"The real guest-chambers I may not offer you," she sighed, as she poked up the logs that blazed on the rusty andirons; "seeing the rats have made such havoc in them, and 'tis many years since any one slept there. But the rats do not affect this chamber greatly, and the roof is sound; also my aunt's woman slept here and saw no ghosts. And if need comes you should hide--which God forbid--you see this little stair in the corner? It leads up to the great attic that is full of lumber, where you could play hide-and-seek with a regiment; and were you pressed there--see"--and she ran lightly up the stair and pushed open the door into the lumber-room. "Look at those bedsteads and chests and the great loom. They make a very rampart! And if that were forced, the ceiling is all broken at that end, so 'twere easy to scramble up on the rafters and lie hid under the tiles. There, surely no one would follow you; leastways, not our constables from hereabouts. They are too lusty for such mountebank scrambles! And now, sir, your fire burns bright, and I will wish you good night, and God keep you in safety." CHAPTER VI. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. "And ever at the loom of birth The mighty mother weaves and sings, She weaves fresh robes for mangled earth, She sings fresh hopes for desperate things." C. KINGSLEY. Long after the light sound of Audrey's step had died away on the garden path, Richard Harrison sat and dreamed. Of late, exhausted by cold and fatigue, he had begun to lose control of his mind: he had sometimes found himself forgetting what dangers threatened him, and in what direction he had decided to turn his steps; and even when he could force himself to think, he had grown too desperate to care what peril might be in wait for him. It might be only the pestilential den men then called a jail; it might be the slave-ship, and the chain-gang in Barbadoes; it might be the gibbet, with the hand of the executioner scrabbling in his entrails. Well, let it be, if it must. His imagination seemed too dull to realize his danger, or work out any coherent scheme of escaping it. It could only brood over one horrible memory, till he felt he could have welcomed the pike thrust of a soldier or the lash of a slave-driver, if only they roused him from the dreams that bordered on insanity. Now, suddenly, he found himself awake. He was his sane self again. A girl's calm voice, a girl's clear eyes seemed to have exorcised the demon that had pursued him. He remembered with a surprise that was full of relief that he had talked to her for long that evening, and his words had been coherent--that he had actually jested! He was not mad! That horrible execution was true; it was no insane dream; but other things were real too. In what strange world had he been living? Had that sullen, desperate wretch been indeed Dick Harrison? He realized that he was alive; he could