“Now, God Almighty be blessed, who protected him through so many dangers!” exclaimed Wildrake. “Huzza!—Up hearts, cavaliers!—Hey for cavaliers!—God bless King Charles!—Moon and stars, catch my hat!”—and he threw it up as high as he could into the air. The celestial bodies which he invoked did not receive the present dispatched to them; but, as in the case of Sir Henry Lee’s scabbard, an old gnarled oak became a second time the receptacle of a waif and stray of loyal enthusiasm. Wildrake looked rather foolish at the circumstance, and his friend took the opportunity of admonishing him. “Art thou not ashamed to bear thee so like a schoolboy?” “Why,” said Wildrake, “I have but sent a Puritan’s hat upon a loyal errand. I laugh to think how many of the schoolboys thou talk’st of will be cheated into climbing the pollard next year, expecting to find the nest of some unknown bird in yonder unmeasured margin of felt.” “Hush now, for God’s sake, and let us speak calmly,” said Everard. “Charles has escaped, and I am glad of it. I would willingly have seen him on his father’s throne by composition, but not by the force of the Scottish army, and the incensed and vengeful royalists.” “Master Markham Everard,” began the cavalier, interrupting him—“Nay, hush, dear Wildrake,” said Everard; “let us not dispute a point on which we cannot agree, and give me leave to go on.—I say, since the young Man has escaped, Cromwell’s offensive and injurious stipulation falls to the ground; and I see not why my uncle and his family should not again enter their own house, under the same terms of connivance as many other royalists. What may be incumbent on me is different, nor can I determine my course until I have an interview with the General, which, as I think, will end in his confessing that he threw in this offensive proposal to sound us both. It is much in his manner; for he is blunt, and never sees or feels the punctilious honour which the gallants of the day stretch to such delicacy.” “I’ll acquit him of having any punctilio about him,” said Wildrake, “either touching honour or honesty. Now, to come back to where we started. Supposing you were not to reside in person at the Lodge, and to forbear even visiting there, unless on invitation, when such a thing can be brought about, I tell you frankly, I think your uncle and his daughter might be induced to come back to the Lodge, and reside there as usual. At least the clergyman, that worthy old cock, gave me to hope as much.” “He had been hasty in bestowing his confidence,” said Everard.