into the ordinary; off
with you to the stables with the roan, rub her down
and medicine her, then to your own supper in the
kitchen.”

“Host,” observes Mr. Grigson, loftily, as that
worthy obsequiously appears in the yard with an
attendant train, as is customary in welcoming persons
.bn 315.png
.pn +1
of quality, “Sir Percy de Bohun has the condescension
to say he will sup in the ordinary,
and—”

Whatever Mr. Grigson’s further remark may
have intended to result in, was, at this crisis, lost
to posterity by such a clattering from up on the
high road ’round the corner of the green lane,
where nestled the Queen and Artichoke, that every
eye was turned to behold such a cloud of dust as
joyed the soul of Boniface, whose tuned intelligence
foresaw a coach and four horses; in the
light of which Sir Percy de Bohun’s reeking lame
roan and ill-kempt aspect faded into almost as
much insignificance as had, long since, the traveler
who had arrived in the clown’s cart.

Boots alone was left to guide Sir Percy to his
apartment, while the rest made a concerted dash
for the yard entrance, just in time to make their
most profound bows and courtesies before the
spick little gentleman who thrust his inquiring
little head out of window, keeping his door closed,
as he beckoned the landlord to him with eager
heavy eyes well under cover of his pulled-down
hat.
.bn 316.png
.pn +1

“What guests have you to-night?” asked the little
gentleman.

At the very moment he was propounding his
query, Sir Percy, now sunk to ignominy even in the
eyes of Boots by announcing he would sup at
ten-pence, was being ushered into an upper chamber
adjoining the very one in which sat, dejected,
robbed of even the prospect of food by his presence,
Lady Peggy Burgoyne.

“Very few, My Lord,” answered the host glibly,
“the very best chamber on the first floor with the
sitting-room has been kept for Your Lordship,”
applying hand to latch of coach-door, the which,
however, is still firmly held by its occupant.

“Their names?” asks the little gentleman, while
at the fleck of one of the postilion’s lashes his
wheelers begin to prance and advance so far into
the yard as that their racket brings Peggy a second
time to her narrow pane, a-squinting up her eyes
to see who this may be. For, in the midst of her
distress, as befalls often enough to all of us, she
takes unconscious note of minor happenings, the
which, those who study such matters affirm to be
proof of the two-sided condition of men’s minds.
.bn 317.png
.pn +1

“Your guests’ names?” reiterates the small gentleman,
as, followed by the cortège of dame, maid,
man, dog, cat, and tame magpie, the coach comes
to a halt within excellent range of Her Ladyship’s
coign of vantage and earshot. “I must know them
before I alight.”

“Well, My Lord, there’s Mr. Bigge, the Curate
from Risley Commons, as stops over here on his
way to Finchley every week; Mr. Blunt, the traveling
tailor; His Grace the Duke of Courtleigh’s
own man, off on his holiday; Mr. Townes and his
new married wife a-goin’ to settle in the lodge at
the Manor-house; a young spark drabbled with
mud and havin’ no boxes and no servants, what arrived
by means of a market cart just anon, and Sir
Percy de Bohun, a fine gentleman what’s just ridden
in the yard before Your Lordship’s coach,
but”—

“Who?” The little gentleman turned green in
his pallor, and shot back in his cushions with a
gasp.

“Not much of any account, My Lord, I’m thinking,
since Jenny here tells me he sups at the ordinary;
of course Your Lordship’ll be served in your
.bn 318.png
.pn +1
own sitting-room and dame and myself to humbly
wait upon you.”

“Hold your tongue!” says the little man, gathering
his scattered wits and pausing to think, while
his steeds paw noisily on the cobble pavement.

Peggy, at the pane, almost laughs as she regards
the shrinking weazened visage.

“Sir Robert McTart!” she says to herself, shaking
her head at the little vixen. “’Tis indeed a
merry fate that puts me and Percy and you all
under one roof this night. That is, if his presence
don’t fright you into a gallop!”

Sir Percy himself, also for a second standing
moodily at his casement, could and did behold
thence Sir Robin’s restive and hungry leaders, and
had a passing wonder as to what the devil brought
any gentleman to stop at such an inn, save as himself,
by the misfortune of a nail in his animal’s
foot.

Sir Robin, however, with that discretion and
prudence, not to say cowardice, which distinguished
him, had purposely chosen the Queen and Artichoke,
for, upon second thought, he had determined
to sleep in comfort.
.bn 319.png
.pn +1

Sir Robin loved his feathers and quilts of a
night far better than the jolt of ruts and ditches,
and dreaded highwaymen more than even the pangs
of delayed love-making.

By his choice he had hoped to escape the least
chance of an encounter with Sir Percy, whom he
believed to be in hot pursuit of him, and at this
juncture his wise little pate quickly resolved that
it were better for him to alight, gain his chamber,
and harbor there in safety until such time as that
Sir Percy should have unsuspectingly proceeded
on his quest.

“If you can ensure me a perfect privacy; to go
unseen to my rooms, a fair service, and dry linen,
with quiet as to cocks and neighbors, I will remain
here for the present,” says Sir Robin, almost taking
in Lady Peggy by the squint of his uncontrollable
left eye.

In a trice, Sir Robin is attended to his bower,
and ere long the best in the larder is laid before
him. Sir Percy partakes of the homely fare of
the ordinary; and Her Ladyship sits, unheeding
the tardy summons of the dame, supperless, hungry,
fagged, in her tiny room where the warmth
.bn 320.png
.pn +1
from the kitchen chimney reaches her, and where
the goodly smells from Sir Robin’s fowls, sausages,
eggs, and fruit-pie assail her senses.

Mr. Grigson, doctoring the roan, endeavored
with much creditable tact to get wind of the name
or title of the master of the coach, but Sir Robin’s
men had had their lesson, and not a hint was to
be got out of either of them by Mr. Grigson, or
by the curious host of the Queen and Artichoke
himself.

By eleven every candle was out in the house. All
the guests, save two, slept the sleep of the presumably
just.

.il fn=i_015.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 321.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XVII—Wherein Her Ladyship slips leash of all mankind...'

.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XVII</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_035.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XVII
.if-
.nf c
<em>Wherein Her Ladyship slips leash of all mankind,
runs for her life, and finds goal in
the arms of Sir Robin McTart.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
These were Peggy and the little Baronet.
Her Ladyship, mind made up to flee in the darkness,
leaving six-pence on the table to pay for her
lodgings, even now stood, latch in hand, bundle
once more under arm, still a man, not having dared
to change her garments.

Sir Robin lay ensconced betwixt the quilts; the
realizing sense that his mortal enemy, one who
sought his life, who coveted His Lady—from whom
he was running away, to be veracious,—lay not
many yards off him, seeming to banish that restful
.bn 322.png
.pn +1
repose that had seldom hitherto forsaken this
worthy and exemplary little person.

A mouse squeaked, and Sir Robin shivered; a
beetle pattered across the hearth, his hair stood
on end.

Surely a footstep sounded in the hallway; the
boards creaked; something metallic struck against
the panel of his door, and he sprang from his
couch and chattered to his sword.

