Upon all this, Ruth in the coming years would oftentimes sit and ponder. Ardent, unshaken little Stuart royalist as she remained to her latest day, and as Master Lawrence under her good guidance came to be, it is doubtful whether either was ever brought to declare with good Madam Lee, that "the king could do no wrong." That question, however, they left uncontested, and, content with trying to do as little of it as possible themselves, did so much good as to call down upon their heads in life and in death the blessings of all the country side. [Sidenote: Good company.] The grandfather's part which the roll of time brought into request at Nether Hall, was excellently represented by good old bachelor Master Alworth, who was its frequent guest, and of the many tales he used to tell the little ones, they liked very much that one of the brave, dear, real grandfather who died fighting for the king on Worcester field. Of old Maudlin, what more can be said than that she passed her uneventful later years in the snug ingle nook at Nether Hall, made much of by every member of the establishment. Adam Lockit, being of another turn of mind, declined to forsake his quarters in the gatehouse. New masters of the old mansion might come and they might go. Maltster or magnifico, peasant or peer, but monarch of his trophy-hung little domain he remained; bequeathing it, when at last he went the way of all flesh, with his well-seasoned tales of flood and field, and hobgoblinry, to Barnaby Diggles, who superadded in fair writing (an accomplishment, by the way, for which he was beholden to his old master's daughter), that tradition of his own times, of the famous plot and conspiracy against his gracious majesty King Charles the Second--known as the Rye House Plot--and whose valuable assistance towards the putting together of this present record, it well behoves this chronicler gratefully to recognize. [Sidenote: The author of this story.] Need it be added that the substantial marks of the king's gratitude which were bestowed on the hostess of the King's Arms, entirely converted Master Sheppard to his wife's way of thinking? and they subsided into the happiest peacefullest pair you could find in Hertfordshire; but then Master Sheppard never again put his fingers in what his wife called "pies that weren't baked for his eatin';" and when sea-coal was wanted for the King's Arms' hearth-places, honest sea-coal it might be, but Mistress Sheppard took good care it should be conveyed overland in a proper decent wagon; and always stood by in person, to count the sacks, and to see to the bottom of them too.