hair, and the squire
prepared to rise, his lip trembling under his white beard, and emotion
working in his dejected features. They were beforehand with him. Ere
he could rise both were on their knees before him, while Richard in a
broken voice cried, "Father, O father!"

"Thank God that thou art come, my son," said the old man, laying his
hands on his shoulders, with a gleam of joy, for as they afterwards
knew, he had sorely feared for Richard's ship in the storm that had
caused Humfrey's death. "I looked for thee, my daughter," he added,
stretching out one hand to Susan, who kissed it. "Now it may go better
with her! Speak to thy mother, Richard, she may know thy voice."

Alas! no; the recently active, ready old lady was utterly stricken, and
as yet held in the deadly grasp of paralysis, unconscious of all that
passed around her.

Susan found herself obliged at once to take up the reins, and become
head nurse and housekeeper. The old squire trusted implicitly to her,
and helplessly put the keys into her hands, and the serving-men and
maids, in some shame at the condition in which the hall had been found,
bestirred themselves to set it in order, so that there was a chance of
the ordinary appearance of things being restored by supper-time, when
Richard hoped to persuade his father to come down to his usual place.

Long before this, however, a trampling had been heard in the court, and
a shrill voice, well known to Richard and Susan, was heard demanding,
"Come home, is she--Master Diccon too? More shame for you, you
sluttish queans and lazy lubbers, never to have let me know; but none
of you have any respect--"

A visit from my Lady Countess was a greater favour to such a household
as that of Bridgefield than it would be to a cottage of the present
day; Richard was hurrying downstairs, and Susan only tarried to throw
off the housewifely apron in which she had been compounding a cooling
drink for the poor old lady, and to wash her hands, while Humfrey,
rushing up to her, exclaimed "Mother, mother, is it the Queen?"

Queen Elizabeth herself was not inaptly represented by her namesake of
Hardwicke, the Queen of Hallamshire, sitting on her great white mule at
the door, sideways, with her feet on a board, as little children now
ride, and attended by a whole troop of gentlemen ushers, maidens,
prickers, and running footmen. She was a woman of the same type as the
Queen, which was of course enough to stamp her as a