! The apprentice Derrick hath for a long time
raised his eyes to his master's daughter, and the old man was ready to
have him as a son, so much was he taken by his godliness and zeal. Yet I
have learned from a side-wind that he is but a debauched and low-living
man, though he covers his pleasures with a mask of piety. I thought as
you did think that he was at the head of the roisterers who tried to
bear Mistress Ruth away, though, i' faith, I can scarce think harshly
of them, since they did me the greatest service that ever men did yet.
Meanwhile I have taken occasion, ere we left Wells two nights ago, to
speak to Master Derrick on the matter, and to warn him as he loved his
life to plan no treachery against her.

'And how took he this mild intimation?' I asked.

'As a rat takes a rat trap. Snarled out some few words of godly hatred,
and so slunk away.'

'On my life, lad,' said I, 'you have been having as many adventures in
your own way as I in mine. But here we are upon the hill-top, with as
fair an outlook as man could wish to have.'

Just beneath us ran the Avon, curving in long bends through the
woodlands, with the gleam of the sun striking back from it here and
there, as though a row of baby suns had been set upon a silver string.
On the further side the peaceful, many-hued country, rising and falling
in a swell of cornfields and orchards, swept away to break in a fringe
of forest upon the distant Malverns. On our right were the green hills
near Bath and on our left the rugged Mendips, with queenly Bristol
crouching behind her forts, and the grey channel behind flecked with
snow-white sails. At our very feet lay Keynsham Bridge, and our army
spotted in dark patches over the green fields, the smoke of their fires
and the babble of their voices floating up in the still summer air.

A road ran along the Somersetshire bank of the Avon, and down this two
troops of our horse were advancing, with intent to establish outposts
upon our eastern flank. As they jangled past in somewhat loose order,
their course lay through a pine-wood, into which the road takes a sharp
bend. We were gazing down at the scene when, like lightning from a
cloud, a troop of the Horse Guards wheeled out into the open, and
breaking from trot to canter, and from canter to gallop, dashed down in
a whirlwind of blue and steel upon our unprepared squadrons. A crackle
of hastily unslung carbines broke from the leading ranks, but in an
instant the Gua