"Sir," I said, very solemnly (yet, for all the gravity of the case, I was at pains to keep back a smile when I so addressed him, and saw that he knew me not), "Sir, His Highness is in danger. Madam your mother has been by force taken from home, but is now in safety; the servants that you find in your house are evil men, and of the plot." Then he that held my horse on the off side, whom I afterwards knew for that great person that for discretion I shall still call "Captain Jennings," took his hand from the bridle. "The lad speaks truth," he said; "a word with you, Captain." With that he drew Ned aside, and while they spoke together ("Captain Jennings" telling, I think, how he feared unjust suspicion of his own connivance if aught befell His Highness) I marked that six Swedish troopers did approach, threading their way through the trees from the gate in the lane that I have above mentioned. Also, between them and me, but nearer by no little distance to where I still sat upon Charley's back, I saw a man stand leaning against the wall of the granary that stands in the orchard, and thus hidden from the advancing soldiers that were still, as I supposed, in pursuit of poor me. And this man, whether from description or from something high and noble in the aquiline countenance of him, I knew at once for William, Prince of Orange. Now, even as I gazed in idleness of wonder on the man I held greatest in the world (for did not Edward Royston serve him with reverence and ardor?), I saw that a little door in the granary, on His Highness's left, was slowly, slowly moving back upon its hinges, and a moment later I had one glimpse of a fat face and a red head peering from the narrow slit of that opening. I thought of Farmer Kidd's tale, and again of Madam Royston's, and straightway drew my sword and clapped heels to my horse. Roan Charley, for all his fatigue, responded very gallantly, and in three of his long bounds we had been beside the Prince, but for a fellow, long, lean, and black-coated, that drew a pistol from under his breast, which he fired in my face in the same moment as he leapt at Charley's head, whereby he undid himself, for, as the horse reared in terror, I, in as much, struck spurs in his sides, and Charley leaping forward, we rode clean over our assailant, whom I struck at wildly with my sword as he fell. Charley must have found foothold upon some part of his body, for I remember still with a thrill of sickness the softness under foot.