father; 'I would have
a word with you.' The workmen had not yet come to their work, so we
strolled out into the sweet morning air, and seated ourselves on the low
stone bankment on which the skins are dressed.

'I have been out here this morning trying my hand at the broadsword
exercise, 'said he; 'I find that I am as quick as ever on a thrust, but
my cuts are sadly stiff. I might be of use at a pinch, but, alas! I
am not the same swordsman who led the left troop of the finest horse
regiment that ever followed a kettledrum. The Lord hath given, and the
Lord hath taken away! Yet, if I am old and worn, there is the fruit of
my loins to stand in my place and to wield the same sword in the same
cause. You shall go in my place, Micah.'

'Go! Go whither?'

'Hush, lad, and listen! Let not your mother know too much, for the
hearts of women are soft. When Abraham offered up his eldest born, I
trow that he said little to Sarah on the matter. Here is the letter.
Know you who this Dicky Rumbold is?'

'Surely I have heard you speak of him as an old companion of yours.'

'The same--a staunch man and true. So faithful was he--faithful even to
slaying--that when the army of the righteous dispersed, he did not lay
aside his zeal with his buff-coat. He took to business as a maltster at
Hoddesdon, and in his house was planned the famous Rye House Plot, in
which so many good men were involved.'

'Was it not a foul assassination plot?' I asked.

'Nay, nay, be not led away by terms! It is a vile invention of the
malignants that these men planned assassination. What they would do they
purposed doing in broad daylight, thirty of them against fifty of the
Royal Guard, when Charles and James passed on their way to Newmarket. If
the royal brothers got pistol-bullet or sword-stab, it would be in open
fight, and at the risk of their attackers. It was give and take, and no
murder.'

He paused and looked inquiringly at me; but I could not truthfully
say that I was satisfied, for an attack upon the lives of unarmed and
unsuspecting men, even though surrounded by a bodyguard, could not, to
my mind, be justified.

'When the plot failed,' my father continued, 'Rumbold had to fly for his
life, but he succeeded in giving his pursuers the slip and in making his
way to the Lowlands. There he found that many enemies of the Government
had gathered together. Repeated messages from England, especially from
the western counties and from London, assure