Fortune, or the will of Providence, had been against Master Neville and his cause. The King’s troops had been beaten again and again, alike in fenced cities and in the open field, before three weary men, soiled with travel and rough living, approached by back ways and side gates, skulking in the gloom into the house of which one of them was the master. “Alack and well-a-day!” cried Dame Hynd, wringing her hands at the sorry plight of a gallant gentleman. “It is the fortune of war, dame,” he cried, relishing condolence as little as ever. He liked better the greeting of Roy and Reine, that no Parliament or Lord Protector or Fairfax’s men in the neighbourhood could prevent—timid creatures though the welcomers were—from rushing to hail his arrival, with acclamation, little ringing yelps, much scuttling to and fro and clambering up his legs, with lavish licking of his muddy boots. Having heard that the vicar was from home—indeed the worthy man was in hiding with greater sinners—Master Neville proceeded to the business which had brought him there—the destruction of private papers, in anticipation of a visit to his house from a detachment of the Parliamentary army. “I don’t think you have anything to fear at the rogues’ hands,” he told his housekeeper, as he prepared to leave again in the dank dawn of the next morning. “You have my leave to speak them fair. As for me, I think I shall make the country quit of me—like others I will not name; God be praised, they are out of danger;” and he raised his beaver for an instant—“till better times. I see my way to the coast, and I shall do my best to survive a term of existence in some wretched mouldy or whitewashed French or Dutch town. Why, I should not care to carry off my beauties with me to bear me company,” he cried on a sudden impulse, catching up Roy and Reine, the one after the other, and depositing them in the deep pockets of his coat. He had often stowed them there when they were wearied with trotting at his heels in his walks in the park or the meadows—or when he passed through his herds of cattle, of which the little spaniels were inordinately afraid, so that if he forgot them they would grovel unperceived in some furrow, and lie there panting and half-dead with terror, though the oxen were not even looking at them, till he missed them and returned to search for, rally, and fetch them home. “I wot you’ll take something there’s more sense in, master,” remonstrated Dame Hynd, loath to oppose him at such a moment, yet driven almost past her patience by the freak.