he balance
on the King's side: I came, too, to be avenged, but that would wait.

"Meanwhile, the score had grown heavier. I went home to find the castle
in usurping hands--in the hands of my enemies. My father was dead; he
died a few months after I had gone to France; and those murderers had
advanced a claim that through my marriage with their cousin, since dead,
and through my own death, there being no next of kin, they were
the heirs-at-law. The Parliament allowed their claim, and they were
installed. But when I came they were away, following the fortunes of the
Parliament that had served them so well. And so I determined to let my
vengeance wait until the war were ended and the Parliament destroyed. In
a hundred engagements did I distinguish myself by my recklessness even
as at other seasons I distinguished myself by my debaucheries.

"Ah, Kenneth, you have been hard upon me for my vices, for my abuses of
the cup, and all the rest. But can you be hard upon me still, knowing
what I had suffered, and what a weight of misery I bore with me? I,
whose life was wrecked beyond salvation; who only lived that I might
slit the throats of those that had so irreparably wronged me. Think you
still that it was so vicious a thing, so unpardonable an offence to seek
the blessed nepenthe of the wine-cup, the heavenly forgetfulness that
its abuses brought me? Is it strange that I became known as the wildest
tantivy boy that rode with the King? What else had I?"

"In all truth your trials were sore," said the lad in a voice that
contained a note of sympathy. And yet there was a certain restraint that
caught the Tavern Knight's ear. He turned his head and bent his eyes in
the lad's direction, but it was quite dark by now, and he failed to make
out his companion's face.

"My tale is told, Kenneth. The rest you can guess. The King did not
prevail and I was forced to fly from England with those others who
escaped from the butchers that had made a martyr of Charles. I took
service in France under the great Conde, and I saw some mighty battles.
At length came the council of Breda and the invitation to Charles the
Second to receive the crown of Scotland. I set out again to follow his
fortunes as I had followed his father's, realizing that by so doing I
followed my own, and that did he prevail I should have the redress and
vengeance so long awaited. To-day has dashed my last hope; to-morrow
at this hour it will not signify. And yet much wou