“Odd’s fish!” he cried, critically weighing the bag; “a purse, my lord, as we live! And a fuller than these fingers have held for many a week!—Am I dreaming, or am I but just awakened from some monstrous nightmare of years? Is this St. Germain once again?—or has fate worked with us benignly while we slept, and is this Whitehall at last?… Why, my merry Rockhurst, this is never a goose I behold, on a Bruges table, flanked by pasty and brawn! Hath our uncle of Spain paid our pension at length—or has our Chancellor of the Exchequer chanced at last upon an Exchequer to draw upon?—Harry, dost thou actually hold in thy hand a brimming goblet? Aye, methinks the fragrance of it already reaches me!” He broke off his bantering tone to add, as he dropped the purse carelessly into his pocket and extended his hand for the glass:— “Nay, but, prince of friends, how have such miracles been worked?” “My liege,” said Rockhurst, with unmoved gravity, “even as I ventured to prophesy: by a laugh, a lie, a fight, a kiss. The fight came first and the kiss came last—and the lie, I’ll warrant, is even now being expounded within the house of a certain mynheer of this town. As for the laugh, your Majesty, nay, the laugh will be between you and me anon when I tell you the tale.… But, Chitterley, bring me a glass of wine.” Charles, his merriment stayed on his lips by the look of sudden emotion he marked on his host’s face, gazed wonderingly up at him. Rockhurst took the glass, and dropping on one knee:— “I pledge the future!” he murmured. “I drink to the hope of England, to your Majesty’s happy restoration, to the triumph of his cause—_Sursum corda!_… my beloved liege!” FARRANT CHACE FARRANT CHACE I FARRANT CHACE Storm without; and within, melancholy humours!—Without, fine, blinding, dry snow, driven in eddies against whatever obstacle it met: against the walls of Sir Paul Farrant’s Manor House: against the holly and clipped yews of his garden: against the serried ranks of firs which screened his estate from the wild blasts that ride from the Downs up the great rise of Hindhead. Never more wildly, never more triumphantly, did the winds ride than on this night of the winter solstice, this Christmas Eve, the fifth since the happy date of his Most Gracious Majesty’s Restoration. Within, a fire of logs glowing under the huge mantelled chimney; rosy flicker on wainscot, glitter of crystal and silver on fair white napery, and a full-paunched bottle or two, dusty and cobwebbed; crocus flames of candles against the rose of the hearth-light and the brown of the oak. Cheerful enough surroundings, one would have deemed—a sort of room where a man might hug comfort with philosophic egotism and have the greater zest in it for the thought of the outside desolation; sip his glass to the tune of the wind; and toast his legs in luxury as he pictured to himself the circumstance of any poor devil who, upon such a night, still chanced to be on the road.