Lady Peggy’s blade had struck the woodwork as
she made her way stealthily down in the darkness;
while Sir Robin shook, she gained the lower end
of the hall but, not being acquainted with its ways
and turnings, above all, having forgot the two
broad steps that cut the straight road to the entrance
in two, Her Ladyship, with much clanking
of her weapon on the brick flooring, fell sprawling;
her bundle shooting off into the unseen, she up on
hands and knees, hither, yon, seeking it; Sir Robin
beating on his wainscot such a tattoo as was fit to
wake the dead, shrieking, from the safe shelter of
the muffling pillows where he huddled:

“Murder! Thieves! Ho there! Landlord!
Tom! James! Ho there, I say! Help! Help!”
.bn 323.png
.pn +1

Sir Percy, out of his four-post up-stairs in a
flash, tinder struck, door flung open; in night-rail
and cap, with rapier drawn, hanger uplifted, and—

“’Sdeath! What the devil is the matter!” cries
he at top of lung. “Speak or I’ll fire!” and down
the stair he plunges to Sir Robin’s very sill.

This one, having successfully summoned those
more doughty than himself to cope with the supposed
danger, now recognizing Sir Percy’s voice,
shivers and sweats as he cowers and pulls the
counterpane over his head, grasping his purse in
his sharp little fingers; wisely never undoing of
his door.

“Speak or I’ll fire,” repeats Sir Percy, whose
candle has been blown out by the draught. He
takes a few steps down the hallway where he hears
the curious scratching noise Her Ladyship is making
as she distractedly feels around for the bundle.

At last she grasps it and creeps up unwittingly
to Sir Percy’s very side; <lang=la><em>de facto</em></lang> her arm grazes
his as she now raises herself to a standing posture,
exactly as her lover, no answer being vouchsafed
him, pulls his trigger and the ball goes a-whizzing
.bn 324.png
.pn +1
through Sir Robin’s door panel and finds lodgement
in the chimney bricks.

Peggy, her customary composure being much
the worse for hunger and the general excitement,
jumps when the shot pops, and thus inadvertently
now palpably touches Percy’s elbow. He turns
upon her and seizes her wrists in a grip of steel;
she, as tightly hugging the bundle under her armpit,
utters no sound, but wriggles and twists to
such a purpose that she is about to get free when
her opponent renews his endeavors with an oath.

“Speak!” says he, “or I’ll brain you!” making
to hold Peg’s two hands prisoner in one of his, the
while he may seize his rapier and put a finish to
the matter.

She does not speak, but to the scene jump now
the heavy cumbrous country-folk, rattled out of
their deep slumber by Sir Percy’s ball and no less
by the piercing and prolonged shrieks of Sir Robin,
each Colin Clout and Dowsabel of ’em, armed with
whatever they could catch; yet, luckily for Her
Ladyship, no one of them with sense enough to
fetch a candle.

“A light! a light! you damnable idiots!” cried
.bn 325.png
.pn +1
Sir Percy, while Her Ladyship makes a final
twist to free herself, fruitless as before. She feels
her ebbing strength at its last pinch and feels,
too, the bundle loosening in her hold.

Then, as landlord stumbles to his tinder-box,
amid an uproar from all the travelers, especially
the new made bride and her spouse, Peggy finds
herself let go, nay, almost thrust aside as her
captor ejaculates testily:

“Zounds! girl, why did you not proclaim your
sex, and not leave me to find it out by a long wisp
of woman’s hair between my fingers? Lights!
Lights! I say! and we’ll get the fellow yet! He
must be in the house, for no one’s left it.”

Sir Percy has been for the moment meshed in
his Lady’s long tresses, which, in the skirmish,
have broke leash of the bundle and dangle out
yard’s length.

For an instant she stands on the landing at bay.
To unbolt the big door and make an open dash
for freedom would mean certain death; to turn up
therefrom and regain her chamber was her sole
chance, and this must be done before a light could
be struck.
.bn 326.png
.pn +1

She wheeled around and rushed up the hall, up
the stairs among the clustering folk, nudging
she knew not whom, skipped along the narrow
rear passage, and into her room before candle
flames revealed to the amazed company that neither
bolt, bar, or latch had been disturbed, nor anything
in the house taken!

Even while they rummaged in the bar-room till,
counted the forks and spoons—pewter though they
were, Her Ladyship, tying the luckless bundle
about her waist with a hastily cut bed-cord, cautiously
opened the casement, crawled out on the
trellis, which unsteadied a bit beneath her weight
but did not break; clambered in and out the vines
to the edge, and then, lightly, thanks to her twin’s
training, swung herself to the ground clear, crept
across the yard, leaped the stone wall, with a bound
and over; flew the width of the meadow; struck
the lane, up to the high road; by the moon, took
a southerly course which she knew made for Kennaston,
and paused not much for breath until she
had left a matter of five miles betwixt her and the
Queen and Artichoke.

It was coming three o’clock by this, and, all the
.bn 327.png
.pn +1
little night winds hushed, all the earth and trees
and grasses, flowers, shrubs and weeds expectant,
vibrant of the nearing dawn, whose pink and beauteous
herald now looked over the hill-tops at the
east, and put the lingering stars to shame, and
woke the little birds, and bade every drop of dew
flash on cup and blade; and all the things that
breathe to grow and pulsate; to thrill through all
their veins with joy that still another day was born.

Her Ladyship too was glad, for, brave as she
had been through all the brief ordeal of her manhood,
this last adventure had broken her spirit a
bit, and hunger and fatigue had sadly weakened
her flesh. As the lark mounted, singing to the now
risen sun, she struck in a bit from the road and
began an endeavor to calculate how far she might
be from Kennaston village, or from any place familiar
to her. But it was vain to speculate. Peggy,
in all her cross-country rides, could not place
the spot in which she now found herself.

Food was what she needed most and she came
out into the open, shading her eyes with her hand
and looking everywhere about for a curl of smoke
that might guide her to a cottage. But no friendly
.bn 328.png
.pn +1
film greeted her, and her hand fell listless at her
side.

Hark! The tinkle of a bell, the soft lowing of
a cow; not far off either. She ran a piece up the
road and presently descried the herd huddling at
the pasture bars waiting for their milking, yet no
maid nor man in sight, no milking-stool nor pail
nor cup, only the soft inviting lowing of the kine.
Her bundle still tied about her waist, Her Ladyship
let down the top bars, edged through, off with her
once splendid but now much tarnished hat, set it
under the nearest cow, knelt, and presently had the
cock full of as fine foaming milk as one might
wish to see. She rose and drank thankfully, rubbing
the cow’s nose in gratitude; then; amid the
concerted cries of the herd, she made off, a little
refreshed, still keeping her southerly course; still
haphazarding her way, for no house came in
sight.

After a matter of a dozen miles, and now reaching
the edge of a woods, with the tower of a
Castle just sticking up out of the horizon for her
only beacon, Peggy halted and, the refreshment of
the milk having been by this exhausted, the tears
.bn 329.png
.pn +1
forced their way to her eyes and even ploughed two
small furrows the length of her cheeks, cupping
in the dimple of her chin, and splashing at last,
on her much rumpled Mechlin lace cravat.

