“There is sense enough in the proposal,” he insisted. “They are my esteemed play-fellows, and they may serve me for a breakfast some fine morning, when hunger craves and all other provisions fail,” he added, in allusion to the Cavaliers’ favourite jest of one of Rupert’s troopers, when they were riding through a town in the Puritan interest, snatching up a fat baby, and poising it screaming before him on the crupper of his saddle, as he announced, amidst a grinning roar of assent from his comrades—while the horrified populace mobbed them, raging powerlessly—that here would be a nice roast wherewith to break a long fast. Master Neville, with the little dogs in his pockets, turned away laughing from the old home which he might never see again. The Cavalier squire proved wrong in his calculation as to gaining the coast forthwith; instead, he had to go through a lengthened experience of that most humiliating ordeal to a man—fleeing before the enemies he has despised. He had to move here and there in various irksome disguises—to seek help from friends ill able to afford it—to elude the vigilance of wide-awake, sometimes vindictive foes—to endure no scant measure of pains and penalties. But, through all, he never abandoned the poor pets with which he had rashly cumbered himself. Occasionally, when he was so well up in the world as to represent a pedlar, with his pack on his back, vending his wares from one country house to another, or from town to town, he would display the little animals openly, and freely admit they had belonged to a gentleman in trouble. Then if some grave father or mother, brother or friend, so far relaxed in their lofty scorn of all toys as to propose to chaffer for the dogs in behalf of a doted-on grandson or a tender-hearted maiden, the reputed pedlar would excuse himself in a flow of specious words, explaining, with a double meaning in the assertion, that he was only conveying the dogs for their rightful owner, and had no warrant to dispose of them. At other times, when Master Neville was playing the beggar, asking alms from door to door, he had cunningly to conceal Roy and Reine, lest he should become liable to the suspicion of having stolen them. The dogs and their master shared and fared alike, and though they had good days and bad days, it soon befell that Roy and Reine, who had been reared on dainties, and who had at first turned up their noses in disgust, like petted children, at plain food, and rather gone without a meal than deigned to touch it, were fain, like Master Neville, to eat heartily and thankfully of homely scraps. Though all three were often hungry enough before they came to this pass, I need not say that the day never dawned when the Cavalier was reduced to kindling a fire in the shelter of the hedge, gipsy fashion, and cooking Roy and Reine for breakfast, dinner, or supper.