Ch. 10: The Duke's Reappearance - Page 2

and I am spent, and hungered. Can you let me lie with you to-night?'

Swetman was generous to people in trouble, and his house was roomy. 'Wait
a bit,' he said, 'and I'll come down and have a look at thee, anyhow.'

He struck a light, put on his clothes, and descended, taking his horn-
lantern from a nail in the passage, and lighting it before opening the
door. The rays fell on the form of a tall, dark man in cavalry
accoutrements and wearing a sword. He was pale with fatigue and covered
with mud, though the weather was dry.

'Prithee take no heed of my appearance,' said the stranger. 'But let me
in.'

That his visitor was in sore distress admitted of no doubt, and the
yeoman's natural humanity assisted the other's sad importunity and gentle
voice. Swetman took him in, not without a suspicion that this man
represented in some way Monmouth's cause, to which he was not unfriendly
in his secret heart. At his earnest request the new-comer was given a
suit of the yeoman's old clothes in exchange for his own, which, with his
sword, were hidden in a closet in Swetman's chamber; food was then put
before him and a lodging provided for him in a room at the back.

Here he slept till quite late in the morning, which was Sunday, the sixth
of July, and when he came down in the garments that he had borrowed he
met the household with a melancholy smile. Besides Swetman himself,
there were only his two daughters, Grace and Leonard (the latter was,
oddly enough, a woman's name here), and both had been enjoined to
secrecy. They asked no questions and received no information; though the
stranger regarded their fair countenances with an interest almost too
deep. Having partaken of their usual breakfast of ham and cider he
professed weariness and retired to the chamber whence he had come.

In a couple of hours or thereabout he came down again, the two young
women having now gone off to morning service. Seeing Christopher
bustling about the house without assistance, he asked if he could do
anything to aid his host.

As he seemed anxious to hide all differences and appear as one of
themselves, Swetman set him to get vegetables from the garden and fetch
water from Buttock's Spring in the dip near the house (though the spring
was not called by that name till years after, by the way).

'And what can I do next?' says the stranger when these services had been
performed.

His meekness and docility struck Christopher much, and won upon him.
'Since you be minded to,' says the latter, 'you can take down the dishes
and spread the table for dinner. Take a pewter plate for thyself, but
the trenchers will do for we.'

But the other would not, and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he