CHAPTER VII

HONOR BRIGHT

Ordinarily speaking, there is of course rarely much difficulty in tracking little truant boys or even girls. Prince Charles was not, however, a mere ordinary little boy. He was the King’s son, and the people, who were beginning to think of fighting against King Charles on account of displeasure with some of his ways of governing, would have been very glad to get the child into their power. They thought they would be able to make a better bargain with the King, who would agree sooner to what they demanded out of fear that, if he did not do so, they might harm the little boy. There were good and just Roundheads, as those discontented persons were called, who would not have lent their aid or approval to such miserable and mean ways of settling matters, and among the many of them was the miller of Oakside. He was a strict Roundhead, and if the quarrel came to a fight, he was quite determined that he would, if it was necessary, lay down his life for what he considered the right and good cause, against the King. Still he prayed and trusted that there would not be war in the kingdom, and the sorry sight of Englishmen fighting with Englishmen. It seemed too fearful, and he now went about his work with a very grave face, though, in a general way, he was neither sad nor sour-natured, but a brave, industrious, honest, cheery man.

When Wynkin was admitted next morning to Lady Chauncy’s little sitting-room, he at once informed her of the past night’s adventures. She was very much astonished at his discovery in the Cedar Room. “’Tis certain,” she said, with almost a smile on her troubled face, “that, as my husband so often hath said, ‘A fortress is not stronger than its weakest part,’ which in this case appears, from what you tell me, Wynkin, to be Minerva’s nose. But who’d have thought it? and if your guess is correct about the red cloak, as I am persuaded it is, that is the direction in which this most naughty boy hath gone.”

And ere many days passed, Wynkin’s guesses became certainties, for, after all, Oakside was only a very few miles from the village in which his father and mother lived, for all Charles fancied he had walked an immense long way that morning before he sat down and sobbed under the oak-tree. Had the matter been merely one of coming to Oakside, and fetching him away, the little runaway would soon have been back again at the Manor, but it was not. There were now spies, and a number of other evil-minded persons, loitering for many miles round, ready to attack any of the Royalist folk, as the King’s party were called, who should attempt to carry him away from Oakside. While he was under the miller’s roof or in his care, they did not dare to touch him, as the Miller himself was a powerful Roundhead, and one who was much trusted and very wise in his way.

Meanwhile, the miller’s boy turned out a capital boy for such a small one. He was most diligent, rising with the lark, and so obliging and obedient, and, though sad sometimes, he was generally merry, singing at his work, and when the millwork was done, he would fetch in water from the well for Mistress Speedwell, and logs from the out-house for the great kitchen hearth-place, for the evenings were beginning to grow chilly, and he played cat’s cradle and spillikins with Molly, and cut out little men and women and cows and dogs from paper, to her boundless delight, and the miller, for all he was so silent, and even grim in his manner to him, was forced to yield him a good word when Mistress Speedwell would ask her husband if he did not consider that the shelter they had given the poor forlorn gipsy lad had returned as a blessing on themselves, for Mistress Speedwell did not know the truth, whatever her husband might know, or whatever he might suspect.

The only fault Mistress Speedwell had to find with him was that, though he kept himself very neat and spruce in the linen jacket and breeches she made for him, he never could be persuaded to wash the flour off his face. The reason he gave for this was that millers were always white. It was the proper thing for them to be so.

One evening she grew really angry about this, “Do you hear?” she said, “I insist on you washing your face. When you came, it was as black as a tinker’s, and then you had not been here a couple of hours before you got it all over flour. If you do not do as I bid you, I will take you and souse your head in the pail myself.”

“Please——” began the boy.

“Ah, please me no please,” she cried, turning to her husband; “will you not have the urchin obey me?”

“You hear what you are bidden to do,” said the miller to the boy, but he spoke rather unwillingly. And Charles crept off, daring no longer to disobey.

“Ah, now,” said Mistress Speedwell, when he returned with his brown cheeks shining like a warming-pan with the rubbing she had bidden him not to be sparing of, and a deep flush from brow to chin, “now we can look truth in the face,” and she was satisfied, and settled quietly to her wheel; and Molly, who had been sorely disheartened to hear her playmate scolded, smiled delightedly. She thought it was the nicest boy’s face she had ever seen; but the miller looked graver than ever, and only said “Umph!” as he glanced over some letters he had received that day, and then sat gazing in a very troubled manner into the fire.

The next evening soon after dark a solemn-looking, plainly-attired gentleman rode up to the gate of the cottage and asked to see Master John Speedwell. He was shown into the best room, where he kept the miller talking for more than an hour, but the interview did not appear to have been very satisfactory to the visitor, who said to Speedwell, as he went away, “I trust that you will come to see the error of your resolve. And,” he went on, when the miller made no reply, “seeing that you are not rich——”

“No, I am a poor man,” said the miller, “but I hope always to remain an honorable man, and I will give up the boy for no money price.”

“Not even in the good cause?” scowled the stranger.

“The cause would be no longer good were I to do this that you seek of me. So fare you well, sir, for by my honor, which I have always kept bright and fair, I will deliver the boy only into the hands to whom he belongs.”

“Well,” said the stranger, in deeply-angered tones, “you know what to expect—I have warned you.”

