XXXIII. WESTWARD HO! XXXIV. JOURNEY'S END XXXV. THE PASSING OF TIBBOTT VENNER ILLUSTRATIONS Merrylips More than once they had to pause and sit by the path, while the lad rested "I am come, on behalf of the Parliament, to search your house for arms" "Faith, here's a schooling in which I'll bear a hand, my pretty gentleman!" He laid a hand on Merrylips' shoulder and drew her to him "He's hurt. Thou must not waken him," she said Rupert and Merrylips knew it was useless to think of escape She stopped and across the rim stared at the man On his bared chest was a red mark like a fresh cut MERRYLIPS CHAPTER I A MAID OF OLD The little girl's name was Sybil Venner, but she was known as Merrylips. For Sir Thomas Venner, her jolly, bluff father, never by any chance called a child of his by its baptismal name. His tall eldest son, Thomas, answered, whether he liked it or not, to the nickname of Longkin, and Edmund and Philip, the two younger lads, became Munn and Flip, and Katharine, the oldest girl, was Puss, and prim Lucy was Pug. So when Sir Thomas came riding home from London town and first saw his little daughter Sybil, a baby of three months old, crowing and laughing in her cradle, he cried:-- "'Truth, here's a merry lass! Come to thy dad, little Merrylips." Thus it was that little Sybil was christened anew, and Merrylips she remained, to all who loved her, to the end of her story. The home of little Merrylips was a great old house called Walsover, which stood below a hill hard by a sleepy village of a half-score thatched cottages. The village, too, was called Walsover, and it lay in that pleasant part of merry England known as the county of Wilts. A remote countryside it was in the days, now more than two long centuries ago, when our Merrylips was romping and laughing in Walsover hall. From Walsover to Salisbury, the market-town, was a journey of many hours on horseback, by roads that were narrow and hard to follow, and full of ruts and stones, and oftentimes heavy with mire. From Salisbury to London was a journey of days, in a carrier's clumsy wain or on horseback, over downs where shepherds kept their flocks, through country lanes where the may bloomed white in the hedgerows, past little villages that nestled in the shadow of stumpy church towers, through muddy towns where half-timbered gables and latticed casements overhung the crooked streets, across wide commons--this far oftener than was pleasant!--where, in the fear of highwaymen or "padders," the traveller kept a hand upon his pistols, and so at last into the narrow streets amid the jostling crowd, under the jangling of the bells that swung in the many steeples of great London town.