It was October in the year 1660. The bonfires that had welcomed the Merry Monarch back to his father's throne were scarcely cold, the clamour of the joy-bells had hardly ceased, and London was still in a half-frightened, half-rapturous state of excitement. Everything was new; the better part of the people had never even seen a king, and now they had the daily sight of a live king, and a couple of royal dukes besides, walking about the streets and feeding ducks in the parks like ordinary human beings. The tension in men's minds suddenly gave way. To the winds with high-flown theories of government and religion, with ideals, and standards, and rules, and covenants! Let us all be comfortable, and hang any one who might trouble our holiday! This popular fear of agitators who might disturb the rule of the Merry Monarch chimed in very well with the feelings of the old cavaliers, who felt that heavy amends were due to them for the sorrows and hardships of the last twenty years, and no doom could be too awful for the murderers who had laid sacrilegious hands upon the sacred person of the king. With relentless activity they hunted down the audacious rebels who had dared to send Charles the First to the scaffold, and few were so fortunate as to escape the fate decreed for a regicide. Yet, full as London was of hopes and fears, of mad gaiety and black despair, the October day was as sweet and still as any day of any autumn; the late roses blossomed as of old in the gardens of the Strand, and vine-leaves wreathed the citizens' with their wonted coronals of ruby and gold. An upper chamber above a mercer's shop in Watling Street was decked with all the pride of city housewifery; the pewter dishes on the sideboard shone like silver, and the marigolds and lavender in a great beaupot on the window-sill filled all the pleasant chamber with autumn fragrance. The room was that of wealthy people, and the rich silk gown and cobweb lawn of a lady who lay huddled up in the corner of a great settle were such as city matrons loved to wear. She was a plump and comely woman enough, but her soft brown hair was disordered, and her dainty cap awry; her eyes were closed, and her face white with the exhaustion of one who has wept till she can weep no more. Near her stood the boy who had buckled on his sword eleven years before, to escort King Charles from Hurst Castle to his doom; a boy no longer, but a tall and handsome young man, with the bronzed complexion and alert eyes of one who has seen service. He hesitated as he looked down at her; had she for an instant forgotten her sorrows in the sleep of exhaustion? But even as he paused, she opened her eyes and sprang to her feet, crying-- "What news, nephew--what news?" "The worst," answered Dick, gloomily. "They are in haste to accomplish their work; he dies in two days' time."