In this night raiding no danger was too great to hold him back from
serving me. Once, when we were washing down our evening meal of meat and
maize cake with plain cold water, I mourned the good wine idling in its
bin at Jennifer House. At that, without a word to me, he took the whole
night for a perilous adventure and fetched a dozen bottles of the
Jennifer port to make me choke and strangle at the thought of what its
bringing had cost in toil and hazard.

Another time I spoke of English beef, saying how it would rebuild a man
at need--how it had made the English soldier what he is. Whereupon, as
before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone
the night long, and slaughtered me some Tory yearling,--'twas Mr.
Gilbert Stair's, I mistrusted, though Dick would never name the owner,
and so I had a sirloin to my breakfast.

In these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. If
he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could
not have made him tenderer.

'Twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom
friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. If I
have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough
and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the
border-born.

But on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart,
a keener eye or a lighter hand. And in a service for friend or mistress
he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about
who made a business of their chivalry.