s
many a better man might be."

The host chimed in with tales of the thieves and outlaws who then, and
indeed for many later generations, infested Bagshot heath, and the wild
moorland tracks around. He seemed to think that the travellers had had
a hair's-breadth escape, and that a few seconds' more delay might have
revealed the weakness of the rescuers and have been fatal to them.

However there was no danger so near the village in the morning, and,
somewhat to Stephen's annoyance, the whole place turned out to inspect
the spot, and behold the burial of poor Spring, who was found stretched
on the heather, just as he had been left the night before. He was
interred under the stunted oak where Master Headley had been tied.
While the grave was dug with a spade borrowed at the inn, Ambrose
undertook to cut out the dog's name on the bark, but he had hardly made
the first incision when Tibble, the singed foreman, offered to do it for
him, and made a much more sightly inscription than he could have done.
Master Headley's sword was found honourably broken under the tree, and
was reserved to form a base for his intended _ex voto_. He uttered the
vow in due form like a funeral oration, when Stephen, with a swelling
heart, had laid the companion of his life in the little grave, which was
speedily covered in.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE DRAGON COURT.

"A citizen
Of credit and renown
A trainband captain eke was he
Of famous London town."
Cowper.

In spite of his satisfaction at the honourable obsequies of his dog,
Stephen Birkenholt would fain have been independent, and thought it
provoking and strange that every one should want to direct his
movements, and assume the charge of one so well able to take care of
himself; but he could not escape as he had done before from the Warden
of Saint Elizabeth, for Ambrose had readily accepted the proposal that
they should travel in Master Headley's company, only objecting that they
were on foot; on which the good citizen hired a couple of hackneys for
them.

Besides the two Giles Headleys, the party consisted of Tibble, the
scarred and withered foreman, two grooms, and two serving-men, all armed
with the swords and bucklers of which they had made so little use. It
appeared in process of time that the two namesakes, besides being
godfather and godson, were cousins, and that Robert, the father of the
younger one, had, after his apprenticeship in the paternal establishment
a