CHAPTER III.
Rochester left London for a day or two to conceal the traces of his whereabouts; but disguising himself completely, and assuming the habit of a simple citizen, he soon returned, and selected an ostensible residence, where he intended, for the time, to appear in the character he had adopted.
Chance, in this vagary, had given to Rochester, as a host, a gentleman and a soldier, who had once been an equal and a companion.
A cavalier officer, and one of the most devoted to his king, Colonel Boynton, had fought in almost every battle against the troops of the parliament, and distinguished himself sufficiently in several to attract the royal notice, and to elicit the commendation of his king. With the loss of the royal cause, Colonel Boynton retired, wounded both in person and in fortune, to private life, where, in the society of his wife and infant daughter, he strove to forget the downfall of the unfortunate though guilty Charles, and the ruin of his family.
The triumph of the parliamentary cause still further affected Boynton's fortunes; yet, when some years after he knew that the sons of his royal master were fugitives in a foreign land, and in pecuniary distress, he did not hesitate to impoverish himself in order to minister to their necessities; trusting to Providence and his own exertions for his immediate wants, and to the re-establishment of the monarchy and the royal gratitude for his future fortune.
Colonel Boynton had lived to see the son of the First Charles ascend the throne; but his just expectations, with regard to his own fortune, had not been realized. Too proud to present himself to the royal notice to claim the reward of his services, and the return of his advances, when he thought that gratitude required he should be sought out, he languished, with his daughter, who had now grown up to be a beautiful maiden, neglected and unnoticed in a condition not many degrees removed from absolute want; struggling for the means of existence, and cherishing each hour increased feelings of bitterness against the king and the court.
It was with Colonel Boynton that Rochester now took up his abode, nor was it long before he recognized the heroic soldier of former times; and wild, reckless and dissipated as Rochester was, he could not help deeply sympathizing with the condition of Boynton, and determining to assist in having justice done to him. But from the Colonel himself he met with an impediment he had not expected; for when, in his assumed character, (Rochester did not disclose himself,) he suggested the king's ignorance of his existence and urged him to present himself to the monarch's notice, the old soldier unhesitatingly and indignantly refused, alleging proudly, that it was not for him personally to quicken the king's memory, adding, that if his services could be so easily forgotten, he was satisfied they should forever remain in oblivion.
Notwithstanding this unexpected obstinacy the earl resolved to serve the veteran and his motherless child, and he conceived a plot at the same time, by which he purposed making the colonel's history subservient to his design of outwitting the Merry Monarch.