is come!" said Dorothy's heart. "Sir Walter and Master Morgan are in the house," murmured Dorothy's lips. "I must see to my duties as hostess, and I do not want to be quizzed about tear-stains. Plague take that little Windybank!" A dainty foot was stamped quite viciously. "I hope Johnnie will cudgel him. A whipping would do him good!" Dorothy sat with folded hands and pleasantly contemplated the corrective operation. Then a voice was heard in the garden calling her name. She listened. "Only nurse!" she murmured in a disappointed tone.

An old crone with a wrinkled but good-natured face came along to the arbour. "Dolly, sweetheart," she cried, "dost thou not know who is within?"

"I saw Sir Walter turn in at the gate to speak to father."

"Hoighty-toity!" exclaimed the old dame. "Saw Sir Walter, did we! And what of the head and pair of shoulders that stood above those of the knight? We did not see them!"

"Was it Master Morgan with him, Peggy?" asked Dorothy unconcernedly.

"Ask him who ran away just now," snapped Peggy. "I saw the toady little villain sneak off. I'd ha' given my Sunday kirtle to my worst enemy if Johnnie had espied him and known that he and thee had been sitting cheek by jowl for an hour."

"Master Windybank is our neighbour," said Dorothy haughtily, "and he comes hither with my father's consent."

"Ay, men are as blind as owls to each other's failings," was the tart response. "But I can see through a quick-set hedge as far as most folks, and know when a rascal lies in hiding behind one. Get thee indoors and talk to Master Morgan, an honest fellow whom thy mother—God rest her soul!—loved before death took her from us."

But Dorothy refused to be hurried. Peggy had loved her and mothered her since she was a tiny prattler of three, and she often found her, as she declared to her gossips, "a handful." Peggy, angry with her nursling, turned to go, but she discharged a telling shot at parting. "Very well!" she cried, "I'll go and bind up Master Morgan's wounds myself. One of the bravest knights in England is attacked by a Spanish giant in the forest. A brave lad jumps in to save him, and receives the dagger in his own body. He comes to those who should love him, to have the flow of his precious blood stanched; but no, good lack; we love not brave lads—we dally away God's good time with cowards and rascals!"

"Peggy! Peggy!" cried Dorothy, and the blue eyes were running over again, and the cheeks were pale as a ghost's, "is Master Morgan wounded?"

"He may be dying; the dagger perhaps was poisoned," said Peggy. "I'll go and kiss the brave lad whilst he has wit enough left to know me. Stay thou here, mistress; only loving hands must tend the brave!"

But Dorothy flew after her and clutched her arm. "Kiss me, Peggy!" she wailed, "kiss me!" But Peggy refused.

"You shall not touch him, Peggy; you are my nurse, but I am his. Do you hear?"

But the old woman was deaf, and she stalked on with her thin nose in the air. Dorothy clung to her, and they reached the house together. It so happened that the story of the attack had been told to Dorothy's father, and Sir Walter was getting a little fun at the expense of Johnnie and his wrestlings with the muse of poetry. A lively, good-humoured sally, at the moment when Dorothy's trembling limbs carried her over the threshold, evoked a peal of stentorian laughter from Master Morgan's capacious lungs. The tearful maid stood bewildered for an instant, then a roar from all three men brought the colour back swiftly to her cheeks. Johnnie Morgan dying? The wicked rascal was convulsed with merriment, and his friends, who should be sorrowing for his untimely fate, were as merry as he! With an indignant look at the chuckling Peggy, the maiden turned and fled into the garden again. But Master Morgan, who had been anxiously listening for her amidst all the chatter and uproar, heard the light patter of her footsteps upon the flagged courtyard. He sprang to the window, caught sight of the flying figure, felt his heart beating like a great drum, murmured an apology to his companions, and darted out of the room, almost laying Peggy full length on the threshold as he ran off.

Chapter VI.

A SINISTER MEETING.

When Master Windybank left the quaint, riverside garden of Captain Dawe, he was feeling about as amiable as a wolf might feel who has just been scared from the side of a lamb by the timely arrival of a huge sheep-dog. He growled with anger, showed his teeth for an instant, then slunk away with his tail between his legs. He was a spiteful, malevolent creature, cunning, unprincipled, and tainted with cowardice. He had pluck of the wolfish sort, and could fight desperately if cornered; but he shunned the open unless hard pressed, and preferred snapping at an opponent's heels to flying in his face. He was a dangerous foe, and pretty Dorothy had gone far towards making one of him.

In no pleasant frame of mind, Andrew Windybank strode up the high street of the town. Few of the townsfolk gave him a good-day; he was not a popular personage. For one thing, he was a Littledean man and not of the river-side; his family was purse-proud and tyrannical; worst of all in the eyes of a Pope-hating people, the Windybank family still clung to the old faith. Young Master Andrew was quite accustomed to cold looks, and, as a rule, they troubled him not at all. He was by nature reserved and uncommunicative, and he was sufficiently well satisfied with himself to care but little for the opinion of other people. He turned aside from the town and breasted the steep hill that led to Littledean.

Windybank had not walked through the town with his ears shut, although he had studiously kept his eyes lowered. More than once he had heard the name of his rival mentioned, and each time the speaker's tones had expressed admiration and affection. The angry young gentleman knew nothing of Morgan's exploit, but the local gossips had seen the forester pass through, and one had succeeded in getting an account of the morning's affray. Johnnie was more than ever a popular hero. It was unfortunate, perhaps, for Dorothy and her rival suitors that Morgan's arm and Windybank's pride had both been wounded on the same morning. The rejected lover had always envied and hated Morgan because of his popularity; the events of the morning were rapidly turning that hatred into a sort of malevolent frenzy. His heart burned with rage and jealousy as he went rapidly homewards.

Now, a man's heart will sometimes be attuned to goodness, and his whole nature, being aglow with conscious virtue, will yearn for some outlet for the kindliness that wells up within him. None is offered, and the virtuous fountain trickles itself dry, and no one is a whit the wiser or better. Anon, the same heart breeds envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, and straightway comes the chance of working evil. The temptation is great, the opportunity is eagerly seized, and wickedness is done; it is so easy to step into the "broad way," so difficult to find footing in the "strait and narrow path."

Andrew Windybank was not a good man, but apt opportunity led him farther astray than, in the depths of his heart, he ever intended to go. His feet were treading the paths of his own domains. His ancestral home, Dean Tower, raised its dark red walls before him. Some of the bitterness was gone from his thoughts. Visions of the wealth, wherein he was superior to his rival and the maiden who had flouted his advances, were easing the wounds in his pride.

A spare figure, garbed in black, stepped from behind a clump of bushes, and stood bareheaded in the pathway.

"God be with thee, Master Windybank, and St. James be thine aid!" exclaimed a harsh voice. Basil confronted him.

Windybank's first feeling was one of annoyance. Basil and his master, Father Jerome, had visited Dean Tower before, and although they had come and gone in secret and by