OF VARIOUS EVENTS OF IMPORTANCE WHICH TOOK PLACE DURING ONE NIGHT, AND CAUSED US CONSIDERABLE UNEASINESS AND OTHER EMOTIONS 103 CHAPTER V OF MY RECONCILIATION WITH SIR NICHOLAS, OF HIS LAST WISH, AND OF HIS DEATH AND OUR OWN SORE STRAITS 143 CHAPTER VI OF MY REMARKABLE ADVENTURES WITH GREGORY AND OUR FORTUNATE DISCOVERY, OF SIR NICHOLAS’S BURIAL IN HIS OWN HOUSE, AND OF MY FLIGHT WITH MISTRESS ALISON 177 CHAPTER VII OF OUR ADVENTURES UNDER THE BRIDGE AND THE PRIVATIONS WE THERE ENDURED, AND OF MY INTERVIEW WITH FAIRFAX AND ITS SAD RESULTS 207 CHAPTER VIII OF MY SURPRISING DELIVERANCE FROM DEATH, MY LAST MEETING WITH ANTHONY DACRE, AND OF CERTAIN NOTABLE PASSAGES ’TWIXT MISTRESS ALISON AND MYSELF 235 [Illustration] Chapter I Of certain Events which happened at East Hardwick Manor House, August 27-28, 1642. I. At seven of the clock I turned away from the window, where, for a full hour, I had stood flattening my nose against the pane in a vain attempt to see something of interest in the dripping garden or the dank meadows outside. Sir Nicholas moved in his deep chair by the fire and then groaned, his old enemy catching him afresh and tweaking his great toe. Seeing that his pain had awakened him I went over and stood at his side. I saw the firelight glint on his frosted hair, and it woke in me some sleeping memory of a by gone winter. Yet then it was August, and had been a bright one, but that day we had suffered from a heavy rain which came with the dawn and kept pouring itself upon us without ceasing, so that no man putting his nose out o’ doors could have said with certainty whether he sniffed April or November in the air. As for me, I was heartily sick of it and everything, and when my uncle’s silvery hair reminded me of winter I thought regretfully of the previous Christmas and of Mistress Catherine and the mistletoe that then hung over the very spot where I now stood watching Sir Nicholas making wry faces at his foot. “Plague!” says he, “Plague on this toe of mine! Let me counsel thee, nephew--but what o’clock is it? God’s body! I must ha’ slept, gout or no gout, why, I must ha’ slept an hour.” “An hour and a half, sir, by the clock,” says I. “But, by the time that I have watched at the window, a year, at the least.”