g to Dover when the King goes."

"It is God's finger and God's will!" cried Phineas, catching me by the
shoulder.

"Enough!" I shouted, leaping up. "Keep your hands off me, man, if you
can't keep your tongue. What is it to you that we go to Dover?"

"Aye, what?" came suddenly in Darrell's voice. He stood in the doorway
with a fierce and angry frown on his face. A moment later he was across
the room and laid his hand on Phineas. "Do you want another cropping of
your ears?" he asked.

"Do your will on me," cried the fanatic. And sweeping away his lanky
hair he showed his ears; to my horror they had been cropped level across
their tops by the shears. "Do your will," he shrieked, "I am ready. But
your hour comes also, yea, your cup shall soon be full."

Darrell spoke to him in low stern tones.

"It may be more than ears, if you will not bridle your tongue. It's not
for you to question why the King comes or goes."

I saw Jonah's face at the door, pale with fright as he looked at the two
men. The interest of the scene grew on me; the talk of Dover seemed to
pursue me strangely.

"But this young man," pursued Phineas, utterly unmoved by Darrell's
threat, "is not of you; he shall be snatched from the burning, and by
his hand the Lord will work a great deliverance."

Darrell turned to me and said stiffly:

"This room is yours, sir, not mine. Do you suffer the presence of this
mischievous knave?"

"I suffer what I can't help," I answered. "Mr Tate doesn't ask my
pleasure in his coming and going any more than the King asks Mr Tate's
in his."

"It would do you no good, sir, to have it known that he was here,"
Darrell reminded me with a significant nod of his head.

Darrell had been a good friend to me and had won my regard, but, from an
infirmity of temper that I have touched on before, his present tone set
me against him. I take reproof badly, and age has hardly tamed me to it.

"No good with whom?" I asked, smiling. "The Duke of York? My Lord
Arlington? Or do you mean the Duke of Monmouth? It is he whom I have to
please now."

"None of them love Ranters," answered Darrell, keeping his face stiff
and inscrutable.

"But one of them may prefer a Ranter to a Papist," laughed I.

The thrust told, Darrell grew red. To myself I seemed to have hit
suddenly on the key of a mystery. Was I then a pawn in the great game of
the Churches, and Darrell another, and (to speak it with all due
respect), these grand dukes littl