many tall fellows might go in peril of their lives.

Richard, meanwhile, had turned to the man on his left - young Vallancey,
a notorious partisan of the Duke of Monmouth's, a hair-brained gentleman
who was his own worst enemy.

"May I count on you, Ned?" he asked.

"Aye - to the death," said Vallancey magniloquently.

"Mr. Vallancey," said Trenchard with a wry twist of his sharp features,
"you grow prophetic."



CHAPTER II
SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE


>From Scoresby Hall, near Weston Zoyland, young Westmacott rode home
that Saturday night to his sister's house in Bridgwater, a sobered
man and an anguished. He had committed a folly which was like to
cost him his life to-morrow. Other follies had he committed in his
twenty-five years - for he was not quite the babe that Blake had
represented him, although he certainly looked nothing like his age.
But to-night he had contrived to set the crown to all. He had good
cause to blame himself and to curse the miscalculation that had
emboldened him to launch himself upon a course of insult against this
Wilding, whom he hated with all the currish and resentful hatred of
the worthless for the man of parts.