uld wring me out and hang me to dry
upon one of these bushes.'

'If we are wet, King James's men must be wetter,' said I, 'for at least
we have had such shelter as there was.'

'It is poor comfort when you are starved to know that another is in
the same plight. I give you my word, Micah, I took in one hole of my
sword-belt on Monday, two on Tuesday, one yesterday, and one to-day. I
tell you, I am thawing like an icicle in the sun.'

'If you should chance to dwindle to nought,' said I, laughing, 'what
account are we to give of you in Taunton? Since you have donned armour
and taken to winning the hearts of fair maidens, you have outstripped us
all in importance, and become a man of weight and substance.'

'I had more substance and weight ere I began trailing over the
countryside like a Hambledon packman,' quoth he. 'But in very truth and
with all gravity, Micah, it is a strange thing to feel that the whole
world for you, your hopes, your ambitions, your all, are gathered into
so small a compass that a hood might cover it, and two little pattens
support it. I feel as if she were my own higher self, my loftier
part, and that I, should I be torn from her, would remain for ever an
incomplete and half-formed being. With her, I ask nothing else. Without
her, all else is nothing.'

'But have you spoken to the old man?' I asked. 'Are you indeed
betrothed?'

'I have spoken to him,' my friend answered, 'but he was so busy in
filling ammunition cases that I could not gain his attention. When I
tried once more he was counting the spare pikes in the Castle armoury
with a tally and an ink-horn. I told him that I had come to crave his
granddaughter's hand, on which he turned to me and asked, "which hand?"
with so blank a stare that it was clear that his mind was elsewhere. On
the third trial, though, the day that you did come back from Badminton,
I did at last prefer my request, but he flashed out at me that this was
no time for such fooleries, and he bade me wait until King Monmouth was
on the throne, when I might ask him again. I warrant that he did not
call such things fooleries fifty years ago, when he went a-courting
himself.'

'At least he did not refuse you,' said I. 'It is as good as a promise
that; should the cause be successful, you shall be so too.'

'By my faith,' cried Reuben, 'if a man could by his own single blade
bring that about, there is none who hath so strong an interest in it as
I. No, not Monmouth himself