"My right name," he went on, "is called Robert Lucas."
"Lucas! 'Tis a name I've heard," said Merrylips. "Perchance I shall remember where."
He looked at her eagerly.
"If thou couldst but help me!" he sighed. "I'll tell thee all, but there's so much I do not know and I can never learn. For I was but a little babe when both my father and my mother died. My father was an English gentleman, one Captain Lucas. He was an officer in the army of the Emperor Ferdinand, and he was serving in High Germany. My mother was with him. She was an Englishwoman, a great lady in her own country, and with a face like an angel, so my nurse hath ofttimes told me.
"My mother held that the camp was too rude a place in which to nurture me. So she gave me, but three months old, to a good woman, Jettchen Kronk, a farmer's wife, who nursed me with her own child. Each week my mother would leave the camp, and ride across the hills on her palfrey, with men to attend her, and visit me for an hour.
"One day, when I was eight months old, she gave me this ring from her hand to play with. I fell asleep holding it fast, and she would not waken me to take it from me, when it came her time to go. She would get her ring when next she came unto me, she said, and bade my nurse guard it safely, for 'twas dear to her and bore the crest of her house. Then she kissed me as I slept, my nurse hath told me, and went her way, and never came again.
"For there fell a great fever on the camp, and among the rest my father and my mother must have died, for never a word was heard of them more. Many of the officers perished, as well as of the soldiers. Doubtless among them were those of my father's friends that would have been mindful of me. And presently, to save the remnant of the troops, they were sent to another camp, miles away, across the mountains, and I was left behind, for there was none now to take thought of me.
"But Jettchen Kronk loved me. Her own child, my foster-brother, died that year, and her husband was slain, and she said that I was all was left unto her. So when her kinsmen bade her cast me forth as a beggar brat, she drove them from her house. And she reared me tenderly, as if I had been her own.
"She had me taught to read and write, both German and Latin, by the priest of the village. And she told me always how I was a gentleman and the son of a gentleman, and she showed me this silver ring that she had kept for me. Through this ring, she said, I should one day find my English kindred, who would be glad to welcome me. But the journey into England was very long, and the country was vexed with war, and she herself was poor and all unable to furnish me for the road. So I could not hope to travel into England until I was old enough and strong enough to make mine own way thither.
"'Twill be three years agone, come Eastertide, that dear Jettchen fell into a lingering sickness. She was in great fear for me, for she knew that there was none to stand my friend when she was gone. But while she was thus troubled, there came to her a cousin, Claus Hinkel, a kind, true soul that had been for years a soldier in the army of the Emperor. He promised Jettchen that he would take me into England, to my kinsfolk there, and so she died with her heart at peace. God rest her! She was kinder to me than any in all this world."