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when he walked that road before. So he left the smithy and pushed on across the heath and far beyond it, marking each familiar farm and village and country house, until night had fallen and the stars had come out, when he laid him down under a hedge and slept.

He was thinking, when he fell asleep, of Nell Entick. He remembered very well her handsome face, her head held so high, her white throat and bare arms. He was going back to the inn to claim fulfillment of her promise and he pictured her as waiting for him there. In most ways he was a bold, resolute youth who had seen much of life; but in some ways, nevertheless, he was a lad of small experience, and if he thought at all that she had been a little over-bold, a little over-willing, he thought only that she was as honestly frank as he.

Waking that night upon his bed of leaves, he saw far away on a hill the dancing flames of a campfire, concerning which he greatly wondered. For, having been long out of England, he had small knowledge of the ups and downs of parliaments and kings; and in the brief time since his return, of which he had spent nearly all in prison, he had heard nothing of the tumultuous state of the kingdom, save a few words dropped here or there while he was passing through hamlets and villages, and seen nothing thereof save such show of arms as in one place or another had caught his eye but not his thought. Although he knew it not, since he was a plain lad with no gift of second-sight, he lay in a country poised on the brink of war and his bed was made in the field where a great battle was to be fought.

He went on at daylight, and going through a village at high noon saw a preacher in clipped hair and sober garb, who was calling on the people to be valiant and of