"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
Falconnet's next friend.

"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"

At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now--

"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.

He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.

"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop
now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together."

After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its