that the obnoxious visitors were Dick Cludde
and his friends: for it was hardly possible that three other king's
officers should have ridden out of Shrewsbury in this direction on
the same day. If Cludde had come once he might come again, and
should he catch sight of me my story would not only be known to my
employer, but would be spread all over Shrewsbury--a thing I could
not contemplate with satisfaction. It crossed my mind that 'twould
be safer to leave Mr. Allardyce and seek employment with some other
yeoman; but from this course two reasons deterred me: first, the
liking I had taken for him and his family; second, an obstinate
reluctance to allow Dick Cludde in any way to alter my plans. It
would not be difficult, I reflected, for one in my humble position
to avoid him should he come to the house, and if I needs must meet
him, I should even welcome the occasion for bundling him out neck
and crop if he proved a troublesome visitor.

My resolution was strengthened a few days afterwards. Since the
morning when Roger Allardyce had first addressed me, a friendship
had sprung up between us, with a rapidity only possible to boys. We
bathed together of mornings; he would come and chat to me when I
was at my work; and the hours of work being over, he would lug me
into a little outhouse he kept as his own, and show me his
treasures--guns, and fishing tackle, a breastplate worn by his
grandfather in the Civil War, an oak-apple from the tree in which
King Charles had hidden after the battle of Worcester. He treated
me as his equal, and once, when I alluded to my dependent position,
his curiosity, which with excellent well-bred delicacy he kept in
check, got the better of him, and he begged me to tell him all
about myself, swearing never to reveal it to a soul. But I cleaved
to my determination; all I would tell him was what he knew already,
that I was a penniless orphan bent on making my way in the world.

Well, one evening, when I returned from my work in the fields, I
found him waiting for me with excitement plainly writ on his open
face. He dragged me to his outhouse, and having shut the door,
said:

"I say, Joe, there's a storm brewing, and we may need your fists.
You remember I told you about my cousin riding over from
Shrewsbury? Well, his father came today--Sir Richard Cludde, a big
red-faced bully of a man. He's Lucy's uncle, you know; her father
was his brother, and they quarreled, and hadn't seen each other for