deep. Having partaken of their usual breakfast of ham and cider he
professed weariness and retired to the chamber whence he had come.

In a couple of hours or thereabout he came down again, the two young
women having now gone off to morning service. Seeing Christopher
bustling about the house without assistance, he asked if he could do
anything to aid his host.

As he seemed anxious to hide all differences and appear as one of
themselves, Swetman set him to get vegetables from the garden and fetch
water from Buttock's Spring in the dip near the house (though the spring
was not called by that name till years after, by the way).

'And what can I do next?' says the stranger when these services had been
performed.

His meekness and docility struck Christopher much, and won upon him.
'Since you be minded to,' says the latter, 'you can take down the dishes
and spread the table for dinner. Take a pewter plate for thyself, but
the trenchers will do for we.'

But the other would not, and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he
spoke of the two girls and remarked how comely they were.

This quietude was put an end to by a stir out of doors, which was
sufficient to draw Swetman's attention to it, and he went out. Farm
hands who had gone off and joined the Duke on his arrival had begun to
come in with news that a midnight battle had been fought on the moors to
the north, the Duke's men, who had attacked, being entirely worsted; the
Duke himself, with one or two lords and other friends, had fled, no one
knew whither.

'There has been a battle,' says Swetman, on coming indoors after these
tidings, and looking earnestly at the stranger.

'May the victory be to the rightful in the end, whatever the issue now,'
says the other, with a sorrowful sigh.

'Dost really know nothing about it?' said Christopher. 'I could have
sworn you was one from that very battle!'

'I was here before three o' the clock this morning; and these men have
only arrived now.'

'True,' said the yeoman. 'But still, I think--'

'Do not press your question,' the stranger urged. 'I am in a strait, and
can refuse a helper nothing; such inquiry is, therefore, unfair.'

'True again,' said Swetman, and held his tongue.

The daughters of the house returned from church, where the service had
been hurried by reason of the excitement. To their father's questioning
if they had spoken of him who sojourned there they replied that they had
said never