oor in the turret, closed it,
locked it, and ascended one round of the staircase, where there was a
loophole. 'I am not coming! I, Lord Baxby, despise ye and all your
wanton tribe!' she hissed through the opening; and then crept upstairs,
as firmly rooted in Royalist principles as any man in the Castle.

Her husband still slept the sleep of the weary, well-fed, and
well-drunken, if not of the just; and Lady Baxby quickly disrobed herself
without assistance--being, indeed, supposed by her woman to have retired
to rest long ago. Before lying down, she noiselessly locked the door and
placed the key under her pillow. More than that, she got a staylace,
and, creeping up to her lord, in great stealth tied the lace in a tight
knot to one of his long locks of hair, attaching the other end of the
lace to the bedpost; for, being tired herself now, she feared she might
sleep heavily; and, if her husband should wake, this would be a delicate
hint that she had discovered all.

It is added that, to make assurance trebly sure, her gentle ladyship,
when she had lain down to rest, held her lord's hand in her own during
the whole of the night. But this is old-wives' gossip, and not
corroborated. What Lord Baxby thought and said when he awoke the next
morning, and found himself so strangely tethered, is likewise only matter
of conjecture; though there is no reason to suppose that his rage was
great. The extent of his culpability as regards the intrigue was this
much; that, while halting at a cross-road near Sherton that day, he had
flirted with a pretty young woman, who seemed nothing loth, and had
invited her to the Castle terrace after dark--an invitation which he
quite forgot on his arrival home.

The subsequent relations of Lord and Lady Baxby were not again greatly
embittered by quarrels, so far as is known; though the husband's conduct
in later life was occasionally eccentric, and the vicissitudes of his
public career culminated in long exile. The siege of the Castle was not
regularly undertaken till two or three years later than the time I have
been describing, when Lady Baxby and all the women therein, except the
wife of the then Governor, had been removed to safe distance. That
memorable siege of fifteen days by Fairfax, and the surrender of the old
place on an August evening, is matter of history, and need not be told by
me.

* * * * *

The Man of Family spoke approvingly across to the Colonel when the Club
had do