“Bah!” cried she. “I weep only because I am
hungry. I am not afraid. Odzooks! She that
has had the hemp about her neck to be strung up
for a highwayman must not fear to encounter one
of her own ilk,” and Her Ladyship essays to laugh
as she plunges into the wood.

It proves a harmless, peaceful, if somewhat
devious neighborhood, where an occasional rabbit
scurries over the dry leaves of last autumn’s falling,
and where a large company of rooks are holding
a caucus, but ’tis interminable; and Peggy’s
legs are not of steel, it seems, but of that lusty
flesh and blood and bone which, when made to do
duty fasting, now these twenty hours, begin to
give out. Her head, too, spins, the knot of her
cravat seems to choke her as she loosens it; the
weight of the bundle appears like twenty stone at
the least about her waist, and she cuts the bed-cord
and lets it drop, just for a few moments’ ease, she
tells herself, as, at last, the other side of the forest
.bn 330.png
.pn +1
is gained and she beholds a wide stretch of downs
and naught but the elusive tower of the distant
Castle, appearing farther away even than at first.

What common can this be?

Once again she shades her blood-shot eyes and
stares up at the sky. In crossing the woods, she
must have struck mistakenly to the west. The
sun is nearing the set, and Peggy now knows she
has come to Farnham Heath where, report has it,
some of the boldest cut-throats in the country rule
the roost.

Shall she start to cross it? Kennaston Village
lies only ten miles on t’other side of it. That will-o’-the-wisp
tower? that castle yonder? yes ’tis
home! and she such a dullard as not to have mistrusted
it before!

She will push on. Why not? What has she,
forsooth, to tempt any thief, unless he took her for
ransom.

Well, let him, since Percy de Bohun at this
very moment, in all liklihood, kneels at the feet of
Lady Diana; if highwaymen want to bear her off,
why should she complain? And just then the
tinkle of the little brook at the wayside beckons in
.bn 331.png
.pn +1
Her Ladyship’s ear, the Castle tower appears to he
dancing up and down against the sky; the two
stark trees, yonder on the heath, are surely turning
somersaults; the bundle drags all forgotten at her
heels, and presently lies in the tall grasses which
she threaded on her way to the brook. Her head
swam, ten thousand blunderbusses seemed to be
firing off inside of it; she pulled off her wig and
threw it far from her; she unbuttoned her coat
and waistcoat, and drew her cloak in a twist about
her; she staggered, caught at an elder; it swayed
with her to the water, as she fell swooning with her
thirsty lips just in touch of the sparkling bubbles;
her wan face shining in the glint of sunshine,
the whole round world and all the men and
women in it quite forgot, even her sword, unbuckled
with the bed-cord, now lay glinting its
jewels in the sedges half a dozen rods away.

A pair of robins eyed her from the bushes, a bee
swerved and swung above her mouth; the minnows
darted next her cheek, but My Lady did not wake
for any or all of these. She lay there motionless
until the sun had gone down and all the sweet
.bn 332.png
.pn +1
scents and drowsy sounds and whirrs and flutters
of twilight had come up; until a fine coach with
four horses and two postilions came prancing and
pawing at a great rate of speed out of the wood to
the heath. Until a little weazened fine gentleman,
who had dozed in his bed until long past noon for
fear of encountering a certain other gentleman,
had risen leisurely, dined with relish, set out from
the Queen and Artichoke only after being assured
that the other gentleman had gone off on a ruined
horse back to Garratt Lane in the hopes of obtaining
a suitable mount, which same was not to be
had short of the ten mile return; until the little
gentleman, then, thrusting his face out of his
coach window as the vehicle came to a sudden
standstill, spoke:

“Is this the heath?” he asks with blinking eyes
and a shiver.

“Yes, Sir Robin, Farnham Heath, Sir!” answers
one of the postilions.

“Your pleasure, Sir Robin?” asks the second
man respectfully, quieting his horses.

“Well,” returns the little Baronet, “if you think
.bn 333.png
.pn +1
can gallop across faster than those devils could
overtake us, I say, proceed. If not—” he glances
back over his shoulder.

To tell the truth, the gentleman from Kent considered
himself as betwixt two very impending
fires, and, ’tis safe to say, he dreaded Sir Percy de
Bohun’s possibility at his back as much, if not
more, than he did the robbers in front of him.

“We’re in the best condition, Sir,” returned
the man, “and fifty minutes ought to take us out
of all chances of danger.”

“Unless,” replies the master, again casting an
apprehensive eye to the rear, “they might close in
on us from behind.”

“No fear, Sir,” cries the lackey, “our pistols
are loaded and cocked; with your own rapier, pistols
and the blunderbuss, Sir Robin, we should—”

“What’s that?” exclaims the second man, eyes
bulging, as with the handle of his whip he points
to the fallen figure by the brookside.

“Zounds!” cries the first, rising in his seat to
peer.

“’Sdeath! Damnation!” squeaks Sir Robin,
pulling down the coach-sash. “On with ye, you
.bn 334.png
.pn +1
devils! On, I say!” thumping impatiently on the
pane with his signet ring.

“No fear, Sir, no fear, Sir Robin!” exclaims the
second man, jumping to the ground and inspecting
Her Ladyship. “It’s only a corp.”

“Are you sure?” opening the door cautiously.
“Sure?”

“Aye, Sir Robin, a quality corp, Sir. Mayhap
shot down by them vagabones out of the heath.
Had I best see if there’s any life left in the young
gentleman, Sir?”

Sir Robin descends from his coach, a pistol in
one hand, a drawn rapier in the other.

“Keep an eye on the lookout, James,” he whispers
to the postilion who remains in his seat, and
the Baronet minces in and out of the tall grasses,
shaking the dew daintily from his sprawling feet,
until he gains the spot, where his man kneels
above the prostrate form.

“Ugh!” says he, turning aside his head in a
species of disgust, “I never could abide the sight
of the dead.”

’Twas the very first time in his life he’d ever
had a chance to behold such!
.bn 335.png
.pn +1

“He ain’t quite cold yet, Sir Robin,” says the
postilion. “There’s a flicker to his eye-lids, Sir,
look!”

The Baronet looks; out of his hands tumble
rapier and pistol.

“’Slife!” he cries, down on his knees, feeling at
Her Ladyship’s pulse, pulling his flask from his
pocket and trying vainly to pour the liquor between
the firmly shut lips.

As he tries, the little gentleman’s wits work
nimbly, which they could do on occasions, and, not
stopping even to wonder at his discovery, only to
accept instantly as a fact that his Lady had been
struck down while pursuing him, he is so overjoyed
at the beauty, sentiment, and opportuneness of the
adventure, as to be scarce able to restrain his elation,
even in the face of a serious swoon.

