A DASH FOR FREEDOM 81

his own trencher; and Carew himself, seeing that he ate,
looked strangely pleased, and ordered him a tiny mutton-
pie, well spiced. Nick pushed it back indignantly; but
Heywood took the pie and cut it open, saying quietly:
“Come, lad, the good God made the sheep that is in this
pie, not Gaston Carew. Hat it—come, ’t will do thee good!”
and saw him finish the last crumb.

From Towcester south through Northamptonshire is a
pretty country of rolling hills and undulating hollows,
ribboned with pebbly rivers, and dotted with fair parks
and tofts of ash and elm and oak. Straggling villages
now and then were threaded on the road like beads upon
a string, and here and there the air was damp and misty
from the grassy fens along some winding stream.

It was against nature that a healthy, growing lad should
be so much cast down as not to see and be interested in
the strange, new, passing world of things about him; and
little by little Nick roused from his wretchedness and
began to look about him. And a wonder grew within his
brain: why had they stolen him?—where were they tak-
ing him ?—what would they do with him there ?— or would
they soon let him go again?

Every yellow cloud of dust arising far ahead along the
road wrought up his hopes to a Bluebeard pitch, as regu-
larly to fall. First came a cast-off soldier from the war
in the Netherlands, rakishly forlorn, his breastplate full
of rusty dents, his wild hair worn by his steel cap, swag-
gering along on a sorry hack with an old belt full of pis-
tolets, and his long sword thumping Rosinante’s ribs.

B