f. I opened the purse;
it held a single guinea; the rest of my store lay with my saddle-bags in
the French King's ship; my head had been too full to think of them.
There is none of life's small matters that so irks a man as to confess
that he has no money for necessary charges, and it is most sore when a
lady looks to him for hers. I, who had praised myself for forgetting how
to blush, went red as a cock's comb and felt fit to cry with
mortification. A guinea would feed us on the road to London if we fared
plainly; but Barbara could not go on her feet.

Her eyes must have come back to my sullen downcast face, for in a moment
she cried, "What's the matter, Simon?"

Perhaps she carried money. Well then, I must ask for it. I held out my
guinea in my hand.

"It's all I have," said I. "King Louis has the rest."

She gave a little cry of dismay. "I hadn't thought of money," she cried.

"I must beg of you."

"Ah, but, Simon, I have none. I gave my purse to the waiting-woman to
carry, so that mine also is in the French King's ship."

Here was humiliation! Our fine schemes stood blocked for the want of so
vulgar a thing as money; such fate waits often on fine schemes, but
surely never more perversely. Yet, I know not why, I was glad that she
had none. I was a guinea the better of her; the amount was not large,
but it served to keep me still her Providence, and that, I fear, is what
man, in his vanity, loves to be in woman's eyes; he struts and plumes
himself in the pride of it. I had a guinea, and Barbara had nothing. I
had sooner it were so than that she had a hundred.

But to her came no such subtle consolation. To lack money was a new
horror, untried, undreamt of; the thing had come to her all her days in
such measure as she needed it, its want had never thwarted her desires
or confined her purpose. To lack the price of post-horses seemed to her
as strange as to go fasting for want of bread.

"What shall we do?" she cried in a dismay greater than all the perils of
the night had summoned to her heart.

We had about us wealth enough; Louis' dagger was in my belt, his ring on
her finger. Yet of what value were they, since there was nobody to buy
them? To offer such wares in return for a carriage would seem strange
and draw suspicion. I doubted whether even in Dover I should find a Jew
with whom to pledge my dagger, and to Dover in broad day I dared not go.

I took up my oars and set again to rowing. The shore was but