Now ever since the hanging of those two men in Drayton village, although Peter Emmet had continued to heat and hammer iron in the usual way, nothing had been heard of Simon, his father, nor of Prudence, his daughter. But one fine morning in mid-October, when my Lord Chief Justice was well back in London, receiving much honor and reward for the evil he had wrought and the grief he had left among us, but no thanks from any man for the only good thing he ever did by us in the west (I mean the leaving us), as I was going to the kitchen, my father being not yet out of his chamber, I passed by that little dark room we did use to call the steward's. But whether it were butler's pantry, museum of weapons out of all date and fashion, or the place where a steward should hold his audits, pay his wages, and keep his books, a stranger had been hard put to it to tell. I marked that the door stood partly open, a thing unusual since we had none to use it, and, peering within, perceived old Simon poring over a book of accounts the most naturally in the world. Indeed, had it not been for some trembling of the hand that held the pen, and the great emaciation of his countenance, I might almost have forgotten he had been absent at all, so fit and proper was his presence there. And the thought of this put in my head, I think, the best and kindest manner of welcoming his return; for I just nodded my head to him, and said: "Ah, Simon, 't is a fair morning, is it not? I trust the old Naseby wound and the rheumatism are better." And the old man turned to me a face full of gratitude, that showed a fresh-healed scar upon the forehead and a shaking smile about the lips. "I am well recovered, pretty mistress," he said; then perceiving, perhaps, that in both dress and manner I was grown deserving of a more formal address, he added, "Madam Philippa, I would say." And so I left him in haste to persuade my father to accept this aged prodigal's return even as I had done. And thus it came about that Simon Emmet slipped back into his old place among us without question asked; and I at least should never certainly have known he had been with Monmouth, nor that he was the man that did escape that night from the barn, if I had not, no long time after his return, taken his granddaughter Prudence into the house to be my handmaid, and in some sort, as it proved, my companion. For she came to me, having returned to her father's house on the same day as Simon to us, and begged me, in pretty rustic manner, and with tears in her pretty eyes, that I would take her into my service, being determined, she said, to serve, if she might, her who had saved the brave gentleman that had so nearly given his life for her protection. And she proved indeed a good servant, a merry companion, and afterwards, upon a great occasion, as will be seen, a friend not to be despised.