ing how; one swears by them.'

Fleetwood eyed the Welsh gentleman, with an idea that he might readily do
the same by him.

Mr. Wythan's quarters were at the small village inn, whither he was on
his way to breakfast. The earl slipped an arm through the bridle reins
and walked beside him, listening to an account of the situation at
Lekkatts. It was that extraordinary complication of moves and checks
which presents in the main a knot, for the powers above to cut. A miserly
old lord withholds arrears of wages; his workmen strike at a critical
moment; his nephew, moved by common humanity, draws upon crippled
resources to supply their extremer needs, though they are ruining his
interests. They made one night a demonstration of the terrorizing sort
round Lekkatts, to give him a chorus; and the old lord fired at them out
of window and wounded a man. For that they vowed vengeance. All the new
gunpowder milled in Surrey was, for some purpose of his own, stored by
Lord Levellier on the alder island of the pond near his workshops, a
quarter of a mile below the house. They refused, whatever their object,
to let a pound of it be moved, at a time when at last the Government had
undertaken to submit it to experiments. And there they stood on ground
too strong for 'the Captain,' as they called him, to force, because of
the quantity stored at Lekkatts being largely beyond the amount under
cover of Lord Levellier's licence. The old lord was very ill, and he
declined to see a doctor, but obstinately kept from dying. His nephew had
to guard him and at the same time support an enemy having just cause of
complaint. This, however, his narrow means would not much longer permit
him to do. The alternative was then offered him of either siding
arbitrarily against the men and his conscience or of taking a course
'imprudent on the part of a presumptive heir,' Mr. Wythan said hurriedly
at the little inn's doorsteps.

'You make one of his lordship's guard?' said Fleetwood.

'The countess, her brother, and I, yes'

'Danger at all?'

'Not so much to fear while the countess is with us.'

'Fear is not a word for Carinthia.'

Her name on the earl's lips drew a keen shot of the eye from Mr. Wythan,
and he read the signification of the spoken name. 'You know what every
Cambrian living thinks of her, my lord.'

'She shall not have one friend the less for me.'

Fleetwood's hand was out for a good-bye, and the hand was grasped by one
who looked happ