"I don't see any," she said, in answering mood, scanning the fields around us. "Not that that matters. I didn't see the steps, but they were there. You make me think, Master Wheatman, of a Turk I saw in a booth at Vienna, who drew rabbits and rose-bushes out of an empty hat. Staffordshire is your conjurer's hat. And I do like ham and eggs." My assurance and her comfortable belief in it made us both brighter, and we stepped out merrily. She gave me an entertaining account of Vienna, where she had spent some months, and which was then the great outpost of Christendom against the Turk. When this talk had brought us on to the field of Hopton Heath, I gave her the best account I could of the battle there in the Civil War time, and of the slaying of the Marquis of Northampton. And this led me on to my pride of ancestry, and I told her of Captain Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, a tower of strength to the Parliament in these parts, who fought here and later on Naseby Field itself. Many tales I told of him that had been handed down from one generation of us to another, and how so greatly was he taken with his incomparable lord-general that he had named his first-born son Oliver, and ever since there had been an Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. Then I told how one of these later Olivers, which one a matter of no consequence, had written verses and put them into the mouth of the doughty Smite-and-spare-not, sitting his horse, stark and strong, at the head of his men on Naseby Field, and gazing with grim, grey eyes on the opening movements of the fight. And, nothing loth, I trolled them out roundly across the meadows, till the peewits screamed and a distant dog began to bay: "Princelet and king, and mitre and ring, Earl and baron and squire, Oliver worries 'em, harries and flurries 'em, With siege and slaughter and fire. With the arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit, Push of pike and the Word, Smiting and praying, and praising and slaying, Oliver fights for the Lord. With the sword He brought the work is wrought, We finish here to-day. When yon rags and remnants of Babylon Are blown and battered away. Hurrah for the groans of 'em, soon shall the bones of 'em, _Steady!_ Hell-rakers at large, Rot under the sod. _Pass the word: 'God_ _Is our strength?'_ There goes Oliver. _Charge!_" When I had done she applauded so that my face burned until I was discommoded and fell into her trap. "I wish you'd written them, Master Wheatman." "Well, I did," said I grumpily, not liking to be bereft of any little glory in her eyes. "What, you?" Her eyebrows arched and her lips curled. "You, oh, never. 'Smiting and praying'? 'The arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit.'" She mouthed the words deliciously.