"Ah, but I choose to give it," said the young man, in a determined tone, and then added: "Mistress Alice, why will you not listen to reason? You know that you are friendless and poor and I would help you,--yes, lay down my life for you. I----" "I do not require your aid. Why do you push your attentions upon me when you know they are unwelcome, and especially at this sad time?" "Ah, but Mistress Alice, my love for you----" She gave an impatient gesture. "Have I not often said that it is vain and useless. I do not wish it, and your father----" "Does not wish it, either," interjected Lanyan with an unpleasant scowl, "but that matters not; I wish it." "But I do not, and I must not encourage you. I cannot give you what I have bestowed upon another." Her face flushed and then resumed its pallid expression. Mr. Richard Lanyan was silent, but his facial muscles twitched with emotion, and his dark eyes gleamed with hidden fire. "I say that no one shall take you from me. My father nor no one else shall stand as a bar in the way." "I stand in the way, myself. My own heart is the strongest bar." "If you will neither listen to reason or affection, there are other means," he said, threateningly. "You are a coward and a miscreant, sir, to use such words to me." "There are other means and----" The words were scarcely uttered when she was seized from the rear and a cloak flung o'er her head. "The coach, Bob," said Richard. "'Tis coming, sir." There was the rattle of wheels and a coach stopped near them. The door was wrenched open and as he placed her within he finished the sentence, "There are other means, and he, whoever he is, will never get you, except over the dead body of Richard Lanyan." The deed was done so quickly that the dazed girl had but time to utter a muffled shriek as the door slammed, and her subsequent cries were drowned by the rattling wheels and trotting horses. Mr. Richard Lanyan, angry with repeated rejections, had made his master movement. CHAPTER XXIX TOM GLAZE TO THE RESCUE "Oh, here's to the ale, The merry King Ale, It makes one jolly Though home comforts fail; We'll swing and we'll sing, Merry as a king, The tankard we love For the joy it'll bring." Chorus. "Then swing tankard round With ale pale or brown, We'll clunk and we'll clunk Till we clunk un all down! Down! Down! "King George, rich and hale, Is naught to King Ale, He reigns and cares not For the poor man's wail, But jolly King Ale Makes sorrow to fail, Huzza for the tankard Of rud, brown or pale." Loud and boisterous came the roaring voices of half-drunken tipplers from behind the green doors of an ale-house in the upper part of Falmouth. At the close of each chorus there was a thumping of tankards and fists upon the tables within that made the midnight hour a perfect babel of sounds.