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His reference to a "solatium" puzzled me, but it did not seem anything of consequence. What had I but the Hanyards to solace him with? A more important puzzle had been his behaviour at Master Dobson's. To find me on the royal side, as he then supposed, and to hear my reason for it, had clean dazed him.

He informed me in excellent English that he had heard the firing, seen my parleying at the window and my subsequent surrender, and desired to know the meaning of it all. "The gentleman at the window," I explained, "is Colonel Waynflete, travelling to join Prince Charles. The lady is his daughter, and I am their servant, by name Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards.

I saw her there, in the splendid room she always dimmed with her greater splendour, the exquisite Marquess at her feet, happy in possession of the pearl of great price. Over this vision a shadow came, and I saw the house-place at the Hanyards, with our widowed Kate alone in her sorrow. Her flame-red hair was white as snow and tears of blood were on her cheeks.

The road past the Hanyards to the village enters the main road abruptly, and clumps of elms prevent anyone travelling along it from seeing what is happening in the village. The vicarage is opposite the smithy and the inn, and when mother and Kate got there, only a few dragoons were about.

The other, a middle-aged, domineering man with a powerful face, looked angrily at me as I handed him my dispatch. He read it impatiently, threw it down beside the map, and said, "They're coming on to-night, Davie." Then, curtly to me, "Your name, sir?" "Wheatman of the Hanyards." "Hanyards? Humph! Are you an Irishman?" "No, my lord. Not even a Scotchman!"

It seemed to me a Sabbath day's journey to the great blazing hearth, where two men were sitting; the high white ceiling was moulded into a wondrous design, with great carved pendants hanging from it like icicles from the eaves of the Hanyards.

"Tried?" he snorted. "Tried, indeed! I've been soldiering man and boy these forty odd years, and, slids, I've never known better work." He ran me up and down with his eyes and, turning to Margaret, continued, "By the beard of the prophet, Madge, Master Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards is a vast improvement on the Baron." Margaret blushed daintily and hastily covered his mouth with her fingers.

As wealth went then, the Marquess of Tiverton was, by his own fault and foolishness, a poorish man, but he was lost in love of her, and he was only one of the many exquisites who were for ever in and out of Master Freake's fine mansion. It did not become a Wheatman of the Hanyards to cringe or be abashed in any company, and with the best of them I kept on terms of ease and intimacy.

He had little, red, ferrety eyes, and they looked fiercely at me fiercely but not suspiciously, I thought. He waved my hospitality aside, and said, "You are Oliver Wheatman?" "Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards, Esquire, at His Majesty's service to command," I replied with great gravity, and filled another horn of ale.

The news about Jack would be whispered round by now, and I could never walk the old streets again without seeing nods and shudders everywhere. See him? That's him! Killed his best friend! Wheatman of the Hanyards! Never held his head up since! And hadn't ought to! The chatter of the townsfolk crept into my ears between the hoof-beats, and made me sick and dizzy.