"No, no. Quite true. But listen, just listen." "I'll do no such a thing. What do you want, Master Lee?" "A horse." "I'll see Sheppard has his horsewhip in nice trim for you next you come this way," irately retorted she; "an' be you ten times master o' Nether Hall." [Sidenote: Stars and garters.] "Nay; for that he need be at no trouble," laughed Lee, hitting a swish in the air with a short riding-whip he carried in his other hand. "I've got my own with me, as luck had it. And if not, 'twould have mattered little enough, for 'tis rarely Stars and Garters needs whip nor spur either." "Stars and Garters!" gasped Mistress Sheppard. "Ay, 'tis her I'll take, with your good leave," calmly returned Lawrence. Now Stars and Garters was the name distinguishing the pride of the King's Arms, and of her mistress's heart, a beautiful black mare, marked with a white star on her left breast, and a curious ring of white hair below the left knee, whose match for docility and fleetness of foot was not to be met with in all the country side; and the audacity of Lee's proposition took Mistress Sheppard's breath away. "Stars and Garters!" ironically ejaculated she, when at last she recovered it. "What next, cuther?" "A brace of pistols," began Lee. "Ah! Thieves!" she shrieked. "Murder!--" "Hold your silly tongue, woman," peremptorily interrupted Lee. "What do you take me for? Don't you know Lawrence Lee yet?" "I'm none so sure that I do," replied she, recovering all her wonted presence of mind. "And I have liked not your ways of late, young man, and so I tell you." "I doubt they have scarce pleased me better than they have yourself," said Lee, with a frank and yet humbled look in his upturned face, which somehow went straight to the good woman's heart. [Sidenote: Mistress Sheppard hesitates.] "If I know toadstools from mushrooms, he means honestly," she went on to herself, showing, however, no signs of capitulating, and sternly pursing her lips. "They would ill become your father's son," she said aloud, "and make sore places in his heart, as a certain prodigal son's we wot of, did." "And he resolved, did he not, to try and mend his ways. So come, Mistress Sheppard, quick with the stable-door key; there's a good soul; and Stars and Garters for England and the King." "The king?!" and curl papers all forgotten, Mistress Sheppard's head craned eagerly down from the casement. "Ay, he's in danger," nodded Lee, catching up, as he spoke, a rusty crowbar lying in the grass; "and there's not a moment to be lost, I tell you. Shall I break open the stable door and help myself?" [Sidenote: A good start.] "No, no, one instant," she replied, glancing at the slumbering Sheppard, "one instant and I'll be down."