"When you lads are older," said he,--and even in her distress, Merrylips wondered to hear Dick Fowell and her brother Munn called "lads,"--"you'll know that the stranger a story sound, the likelier it is to be the truth." While Lord Caversham spoke, he put his arm about Rupert and drew him down to sit upon his knee. At this treatment Rupert stiffened and grew red, for he was not pleased at being handled like a little boy. "Put back the shirt from your shoulder," my lord bade. There was something in his tone that made Rupert obey in haste. He put back his shirt, with shaking fingers. Merrylips stood near enough to see that on his bared chest was a red mark like a fresh cut. And yet she knew that Rupert had not recently been hurt. [Illustration: ON HIS BARED CHEST WAS A RED MARK LIKE A FRESH CUT.] "Enough!" said Lord Caversham. "And you can sit quiet, my boy, for I've held you in my arms before this day, my godson, Robert Lucas." CHAPTER XXXII NEWS FROM LONDON You may be sure that the rest of the dinner went that day untasted from Lord Caversham's table. For all who sat at the board forgot to eat, while they listened to the story, a strange one indeed, that my lord told, with his arm about Rupert's shoulders. "Thirteen years ago come Eastertide," said my lord Caversham, "I was sent upon an embassy by the Elector Palatine, whose fortunes I followed, unto the Emperor Ferdinand. The country all was sore distressed with war. Armies of both parties, of the Emperor and of the Protestant princes, were marching to and fro. I was myself stayed, for want of fitting escort, at a town called Rodersheim, upon the borders of Bohemia. "While I lay there, a battle was fought beneath the very walls of the town, wherein the Emperor's troops got the upper hand, but suffered heavy loss. Their wounded men were brought in sorry state into our town, which speedily was filled to overflowing. A piteous sight it was to see those poor fellows dying, more than one, for mere lack of tendance! "Now when night was falling on the groaning town, there halted at my door a rude country cart, in which lay a man who seemed near unto death, and a fair woman, who held his head on her knees and wept as one distraught. She made shift to tell me that she was born Venetia Fernefould, daughter to his Grace of Barrisden, and that the man she tended was her husband, Edward Lucas, a captain in the Emperor's service. "She had been with him on this expedition, and when the battle was over, she had sought and found him amid the slain. She had given all that she had to some country folk to fetch him in that poor cart unto the town. But now that she had brought him thither, she could find neither roof to shelter him, nor surgeon to dress his hurt. So she had sought me, as a fellow-countryman, and she prayed me, in the name of our common English blood, to give her husband succor.