"Warrants and pursuivants! Away! warrants and pursuivants!"—The Wise Woman of Hogsdon.
Sir Valentine Fleetwood was a thin man, with regular features and sunken cheeks, his usually sallow face now flushed with fever. His full round beard was gray, but there were yet streaks of black in his flowing hair.
"Sir Valentine," Hal began, suppressing his excitement, "there is private news I must make known to you instantly." And he cast a look at the doctor, who frowned, and at Anthony, who remained motionless near the door, with his lanthorn still in hand, as if expecting that he should soon have to escort Hal out again.
"Sir Valentine is not in a condition to hear—" broke in the doctor, in a voice of no loudness, but of much latent authority.
"But this is of the gravest import—" interrupted Hal, and was himself interrupted by Sir Valentine, who had gathered breath for speech.
"Nay, Harry, it may wait. I am in no mind for business."
"But it requireth immediate action," said Hal, who would have told the news itself, but that he desired first the absence of the doctor and the steward.
"Then 'twill serve nothing to be told," said Sir Valentine, lapsing into his former weakness, and with a slight shade of annoyance upon his face. "As thou see'st, boy, I am in no state for action. A plague upon the leg, I can't stir it half an inch."
"But—" cried Harry.