The challenge was welcome, for I feared a scene, and to be left face to face with my uncle more than anything. Now, as the servants with a loud murmur of surprise and recognition fell back and disclosed me standing by Martin's side, I turned a little from Sir Anthony and faced Greville. "Not this time, I think, Sir Thomas," I said, giving him back glance for glance. "I have learned my lesson from some who have fared farther and seen more than you, from men who have stood by their cause in foul weather as well as fair; and were not for mass one day and a sermon the next."
"What is this?" he cried angrily. "Who are you?"
"Sir Anthony Cludde's dutiful and loving nephew," I answered, with a courteous bow. "Come back, I thank Heaven, in time to do him a service, Sir Thomas."
"Master Francis! Master Francis!" Clopton exclaimed in remonstrance. He had known me in old days. My uncle, meanwhile, gazed at me in the utmost astonishment, and into the servants' faces there flashed a strange light, while many of them hailed me in a tone which told me that I had but to give the word, and they would fall on the very sheriff himself. "Master Francis," Sir Philip Clopton repeated gravely, "if you would do your uncle a service, this is not the way to go about it. He has surrendered and is our prisoner. Brawling will not mend matters."
I laughed out loudly and merrily. "Do you know, Sir Philip," I said, with something of the old boyish ring in my voice, "I have been, since I saw you last, to Belgium and Germany, ay, and Poland and Hamburg! Do you think I have come back a fool?"
"I do not know what to think of you," he replied dryly, "but you had best----"
"Keep a civil tongue in your head, my friend!" said Greville with harshness, "and yourself out of this business."
"It is just this business I have come to get into, Sir Thomas," I answered, with increasing good humor. "Sir Anthony, show them that!" I continued, and I drew out a little packet of parchment with a great red seal hanging from it by a green ribbon; just such a packet as that which I had stolen from the Bishop's apparitor nearly four years back. "A lantern here!" I cried. "Hold it steady, Martin, that Sir Anthony may read. Master Sheriff wants his rere-supper."
I gave the packet into the knight's hand, my own shaking. Ay, shaking, for was not this the fulfillment of that boyish vow I had made in my little room in the gable yonder, so many years ago? A fulfillment strange and timely, such as none but a boy in his teens could have hoped for, nor any but a man who had tried the chances and mishaps of the world could fully enjoy as I was enjoying it. I tingled with the rush through my veins of triumph and gratitude. Up to the last moment I had feared lest anything should go wrong, lest this crowning happiness should be withheld from me. Now I stood there smiling, watching Sir Anthony, as with trembling fingers he fumbled with the paper. And there was only one thing, only one person, wanting to my joy. I looked, and looked again, but I could not anywhere see Petronilla.
"What is it?" Sir Anthony said feebly, turning the packet over and over. "It is for the sheriff; for the sheriff, is it not?"