"I had meant to rest myself at Southam's Mill, where they have daily expected me these twenty years and more. But if, as you say, the mill hath been burnt down, why, then, there is not a house in the land that I can call my home. Howbeit, I doubt not I shall find goodly shelter under the lee of some friendly haystack. 'Twill not be the first, no, nor the hundredth time that I have slept in the open air. And believe me, my master, he is a happy man who hath none to thank for his food and shelter saving only his God." "I do perceive that thou art an easily contented mortal," remarked Timothy with a ring of sympathy in his voice. "Privation hath made me so," returned Hartop. "Nevertheless," pursued Tim, "you will, so please you, think no more of the haystack, but come on to the manor of Modbury; for sure I am that Master Oglander would blame me most severely were I to suffer you to go adrift like a lost creature." Hartop answered very seriously and firmly: "Were there no other house in all England, my master, I should still refuse to take shelter in the manor of Modbury." "And wherefore?" asked Timothy in surprise. "Because," returned the old mariner, "it is in that same house that my bitterest enemy doth live--Jasper Oglander to wit." "Pooh!" rejoined Timothy. "Jasper Oglander is dead these many years." "Not so," declared Hartop. "You, indeed, and many others may believe him dead. But in this matter, at the least, I make no mistake; for hark ye, my friend, Jasper Oglander is as much alive at this moment as you or I. You and your young friend may not have known him--how should you?--but 'twas he whom you saw this very day coming ashore from the ship _Pearl_; he and his wife and his son. If you should see him again,--as I doubt not you will ere many hours be past,--you shall know him by the token that he hath an old knife-cut across his cheek: a cut that was dealt to him by one whom he sought to treacherously murder." CHAPTER VI TABLE-TALK AT MODBURY MANOR. At this same time, while Gilbert and Timothy were continuing their journey homeward through the darkness and the driving sleet after their encounter with the unknown robbers in Beddington Dingle, Lord Champernoun and his household were seated at the supper-table in the great dining-hall of Modbury Manor. Some friends were with them--high-born ladies and noble gentlemen who had been of a hawking party that day, and had come back very weary and full of the enjoyment of the sport. Chief among the ladies, both for her beauty and wit and for her noble birth, was the Lady Elizabeth Oglander--or Lady Betty, as she was familiarly called--who, as the widow of the Honourable Edmund Oglander, was now the mistress of Modbury Manor; and among the men, Sir Walter Raleigh and those two gallant seamen, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Richard Grenville.