My lord Godolphin took off his cocked hat, removed his full periwig, and shook it over the side of the calash, wrying his lips as the horse of one of his escort started at the sudden cloud. My lord had good excuse for his petulance. It was a brilliant June day, in a summer of glorious weather, and the Wiltshire roads, no better nor worse than other English highways in the year 1702, were thick with white dust, which the autumn rains would by and by transform into the stickiest of clinging mud. The Lord High Treasurer, as he lay back wearily on his cushions, looked, with his lean, lined, swarthy face and close-cropt grizzled poll, every day of his fifty-eight years. He was returning with his son Francis, now nearly twenty-three, from a visit to his estates in Cornwall. Had he been a younger man he would no doubt have ridden his own horse; had he been of lower rank he might have travelled by the public coach; but being near sixty, a baron, and lord of the Treasury to boot, he drove in his private four-horsed calash, with two red-coated postilions, and four sturdy liveried henchmen on horseback, all well armed against the perils of footpads and highwaymen. It was nearing noon on this bright, hot morning, and my lord had begun to acknowledge to himself that he would barely complete his journey to London that day. "Where are we now, Dickory?" he asked languidly of the nearest rider on the off-side. "Nigh Winton St. Mary, my lord," replied the man. "Down the avenue yonder, my lord; then the common, and the church on the right, and the village here and there bearing to the left, as you might say, my lord." "Look ’ee, Frank, we’ll draw up at Winton St. Mary and wet our whistles. My lady Marlborough expects us in town to-night, to be sure; but she must e’en be content to wait. Time was——eh, my boy?—but now, egad, I’ll not kill myself for her or any woman." "’Twould be a calamity—for the nation, sir," said Frank Godolphin with a grin. "So it would, i’ faith. Never fear, Frank, I’ll not make way for you for ten years to come. But what’s afoot yonder? A fair, eh?"