and,
as his mother told her, driven him to death and destruction, and it was
highly satisfactory to see him safe and sound, and apparently
respectable and prosperous.

Moreover, grieved as all the family were for the fate of the admirable
and excellent More, it was a relief to those less closely connected with
him to attend to something beyond poor Ambrose's sorrow and his talk,
the which moreover might be perilous if any outsider listened and
reported it to the authorities as disaffection to the King. So Giles
told his story, sitting on the gallery in the cool of the summer
evening, and marvelling over and over again how entirely unchanged all
was since his first view of the Dragon court as a proud, sullen, raw lad
twenty summers ago. Since that time he had seen so much that the time
appeared far longer to him than to those who had stayed at home.

It seemed that Fulford had from the first fascinated him more than any
of the party guessed, and that each day of the free life of the
expedition, and of contact with the soldiery, made a return to the
monotony of the forge, the decorous life of a London citizen, and the
bridal with a child, to whom he was indifferent, seem more intolerable
to him. Fulford imagining rightly that the knowledge of his intentions
might deter young Birkenholt from escaping, enjoined strict secrecy on
either lad, not intending them to meet till it should be too late to
return, and therefore had arranged that Giles should quit the party on
the way to Calais, bringing with him Will Wherry, and the horse he rode.

Giles had then, been enrolled among the Badgers. He had little to tell
about his life among them till the battle of Pavia, where he had had the
good fortune to take three French prisoners; but a stray shot from a
fugitive had broken his leg during the pursuit, and he had been laid up
in a merchant's house at Pavia for several months. He evidently looked
back to the time with gratitude, as having wakened his better
associations, which had been well-nigh stifled during the previous years
of the wild life of a soldier of fortune. His host's young daughter had
eyes like Aldonza, and the almost forgotten possibility of returning to
his love a brave and distinguished man awoke once more. His burgher
thrift began to assert itself again, and he deposited a nest-egg from
the ransoms of his prisoners in the hands of his host, who gave him
bonds by which he could recover the sum from Lombard