"I don't care!" he said to himself. "I will do something which shall show them that I am not afraid. I will climb up to the magpie's nest and bring down a pair of the young ones to tame. Winnie dare not do that, I know. I can teach the young magpies all sorts of things—even to speak, I dare say, and then I can sell one of them at the fair." The magpie's nest which Jack intended to rob was built in the top of a very high old tree, which stood not far from the farm-house. The tree had been long dead, and the branches were as dry as tinder; a fact of which the cunning magpie was doubtless well aware when she built her nest in the highest fork. A tame magpie is fully as entertaining as a parrot, and Jack, with whom bird's-nesting was a kind of passion, often cast longing eyes upon the nest in question. His grandfather, however, had forbidden him to go near it, not from any particular tenderness to the birds, but because the tree was such dangerous climbing. It was nearly eight o'clock when Winifred opened her eyes with a start, and saw her mother standing by her bedside. "Did I frighten you?" asked her mother. "No, mother—I was dreaming. I thought the soldiers had come!" replied Winifred. "Is it not very late?" she added, looking at the sun and starting up in alarm. "Almost eight o'clock!" replied her mother. "I have let you sleep as long as I dared, but you know you have to go to the Hall to-day. You will have no more than time to dress yourself neatly and eat your breakfast. Do not forget the packet for my lady." There was no great danger of Winifred's forgetting it. She had slept with it under her pillow, and a dozen times during the night she had gone over the matter in her dreams, with all sorts of absurd and frightful incidents attached thereto. Now she was telling the secret to Lady Peckham, at the parish church, in service time, while the vicar stopped his sermon and all the congregation turned around to listen. Now she was in the street of Bridgewater, on a market day, irresistibly impelled to tell every one she met that the Duke of Monmouth was hiding in Lady Peckham's closet. And again, she found herself at the water-side in Bristol, whither she had once gone to meet her father, and all the bells of the place were ringing at once: "Tell my Lady Peckham! Tell my Lady Peckham!"