“Into the coach at once, James,” he says, raising
Her Ladyship’s head himself, “your gentlest
endeavors and a guinea apiece to you,” nodding to
the other, as between them they carry the limp
form to the coach, “if you bring me to Kennaston
Castle before curfew.”

“Never fear, Sir Robin; if the young gentleman
.bn 336.png
.pn +1
only holds out for a single hour, I swear, Sir, in
the teeth of all the highwaymen in the kingdom,
we’ll have you there.”

“Tut, tut,” says Sir Robin, smiling, no longer
restraining an expression of his happiness and
triumph, as he makes ready the rugs and cushions
within to receive the burden James, for the moment,
bears alone.

“’Tis no young gentleman, you rogues, ’tis My
Lady Peggy Burgoyne, my bride that is to be.
Wait a moment, Thomas, while I spread this
shawl; and James, look you sharp behind us, for
there’s a gentleman in pursuit of this Lady would
kill me on sight if he can.”

.il fn=i_034.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 337.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title=XVIII—In the which Sir Percy steals a coach...'

.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XVIII</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_016.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XVIII
.if-

.nf c
<em>In the which Sir Percy steals a coach and
four and the living contents thereof and
makes off therewith at breakneck
speed for life and death.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
At this very moment, two horsemen, sorry
mounted enough, especially the master, are rounding
the turn of the woodland path and about to
emerge upon the open next the heath. He who
rides the lame roan has his eyes bent upon the
ground, a thousand sad and conflicting thoughts
crowding his brain, as ’tis impossible even to urge
his hurt steed, and a jog-trot is all that can be got
out of her ever again. Garratt Lane had sent him
away only with his own again.

“Sir Percy, with submission, Sir,” exclaims
.bn 338.png
.pn +1
Grigson, “this be Farnham Heath, Sir, and, ’pon
my life, Sir!” jumping from his saddle and darting
to the grassy side of the way, “a rapier, Sir
Percy!” picking it up and dragging with it the
straggling bed-cord and its appending bundle.

Percy leaped to the ground and seized the
weapon.

“Grigson!” cried he, “there’s been foul work
hereabouts. This is the sword of a gentleman I
know, or my name’s not Percy de Bohun! He is
a scurvy fellow, and my enemy, but if he has fallen
among thieves, by the heaven above us! I’ll rescue
him, even if ’tis to punish him later according to
my own will. Take the rapier.”

As he hands it back to his man, the bed-cord
from the Queen and Artichoke, being a full century
old, gives entirely away and My Lady Peggy’s
duds, long tail of dark hair, pins, needles, whatever
else beside, fall, scatter, topsy-turvy to the
ground, and at the very same moment Percy sees
before him, as in a nest among the sedges and ferns
of the marshy brookland, the wig that Her Ladyship
had flung off, and a scrap of tumbled paper
addressed to himself, flapping, spiked on a thistle-top
.bn 339.png
.pn +1
near it! Thunderstruck, he is about to read
it, when Grigson, who has gone on afoot a few
steps, starts back, and, reckless of all things,
seizes his master’s arm and drags him to the turn
of the road.

“Sir Percy! Hist! For the love of God, Sir,
look!”

Thrusting the bit of paper into his waistcoat,
Percy gasps and gazes. He beholds Sir Robin and
his man lifting a limp and slender form, ill-defined,
’tis true, in its swathe of camlet cloak, into
the coach; he beholds a head of dark short hair, a
face of ashen pallor, and, in two seconds more,
before he can rush back and leap into his saddle,
motioning Grigson to do the same, the coach containing
Sir Robin and his prize is dashing as fast
as whip, spur, sixteen thoroughbred legs, and a
backing-up of wholesome terror can urge it, over
the bleak and gruesome waste of Farnham Heath!

“’Slife! Grigson, man,” cries Percy, digging
steel into the poor roan’s flanks till they spurt
blood in a stream. “We must overtake ’em, unhorse
’em, spill out the wretch inside; I’ll into the
.bn 340.png
.pn +1
coach then to protect the lady, you mount the
leader and gallop us over the heath for your life!”

“Trust me, Sir Percy,” answers Grigson from a
length behind his master. “God grant, Sir, that
the roan drop not out of the race and leave us but
one saddle betwixt you and me, Sir.”

“Poor beast,” says Percy, pricking her hard and
striking her shoulder with the flat of his rapier.
“She’ll die, and in a good cause if she gain me the
goal.”

And all the while they’re speaking, flash and
crack go the whips of Sir Robin’s postilions, and
Sir Robin’s splendid beasts cover the ground with
a swing and a will that keeps the coach rocking,
but yet awakens not Lady Peggy, whose dark
cropped head reposes on the crooked shoulder of
Sir Robin, while her white eyelids remain sealed
and no quiver of returning consciousness thrills
about her drawn and bloodless lips.

“Gad!” exclaims Percy, as he beholds the vehicle
swinging and spinning farther and farther from
him, and as Grigson’s black now is up nose and
nose with his own expiring mare. “Gad, girl,”
bending his lips to the roan’s laid-back ear, “go
.bn 341.png
.pn +1
on! help me to save her! to reach her; go on, I say,
in God’s name!”

As if the faithful creature comprehended her
master’s entreaty, with that not uncommon last
flash of superhuman strength that inheres in man
and beast alike, the roan raised her fine head in
the air, pricked her ears, stretched out her neck,
gathered herself up with a twitch of her nerves
that thrilled to her rider’s heart, and off! as in her
best days, when she could distance the fleetest
mount in the county; off, with the whirl and whirr
of those coach-wheels beckoning to her; off, with
that pair of straining eyes, those parted lips, blessing
her as she began to gain on Sir Robin,—began
to? nay, ’twas all a matter of beginning and ending
in a breath. Before the postilions, amid
their own clatter and calling, had caught hint of
the pursuit, the roan was up with the windows out
of which the apprehensive little Baronet was peering;
his scream of terror:

“Highwaymen! Faster! On! lads, on! A hundred
pounds if we outrun ’em! On!” was their
first advertisement of danger.

But while the two were drawing their hangers
.bn 342.png
.pn +1
from their belts, Sir Percy, with a swerving dash,
pulled the roan on her hind legs directly in front
of the galloping leaders. ’Twas but an interposition
of Providence (coupled with very excellent
cool-headed horsemanship) that he was not then
and there dispatched into the hereafter.

The leaders plunged, grinding the wheelers with
their hind hoofs; the wheelers fell back of a heap,
smashing in the fine front glass and cutting Sir
Robin across the lip, but not so much as waking
his burden from her deathlike sleep.

“Down with ye!” cries Sir Percy, a pistol in
each hand, as Grigson rides up with another
brace to reinforce his master, putting a hand as
well to the quieting of the coach horses.

“Aye, aye, Sir! but spare our lives and we’ll do
your bidding!” cry Sir Robin’s lackeys, leaping
to the ground.

“We’ve not a groat betwixt us, Your Honor, on
our life!”

