such a fate than she thought: and he felt the bound of her heart against his breast as she heard him. He knew it was hope and not fear which so stirred her; and it was more for the sake of others than for hers that he told what might befal Joanna. It was known at Court that she had been one of the school-children who had gone out to meet Monmouth with standards of their own embroidering; and notice had been issued that every little maiden of the whole number was liable to be sent out as a slave to the plantations. There was no fear of such a fate in reality for Joanna, or any one of them whose father was a man of substance. An agent had come down into the Western Counties: no other than the George Penne whose greed of money was so well known; and Mr. George Penne had put a price on the heads of the little maidens, which should relieve them from slavery and transportation, and endow the court-ladies with little fortunes as their gain from the rebellion—Mr. George Penne being careful to pay himself first.
Joanna was troubled lest her father should be made poor by any fault of hers; but he told her that, first, it was no fault of hers that she went forth to meet the Duke: and that, next, he could pay the sum needed to keep his little daughter in her home. It was on no vain pretence that she had been sent to that school. It was more probable now than then that the family property would be absorbed or wasted by persecution, and that the daughters of the house, as well as the sons—(the involuntary pause here was soon got over)—would have to work for a subsistence; and it was with this view that Joanna had been placed in such training as Madam Lisle desired. All their fortunes seemed desperate now. Soldiers would no doubt be quartered upon them: prosecutions and fines would drive them to ruin: in a little while they might have nothing that they could call their own.
This was no trouble to them. Nothing could trouble them to-night, from the point of view at which they stood. They slept, as the Lord’s people should, after bringing down His presence about them: and when they met in the morning no spirit had quailed.
A shock awaited them, however, before noon had arrived. A knot of people came down the road, bearing some burden which they seemed anxious to lay down before the Squire’s door.
It looked like a charred log of wood; but it was not. It was the body of Reuben Coad,—known by the hat and the riding-whip, which had been Christopher’s, and had been taken by Reuben, as he brutally said, to remember his young master by. Hunted out of Lyme by the enraged spectators of his victim’s death, he had gained a wood to hide in, and had taken shelter under an oak—to be laid low by lightning. There he died, all alone,—an outcast from men, and with no other help to flee to. For generations to come, the people would certainly believe that that storm was sent to cut off Reuben the traitor in his accursed career.
The Battiscombes soon left the home in which their fathers had dwelt for generations. Loyal magistrates thought proper to set up the head of a rebel immediately opposite their gate; but they would have stood this, disdaining to flinch. The reason for their removing to a small house on the shore was that their property was so much reduced, by the imposition of fines and securities, that they must descend to a humbler mode of life. Elizabeth was one with them—as firmly fixed with them for a life of duty and devotion—as wedded to their martyr as a nun could be in her convent as the spouse of Christ. She was a kind of apostle among the poor fishing-people, who lived under the cliffs with nobody to care for them till the Squire’s ladies became their helpers and spiritual teachers. Not even Elizabeth looked as if so blasting a calamity had swept over her. Their faces were cheerful, for their hands were full of good works, while they waited for the coming salvation of the world of the Reformation.
Before the people could see whether Monmouth would reappear in Eighty-nine, there was a Protestant king on the throne.
As Prince William of Orange,—he who was about to become the great King William was on his way, in grand procession, from Devonshire to London, amidst the homage of the Western Counties, one of his suite rode up and told him something in a low voice. William was not wont to express his feelings by outward act; but now he nodded to M. Florien, and stopped to address himself to a gentleman in the midst of a group of the country party who had ridden far to greet him. All gave way to enable the grey-haired Squire to approach; and what the Prince said to him was:
“Let us rejoice together, Mr. Battiscombe, in that final establishment of the Reformation in England for which you have waited so wisely and suffered so much.”
And when both riders bowed uncovered, the obeisance of Prince William was the deeper of the two.
THE END.
A DAY IN THE DESERT.
CHAPTER I.
Some years ago, before viaducts spanned the Nile, and tall poles marked the course of the iron way which now crosses the Goshen desert, travellers to and from India found their way over it as best they might. For those who preferred to ride in carriages, there were machines on two wheels with tilted covers, like errand-carts. For timid maidens and elderly ladies, there was the donkey-chair, a rude invention, closely resembling the old sedan, where asses took the place of chairmen, and whose motion, when the forward donkey indulged in a gallop, whilst his lazier friend in the rear would persist in a trot, was indescribably parabolic and dislocatory both of limb and temper. Enterprising young men and brave warriors bestrode the patient ass, mounted on a square and flat, but withal, comfortable Egyptian saddle, whilst a very small per-centage would be tempted to mount the perilous hump of the dromedary, and sail cosily over the yielding sand.
It was in these early days of “The Overland” that I had the charge of the mails and passengers between Alexandria and Suez, and vice versâ, and