Yet she found this happiness which she felt, quite incomprehensible: she even chid herself for feeling it, for the outside world was still the same, and her brother still in peril. He, the man, alone knew whither he was drifting; he knew that he loved her with every fibre of his being, and that she was as immeasurably beyond him as the stars. He knew what this happiness meant, and that it could but live a day, an hour. Therefore he drained the cup to its full measure, enjoying each fraction of a second of this one glorious hour, watching her as she smiled, as she sipped her tea, as she blushed when she met his eyes. And sometimes—for he was clumsy with his one arm in a sling—sometimes as she helped him in the thousand and one little ways of which women alone possess the enchanting secret, her hand would touch his, just for one moment, like a bird on the wing, and he, the poor outlaw, saw heaven open before him, and seeing it, was content. Outside an early September sun was flooding the little village street with its golden light. They did not dare to show themselves at the window, lest either of them should be recognised, so they had drawn the thin muslin curtain across the casement, and shut out the earth from this little kingdom of their own. Only at times the bleating of a flock of sheep, or the melancholy lowing of cattle would come to them from afar, or from the window-sill the sweet fragrance of a pot of mignonette. CHAPTER XXIII A DARING PLAN It was close on ten o’clock when they came back to earth once more. A peremptory knock at the door had roused them both from their dreams. Bathurst rose to open, and there stood John Stich and Mistress Betty, both looking somewhat flurried and guilty, and both obviously brimming over with news. "My lady! my lady!" cried Betty, excitedly, as soon as she caught her mistress’s eye, "I have just spied Sir Humphrey Challoner at the window of the Royal George, just over the green yonder." "Give me leave, Captain," added John Stich, who was busy rolling up his sleeves above his powerful arms, "give me leave, and I’ll make the rogue disgorge those letters in a trice." "You’d not succeed, honest friend," mused Bathurst, "and might get yourself in a devil of a hole to boot." "Nay, Captain," asserted John, emphatically, "’tis no time now for the wearing of kid gloves. I was on the green a moment ago, and spied that ravenous scarecrow, Mittachip, conversing with the beadle outside the Court House, where Squire West is sitting." "Well?" "When the beadle had gone, Master Mittachip walked across the green and went straight to the Royal George. Be gy! what does that mean, Captain?"