"And terrify me not at all. As soon as I have that passport I am gone. I shall not return until I bring Mistress Sylvia Thorne with me." "Fore 'gad, you are a bold fellow! I am proud to have you of my kith and kin. Yet you will want something else. What money have you?" "I had forgotten that. Money, of course, I have, yet--yet----" "Not enough. Is that it? Hey? Well, you shall have enough--enough to help you bravely; to bring you, if Providence watches over you, safely to Liége and before the glances of Sylvia's grey eyes. And, then, Heaven grant you may both get back safely." "I have no fear. What a man may do I will do. Yet, my lord, one thing alone stands not clearly before my eyes. God, He knows, I go willingly enough to obey your behests, your desires; to, if it may be, help a young maiden to quit a town which may soon be ravaged by war; a town to be, perhaps, held by our enemies for months or even years. From my heart I do so. Yet--ah!--how shall I by this do that on which I have set my heart? How get back again to the calling I have loved and forfeited--though forfeited unjustly? How will this commend me to my Lord Marlborough?" "What! How? Why, heart alive! if Marlborough but hears you have done such a thing as this, your new commission will be as good as signed by Queen Anne. He hath ever an eye for a quick brain, a ready hand. 'Tis thus that great men rise or, being risen, help to maintain their eminence. The workman who chooses good tools does ever the best of work." "Therefore I need not fear?" "Fear! Fear nothing; above all, fear not that you shall go unrewarded. Moreover, remember Jack Churchill has ever been a valiant cavalier of _le beau sexe, un preux chevalier_; remember his devotion to his wife, handsome shrew though she be. Great commander though he is, he is not above advancing those soldiers who can help beauty in distress. "Now," Lord Peterborough concluded, "go and hold yourself in readiness, remembering always that she whom you go to succour is the child of a man I loved--of my dearest, my dead, friend. Remember, too, that she is young and good and pure and honest. Now go, remembering this; and when I send for you--'twill not be long--return. Then, when you have my last instructions, as also the money and the passport, with, too, a letter for Sylvia Thorne, I will bid you God speed. Go--farewell!" CHAPTER III. [Illusration: "'Not forgotten, monsieur dares to hope.'"--_p_. 10.]