“I want no groats, nor guineas either!” says
Percy, now leaving his man to cover the steeds and
the postilions, while he jumps off the roan’s back
and springs to the side of the coach.
.bn 343.png
.pn +1

To wrest the door from the feeble clutch of the
shrieking little gentleman from Kent; to open it;
seize him, stopping his frantic and craven cries
with a thrust of a pocket napkin in his mouth; to
haul him out and send him spinning over the turf
with his gold and silver scattering from purse and
pockets, is, with Sir Percy, the work of a very few
seconds.

“Mercy! Mercy! Mr. Highwayman!” whimpers
the Baronet, cringing on his knees, as Grigson lifts
himself up on the off leader’s back and Percy
props the swooning figure within the coach.

“’Slife, Sir, whoever you are! Raise your eyes!
I am Sir Percy de Bohun, at your service any time
three hours hence.”

Sir Robin glances up, his crooked little legs now
bowing more into an arc than before, as he hears
the dread name of his rival.

Clapping hand to hilt, however, he stands up.

“Sir,” says he, pushed into a valiance he has no
smallest sympathy with, solely from fear that Lady
Peggy may have open ears by this time. “Sir, that
Lady is my affianced. I command you, quit her
and leave us to pursue our journey in peace.
.bn 344.png
.pn +1
D’ye hear, Sir?” Sir Robin brandishes his
weapon, now reinforced by the approach of his
servants. “I’ll stick you where you stand, Sir!”
shouts McTart, prancing a bit nearer and actually
touching Percy’s shoulder with the point of his
weapon,—be it remembered de Bohun’s back was
toward him as he leaned into the coach arranging
the cushions.

“Will you!” says Sir Percy, coolly turning and
seizing the little man’s blade and administering
therewith to its owner a smart box on his out-flapping
ears. “Had I time to waste,” adds Percy,
now jumping into the coach, “I’d leave your carcass
here. Put up your pistol, Sir,” says he, aiming
his own straight at Sir Robin’s now un-wigged
pate, “or, damn you! you’ll be cold inside a second.
On with you, Grigson,” calls master to man. “Life
and death are in this matter. If the four beasts,
and you, too, drop at the finish, get us to Kennaston
faster than the wind travels.”

Even while he speaks, he watches the still white
face so near him with his finger on his trigger, Sir
Robin discreetly backing away and rending the air
with noisy and impotent curses; then a plunge, a
.bn 345.png
.pn +1
long, resounding call from Grigson; the two
lackeys agog at finding themselves alive, Sir
Robin’s coach starts on as if the very devil himself
were in its wake.

Percy does not draw Peggy to him; he lays her
back among the pillows; he bathes her head and
lips and hands with liquor from his flask; he holds
the slender fingers in his palm, as, amid awful
terror lest his Lady die, he is racked with consternation
and wonder at the present outcome, and
in his distraught mind endeavors to patch and
piece out the strange network of the mystery now
beginning to solve itself before his eyes.

As he prays God to spare her, if not for him, for
some better man, a shrill, weird sound smites his
ear.

Percy throws back his head and listens; ’tis the
long roan neighing for the last time back on Farnham
Heath, where Sir Robin, picking up his
money, dejectedly shivering like an aspen (since
he would rake hell with a nail to secure a ha’penny,
and fairly weeps at the six-pences he can’t recover),
presently and ruefully, one of his men behind
him, pillion fashion, t’other running at his side,
.bn 346.png
.pn +1
turns back to Tooting on top of Grigson’s black,
his fox teeth chattering in his wide mouth as he
congratulates himself on his second and miraculous
escape from the famous Sir Percy de Bohun.

’Twas, in sooth, for this latter a bitterly sad
hour which was spent in covering the distance between
the heath and the Castle. Revived a bit,
no doubt by the fumes of the liquor, Her Ladyship’s
lids quivered, contracted, and finally opened,
but it was with a distraught and unrecognizing
stare that she surveyed her companion.

“’S death!” cries she aloud, her feeble right
hand seeking her sword-side, “I tell ye, Chock,
your mistress is now full-fledged a man! Hist,
girl, an you love me, keep it close. Sir Percy’s
wed to Lady Diana! Aye!” Peggy laughs with
such a heart-break in her voice and such tears in
her winkers as causes Percy a pang of cruelest
misery.

“Tut, tut, Chock! What’s his marriage to me?
Fetch the pack, Mr. Brummell; aye, I’m at your
service, loo, crimp, or whist! I, Sir Robin McTart,
’ll lay you a thousand to nothing! Zounds!
Sir, fetch coffee to stain my face with! and where,
.bn 347.png
.pn +1
oh, where’s my precious bundle with my woman’s
duds in’t, my patch-box that I burned, and the
long tail of my hair I cut off when you, Chock,
bought me the counterfeit of Sir Robin’s own wig
at the perruquier’s in Lark Lane. Aye! So!—No!
No! No!” and now a shiver and a lower tone,
as Lady Peggy, with her wide wild eyes, shrank
back in the far corner of the jolting coach.

“My Lady Mother,—I command you, Chock, tell
her not of my escapades; and when Percy comes
home with his bride, swear him, as will I, I was off
pleasuring in Kent at my godmother’s. Mother!
Mother!” cries she, piteously now, as Percy’s arms
enfold her, and a thousand fond words jostle each
other on his lips.

Then she sinks into the stupor again, and remains
so until the great coach rolls through the
park and up to the entrance of her home; until
Percy, with few words, lays her in the stout arms
of the faithful Chockey and sees her mother bending
above her; her father distract in his night-rail
and cap; cook wailing, being from Kerry and
prompt at any sort of hubbub; Bickers’ toothless
mouth agape with groans; sees his Lady carried
.bn 348.png
.pn +1
up, limp, little hands down-hanging, to her chamber
out of his sight.

Sir Percy leaves Peggy’s bundle, which he had
gathered up as best he could and slung about his
shoulders, on the table in the hall. The little
scrap of paper he carries away with him and reads
when he reaches home that night; ’tis Her Ladyship’s
note to him, written on the fly-leaf of the
prayer-book of the young Curate of Brook-Armsleigh
Village. As he scans it, presses it to his
lips, sits until dawn, remembering many things
since he parted from his Lady long ago in the
parlor at Kennaston, the most of the mystery is
unraveled by light of the scrawl; and the delirium
of his joy at knowing himself to have been in her
heart almost equals the mad anxiety that consumes
him now as to her life and well-being.

.il fn=i_050.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 349.png
.pn +1
.pb
.if h
.h2 title='XIX—Which sets forth how My Lady Peggy recovers of her illness...'

.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.ce
<l>XIX</l>
.if-
.if t
.il fn=i_051.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.sp 4
.h2
XIX
.if-
.nf c
<em>Which sets forth how My Lady Peggy recovers
of her illness—gets once more into
hoops and petticoats—and puts
a very fine and noble young
gentleman into an
earthly paradise.</em>
.nf-

.sp 2
Until midsummer he rides over to Kennaston
twice each day, morning and night, to find out how
it fares with her, and ’twas not until then that the
Earl gave him hopes he might see her, perhaps
within the se’ennight.

