Thus we sealed our compact and knitted out of the warp and woof of enmity a friendship which became a great joy and a sweet grief to each of us. That night I lay for hours thinking of the past and wondering about the future. I had tasted the sweets--all flavored with bitterness--of court life. Women, wine, gambling, and fighting had given me the best of all the evils they had to offer. Was I now to drop that valorous life, which men so ardently seek, and was I to take up a browsing, kinelike existence at Haddon Hall, there to drone away my remaining days in fat'ning, peace, and quietude? I could not answer my own question, but this I knew: that Sir George Vernon was held in high esteem by Elizabeth, and I felt that his house was, perhaps, the only spot in England where my head could safely lie. I also had other plans concerning Sir George and his household which I regret to say I imparted to Sir John in the sack-prompted outpouring of my confidence. The plans of which I shall now speak had been growing in favor with me for several months previous to my enforced departure from Scotland, and that event had almost determined me to adopt them. Almost, I say, for when I approached Haddon Hall I wavered in my resolution. At the time when I had last visited Sir George at Haddon, his daughter Dorothy--Sir George called her Doll--was a slipshod girl of twelve. She was exceedingly plain, and gave promise of always so remaining. Sir George, who had no son, was anxious that his vast estates should remain in the Vernon name. He had upon the occasion of my last visit intimated to me that when Doll should become old enough to marry, and I, perchance, had had my fill of knocking about the world, a marriage might be brought about between us which would enable him to leave his estates to his daughter and still to retain the much-loved Vernon name for his descendants.