Her perilous journey was near its end, the toilsome journey nigh over; and she felt happy. For, as through frost some twelve months before, she had approached Bristol with pleasant anticipations, so now was she about to enter Gloucester with the same, and from a similar cause. Her expectancy was realised sooner than she had hoped for; the result identical to a degree of oddness. For just as upon that night at Bristol, so on this at Gloucester, Rob Wilde chanced to be guard-sergeant of the gate by which she sought admission. And once again went their great arms around each other; their lips closing in kisses loud and fervent as ever. "God Almighty, Win!" he exclaimed, still holding her in honest, amorous embrace, "what bet now? Why hast thee comed hither through the flood? Dear girl! ye be's wet up to the--" "No matter how high, Rob," she said, interrupting, "if 'twor up to the neck, there be good reasons for't." "What reasons?" "News I ha' brought frae Ruardean; rayther us ought say Hollymead." "Bad news be they? I needn't axe; I see't in your face." "Bad enough; though nothin' more than might ha' been expected after the Cavalieres bein' back at Monnerth, an' master's theer. Ye ha' heerd that, I suppose?" "Oh, certainly! The news got here day afore yesterday, in the night. But fra Hollymead?" "A troop o' 'em there, numberin' nigh two hundred; horse sodjers in scarlet, wi' all sorts o' grand trappins; the Prince Rupert's they be. Us ha' come wi' a message to Sir Richard. So I needn't tell ye who't be from." "No, you needn't. I can guess. Then ye maun see him at once?" "Wi' not a minute's delay. Us ha' got a letter for him; an' she as sent it sayed the deliverin' be a thing o' life an' death. I knows that myself, Rob." "Come along, love! The colonel be in his quarters, I think. He wor by the gate here only a short whiles ago, and gied me orders for reportin' to him there. Another kiss, Win dear, fore's we get into company." The favour was conceded soon as asked; and, after another hug, with more, than one osculation, the two great figures moved off side by side through the darkness. CHAPTER SIXTY TWO. THEIR DEAR ONES IN DANGER. As the sergeant conjectured, Colonel Walwyn was in his quarters; Eustace Trevor, his almost constant companion, along with him. The ever-active Governor of Gloucester was absent on another of his many expeditions, and had left Colonel Broughton in chief command of the garrison, Sir Richard commanding its cavalry force, with a separate jurisdiction. The duties of the day over, with all guards stationed for the night, he, with his young troop captain, having just completed the "Grand Rounds," had returned to quarters, and taken seat by a brisk wood fire; the night, as already said, being chill.