[Illustration: “With his dark locks and swarthy cheeks smudged with dirt, the good folks took him for some gipsy boy.”] HONOR BRIGHT A STORY OF THE DAYS OF KING CHARLES BY MARY C. ROWSELL WITH TWENTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS PHILADELPHIA HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY [Illustration] Copyright, 1900, by HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY. [Illustration: HONOR BRIGHT BY MARY C. ROWSELL] CHAPTER I THE CEDAR ROOM One fine autumn morning a long time ago, a little boy lay stretched in the broad seat of a latticed window, gazing earnestly with his great dark eyes on the scene before him. The window was the only one in the room, which was situated high up in a sort of tower at the corner of a big old house. The beautiful garden surrounding the house was laid out in long terrace walks, with wide stone steps and balustrades, and planted with smooth-shaven yew-hedges as thick and almost as sturdy as walls, and the flower-beds carpeting the ground were ablaze with glorious colors in the shadowless sunshine, for the great bell in its wooden cote above the square red-brick gate-house was ringing out midday. Bounding the garden on every side were lofty walls, covered with the spreading branches of plum and pear and apple trees, and the rich fruit gleamed red and tawny and purple, bright as gems among the green leaves. Away beyond the garden, far as eye could reach, stretched wood and dale and fair green meadows, where the sheep cropped at the sweet turf and the cows grazed, whisking away the tiresome flies with their great tails as they moved slowly along. Here and there among the leafy hedgerows and coppices, the little boy, whose Christian name was Charles, could see from his lofty watch-place the gleaming of a stream which wound like a silver ribbon on and on, nearer and nearer, till it reached the little wood covering the wide, sloping banks which shut in the road leading past the house. There for some distance it was almost completely lost in the ferny brushwood, peeping out again at last in a rush-grown pool. Thence hurrying onward, it wound right round the walls of the house, so that to reach the great nail-studded main door you had to cross a little one-arched stone bridge. Faster and faster, as he gazed upon this fair scene, the tears brimmed up into the little lad’s eyes, until they rolled down his cheeks—cheeks not very rosy or chubby, like those of most boys and girls of eight or nine years old, which was the age of this boy, but of a clear, naturally healthful brown, although just now they looked a little wan. His hair was also dark, and fell in thick curly locks upon the broad collar of Flemish lace covering his shoulders to the top of the sleeves of his dark-green velvet surcoat. His face was rather handsome, and, although there was an expression of self-will about his lips, it was mingled with great good-humor, as if he had a kind, generous nature, and might look merry enough when there was anything to be merry about.