Ch. 10: The Duke's Reappearance

A FAMILY TRADITION

According to the kinsman who told me the story, Christopher Swetman's
house, on the outskirts of King's-Hintock village, was in those days
larger and better kept than when, many years later, it was sold to the
lord of the manor adjoining; after having been in the Swetman family, as
one may say, since the Conquest.

Some people would have it to be that the thing happened at the house
opposite, belonging to one Childs, with whose family the Swetmans
afterwards intermarried. But that it was at the original homestead of
the Swetmans can be shown in various ways; chiefly by the unbroken
traditions of the family, and indirectly by the evidence of the walls
themselves, which are the only ones thereabout with windows mullioned in
the Elizabethan manner, and plainly of a date anterior to the event;
while those of the other house might well have been erected fifty or
eighty years later, and probably were; since the choice of Swetman's
house by the fugitive was doubtless dictated by no other circumstance
than its then suitable loneliness.

It was a cloudy July morning just before dawn, the hour of two having
been struck by Swetman's one-handed clock on the stairs, that is still
preserved in the family. Christopher heard the strokes from his chamber,
immediately at the top of the staircase, and overlooking the front of the
house. He did not wonder that he was sleepless. The rumours and
excitements which had latterly stirred the neighbourhood, to the effect
that the rightful King of England had landed from Holland, at a port only
eighteen miles to the south-west of Swetman's house, were enough to make
wakeful and anxious even a contented yeoman like him. Some of the
villagers, intoxicated by the news, had thrown down their scythes, and
rushed to the ranks of the invader. Christopher Swetman had weighed both
sides of the question, and had remained at home.

Now as he lay thinking of these and other things he fancied that he could
hear the footfall of a man on the road leading up to his house--a byway,
which led scarce anywhere else; and therefore a tread was at any time
more apt to startle the inmates of the homestead than if it had stood in
a thoroughfare. The footfall came opposite the gate, and stopped there.
One minute, two minutes passed, and the pedestrian did not proceed.
Christopher Swetman got out of bed, and opened the casement. 'Hoi! who's
there?' cries he.

'A friend,' came from the darkness.

'And what mid ye want at this time o' night?' says Swetman.

'Shelter. I've lost my way.'

'What's thy name?'

There came no answer.

'Be ye one of King Monmouth's men?'

'He that asks no questions will hear no lies from me. I am a stranger;