"The country in general is well affected to the Princess Elizabeth," he continued. "Yet the interests of the Bishops, of the Spanish faction, and of some of the council, will lie in giving trouble. To avoid this, we should show our strength. Therefore I want the Duchess to come over with all speed. Will you fetch her?" he added sharply, turning to me. "Will I?" I cried in surprise. "Yes, you. I cannot well go myself at this crisis. Will you go instead?" "Of course I will," I answered. And the prospect cheered me wonderfully. It gave me something to do, and opened my eyes to the great change of which Penruddocke had been the herald, a change which was even then beginning. As we rode down Highgate Hill that day, messengers were speeding north and south and east and west, to Norwich and Bristol and Canterbury and Coventry and York, with the tidings that the somber rule under which England had groaned for five years and more was coming to an end. If in a dozen towns of England they roped their bells afresh; if in every county, as Penruddocke had prophesied, they got their tar-barrels ready; if all, save a few old-fashioned folk and a few gloomy bigots and hysterical women, awoke as from an evil dream; if even sensible men saw in the coming of the young queen a panacea for all their ills--a quenching of Smithfield fires, a Calais recovered, a cure for the worthless coinage which hampered trade, and a riddance of worthless foreigners who plundered it--with better roads, purer justice, a fuller Exchequer, more favorable seasons--if England read all this in that news of Penruddocke's, was it not something to us also? It was indeed. We were saved at the last moment from the dangerous enterprise on which we had rashly embarked. We had now such prospects before us as only the success of that scheme could have ordinarily opened. Ease and honor instead of the gallows, and to lie warm instead of creaking in the wind! Thinking of this, I fell into a better frame of mind as I jogged along toward London. For what, after all, was my father to me, that his existence should make me unhappy, or rob mine of all pleasure? I had made a place for myself in the world. I had earned friends for myself. He might take away my pride in the one, but he could never rob me of the love of the others--of those who had eaten and drunk and fought and suffered beside me, and for whom I too had fought and suffered! * * * * * "A strange time for the swallows to come back," said my lady, turning to smile at me, as I rode on her off-side.