“Why, no,” I answered. “I think you’re a very proper young man—such as I should loathe to see spoil’d by Master Settle’s knife.”
“Art not quick at friendship, Jack, but better at advising; only in this case fortune has prevented thy good offices. Hark ye,” he lean’d forward and glanc’d to right and left, “if these twain intend my hurt—as indeed ’twould seem—they lose their labor: for this very night I ride from Oxford.”
“And why is that?”
“I’ll tell thee, Jack, tho’ I deserve to be shot. I am bound with a letter from His Majesty to the Army of the West, where I have friends, for my father’s sake—Sir Deakin Killigrew of Gleys, in Cornwall. ’Tis a sweet country, they say, tho’ I have never seen it.”
“Not seen thy father’s country?”
“Why no—for he married a Frenchwoman, Jack, God rest her dear soul!”—he lifted his hat—“and settled in that country, near Morlaix, in Brittany, among my mother’s kin; my grandfather refusing to see or speak with him, for wedding a poor woman without his consent. And in France was I born and bred, and came to England two years agone; and this last July the old curmudgeon died. So that my father, who was an only son, is even now in England returning to his estates: and with him my only sister Delia. I shall meet them on the way. To think of it!” (and I declare the tears sprang to his eyes): “Delia will be a woman grown, and ah! to see dear Cornwall together!”
Now I myself was only a child, and had been made an orphan when but nine years old, by the smallpox that visited our home in Wastdale Village, and carried off my father, the Vicar, and my dear mother. Yet his simple words spoke to my heart and woke so tender a yearning for the small stone cottage, and the bridge, and the grey fells of Yewbarrow above it, that a mist rose in my eyes too, and I turn’d away to hide it.
“’Tis a ticklish business,” said I after a minute, “to carry the King’s letter. Not one in four of his messengers comes through, they say. But since it keeps you from the dice——”
“That’s true. To-night I make an end.”
“To-night!”