“It is the fortune of war, dame,” he cried, relishing condolence as little as ever. He liked better the greeting of Roy and Reine, that no Parliament or Lord Protector or Fairfax’s men in the neighbourhood could prevent—timid creatures though the welcomers were—from rushing to hail his arrival, with acclamation, little ringing yelps, much scuttling to and fro and clambering up his legs, with lavish licking of his muddy boots.
Having heard that the vicar was from home—indeed the worthy man was in hiding with greater sinners—Master Neville proceeded to the business which had brought him there—the destruction of private papers, in anticipation of a visit to his house from a detachment of the Parliamentary army.
“I don’t think you have anything to fear at the rogues’ hands,” he told his housekeeper, as he prepared to leave again in the dank dawn of the next morning. “You have my leave to speak them fair. As for me, I think I shall make the country quit of me—like others I will not name; God be praised, they are out of danger;” and he raised his beaver for an instant—“till better times. I see my way to the coast, and I shall do my best to survive a term of existence in some wretched mouldy or whitewashed French or Dutch town. Why, I should not care to carry off my beauties with me to bear me company,” he cried on a sudden impulse, catching up Roy and Reine, the one after the other, and depositing them in the deep pockets of his coat. He had often stowed them there when they were wearied with trotting at his heels in his walks in the park or the meadows—or when he passed through his herds of cattle, of which the little spaniels were inordinately afraid, so that if he forgot them they would grovel unperceived in some furrow, and lie there panting and half-dead with terror, though the oxen were not even looking at them, till he missed them and returned to search for, rally, and fetch them home.
“I wot you’ll take something there’s more sense in, master,” remonstrated Dame Hynd, loath to oppose him at such a moment, yet driven almost past her patience by the freak.
“There is sense enough in the proposal,” he insisted. “They are my esteemed play-fellows, and they may serve me for a breakfast some fine morning, when hunger craves and all other provisions fail,” he added, in allusion to the Cavaliers’ favourite jest of one of Rupert’s troopers, when they were riding through a town in the Puritan interest, snatching up a fat baby, and poising it screaming before him on the crupper of his saddle, as he announced, amidst a grinning roar of assent from his comrades—while the horrified populace mobbed them, raging powerlessly—that here would be a nice roast wherewith to break a long fast.
Master Neville, with the little dogs in his pockets, turned away laughing from the old home which he might never see again.
The Cavalier squire proved wrong in his calculation as to gaining the coast forthwith; instead, he had to go through a lengthened experience of that most humiliating ordeal to a man—fleeing before the enemies he has despised. He had to move here and there in various irksome disguises—to seek help from friends ill able to afford it—to elude the vigilance of wide-awake, sometimes vindictive foes—to endure no scant measure of pains and penalties. But, through all, he never abandoned the poor pets with which he had rashly cumbered himself.
Occasionally, when he was so well up in the world as to represent a pedlar, with his pack on his back, vending his wares from one country house to another, or from town to town, he would display the little animals openly, and freely admit they had belonged to a gentleman in trouble. Then if some grave father or mother, brother or friend, so far relaxed in their lofty scorn of all toys as to propose to chaffer for the dogs in behalf of a doted-on grandson or a tender-hearted maiden, the reputed pedlar would excuse himself in a flow of specious words, explaining, with a double meaning in the assertion, that he was only conveying the dogs for their rightful owner, and had no warrant to dispose of them.
At other times, when Master Neville was playing the beggar, asking alms from door to door, he had cunningly to conceal Roy and Reine, lest he should become liable to the suspicion of having stolen them.
The dogs and their master shared and fared alike, and though they had good days and bad days, it soon befell that Roy and Reine, who had been reared on dainties, and who had at first turned up their noses in disgust, like petted children, at plain food, and rather gone without a meal than deigned to touch it, were fain, like Master Neville, to eat heartily and thankfully of homely scraps. Though all three were often hungry enough before they came to this pass, I need not say that the day never dawned when the Cavalier was reduced to kindling a fire in the shelter of the hedge, gipsy fashion, and cooking Roy and Reine for breakfast, dinner, or supper.