“Either my good friend, guide, and patron, has heard worse news this morning than he cares to tell us, or he must have stumbled over my tattered jerkin and leathern hose, and acquired, by contact, the whole mass of stupidity which I threw off last night with those most dolorous garments. Cheer up, my dear Colonel Albert, if your affectionate page may presume to say so—you are in company with those whose society, dear to strangers, must be doubly so to you. Oddsfish, man, cheer up! I have seen you gay on a biscuit and a mouthful of water-cresses—don’t let your heart fail you on Rhenish wine and venison.” “Dear Louis,” said Albert, rousing himself into exertion, and somewhat ashamed of his own silence, “I have slept worse, and been astir earlier than you.” “Be it so,” said his father; “yet I hold it no good excuse for your sullen silence. Albert, you have met your sister and me, so long separated from you, so anxious on your behalf, almost like mere strangers, and yet you are returned safe to us, and you find us well.” “Returned indeed—but for safety, my dear father, that word must be a stranger to us Worcester folk for some time. However, it is not my own safety about which I am anxious.” “About whose, then, should you be anxious?—All accounts agree that the King is safe out of the dogs’ jaws.” “Not without some danger, though,” muttered Louis, thinking of his encounter with Bevis on the preceding evening. “No, not without danger, indeed,” echoed the knight; “but, as old Will says,— ‘There’s such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason dares not peep at what it would.’ “No, no—thank God, that’s cared for; our Hope and Fortune is escaped, so all news affirm, escaped from Bristol—if I thought otherwise, Albert, I should be as sad as you are. For the rest of it, I have lurked a month in this house when discovery would have been death, and that is no longer since than after Lord Holland and the Duke of Buckingham’s rising at Kingston; and hang me, if I thought once of twisting my brow into such a tragic fold as yours, but cocked my hat at misfortune as a cavalier should.” “If I might put in a word,” said Louis, “it would be to assure Colonel Albert Lee that I verily believe the King would think his own hap, wherever he may be, much the worse that his best subjects were seized with dejection on his account.” “You answer boldly on the King’s part, young man,” said Sir Henry. “Oh, my father was meikle about the King’s hand,” answered Louis, recollecting his present character. “No wonder, then,” said Sir Henry, “that you have so soon recovered your good spirits and good breeding, when you heard of his Majesty’s escape. Why, you are no more like the lad we saw last night, than the best hunter I ever had was like a dray-horse.”