protect you, my lady, since you won't leave.'

'He stays at the castle?'

'He is to stay there, he says, as long as the Welsh are out.'

'The "Welsh" are misunderstood by Lord Fleetwood,'

Mrs. Wythan said to Carinthia. 'He should live among them. They will not
hurt their lady. Protecting may be his intention; but we will have our
baby safe here. Not?' she appealed. 'And baby's mother. How otherwise?'

'You read my wishes,' Carinthia rejoined. 'The man I do not think a bad
man. He has a master. While I am bound to my child I must be restful,
and with the man at the castle Martha's goblins would jump about me day
and night. My boy makes a coward of his mother.'

'We merely take a precaution, and I have the pleasure of it,' said her
hostess. 'Give orders to your maid not less than a fortnight. It will
rejoice my husband so much.'

As with the warmly hospitable, few were the words. Madge was promised by
her mistress plenty of opportunities daily for seeing Kit Ines, and her
mouth screwed to one of women's dimples at a corner. She went off in
a cart to fetch boxes, thinking: We are a hunted lot! So she was not
mildly disposed for the company of Mr. Kit on her return to the castle.

England's champion light-weight thought it hard that his, coming down
to protect the castle against the gibbering heathen Welsh should cause a
clearing out, and solitariness for his portion.

'What's the good of innocence if you 're always going to suspect a man!'
he put it, like a true son of the pirates turned traders. 'I've got a
paytron, and a man in my profession must have a paytron, or where is
he? Where's his money for a trial of skill? Say he saves and borrows and
finds the lump to clap it down, and he's knocked out o' time. There he
is, bankrup', and a devil of a licking into the bargain. That 's the
cream of our profession, if a man has got no paytron.

No prize-ring can live without one. The odds are too hard on us. My lady
ought to take into account I behaved respectful when I was obliged to
do my lord's orders and remove her from our haunts, which wasn't to his
taste. Here I'm like a cannon for defending the house, needs be, and all
inside flies off scarified.'

'It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no better than a tool
of a man,' said Madge.

'And don't you go to be sneering at honest tools,' Ines retorted. 'When
will women learn a bit of the world before they're made hags of by old
Father Wear-and-Tear! A