The Tavern Knight | Page 4

pair of eyes that of a sudden seemed ablaze glared at his
companion; then the lids drooped until those eyes became two narrow
slits - catlike and cunning - and again he laughed.
"Gad's life, Master Stewart, you have a temerity that should save you
from grey hairs! What is't to you what ditty my fancy seizes on?
'Swounds, man, for three weary months have I curbed my moods, and
worn my throat dry in praising the Lord; for three months have I been a
living monument of Covenanting zeal and godliness; and now that at
last I have shaken the dust of your beggarly Scotland from my heels,
you - the veriest milksop that ever ran tottering from its mother's lap
would chide me because, yon bottle being done, I sing to keep me from
waxing sad in the contemplation of its emptiness!"
There was scorn unutterable on the lad's face as he turned aside.
"When I joined Middleton's horse and accepted service under you, I
held you to be at least a gentleman," was his daring rejoinder.
For an instant that dangerous light gleamed again from his companion's

eye. Then, as before, the lids drooped, and, as before, he laughed.
"Gentleman!" he mocked. "On my soul, that's good! And what may you
know of gentlemen, Sir Scot? Think you a gentleman is a Jack
Presbyter, or a droning member of your kirk committee, strutting it like
a crow in the gutter? Gadswounds, boy, when I was your age, and
George Villiers lived - "
"Oh, have done!" broke in the youth impetuously. "Suffer me to leave
you, Sir Crispin, to your bottle, your croaking, and your memories."
"Aye, go your ways, sir; you'd be sorry company for a dead man - the
sorriest ever my evil star led me into. The door is yonder, and should
you chance to break your saintly neck on the stairs, it is like to be well
for both of us."
And with that Sir Crispin Galliard lay back in his chair once more, and
took up the thread of his interrupted song
But, heigh-o! she cried, at the Christmas-tide, That dead she would
rather be-O! Pale and wan she crept out of sight, and wept
'Tis a sorry -
A loud knock that echoed ominously through the mean chamber, fell in
that instant upon the door. And with it came a panting cry of -
"Open, Cris! Open, for the love of God!"
Sir Crispin's ballad broke off short, whilst the lad paused in the act of
quitting the room, and turned to look to him for direction.
"Well, my master," quoth Galliard, "for what do you wait?"
"To learn your wishes, sir," was the answer sullenly delivered.
"My wishes! Rat me, there's one without whose wishes brook less
waiting! Open, fool!"

Thus rudely enjoined, the lad lifted the latch and set wide the door,
which opened immediately upon the street. Into the apartment stumbled
a roughly clad man of huge frame. He was breathing hard, and fear was
writ large upon his rugged face. An instant he paused to close the door
after him, then turning to Galliard, who had risen and who stood eyeing
him in astonishment -
"Hide me somewhere, Cris," he panted - his accent proclaiming his
Irish origin. "My God, hide me, or I'm a dead man this night!"
"'Slife, Hogan! What is toward? Has Cromwell overtaken us?"
"Cromwell, quotha? Would to Heaven 'twere no worse! I've killed a
man!"
"If he's dead, why run?"
The Irishman made an impatient gesture.
"A party of Montgomery's foot is on my heels. They've raised the
whole of Penrith over the affair, and if I'm taken, soul of my body,
'twill be a short shrift they'll give me. The King will serve me as poor
Wrycraft was served two days ago at Kendal. Mother of Mercy!" he
broke off, as his ear caught the clatter of feet and the murmur of voices
from without. "Have you a hole I can creep into?"
"Up those stairs and into my room with you!" said Crispin shortly. "I
will try to head them off. Come, man, stir yourself; they are here."
Then, as with nimble alacrity Hogan obeyed him and slipped from the
room, he turned to the lad, who had been a silent spectator of what had
passed. From the pocket of his threadbare doublet he drew a pack of
greasy playing cards.
"To table," he said laconically.
But the boy, comprehending what was required of him, drew back at
sight of those cards as one might shrink from a thing unclean.

"Never!" he began. "I'll not defile - "
"To table, fool!" thundered Crispin, with a vehemence few men could
have withstood. "Is this a time for Presbyterian scruples? To table, and
help a