Notes there had been, daily, as soon as Chockey
had let him know that her mistress was in her
head once more, and the two surgeons, down from
London, had pronounced Her Ladyship on the
.bn 350.png
.pn +1
mend; notes, and flowers and fruits, and game and
fish to tempt her appetite; a little dog from Pomerania;
a Persian boy to wait upon her whims; a
mare, as white as milk; sweetmeats from the Indies;
damasks from China and France; shells and
curious beadwork slippers from the American Colonies—whither,
it is needless to say, a certain good
ship had sailed, leaving a certain young gentleman
behind—all these things, and many more besides,
were offered up at Her Ladyship’s shrine, but
never yet had she been able to bring herself to
scribble one line to her suitor, or to send any message,
save polite civilities by Chockey.

’Twas only after the buxom damsel (having the
night previous heard from Grigson that his master
was like to die of suspense, and having imparted
the same to Her Ladyship), together with the
Lady Mother and the Earl, had argued and
preached into her the great and chivalrous devotion
of Sir Percy, that Peggy at last had brought her
mind into a condition of acquiescing in his coming
up to her morning-room on the Thursday (being
St. James’s Day) after the sixth Sunday after
Trinity; which same she carefully marked in her
.bn 351.png
.pn +1
prayer-book with a dab of the crimson her mother
sent in to beautify her pale cheeks with, against
Sir Percy’s advent.

“Oh, slitterkins! Madam,” cries the Abigail
under her breath, “and asking Your Ladyship’s
pardon, but how can I do up Your Ladyship’s hair
an’ it no longer than the peltry of a meadow-mouse!”

“True enough, Jane Chockey,” replies her mistress,
contemplating her countenance in the mirror.
“Of a fact, I resemble nothing so much as one of
those weazen little vermin; my nose is sharp, too,
and my cheeks—”

“Stay, My Lady,” says Chock, taking up the
rouge, and putting on layer after layer. “Who’ll
say Your Ladyship ain’t handsome now? Lawk,
Madam! You look like an angel! What a blessing
of Providence the French is with their nostrums!”

Peggy regards herself.

“Now, My Lady,” cries Chockey, “would you
but borrow your Lady Mother’s worked head, a
cup of powder, and Her Ladyship’s pink feathers
.bn 352.png
.pn +1
atop of it! What a sight would you be for Sir
Percy to behold!”

Peggy shakes her head. The three feet of wire,
wool, pommade, frizz and plumage the hand-maiden
suggests, even causes her to laugh aloud as
she figures it above her own face.

“Nay, Chock, none o’ that!” says she, “I’ll do as
I am. Sir Percy has seen my cropped head; faith,
he ’twas, you tell me, that fetched the tail of my
locks to Kennaston in his saddle-pocket, or tied
upon him somewhere?”

“Aye, My Lady, Mr. Grigson says never, since
Adam and Eve began courtin’ under the fig-tree,
has any young nobleman been seen in such a frenzy
as Sir Percy about Your Ladyship. Lawk, Lady
Peggy! When a young gentleman goes off his
feed, ceases swearin’ and cursin’ his man, and stops
down in the country nigh three months in the
season, a-readin’ loud to his deaf aunt, there ain’t
no sort of doubt as to the quality of his passion!”

Her Ladyship smiles as she spreads her train
and glances at it over her shoulder.

“Chock,” says she, “look you, now, while I cross
.bn 353.png
.pn +1
the room; does the paduasoy stand out well over
my hoop?”

“Like the dish-clout, My Lady, when I spreads
it to dry over one of the biggest hen-coops. ’Tis
monstrous fine, finer, I should swear, than anything
Lady Diana could have!” Chockey sighs,
lost in admiration. “Though belike Lord Kennaston
wouldn’t think so.”

“And, Chock, look again.” Her Ladyship
crosses back to the divan. “’Tis thus the town
ladies give the true quality sweep to their trains.
Give me the trinket Sir Percy sent me last night.”
Peggy takes a fan of most beautiful feathers from
a mother-of-pearl box and waves it back and forth.
“’Tis so, Chock, the London fine ladies flutter the
fan, as ’tis called, and every wriggle hath a different
meaning!”

“Oh!” Chockey is well-nigh speechless as she
watches her mistress sidling, bridling, agitating
the fan back, forth, hither, and yon. “Madam,
’tis amazin’ grand! A glass of port now, My
Lady, as by the orders of the surgeons?”

“Nay,” says Peggy, “I ain’t in need of such.”

“A mug of ale? cider? milk?”
.bn 354.png
.pn +1

“I’ll none of ’em, Chock,” returns Her Ladyship,
seating herself on the divan, and spreading
out the paduasoy as ’twere a tail and she the peacock
owning it.

“Set my <lang=fr><em>étui</em></lang> beside me on the stand; place that
large chair far off yonder by the window for Sir
Percy, that he may not disturb my furbelows,
and—”

“Hark, Madam! Hoofs!”

“Lud!” cries Her Ladyship, “his new horse’s
hoofs! I’ve learned the ring of ’em as well as I
once knew that of the poor long roan.” Peggy
sighs; she has heard much during her convalescence
by way of Mr. Grigson and the Abigail.

“Go you down, Chock, and, after a suitable
period of waiting,—I mean such decent few minutes,”
cries she after the girl, “as may be occupied
in dutiful greetings to Dad and Her Ladyship, you
may send Sir Percy up to see me.”

She hears his voice in the hall greeting her
father and mother; she glances over at the mirror,
and, snatching her pocket-napkin from her bag,
Peggy tips it to the top of the essence-bottle and
rubs the red from her cheeks; she flings the fan
.bn 355.png
.pn +1
down, draws in her splendid train to a crumpled
heap about her, gives the hoop as smart a thrust as
her feeble strength will permit, hears a footstep,
and promptly buries her shamed face in the cushions
of the divan.

She does not answer the light rap on the half-open
door, nor does her lover wait; he enters, and
in a second, kneeling at her feet, his two arms
about her, he raises her sweet face and lays his
yearning lips on Her Ladyship’s own beautiful
mouth.

“Ah, Peggy, my adored one,” says he, devouring
her pale face with his happy eyes, stroking her
cropped head with caressing fingers.

“Oh, Percy!” says she, with real roses blooming
in her cheeks.

.il id=i_336fp fn=i_336fp.jpg w=347px ew=80% alt='Ah, Peggy, my adored one...'

“I know a deal,” whispers he, “but one thing I
must ask. You’ll tell me at once, will you?”

“What is’t?” says she, smiling, as she leaves her
two hands in the hold of one of his.

“Why did you adventure so much? for what, for
whom, whose sake? Wherefore?” The young
man’s voice is feverish with anxiety.

She hangs her head; raises it proudly; wishes
.bn 356.png
.pn +1
she had him at a distance, and so, leave to swing
her train and use her fan indifferent.

“My beloved,” cries he, “answer me! ’Tis your
own Percy, him that worships the ground you tread
upon; who has never had a thought apart from
you; to whom every other lady on God’s earth’s
but a puppet—that asks—eh, Peg, for whom,
who?” coaxes he with eyes, lips, hands, heart-beats.

