ause there can't be anything.
They've only gone after a mob of shoemakers and tailors with a
counterpane for flag, and father will scatter them all like dead
leaves."

"Roy! My boy, these are not your words?"

"No, mother; old Ben Martlet said something of that kind to me this
morning."

"Does he not know, then, how serious it is?"

"Serious? What do you mean by serious?"

Lady Royland drew a deep breath, and laid her hand upon her side as if
in pain.

"Why, mother," repeated the boy, "what do you mean by serious?"

"This trouble--this rising, my dear. We have had no news, but Master
Pawson has had letters from London, and he tells me that what was
supposed to be a little petty discontent has grown into a serious
revolution."

Roy gazed in his mother's troubled face as if he did not quite
comprehend the full extent of her words.

"Well, and if it has, mother, what then?"

"What then, my boy?"

"Yes. You've nothing to fidget about. Father is there with his men,
and he'll soon put a stop to it all. You know how stern he can be when
people misbehave."

"My dear Roy, this, I am afraid, is going to be no little trouble that
your father can put down with his men. Master Pawson tells me that
there is every prospect of its being a civil war."

"What! Englishmen fighting against Englishmen?"

"Yes; a terrible fratricidal war."

"But who has quarrelled, mother? Oh, the king will soon stop it."

"Roy, my boy, we have kept you so shut up here in this retired place for
home study, instead of parting with you to send you to one of the great
schools, that in some things you are as ignorant as I."

"Oh, mother!" cried the boy, laughing. "You ignorant! I only wish I
were half as learned and clever. Why, father said--"

"Yes, yes, dear; but that is only book-learning. We have been so happy
here that the jarring troubles of politics and the court have not
reached our ears; and I, for one, never gave them a thought till, after
all these years of peacefulness, your father found himself compelled to
obey the call of duty, and left us. We both thought that it was only
for a week or two, and then the disturbance would be at an end; but
every letter he has sent me has contained worse news, till now it is
nearly a month since I have heard from him."

"Then it is because he is putting down the rioters," said Roy, quickly.

"Rioters, my boy! Rebels you should say, for I fear that a great
attempt is to be m