Traitor or patriot?

May-day! None of your raw, drizzling, windy, nineteenth-century May-days, when folks, chilled to their marrow-bones, draw their old cloaks and coats about them and beg for a coz...

"Tush!" he rejoined impatiently. "I'll have no more of these gaddings. And hark you, young mistress, no more of these vanities neither;" and he looked as he spoke, in angry cont...

"Marry! and so here you be at last, child!" said a half-glad, half-chiding, cracked, treble voice, as a brown withered hand unfastened the door from within. "Have you seen your...

When the Rye House was built, or at least its gate-tower wing of which we are now speaking, and which was as old as the time of King Henry the Sixth, probably no dwelling of any...

This recollection of the morning, troubles Ruth strangely now, as she sits in the broad window-seat of her own room, her eyes fixed indeed on the fair moon-lit scene before her,...

One thing only was quite certain, that the maltster was to be seen next morning at the usual hour among his men. As for Lawrence Lee, whatever Rumbold had confided to him remain...

Mistress Sheppard was almost as perfect a specimen of a landlady, as her establishment was a model of an inn; for who has not heard of that famous King's Arms, within whose snug...

"I say," doggedly began Rumbold, and taking no more notice of Lord Howard's mishap than if it had not occurred, "that this must be found, and before morning, else it will betray...

The postern was still on the latch when Ruth reached it. Alas! she had anticipated no less. That it was locked, was no longer one of her fears. She would have sooner her father...

As the sights and sounds of the new day greeted her, she felt a little cheered. One must have been wretched indeed not to have found an agreeable distraction in the blithe bird...

"Lawrence," she said, timorously following his glance, "I want to tell it you. But 'twas all such a confusion. Just a word here and there; yet, oh, Lawrence! such fearful ones;...

Lovelier spring than this one now passing into early summer had not been within living memory. Never had the trees budded more green and fresh-looking, and the roses and larkspu...

The Warder's Room was an excellent example of the famous rule that no stronghold is stronger than its weakest part. Its three outer walls, the one namely terminating the wing, t...

Lingeringly and drearily the sound died in a low angry growl of wind, that came sweeping up muffled and sullen as some vexed human voice. Hark! hark! surely that is a human voic...

"Blunderbusses!" shrieked a voice, which seemed to retreat, as it spoke, into the room's remotest corners; "the gracious powers above! Mind, for mercy's sake, be careful. Not lo...

When the shuffling of the footsteps of the conspirators had died away far down below, not a sound was to be heard, save the rain, now fallen to a gentle patter, and ever and ano...

"So, Master Sheriff," muttered Rumsey, as he stood coolly watching the thin stream of blood trickling slowly from the prostrate body of his victim, "that is one of you ticked of...

He might more effectually have summoned back the wind, as it swept past with a low snarling hiss, as if in mockery of his indignation; and before he had time to repeat the words...

The inmates of the King's Arms had been in bed and asleep full four hours, and profound silence reigned throughout its precincts, when, a few moments after the gatehouse clock h...

Lawrence Lee had meanwhile reached the town. Hardly, however, was he well into the High Street before he was forced to rein up, impeded at every step by the dense throng, crowdi...

Passing beneath the archway, where Lawrence Lee delivered Stars and Garters into the charge of a groom, who advanced to receive her in obedience to a lofty gesture from Mr. Flip...

The king's private apartments in his ramshackle, patched-together, wandering old hunting-lodge, presented a vastly different scene from the like sacred precincts by courtesy mis...

Slowly the gatehouse clock tolled out the hours succeeding Lawrence's departure. Terrible and solemn ones they were for Ruth, maintaining her solitary watch beside the secret pa...

The dig in the ribs accompanying these words, which were rendered bewilderingly indistinct by reason of the quantity of the toothsome edibles he referred to, filling the speaker...

"Oh, all that I grant you; 'tis indeed a mockery of hospitality which moves a man to press his good things on his guest beyond his appetite; and the rascals were to blame--much...

Silent and dark as any city of the dead lies Newmarket under the starless sky. Not so much as a glimmer to be seen even about the palace, excepting from the mullioned lattices o...

The after-supper nap indulged in by Master Alworth was no little affair of forty winks; and he would possibly have slept on till morning's light, had not the sound of countless...

And so as the shadows fled away, and breaking day cast its pale gleams across the face of the dead conspirator, Ruth drew the panel back into its place; for down in the malting-...

"Past three o' the clock, and a fine starlight night," piped the old watchman, as he shuffled along, bell and lantern in hand, down Newmarket High Street. "Past three o' the clo...

"This a fair scene," said the king to himself, as between three and four o'clock in the afternoon he reached the rising ground which commanded the familiar prospect of the squar...

"Mistress, your servant," said the king, his voice dropping to a gentle gravity, as the door opened, and disclosed the gray-clad figure of Ruth Rumbold. "What can we do for you?...

One bright June morning, a few weeks after the events recorded in this little chronicle, the large audience chamber of the palace of Whitehall is thronged with a brilliant compa...