“My son,” answered the other, “is in good hands—and my sister in the farm-house where she hath refuge brings him up even in such wise as I should myself. As for a new wife, poor Charles,”—his lips broke into a smile as they spoke the words,—“believe your poor Harry, he is as little likely to seek one as he is to seek a new master—But, Heaven forgive me!” he went on with brisk change of tone, “this outer fog seems to have befogged my inner wits. The house can at least afford us lights. Nay, I will close the casement upon the dull, wet world. Another log or two on the hearth!” He added action to speech, and a cheerful roar and blaze answered the ministration. “The curtain across the casement—so! Now we were in worse straits after Worcester. Have you forgotten how we stole a sheep and killed it and brought you the reeking leg, and you yourself cut it into collops and set them in the pan? Good lack—how tough they were! Yet ’twas a merry supper. Back to your chair by the warmth, my dearest Sire. An hour’s patience, and it will go ill with me if I serve you not a meal—and wine to it—fit wine for the pledge it shall wash.” “Aye, and how will you manage that, my merry Rockhurst?” asked Charles Stuart listlessly, as he suffered himself to be led back to his chair. “Why, by a fight or a kiss, a laugh or a lie!” cried his companion gaily. “Since the French king has thrust us out to please England’s Protector; since the Don neglects to maintain us in proper state, why then, the Don’s land must be made to provide!” He took up his sword which lay on the table to his hand and buckled it round his lean figure as he spoke. “A joke will bring a man far along sometimes; or, if not, then a prodigious bit of deceit. I am ready, too, to kiss, my good liege, or kill. Is not all fair in love and war? And are we not at war still, aye, and with the whole world too,—and as much in love as out of it? There are women in this Flemish town, and they have hearts for a man, or how could even this Bruges subsist?” He stood in the full light of the racing hearth-flame, the points of the thin mustache quivering with his smile. So handsome, although worn with anxiety and privation; so tall and proper a man, so dashing a presence in such tattered and faded garb. Charles turned his dark eyes slowly on his friend. “Art a likely figure, in verity, to go courting the prude burgher’s daughter!” he drawled upon a yawn. “Aye, well—off with thee, then, and I’ll have a nap to pass the weary time. _Qui dort dine_, as the French say—though my sleek cousin of France would scarce put up with the alternative!—But mind how you play, my lord, with your kisses and your blade—I can ill afford to lose my last friend!” Rockhurst answered but by a look of affectionate devotion. Then, after a little pause:— “I will send Chitterley with candles,” said he, “and bid him lay the table against my return.”