“For your sake, Sir, and none other,” she answers.
“’Twas because I knew I’d done wrong
and sent you from me careless; I would not give
in; but, you up in town, Ken writin’ me as he
did—I could abide it no longer—and I went.”

“Now the God above us, bless you,” says he,
taking her in his arms, and at the same instant
pulling from his waistcoat pocket the scrap of a
note she’d written him in the eye of the scaffold.

“Peg, Peg! I’m not worthy to mate with you,
and when I learned of all your hairbreadth ’scapes,
your twice saving of my life—when I read this,
’slife! My Lady, what’s a man like me to such as
you!”

“I’ll tell you,” says she, laying her head on his
shoulder, “he’s the man she loves.”
.bn 357.png
.pn +1

“Will you marry me in a fortnight, Peggy?”
asks he, rapturous.

“Nay!” answers she, laughing. “I’ve another
suitor to consider, Sir.”

“And who is he?”

“Sir Robin McTart! He was over yesterday to
ask my hand from Daddy.”

“The devil!”

“Nay, Sir, not enough courage for that!”

“Peggy, sweetlips, will you be mine the Tuesday
after Transfiguration?”

“Lud! No, Sir Percy! that will I not!”

“When will you, then, love?”

“Next Christmas.”

“Split it,” cries he, imploringly, “make it the
first quarter of the October moon?”

“Well,” she answers, looking up to where her
father and mother stand in the doorway, “an
Daddy and my Lady Mother consent, you shall
have your way, Sir.”

The young man glances up, following Peggy’s
eyes, springs to his feet, raises her from the old
divan and leads her before them.

“My Lord and Your Ladyship,” says he, “will
.bn 358.png
.bn 359.png
.bn 360.png
.pn +1
you consent, as Peggy has, to our being made man
and wife on October the fifth? and will you give
My Lady and my unworthy self your blessing?”

They kneel down and the Earl puts out his
hands above their heads; the words stumble, for
there are drops in his old eyes, as he looks and
beholds about their faces that most splendid of all
aureoles, the light of love and faith, honor with
youth, and hope and wholesome minds to guide.

.il fn=i_339.jpg w=400px ew=80%
.bn 361.png
.bn 362.png
.pn +1
.pb


.hr 100%
.nf c
A FEW OF
<xl>GROSSET & DUNLAP’S</xl>
<xl>Great Books at Little Prices</xl>
NEW, CLEVER, ENTERTAINING.
.nf-
.hr 100%
.in 4
.ti -4
GRET: The Story of a Pagan. By Beatrice Mantle. Illustrated
by C.M. Relyea.
.in

<s>The wild free life of an Oregon lumber camp furnishes the setting for this
strong original story. Gret is the daughter of the camp and is utterly content
with the wild life—until love comes. A fine book, unmarred by convention.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated
by Howard Pyle.
.in

<s>A vivid yet delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town.</s>

<s>Dr. Lavendar’s fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of
all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful
and life giving. “Old Chester Tales” will surely be among the books that
abide.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY. By Josephine Daskam. Illustrated
by F.Y. Cory.
.in

<s>The dawning intelligence of the baby was grappled with by its great aunt,
an elderly maiden, whose book knowledge of babies was something at which
even the infant himself winked. A delicious bit of humor.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
REBECCA MARY. By Annie Hamilton Donnell. Illustrated
by Elizabeth Shippen Green.
.in

<s>The heart tragedies of this little girl with no one near to share them, are
told with a delicate art, a keen appreciation of the needs of the childish
heart and a humorous knowledge of the workings of the childish mind.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.
.in

<s>An Irish story of real power, perfect in development and showing a true
conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the tragic as
well as the tender phases of life.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE MAN FROM BRODNEY’S. By George Barr McCutcheon.
Illustrated by Harrison Fisher.
.in

<s>An island in the South Sea is the setting for this entertaining tale, and
an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most complicated
plot. One of Mr. McCutcheon’s best books.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illustrated
by A.B. Frost, J.M. Conde and Frank Verbeck.
.in

<s>Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another
little boy to that non-locatable land called “Brer Rabbit’s Laughing
Place,” and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play their
parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE CLIMBER. By E.F. Benson. With frontispiece.
.in

<s>An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman’s soul—a woman who
believed that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds
instead the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
LYNCH’S DAUGHTER. By Leonard Merrick. Illustrated by
Geo. Brehm.
.in

<s>A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful and
simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings of her
father, “Old Man Lynch” of Wall St. True to life, clever in treatment.</s>

.hr 100%
.ce
<sc>Grossett & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York</sc>
.hr 100%
.bn 363.png
.pn +1
.pb

.hr 100%

.nf c
<l>GROSSET & DUNLAP’S</l>
<xl>DRAMATIZED NOVELS</xl>
A Few that are Making Theatrical History
.nf-

.hr 100%

.in 4
.ti -4
MARY JANE’S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes
from the play.
.in

<s>Delightful, irresponsible “Mary Jane’s Pa” awakes one morning to find
himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he wanders
from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most humorous
bits of recent fiction.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford.
.in

<s>“Cherub,” a good hearted but not over refined young man is brought in
touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a merciless
analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more than ancient
lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the flock.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
A WOMAN’S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with
scenes from the play.
.in

<s>A story in which a woman’s wit and self-sacrificing love save her husband
from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently tragic situation
into one of delicious comedy.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks.
.in

<s>With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village
where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude’s to train for the
opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent
but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she
studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated
by Edmund Magrath and W.W. Fawcett.
.in

<s>A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the influence
of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on, how he
struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make a story of
unflinching realism.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin
Milton Royle. Illustrated with scenes from the play.
.in

<s>A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine courageous
hero and a beautiful English heroine.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated
with scenes from the play.
.in

<s>A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a venturesome
spirit and an eye for human oddities.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated
with scenes from the play.
.in

<s>A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in
dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring, mysterious
as the hero.</s>

.hr 100%
<sc>Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York</sc>
.hr 100%
.bn 364.png
.pn +1
.pb
.hr 100%
.nf c
A FEW OF
<l>GROSSET & DUNLAP’S</l>
Great Books at Little Prices
.nf-

.in 4
.ti -4
CY WHITTAKER’S PLACE. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Illustrated by Wallace Morgan.
.in

<s>A Cape Cod story describing the amusing efforts of an elderly
bachelor and his two cronies to rear and educate a little
girl. Full of honest fun—a rural drama.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE FORGE IN THE FOREST. By Charles G.D.
Roberts. Illustrated by H. Sandham.
.in

<s>A story of the conflict in Acadia after its conquest by the
British. A dramatic picture that lives and shines with the indefinable
charm of poetic romance.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
A SISTER TO EVANGELINE. By Charles G.D.
Roberts. Illustrated by E. McConnell.
.in

<s>Being the story of Yvonne de Lamourie, and how she went
into exile with the villagers of Grand Prè. Swift action,
fresh atmosphere, wholesome purity, deep passion and searching
analysis characterize this strong novel.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE OPENED SHUTTERS. By Clara Louise Burnham.
Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.
.in

