This stern man bore urgent order for the Viscount Auberley to join the king at once at Oxford, and bring with him all his gathering. Having gathered no men yet, but spent the time in plucking roses and the wild myrtles of Devonshire love, the young lord was for once a little taken aback at this order. Moreover, though he had been grumbling, half a dozen times a day--to make himself more precious--about the place, and the people, and the way they cooked his meals, he really meant it less and less as he came to know the neighbourhood. These are things which nobody can understand without seeing them. “I grieve, my lord,” said the worthy baron, “that you must leave us in this high haste.” On the whole, however, this excellent man was partly glad to be quit of him. “And I am deeply indebted to your lordship for the grievance; but it must be so. _Que voulez-vous?_ You talk the French, _mon baron?_” “With a Frenchman, my lord; but not when I have the honour to speak with an Englishman.” “Ah, there Foreign again! My lord, you will never speak English.” De Wichehalse could never be quite sure, though his race had been long in this country, whether he or they could speak born English as it ought to be. “Perhaps you will find,” he said at last, with grief as well as courtesy, “many who speak one language Striving to silence one another.” “He fights best who fights the longest. You will come with us, my lord?” “Not a foot, not half an inch,” the baron answered sturdily. “I've a-laboured hard to zee my best, and 'a can't zee head nor tail to it.” Thus he spoke in imitation of what his leading tenant said, smiling brightly at himself, but sadly at his subject. “Even so!” the young man answered; “I will forth and pay my duty. The rusty-weathercock, my lord, is often too late for the oiling.” With this conceit he left De Wichehalse, and, while his grooms were making ready, sauntered down the zigzag path, which, through rocks and stubbed oaks, made toward the rugged headland known, far up and down the Channel, by the name of Duty Point. Near the end of this walk there lurked a soft and silent bower, made by Nature, and with all of Nature's art secluded. The ledge that wound along the rock-front widened, and the rock fell back and left a little cove, retiring into moss and ferny shade. Here the maid was well accustomed every day to sit and think, gazing down at the calm, gray sea, and filled with rich content and deep capacity of dreaming. Here she was, at the present moment, resting in her pure love-dream, believing all the world as good, and true, and kind as her own young self. Round her all was calm and lovely; and the soft brown hand of autumn, with the sun's approval, tempered every mellow mood of leaves.