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slipped into the close halted at a reassuring distance. His frame, long and gaunt as a famine, buckled in an attempt at a bow. “Will Fairweather’s tha name, good my mis’ess.” The voice bobbed up by his Adam’s apple made rusty an otherwise soft Southland tone. “An’ today, at last, I can stand on the style of it. Be not afeared; you may fiand me a Tom o’ Bedlam, but ’a war harmless long’s they left his rhinoceros in peace, an’ I don’t ’spect you’ll twingle miane.”
    He tapped the nose which dwarfed the rest of his head. As if cowed by that overhang, his brow and chin sloped backward, though some stubble fought a rearguard action. His smile showed crooked teeth, and little pale eyes twinkled beneath sandy hair. His smock was too short for him. Beneath breeches of better stuff spraddled shoes worn-out and holeful, evidently the best he could beg into which his feet might squeeze.
    “Art thou a vagabond?” the girl asked slowly.
    “Not quiate, mis’ess. A man o’ parts—theeazam parts for tha time bein’. Uh, you be Jennifer Alayne o’ tha Shelgrave house, ben’t you?”
    “Aye. But in the months I’ve dwelt here, I’ve come to know the neighborhood—”
    “An’ not me, eh? I pray you, listen. I hope in due coua’se to make everything as clear, an’ to your gain, as a verse o’ Scripture; call it a mica profit. But first I make boald to ask”—abruptly he was stretched tense—“how cloase a friend you be to Prince Rupert.”
    Jennifer sagged against the wall, whose ivy rustled and dripped. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and breathed.
    “Ah.” Will Fairweather nodded. “I thought as much. Well, me tha zame, mis’ess. If you knew how I’ve waited for this chance—! Thic mighty snuffle you hear comes from a month o’ skulkin’ in wet brush. Always you’d be with him, which meant four zurly Roundheads to boot—and how I wished to boot ’em!—or you war along o’ zomeone else, oftenest a walkin’ rail topped by a prune.”
    “Prudence!” Jennifer could not help herself, she must laugh.
    “I’d plenty o’ that—”
    “I escaped from mine today, to be alone.”
    “Well, now we must boath leave prudence behind, mis’ess, for time’s breathin’ up our arse. Word goes, no Cavaliers be left under arms in East England, an’ the rest be driven too far west an’ zouth to have any way o’ raidin’ ’twixt here an’ London. I think tha word be true. Countryfolk mark zuch things better an’ pass ’em on faster than tha gentry might think, tha’ havin’ to fret ’bout crops what might be trampled an’ women what might be zampled. Zavin’ your reverence, mis’ess. Anyhow, tha way lies clear for hustlin’ Prince Rupert off to tha Tower, an’ I doan’t zuppose Parly-ment’ll be laggard about an invitation.”
    “No—”
    Jennifer shook herself, straightened, and sped across the yard. Catching his hands, she cried: “Canst thou help him?”
    Will stopped grinning.
“We
can, lady.”
    “Who art thou? What art thou? Dear God—”
    “Nay, a different Person has thic post. I be but a tenant farmer from Somersetshire, ’listed in tha dragoons when tha King raised his standard, got near Prince Rupert on account o’ bein’ good at caerin’ for animals. ’A kept no few—white dog, monkey, an’ moare—tha Puritans yammered ’a must be a wizard an’ theeazam his familiars, but ’twar zimply that ’a liaked pets … an’ outzoldiered his foes … an’ I chatter a lot, doan’t I?”
    Jennifer glanced around, “Well, I may be missed and tracked any minute. B-besides—keep me not hooked!”
    Will hunkered down to scrub sleeve across a low fragment of wall. “Than zit, mis’ess, an’ bear with me for tha love we boath bear him an’ tha King.”
    The King?
thought Jennifer dazedly.
No, not the King, that heavy Scot on England and
on English faith and freedom—or thus I lately have been told—But Rupert—She let herself down, clasped her