ndent
gentleman, with this difference, that henceforth he would be passing
rich, able to gratify his ambition, to cut a figure in the world as he
chose.

Fortune which had been his idol all his life, now was indeed his slave.
He had it, he possessed it. It lay snug and safe in a leather wallet
inside the lining of his doublet.

Sue had gone out of his sight, desirous apparently of turning her back
on him forever. He was free and rich. The game had been risky, daring
beyond belief, yet he had won in the end. He could afford to laugh now
at all the dangers, the subterfuges, the machinations which had all gone
to the making of that tragic comedy in which he had been the principal
actor.

The last scene in the drama had been successfully enacted. The curtain
had been finally lowered; and Sir Marmaduke swore that there should be
no epilogue to the play.

Then it was that Fate--so well-named the wanton jade--shook herself from
out the torpor in which she had wandered for so long beside this Kentish
squire. A spirit of mischief seized upon her and whispered that she had
held this man quite long enough by the hand and that it would be far
more amusing now to see him measure his length on the ground.

And all that Fate did, in order to satisfy this spirit of mischief, was
to cause Sir Marmaduke to forget his tinder-box in the front parlor of
Mistress Martha Lambert's cottage.

A tinder-box is a small matter! an object of infinitesimal importance
when the broad light of day illumines the interior of houses or the
bosquets of a park, but it becomes an object of paramount importance,
when the night is pitch dark, and when it is necessary to effect an
exchange of clothing within the four walls of a pavilion.

Sir Marmaduke had walked to the park gates with his wife, not so much
because he was anxious for her safety, but chiefly because he meant to
retire within the pavilion, there to cast aside forever the costume and
appurtenances of Prince Amede d'Orleans and to reassume the
sable-colored doublet and breeches of the Roundhead squire, which
proceeding he had for the past six months invariably accomplished in the
lonely little building on the outskirts of his own park.

As soon, therefore, as he realized that Sue had gone, he turned his
steps towards the pavilion. The night seemed additionally dark here
under the elms, and Sir Marmaduke searched in his pocket for his
tinder-box.

It was not there. He had left it at the c