ould be coerced, but a staid, self-reliant, scholarly person,
with a sword by his side and an English passport to secure him, and his
brother did not regard him as quite the disgrace to his family he had at
first deemed him. He was at least no rebel; and though the law seemed to
French eyes infinitely beneath the dignity of a scion of nobility, still
it was something not to have him a heretic preacher, and to be able
at least to speak of him as betrothed to the sister of the Baron de
Ribaumont. Moreover, that Huguenot kinsman, whose extreme Calvinist
opinions had so nearly revolted Mericour, had died and left him all his
means, as the only Protestant in the family; and the amount, when Claude
arranged matters with his brother, proved to be sufficient to bear him
through his expenses handsomely as a student, with the hope of marriage
so soon as he should have kept his terms at the Temple.

And thus the good ship THROSTLE bore home the whole happy party to
Weymouth, and good Sir Marmaduke had an unceasing cause for exultation
in the brilliant success of his mission to France.

After all, the first to revisit that country was no other than the
once homesick Philip. He wearied of inaction, and thought his county
neighbours ineffably dull and lubberly, while they blamed him for being
a fine, Frenchified gentleman, even while finding no fault with their
old friend Berenger, or that notable little, lively, housewifely lady
his wife, whose broken English and bright simplicity charmed every one.
Sorely Philip needed something to do; he might have been a gentleman
pensioner, but he had no notion, he said, of loitering after a lady to
boat and hunt, when such a king as Henry of Navarre was in the field;
and he agreed with Eustacie in her estimate of the court, that it was
horribly dull, and wanting in all the sparkle and brilliancy that even
he had perceived at Paris.

Eustacie gladly retreated to housewifery at Combe Walwyn, but a
strenuous endeavour on Lady Thistlewood's part to marry her stepson to a
Dorset king's daughter, together with the tidings of the renewed war in
France, spurred Philip into writing permission from his father to join
the King of Navarre as a volunteer.

Years went by, and Philip was only heard of in occasional letters,
accompanied by presents to his sisters and to little Rayonette, and
telling of marches, exploits, and battles,--how he had taken a standard
of the League at Coutras, and how he had led