<s>A summer haunt on an island in Casco Bay is the background
for this romance. A beautiful woman, at discord with
life, is brought to realize, by her new friends, that she may
open the shutters of her soul to the blessed sunlight of joy by
casting aside vanity and self love. A delicately humorous
work with a lofty motive underlying it all.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE RIGHT PRINCESS. By Clara Louise Burnham.
.in

<s>An amusing story, opening at a fashionable Long Island resort,
where a stately Englishwoman employs a forcible New
England housekeeper to serve in her interesting home. How
types so widely apart react on each others’ lives, all to ultimate
good, makes a story both humorous and rich in sentiment.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE LEAVEN OF LOVE. By Clara Louise Burnham.
Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.
.in

<s>At a Southern California resort a world-weary woman, young
and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned
the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and
joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul
of the blasè woman by this glimpse into a cheery life.</s>

.hr 100%
.ce
<sc>Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York</sc>
.bn 365.png
.pn +1
.pb

.nf c
A FEW OF
<l>GROSSET & DUNLAP’S</l>
Great Books at Little Prices
.nf-
.hr 100%

.in 4
.ti -4
QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. A Picture of New
England Home Life. With illustrations by C.W.
Reed, and Scenes Reproduced from the Play.
.in

<s>One of the best New England stories ever written. It is
full of homely human interest * * * there is a wealth of New
England village character, scenes and incidents * * * forcibly,
vividly and truthfully drawn. Few books have enjoyed a
greater sale and popularity. Dramatized, it made the greatest
rural play of recent times.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF QUINCY
ADAMS SAWYER. By Charles Felton Pidgin.
Illustrated by Henry Roth.
.in

<s>All who love honest sentiment, quaint and sunny humor,
and homespun philosophy will find these “Further Adventures”
a book after their own heart.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
HALF A CHANCE. By Frederic S. Isham. Illustrated
by Herman Pfeifer.
.in

<s>The thrill of excitement will keep the reader in a state of
suspense, and he will become personally concerned from the
start, as to the central character, a very real man who suffers,
dares—and achieves!</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
VIRGINIA OF THE AIR LANES. By Herbert
Quick. Illustrated by William R. Leigh.
.in

<s>The author has seized the romantic moment for the airship
novel, and created the pretty story of “a lover and his lass”
contending with an elderly relative for the monopoly of the
skies. An exciting tale of adventure in midair.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE GAME AND THE CANDLE. By Eleanor M.
Ingram. Illustrated by P.D. Johnson.
.in

<s>The hero is a young American, who, to save his family from
poverty, deliberately commits a felony. Then follow his capture
and imprisonment, and his rescue by a Russian Grand
Duke. A stirring story, rich in sentiment.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
WHEN A MAN MARRIES. By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Illustrated by Harrison Fisher and Mayo Bunker.
.in

<s>A young artist, whose wife had recently divorced him, finds that
a visit is due from his Aunt Selina, an elderly lady having ideas
about things quite apart from the Bohemian set in which her
nephew is a shining light. The way in which matters are temporarily
adjusted forms the motif of the story.</s>

<s>A farcical extravaganza, dramatized under the title of “Seven Days”</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA
CRAIG. By David Graham Phillips. Illustrated.
.in

<s>A young westerner, uncouth and unconventional, appears in
political and social life in Washington. He attains power in politics,
and a young woman of the exclusive set becomes his wife, undertaking
his education in social amenities.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
“DOC.” GORDON. By Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman. Illustrated
by Frank T. Merrill.
.in

<s>Against the familiar background of American town life, the
author portrays a group of people strangely involved in a mystery.
“Doc.” Gordon, the one physician of the place, Dr. Elliot, his
assistant, a beautiful woman and her altogether charming daughter
are all involved in the plot. A novel of great interest.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
HOLY ORDERS. By Marie Corelli.
.in

<s>A dramatic story, in which is pictured a clergyman in touch with
society people, stage favorites, simple village folk, powerful financiers
and others, each presenting vital problems to this man “in
holy orders”—problems that we are now struggling with in America.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
KATRINE. By Elinor Macartney Lane. With frontispiece.
.in

<s>Katrine, the heroine of this story, is a lovely Irish girl, of lowly
birth, but gifted with a beautiful voice.</s>

<s>The narrative is based on the facts of an actual singer’s career,
and the viewpoint throughout is a most exalted one.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE FORTUNES OF FIFI. By Molly Elliot Seawell.
Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup.
.in

<s>A story of life in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi,
a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third
rate Parisian theatre. A story as dainty as a Watteau painting.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
SHE THAT HESITATES. By Harris Dickson. Illustrated
by C.W. Relyea.
.in

<s>The scene of this dashing romance shifts from Dresden to St.
Petersburg in the reign of Peter the Great, and then to New Orleans.</s>

<s>The hero is a French Soldier of Fortune, and the princess, who
hesitates—but you must read the story to know how she that hesitates
may be lost and yet saved.</s>
.bn 367.png
.pn +1

.in 4
.ti -4
THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. Illustrated
by John Rae.
.in

<s>This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a German
musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has
well portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied experiences
in endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained
to an appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in
the rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, now a
beautiful young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit
of fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The
play in which David Warfield scored his highest success.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
DR. LAVENDAR’S PEOPLE. By Margaret Deland.
.in

<s>Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales
that this volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lovable
doctor is more ripened in this later book, and the simple comedies
and tragedies of the old village are told with dramatic charm.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated
by Howard Pyle.
.in

<s>Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint people
in a sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable
“preacher,” is the connecting link between these dramatic stories
from life.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E.P. Roe.
With frontispiece.
.in

<s>The hero is a farmer—a man with honest, sincere views of life.
Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics
of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising
source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife
but commands his respect and eventually wins his love. A bright
and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts
all difficulties and survives the censure of friends as well as the bitterness
of enemies.</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
THE YOKE. By Elizabeth Miller.
.in

<s>Against the historical background of the days when the children
of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has
sketched a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great
as any since “Ben Hur.”</s>

.in 4
.ti -4
SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by
André Castaigne.
.in

<s>The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome
and Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod
Agrippa and the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the
mighty figures that move through the pages. Wonderful descriptions,
and a love story of the purest and noblest type mark this
most remarkable religious romance.</s>

.hr 100%
.ce
<sc>Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York</sc>
.hr 100%
.sp 4
<target id='endnote'>
.dv class='tnotes'
.ce
<l>Transcriber’s Note</l>

In several cases, the author (or printer) uses an apostrophe incorrectly;
three times as the possessive pronoun, and once as 3rd person present (‘let’s’).
Each has been corrected.  Other minor lapses in punctuation have been
corrected as well, without further mention.

.ta l:10 l:60 w=100%
p. 43 | even than [it’s] forlorn neighbors
p. 85 | hiding [it’s] tell-tale under the skirt of her coat
p. 251| links his arm in [her’s]
p. 266| and [let’s] out that I was not she at all
.ta-

.dv-