“I repeat, madam,” said the suave landlord, “in the very first hour of your coming you had recourse to a lie. You said your husband suffered from an incurable disease. More correctly, you should have said a bullet wound obtained a few weeks ago at the battle of Worcester.” It was a shot in the dark, but it found its mark. The woman fell back against the stairs with a face the colour of snow. “No, madam,” the landlord went on, “I can confess to no surprise at the course you have taken. It is hardly to be supposed that the wife of a proscribed cavalier, who hath come a fugitive to a lonely inn on the seacoast, in the hope of slipping over to France on a dark night, should be willing to publish his name to all and sundry. But it is a fortunate circumstance that old Gamaliel Hooker hath a few wits in his head, otherwise a notable traitor to his country might have escaped his deserts, and there would be one malignant more than there should be in the world.” The landlord had trimmed his cruel words, and, uttered them slowly. Each one sank like a sharp-pointed knife into the very flesh of the woman. She shrank away from him, torn, bleeding, trembling. “Happily,” said the landlord in the same clear-cut, long-drawn, formal tone, “Gamaliel Hooker is not a man to shirk his plain and manifest duty. A few hours prior to your appearance a band of soldiers called here, and told me where I might find them should any malignants appear. I will send an information to them the first thing in the morning. And now I give you good-night, madam; I think after our nocturnal wanderings we shall both welcome a return to bed.” The landlord made to go upstairs. He would reserve the question of what she was doing in the dead of night, and her highly singular conduct towards his serving-man, until the morrow. He must not exhaust all his weapons at once; he would save a few with which to amuse himself at his leisure. But he had enjoyed using these vastly. He would teach her to take him trapesing in the dead of the night through the winter gale! However, as the landlord made to retire the woman sprang forward with an appeal. She clung to his coat with her frozen hands. “Have mercy, I beseech you!” was her cry. The landlord laughed in her face. “It is a matter for the Lord Protector,” he said. “But I have yet to hear that he is a merciful man.” “You will not deliver up my poor husband,” she cried,--“you will not be so cruel!” “Mother of God!” said the landlord. “I will do my duty.”