iz Sebastian. The cavalcade started.
As the horse that bore the double load passed Landless, the murderer
twisted himself about in his seat, and, with a venomous look, spat at
him. Luiz Sebastian smiled evilly.

The shaven head and fleshless face of Win-Grace Porringer protruded
themselves over Landless's shoulder.

"What does it mean?" he muttered.

"God knows," answered the other. "Come to the trysting place to-night.
We must act, and act quickly."

That night ten men met in the deserted hut on the marsh, having stolen
with the caution of Indians from their respective plantations. Five were
men who had fought at Edgehill and Naseby and Worcester, or had followed
Cromwell through the breach at Drogheda. Four were victims of the Act of
Uniformity; darker, sterner, more determined if possible, than the
veterans of the New Model. The tenth man was Landless. When, late at
night, he and Porringer crept stealthily back to the quarters, it was
with the conviction that this was the last time they should so steal
through the darkness. The date of the rising had been fixed for the
thirteenth of September; this night, by Landless's advice, it was
brought forward to the tenth--and it was now the sixth.

Groping his way past the slumbering forms of the three other occupants
of his cabin, Landless threw himself down upon his pallet with a heavy
sigh.

"Liberty!" he said beneath his breath. "Goddess, whom I and mine have
sought through long years, whom once we thought we held, and waked to
find thee gone,--once I thought thee fairer than aught beside; thought
no price too great to pay for thee. But now!"

He hid his face in his hands with a stifled groan. When at length he
fell into a troubled sleep, it was to see again a storm-tossed boat, and
a woman's face, set like a star against the blackness of the night.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LIBRARY OF THE SURVEYOR-GENERAL

At a long, low table stood Mistress Betty Carrington, her slender figure
enveloped in an apron of blue dowlas, her sleeves of fine holland rolled
above her elbows, and her white and rounded arms plunged deep into a
great bowl filled with the purple globes of the wild grape. A row of
children knelt on the brick floor at her feet, busily stripping the
fruit from the stems, and negresses, hard by, strained with sinewy hands
the crimson juice from the pulpy mass into jars of earthenware. To this
group suddenly entered a breathless urchin.

"Ohe, mistis! de Go