gh the bridle reins
and walked beside him, listening to an account of the situation at
Lekkatts. It was that extraordinary complication of moves and checks
which presents in the main a knot, for the powers above to cut. A
miserly old lord withholds arrears of wages; his workmen strike at
a critical moment; his nephew, moved by common humanity, draws upon
crippled resources to supply their extremer needs, though they are
ruining his interests. They made one night a demonstration of the
terrorizing sort round Lekkatts, to give him a chorus; and the old
lord fired at them out of window and wounded a man. For that they vowed
vengeance. All the new gunpowder milled in Surrey was, for some purpose
of his own, stored by Lord Levellier on the alder island of the pond
near his workshops, a quarter of a mile below the house. They refused,
whatever their object, to let a pound of it be moved, at a time when
at last the Government had undertaken to submit it to experiments. And
there they stood on ground too strong for 'the Captain,' as they called
him, to force, because of the quantity stored at Lekkatts being largely
beyond the amount under cover of Lord Levellier's licence. The old lord
was very ill, and he declined to see a doctor, but obstinately kept from
dying. His nephew had to guard him and at the same time support an enemy
having just cause of complaint. This, however, his narrow means would
not much longer permit him to do. The alternative was then offered him
of either siding arbitrarily against the men and his conscience or
of taking a course 'imprudent on the part of a presumptive heir,' Mr.
Wythan said hurriedly at the little inn's doorsteps.

'You make one of his lordship's guard?' said Fleetwood.

'The countess, her brother, and I, yes'

'Danger at all?'

'Not so much to fear while the countess is with us.'

'Fear is not a word for Carinthia.'

Her name on the earl's lips drew a keen shot of the eye from Mr. Wythan,
and he read the signification of the spoken name. 'You know what every
Cambrian living thinks of her, my lord.'

'She shall not have one friend the less for me.'

Fleetwood's hand was out for a good-bye, and the hand was grasped by one
who looked happy in doing it. He understood and trusted the man after
that, warmed in thinking how politic his impulses could be.

His intention of riding up to Croridge at noon to request his interview
with Mr. Kirby-Levellier was then stated.

'The key of th