long as our husbands are content to stay at home? Women surely have no place up here.”

Sir Jasper, too, was tired in his own way. “Yes, you’ve a place,” he answered sharply—“the place we fight to give you. There’s only one King, wife—I’m pledged to his service, by your leave.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, with her pleasant drawl. “I know that by heart. Faith, and the high adventure, and the King. There’s only one matter you forget—the wife who sits at home, and plies her needle, and fancies each stitch is a wound her husband takes. You never saw that dark side of your Rising?”

“Wounds?” said the other gruffly. “We hide them, wife—that[36] is men’s business. The fruits of them we bring home—for our wives to spend.”

[36]

“Ah, you’re bitter,” she pleaded.

“Not bitter,” he said. “I’m a man who knows his world—or thinks he does. The men earn—and the women spend; and you never guess how hard come by is that delicate gift, honour, we bring you.”

“Honour?” She was peevish now. “I know that word, too, by heart. It brings grief to women. It takes their men afield when they have all they need at home. It brings swords from the scabbard——”

“It brings peace of soul, after the wounds are healed,” Sir Jasper interrupted gravely.

Will Underwood about this time had reached his own house, and had found his bailiff waiting for him. He had added another wing to the house in the summer, and workmen had been busy ever since in getting things to rights indoors in readiness for the ball which Underwood had planned for Christmas Eve—a ball that should outmatch in lavishness and pomp all previous revels of the kind.

“Well, Eli?” growled the master, who was in no good mood to-night. “Your face is sour enough. Have you waited up to tell me that the men are discontented again with their wages?”

“Nay, with their King,” said the bailiff, blunt and dispassionate. “It’s a pity, for we were getting gradely forrard with the work—and you wanted all done by Kirstmas, so you said. I’d not go up street myself to see any king that stepped. Poorish folk and kings are much o’ the same clay, I reckon. Sexton at th’ end of all just drops ’em into six feet o’ wintry mould.”

Will Underwood’s father had held the like barren gospel, expressed in terms more 

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