mistake! La," she laughs, "I'm like to die!"

I'd a mind to tell her ladyship that a loosening of her stays might
prolong life, but I didn't. Instead, I delivered the message from
Pierre Radisson and took myself off a mighty mad man; for youth can be
angry, indeed. And the cause of the anger was the same as fretteth the
Old World and New to-day. Rebecca was measuring Jack by old standards.
I was measuring Rebecca by new standards. And the measuring of the old
by the new and the new by the old teareth love to tatters.

Pierre Radisson I met at the entrance to the Fur Company's offices in
Broad Street. His steps were of one on steel springs and his eyes
afire with victory.

"We've beaten them," he muttered to me. "His Majesty favours us! His
Majesty accepted the furs and would have us at Whitehall to-morrow
night to give account of our doings. An they try to trick me out of
reward I'll have them to the foot o' the throne!"

But of Pierre Radisson's intrigue against his detractors I was not
thinking at all.

"Were the courtiers about?" I asked.

"Egad! yes; Palmer and Buckingham and Ashley leering at Her Grace of
Portsmouth, with Cleveland looking daggers at the new favourite, and
the French ambassador shaking his sides with laughter to see the women
at battle. His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, got us access to
present the furs. Egad, Ramsay, I am a rough man, but it seemed
prodigious strange to see a king giving audience in the apartments of