"As for Mr. Fiennes--nay, lad, I remember you well." My father turned to him with that sweet courtesy which few ever resisted. "And blush not, lad, if I guess that to you we all owe this meeting; 'twere a bravery well beseeming your blood. As for Mr. Fiennes, he will accompany us in heart if he cannot in presence--being, as I understand, destined for the law?" "Why, sir, as for that," stammered Nat, "I have had the devil's own dispute with my father." "You treated him with all respect, I hope?" "With all the respect in the world, sir. But it scarcely matters, since he has cast me off, and without a penny." "Why, then, you can come too!" cried my father, gripping him by the hand. "Bravo, Prosper! that makes five; and with Billy Priske, when we can find him, six; and that leaves but one to find before dinner-time." He pulled out his watch. "Lord!" he cried, "and 'tis high time to feel hungry, too. If this lady now will repeat her hospitable offer--" I thought at the moment, and I thought once or twice during the meal downstairs, that my father was taxing this poor woman's hospitality. I doubted that he, himself so carelessly hospitable, might forget to offer her payment; and lingered after the others had trooped into the passage, with purpose to remind him privately. "Come," said he, and made a notion to leave, still without offering to pay. On the threshold I had almost turned to whisper to him when the woman came after and touched his arm. "Nay, Sir John," said she, eagerly, in a low hoarse voice, "let the lad hear me thank you. He is old enough to understand and clean enough to profit. Shut the door, child. You know me, Sir John?" My father bent his head. "I never forget a face," said he, quietly. "Take notice of that, boy. Your father remembers me, whom to my knowledge he never saw but once, and then as a magistrate, when he sat to judge me. Never mind the offence, lad. I am a sinful woman, and the punishment was--" "Nay, nay!" put in my father, gently.