e matter of his speech.

"In the kitchen," answered Walters.

"Fetch me them." And he kicked off again the boot he had half drawn on.

"But they are all befouled with mud, sir."

"Clean them, Walters; clean them and let me have them."

Still Walters hesitated, pointing out that the boots he had brought his
master were newer and sounder. Wilding interrupted him impatiently. "Do
as I bid you, Walters." And the old man, understanding nothing, went off
on the errand.

"A pox on your boots!" swore Trenchard. "What does this mean?"

Wilding seemed suddenly to have undergone a transformation. His gloom
had fallen from him. He looked up at his old friend and, smiling,
answered him. "It means, Nick, that whilst these excellent boots that
Walters would have me wear might be well enough for a ride to the coast
such as you propose, they are not at all suited to the journey I intend
to make."

"Maybe," said Nick with a sniff, "you're intending to journey to Tower
Hill?"

"In that direction," answered Mr. Wilding suavely.

"I am for London, Nick. And you shall come with me."

"God save us! Do you keep a fool's egg under that nest of hair?"

Wilding explained, and by the time Walters returned with the boots
Trenchard was walking up and down the room in an odd agitation. "Odds my
life, Tony!" he cried at last. "I believe it is the best thing."

"The only thing, Nick."

"And since all is lost, why..." Trenchard blew out his cheeks and
smacked fist into palm. "I am with you," said he.

CHAPTER XXIV. JUSTICE

It has fallen to my lot in the course of this veridical chronicle of Mr.
Anthony Wilding's connection with the Rebellion in the West, and of his
wedding and post-nuptial winning of Ruth Westmacott, to relate certain
matters of incident and personality that may be accounted strange. But
the strangest yet remains to be related. For in spite of all that had
passed between Sir Rowland Blake and the Westmacotts on that memorable
night of Sunday to Monday, on which the battle of Sedgemoor was lost
and won, towards the end of that same month of July we find him not only
back at Lupton House, but once again the avowed suitor of Mr. Wilding's
widow. For effrontery this is a matter of which it is to be doubted
whether history furnishes a parallel. Indeed, until the circumstances
are sifted it seems wild and incredible. So let us consider these.

On the morrow of Sedgemoor, the town of Bridgwater became
invested--infe