“And though my house be stormed, and you should be able to kidnap the boy—which I much doubt you shall succeed in doing—I abide by what I have said,” replied the miller.

And so the stranger mounted his horse again, muttering and grumbling till he was gone out of sight.

Then the miller returned to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire alone. The rest of the little household were all abed. He listened intently. For a long time there was no sound but the brisk night wind stirring round the house, but as the village church-clock struck eleven, there came a low tap on the lattice. The miller rose, and, drawing aside the curtain, said in a low tone as he opened the lattice, “Are you ready?”

“Ay, ready,” replied the person who tapped, dropping the folds of the big cloak he was wearing from about his face, which was Wynkin’s.

“’Tis well you are come to-night,” said the miller, “for my house is threatened. They might even storm it to-morrow and steal the Prince, for all my endeavor.”

“I dared not venture till to-night,” said Wynkin, “but I know that this evening the coast is clear. They are all gone upon another scent.”

“Come with me,” said the miller, and he led the way above stairs. “Have you a horse?”

“Nay,” smiled Wynkin, “I have the punt; which is safer, since it is less suspected, and it is freighted with half a dozen stout men-at-arms under the canvas.”

“Take your treasure,” said the miller, as he unlocked a door, and motioned Wynkin to approach the bed where the miller’s boy lay sleeping soundly after his day’s fetching and carrying, “if indeed, as I believe, it belong to your master.”

“Ay, truly it is our lost one,” murmured Wynkin, as he lifted the sleeping child so gently in his arms that he did not stir, but seemed only to breathe the more restfully as the trusty serving-man wrapped his cloak close round him so that he could not be seen. “Heaven reward you, Master Speedwell,” and, turning down the stairway he sped out by the door, never stopping till he reached the punt held fast alongside by many hands that stretched from under the canvas covering. Then as the word was given, away, fast, on and on glided the punt, and sleeping the restful sleep of a tired child, the little Prince never stirred till far on towards morning just before the breaking of the dawn, by which time he lay in his own little carved bed in the Cedar Room shaded by its silken curtains, and then Charles was too drowsy to understand much.

“Is that you, Wynkin?” he murmured, as at the sound of his voice the serving-man came beside him, while Lady Chauncy and Sir William, and a tall, dignified gentleman, who was the King, and had but that night arrived at the Manor, drew back, lest they might startle the boy. “Is it you, Wynkin, dear?”

“Yes, your Highness.”

“Ah! you don’t know what mighty strange dreams I’ve been dreaming. All about windmills, and little tots of girls, and then, oh, Wynkin, a terrible dark hole—so dark——”

“Think of that now!” interrupted Wynkin. “Well, if I were you I’d wait and tell it all to-morrow.”

“Yes, and then I heard my father’s voice. I wish that wasn’t all a dream, I can tell you.”

“Well, I expect that will be coming true before many days—perhaps many hours—are over. But, go to sleep again now, won’t you?”

“Yes. Is this the Cedar Room?”

“Certainly. You like the Cedar Room, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes. ’Tis well enough, but I don’t like the door of it to be locked.”

“Oh, well, then we must talk to Lady Chauncy about it to-morrow,” said Wynkin, as he stole a sly glance at her ladyship, who smiled in her white prim frame of a cap. “It is a grave question, and will have to be considered.”

“No, it will not,” said the Prince of Wales. “’Tis proper for my wishes to be obeyed.”

“Well, if you promise not to run away, perhaps——”

“Run away—I do not want to run away. I——”

“You’d promise you wouldn’t?”

“Certainly.”

“On your honor?”

“_Honor bright_,” murmured Charles as he fell asleep again.

* * * * *

It is hardly necessary to say that Charles kept his word. The favor he desired was granted him after he had been summoned next day to the presence of the King and of Sir William and Lady Chauncy in the dining-hall. Each of them in turn pointed out to him not only the terrible danger he had exposed himself to by running away out into the wide world, but also the misery and strife that had nearly come of it for everybody—not by any means least or last for good Master and Mistress Speedwell and the sweet little maid Molly, who had been so kind and pitying of his plight.

After that Charles was permitted to leave the great shadowy hall, and since the King and Sir William considered that he must have suffered enough, and had shown himself brave as boys should be under difficulties and privations, no more was said about the matter by the King or by Sir William. Lady Chauncy, however, never wearied for a long time of lamenting that she could not “give him a good whipping as he deserved,” she said, “as much as any other naughty little boy,” and to escape that was one of the very few advantages Charles found in being the King’s eldest son, upon whom at that time it was not accounted lawful to lay whipping materials of any kind.

Till a short time after, when his father took him to London with him, Charles had his freedom in the old house as far as his given word allowed it him. As to Wynkin, he remained Charles’s most trusty and well-beloved friend to the end of his long life.

Molly grew up to be a brave yeoman’s wife, and of winter nights as she sat at her wheel and little, merry-faced, golden-haired, blue-eyed children, like once she herself had been, were gathered round her, she would relate the story of the gipsy boy who was now King of England. As for the miller, he lived long and peacefully, not mixing so much as of old in the affairs of the nation, but attending to the grinding of his corn, and listening with a contented mind to the music of the mill-sails, as they whirled in the wind.

* * * * *

[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text:

Page 23—it to if—“even if he dared”.]