During this time the Baron de Guerre-à-mort was not sitting idly at home. He made every inquiry for his daughter, and was exceedingly vexed at his total want of success in discovering where she was. It is likely enough that he would have found her if she had been further off or more carefully concealed. But it may be observed as a rule which obtains pretty generally, that the things which are immediately under our noses escape our observation more than those which require a careful search. A hare sometimes squats-securely in the middle of a ploughed field whilst the sportsman is seeking her in the thick wood; the nest of the grey thrush, built in the bare cleft of a laurel-tree, often escapes the eye of the school-boy more easily than the nest more carefully hidden in the thick bushes; or, to take another comparison an elderly gentleman sometimes makes entirely ineffectual search for the spectacles which he has pushed up from his nose to his forehead, whereas, had they been hidden among papers, or left in some unusual place, he would quickly have discovered them. So it was, at any rate, that the Baron sought far and wide for his daughter without success, whilst she, poor girl, was keeping pigs on the hill-side all the time, a very {128}few miles distant from the castle of her respected parent. The good man, however, found that before long he had other business to attend to than the agreeable occupation of daughter-hunting. The fortunes of the two great parties in the state underwent a considerable change. Instead of being any longer in the ascendant, the Lancastrians experienced heavy reverses, and those who had espoused the cause of the House of York gained ground continually on every side. In those times it was not so easy to change one’s politics or one’s party as has been the case in some later periods of the history of this country, especially if one had supported one’s opinions by the carrying of fire and sword into the territory of one’s opponents. Therefore the old Baron, who, as we have seen, had adopted this old-fashioned method of proceeding, would have found it somewhat difficult to change sides even if he had wished to do so. Nothing, however, could have been further from his intention. He believed the cause of the House of Lancaster to be just and right, and even if he had thought otherwise, I do not believe that he would ever have deserted a cause which he had once thoroughly espoused. So he remained loyal to the Lancastrian standard, and was as ready to fight for it in adversity as he had ever been when it seemed likely to triumph. The consequences, however, were not likely to be agreeable.