"A brace of pistols," began Lee.
"Ah! Thieves!" she shrieked. "Murder!—"
"Hold your silly tongue, woman," peremptorily interrupted Lee. "What do you take me for? Don't you know Lawrence Lee yet?"
"I'm none so sure that I do," replied she, recovering all her wonted presence of mind. "And I have liked not your ways of late, young man, and so I tell you."
"I doubt they have scarce pleased me better than they have yourself," said Lee, with a frank and yet humbled look in his upturned face, which somehow went straight to the good woman's heart.
Mistress Sheppard hesitates.
"If I know toadstools from mushrooms, he means honestly," she went on to herself, showing, however, no signs of capitulating, and sternly pursing her lips. "They would ill become your father's son," she said aloud, "and make sore places in his heart, as a certain prodigal son's we wot of, did."
"And he resolved, did he not, to try and mend his ways. So come, Mistress Sheppard, quick with the stable-door key; there's a good soul; and Stars and Garters for England and the King."
"The king?!" and curl papers all forgotten, Mistress Sheppard's head craned eagerly down from the casement.
"Ay, he's in danger," nodded Lee, catching up, as he spoke, a rusty crowbar lying in the grass; "and there's not a moment to be lost, I tell you. Shall I break open the stable door and help myself?"