"Madam," said I, "this is my friend, Master Freake, whom I set out to rob." To him I added, "This is Mistress Waynflete, whom I have the honour to serve."
He bared his head and bowed. "And whom I hope to have the honour of serving too."
I looked at him curiously. All other emotions had faded from his face now, but it was clear that her peerless and now so helpless beauty had appealed home to him.
"Sir," she said, recovering herself with a great effort, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. And now,"--speaking to me,--"since you have given me a great fright and made me behave like a milkmaid rather than a soldier's daughter, perhaps you will tell me what has happened, and how it"--she looked over my shoulder--"comes to be lying there. I heard shots and shrieks that turned me to stone. What has happened?"
"Master Wheatman," said our new acquaintance, taking my words out of my mouth, "is hardly likely to give you a reasonably correct account. Allow me to be the historian of his fine conduct." He told the story with overmuch kindness to me, and as he told it the colour came back to her face, and she was herself again. While he was telling it, I noticed for the first time, or rather for the first time gathered its meaning, that she had run out after me without the domino, and in the biting air she might easily catch a chill. So while Master Freake was making a fine sprose about me, much more applicable to Achilles or the Chevalier Bayard, I slipped off and fetched the hat and coat. He was just concluding his story on my return, and without interrupting him, I clumsily thrust the hat on her head and flung the coat over her shoulders.
"Master Freake," she said, in her sweetest bantering tones, "my servant, as he absurdly calls himself, is really an artist in helping people. I told him this morning that his native shire was his conjurer's hat, when he fetched ham and eggs out of it for poor hungry me. Now he observes that I am coatless and a-cold, and lo, a hat is on my head and a coat on my shoulders. It is marvellous and nothing short of it. Nay, I shall shun him as one in league with the powers of darkness if there's much more of it. If I be saved, you remember Master Slender,"--this in a sly aside to me,--"I'll be saved by them that have the fear of God."
"Ingrate!" I cried, half angry and yet wholly delighted; "what of marvel or devilment is there in picking up a hat and coat one has found lying under a tree?"
"Major Tixall's," said Master Freake.
"Ass that I am, of course they are. Steady, Mistress Margaret, while I go through the pockets. The odds are we shall find something useful in checkmating my Lord Brocton."
In this I was wrong, for there was not a single scrap of writing in any of them. I did, however, fish out two small but heavy packets, wrapped in paper. They were easily examined, and each contained a roll of ten guineas.