"I have done what I meant to do," he replied. "If the son is a fool there is no reason why the father should be. I have so managed the king, through His Grace of York that I have got my old lands back, so that in spite of thine own foolishness thou wilt no longer be a landless Rashcliffe. The king's marriage with Lucy Walters was not the only card I had to play, so when my time came I played it, and I took the trick too." At this I was silent, for somehow I felt my father to be a different man. "If ever a man had his chances you had," my father went on. "I had known for years that Katharine Harcomb had been trying to find out through Lucy Walters' mother where the old madman Walters was, and I knew that when she found out she would come and tell me." "How did you know?" I asked. "Because I had power over her. Because in her young days she had done that which, if I had chosen to make known, would have sent her to the gallows. Because I had made her promise that if ever she found out where old Solomon, as he called himself, was, she dared do no other than to tell me. She knew that he had got hold of the marriage contract; the question was, where the old man was hiding." And then my father told me a long story which I will not here set down, because it hath no real bearing on my history. "You have disappointed me greatly," he went on presently. "You had a chance such as few men have, and you spoiled it; you have gained the king's enmity, and you have allowed yourself to be mewed up here in this stinking hole with a lot of psalm-singing Nonconformists. Besides, you have done no good by it all. The story hath come out, and the king hath taken an oath that he did never wed Lucy. Therefore your knowledge doth avail nothing." "But I saw the contract," I cried. "Ay, but the king hath taken his oath," he laughed. "What, to a lie!" I said. "The oath of Charles Stuart!" said my father. "What was his father's oath worth? What is the son's oath worth? But you have spoiled your chance. What matters whether the thing is a forgery or no? Now that the thing hath come to light it doth not matter. That is what angers me. The son in whom I trusted to have clever wits hath acted like a Puritan." "And am I to remain in gaol?" I asked. "As to that, no," he replied. "Now that the thing hath come to light nought matters. Had I come back earlier I had set you at liberty long ago. As soon as I discovered how matters stood I took steps to gain your freedom." "Then I may leave this place?" I cried. "Ay, be thankful that your father is not a fool. You can e'en return to your old home to-morrow." "And know you aught of Mistress Constance Leslie?" I asked. "Ay, I do," he replied. "What? Tell me!" I cried. My father turned and looked around him before speaking, as though he feared some one was listening. CHAPTER XXVII HOW I LEFT FLEET PRISON