From long siege on land there comes to men something of the look that manners have whose business is with besieging seas. The Governor’s eyes were steady and far away. He seemed bewildered by the ready laughter of these folk who had ridden in the open instead of sitting behind castle walls. But even his gravity broke down when Elizabeth came trotting through the press, and look about her, and found Michael. She licked his hands and face. She brayed a triumph-song, its harmony known only to herself. "One has not lived amiss, when all is said," said Michael. "You will bear witness, sir, that I have captured a heart of gold." The Governor stopped to pat Elizabeth, and she became an untamed fury on the sudden, for no reason that a man could guess. "I—I am sorry, sir," Michael protested. "Oh, no regrets! She is a lady to her hoof-tips, as you said, and my shins are only red-raw—not broken, as I feared." It was well they had their spell of laughter in between what had been and what must follow. When they came to Norton Conyers, it was to find the mistress dull with grief, and hopeless. All she cared for lay buried, with pomp and ceremony enough, in the kirkyard below. She was scarcely roused by the news that fire and rapine would have raided the defenceless house if the Riding Metcalfs had not come on the stroke of need. "I thank you, gentlemen—oh, indeed, I thank you. But nothing matters very much. He waits for me, and that is all." She was past argument or quiet persuasion. They ate and drank their fill that night, because they needed it—and their needs were the King’s just now—and on the morrow, when they had cursed their wounds, and prayed for further sleep, and got up again for whatever chanced, they found Graham’s widow still intractable. They told her that the safety of many women-folk was in her hands. "I trust them to you," she said. "There’s an old nurse of mine lives up in a fold of the hills yonder. They will not find me there, and I care little if they do. Meanwhile, I shall get down each night and morning to pray for the soul of a gallant gentleman who has unlocked the Gate"—her eyes were luminous with a temperate fire—"unlocked it a little ahead of me. He has left it on the latch." The Squire bent to her hand. "Madam," he said, his roughness broken up, as honest moorland soil is broken when it is asked to rear pleasant crops—"madam, I’ve a wife in Yoredale, I. She carries your sort of heart, I think. Of your charity, pray for her till I come." "I shall pray, sir." And so the Riding Metcalfs went from Norton Conyers, with an added burden of women-folk, but with a sense of rosemary and starshine, as if they had tarried for a while in some wayside Calvary. *CHAPTER XXII.* *MISS BINGHAM.*