n I
followed you to this house, and right glad I am that you are safe with
so good a woman as Mrs. Gaunt."

"But why should you be in London when the whole countryside at home is
in gaol or in mourning? Have you no friend to help? Did you sneak away
to be out of it all?" I asked with the silly petulance of a maid that
knows nothing and will say anything.

"Yes," he said, hanging his head like one ashamed, "I sneaked away to be
out of it all."

It vexed me to see him so, and I went on in a manner that it pleased me
little afterwards to remember. "You, that talked so of the Protestant
cause! you, that were ready to fight against Popery! you were not one of
those that marched for Bristol or fought at Sedgemoor?"

"No," he said, "I did neither of these things."

"Yet you have run away from the sight of your neighbours' trouble--lest,
I suppose, you should anyways be involved in it. Well, 'twas a man's
part!"

He was about to answer me when we both started to hear a sound in the
house. There was a foot on the stairs that I knew well. Tom turned aside
and listened, for we had now withdrawn to the kitchen.

"That is a man's tread," he said; "I thought you lived alone with Mrs.
Elizabeth Gaunt."

"Mrs. Gaunt spends her life in good works," I answered, "and shows
kindness to others beside me."

I raised my voice in hopes that the man might hear me and come no
nearer, but the stupid fellow had waxed so confident that he came right
in and stood amazed.

[Sidenote: "You!"]

"You!" he said; and Tom answered, "You!"

So they stood and glared at one another.

"I thought you were in a safe place," said Tom, swinging round to me.

"She is in no danger from me," said the man.

"Are you so foolish as to think so?" asked Tom.

"If you keep your mouth shut she is in no danger," was the answer.

"That may be," said Tom. Yet he turned to me and said, "You must come
away from here."

"I have nowhere to go to--and I will not leave Mrs. Gaunt."

"I am myself going away," the man said.

"How soon?"

"To-night maybe; to-morrow night at farthest."

"'Tis a great danger," said Tom, "and I thought you so safe." Again he
spoke to me.

"Is there danger from _you_?" the man asked.

"Do you take me for a scoundrel?" was the wrathful reply.

"A man will do much to keep his skin whole."

"There are some things no man will do that is a man and no worse."

"Truly you might have easily been in my place; and you would not in