“As innocent as the hand that penned it, and if I so oppose your reading it, it is because thus much I owe her. Believe me, sir,” he added, his accents returning to a beseeching key, “when again I swear that it is no more than such a letter any maid may write her lover. I thought that you had understood all this when you rescued me from those bullies at The Mitre. I thought that what you did was a noble and generous deed. Instead--” The lad paused. “Continue, sir,” Galliard requested coldly. “Instead?” “There can be no instead, Sir Crispin. You will not mar so good an action now. You will give me my letter, will you not?” Callous though he was, Crispin winced. The breeding of earlier days--so sadly warped, alas!--cried out within him against the lie that he was acting by pretending to suspect treason in that woman's pothooks. Instincts of gentility and generosity long dead took life again, resuscitated by that call of conscience. He was conquered. “There, take your letter, boy, and plague me no more,” he growled, as he held it out to Kenneth. And without waiting for reply or acknowledgment, he turned on his heel, and entered the palace. But he had yielded overlate to leave a good impression and, as Kenneth turned away, it was with a curse upon Galliard, for whom his detestation seemed to increase at every step. CHAPTER V. AFTER WORCESTER FIELD The morn of the third of September--that date so propitious to Cromwell, so disastrous to Charles--found Crispin the centre of a company of gentlemen in battle-harness, assembled at The Mitre Inn. For a toast he gave them “The damnation of all crop-ears.” “Sirs,” quoth he, “a fair beginning to a fair day. God send the evening find us as merry.” It was not to be his good fortune, however, to be in the earlier work of the day. Until afternoon he was kept within the walls of Worcester, chafing to be where hard knocks were being dealt--with Montgomery at Powick Bridge, or with Pittscottie on Bunn's Hill. But he was forced to hold his mood in curb, and wait until Charles and his advisers should elect to make the general attack. It came at last, and with it came the disastrous news that Montgomery was routed, and Pittscottie in full retreat, whilst Dalzell had surrendered, and Keith was taken. Then was it that the main body of the Royal army formed up at the Sidbury Gate, and Crispin found himself in the centre, which was commanded by the King in person. In the brilliant charge that followed there was no more conspicuous figure, no voice rang louder in encouragement to the men. For the first time that day Cromwell's Ironsides gave back before the Royalists, who in that fierce, irresistible charge, swept all before them until they had reached the battery on Perry Wood, and driven the Roundheads from it hell-to-leather. It was a glorious moment, a moment in which the fortunes of the day hung in the balance; the turn of the tide it seemed to them at last.