Nance Holdaway was on her knees before the fire blowing the green wood that voluminously smoked upon the dogs, and only now and then shot forth a smothered flame; her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for she had been some while at this ungrateful task, but her mind was gone far away to meet the coming stranger.  Now she met him in the wood, now at the castle gate, now in the kitchen by candle-light; each fresh presentment eclipsed the one before; a form so elegant, manners so sedate, a countenance so brave and comely, a voice so winning and resolute ­sure such a man was never seen!  The thick-coming fancies poured and brightened in her head like the smoke and flames upon the hearth.

Presently the heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work.  He glanced at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing of the casement clumsily repaired with paper.

“Leave that fire a-be,” he cried.  “What, have I toiled all my life to turn innkeeper at the hind end?  Leave it a-be, I say.”

“La, uncle, it doesn’t burn a bit; it only smokes,” said Nance, looking up from her position.

“You are come of decent people of both sides,” returned the old man.  “Who are you to blow the coals for any Robin-run-agate?  Get up, get on your hood, make yourself useful, and be off to the ‘Green Dragon.’”

“I thought you was to go yourself,” Nance faltered.

“So did I,” quoth Jonathan; “but it appears I was mistook.”

The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and she began to hang back.  “I think I would rather not, dear uncle,” she said.  “Night is at hand, and I think, dear, I would rather not.”

“Now you look here,” replied Jonathan, “I have my lord’s orders, have I not?  Little he gives me, but it’s all my livelihood.  And do you fancy, if I disobey my lord, I’m likely to turn round for a lass like you?  No, I’ve that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I wouldn’t walk a mile, not for King George upon his bended knees.”  And he walked to the window and looked down the steep scarp to where the river foamed in the bottom of the dell.

Nance stayed for no more bidding.  In her own room, by the glimmer of the twilight, she washed her hands and pulled on her Sunday mittens; adjusted her black hood, and tied a dozen times its cherry ribbons; and in less than ten minutes, with a fluttering heart and excellently bright eyes, she passed forth under the arch and over the bridge, into the thickening shadows of the groves.  A well-marked wheel-track conducted her.  The wood, which upon both sides of the river dell was a mere scrambling thicket of hazel, hawthorn, and holly, boasted on the level of more considerable timber.  Beeches came to a good growth, with here and there an oak; and the track now passed under a high arcade of branches, and now ran under the open sky in glades.  As the girl proceeded these glades became more frequent, the trees began again to decline in size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy coverts.  Last of all there was a fringe of elders; and beyond that the track came forth upon an open, rolling moorland, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse.  Right over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot with ice.

Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood the lights of the “Green Dragon” hove in sight, and running close beside them, very faint in the dying dusk, the pale ribbon of the Great North Road.  It was the back of the post-house that was presented to Nance Holdaway; and as she continued to draw near and the night to fall more completely, she became aware of an unusual brightness and bustle.  A post-chaise stood in the yard, its lamps already lighted:  light shone hospitably in the windows and from the open door; moving lights and shadows testified to the activity of servants bearing lanterns.  The clank of pails, the stamping of hoofs on the firm causeway, the jingle of harness, and, last of all, the energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall upon her ear.  By the stir you would have thought the mail was at the door, but it was still too early in the night.  The down mail was not due at the “Green Dragon” for hard upon an hour; the up mail from Scotland not before two in the black morning.

Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled.  Sam, the tall ostler, was polishing a curb-chain with sand; the lantern at his feet letting up spouts of candle-light through the holes with which its conical roof was peppered.

“Hey, miss,” said he jocularly, “you won’t look at me any more, now you have gentry at the castle.”

Her cheeks burned with anger.

“That’s my lord’s chay,” the man continued, nodding at the chaise, “Lord Windermoor’s.  Came all in a fluster ­dinner, bowl of punch, and put the horses to.  For all the world like a runaway match, my dear ­bar the bride.  He brought Mr. Archer in the chay with him.”

“Is that Holdaway?” cried the landlord from the lighted entry, where he stood shading his eyes.

“Only me, sir,” answered Nance.

“O, you, Miss Nance,” he said.  “Well, come in quick, my pretty.  My lord is waiting for your uncle.”

And he ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch.  One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short, purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt and gobbling utterance.  This was my Lord Windermoor.  In his companion Nance beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely dressed, and wearing his own hair.  Her glance but lighted on him, and she flushed, for in that second she made sure that she had twice betrayed herself ­betrayed by the involuntary flash of her black eyes her secret impatience to behold this new companion, and, what was far worse, betrayed her disappointment in the realisation of her dreams.  He, meanwhile, as if unconscious, continued to regard her with unmoved decorum.

“O, a man of wood,” thought Nance.

“What ­what?” said his lordship.  “Who is this?”

“If you please, my lord, I am Holdaway’s niece,” replied Nance, with a curtsey.

“Should have been here himself,” observed his lordship.  “Well, you tell Holdaway that I’m aground, not a stiver ­not a stiver.  I’m running from the beagles ­going abroad, tell Holdaway.  And he need look for no more wages:  glad of ’em myself, if I could get ’em.  He can live in the castle if he likes, or go to the devil.  O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I recommend him to take him in ­a friend of mine ­and Mr. Archer will pay, as I wrote.  And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing for Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off against the wages.”

“But O, my lord!” cried Nance, “we live upon the wages, and what are we to do without?”

“What am I to do? ­what am I to do?” replied Lord Windermoor with some exasperation.  “I have no wages.  And there is Mr. Archer.  And if Holdaway doesn’t like it, he can go to the devil, and you with him! ­and you with him!”

“And yet, my lord,” said Mr. Archer, “these good people will have as keen a sense of loss as you or I; keener, perhaps, since they have done nothing to deserve it.”

“Deserve it?” cried the peer.  “What?  What?  If a rascally highwayman comes up to me with a confounded pistol, do you say that I’ve deserved it?  How often am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated ­that I was cheated?”

“You are happy in the belief,” returned Mr. Archer gravely.

“Archer, you would be the death of me!” exclaimed his lordship.  “You know you’re drunk; you know it, sir; and yet you can’t get up a spark of animation.”

“I have drunk fair, my lord,” replied the younger man; “but I own I am conscious of no exhilaration.”

“If you had as black a look-out as me, sir,” cried the peer, “you would be very glad of a little innocent exhilaration, let me tell you.  I am glad of it ­glad of it, and I only wish I was drunker.  For let me tell you it’s a cruel hard thing upon a man of my time of life and my position, to be brought down to beggary because the world is full of thieves and rascals ­thieves and rascals.  What?  For all I know, you may be a thief and a rascal yourself; and I would fight you for a pinch of snuff ­a pinch of snuff,” exclaimed his lordship.

Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with a pleasant smile, so full of sweetness, kindness, and composure that, at one bound, her dreams returned to her.  “My good Miss Holdaway,” said he, “if you are willing to show me the road, I am even eager to be gone.  As for his lordship and myself, compose yourself; there is no fear; this is his lordship’s way.”

“What? what?” cried his lordship.  “My way?  Ish no such a thing, my way.”

“Come, my lord,” cried Archer; “you and I very thoroughly understand each other; and let me suggest, it is time that both of us were gone.  The mail will soon be due.  Here, then, my lord, I take my leave of you, with the most earnest assurance of my gratitude for the past, and a sincere offer of any services I may be able to render in the future.”

“Archer,” exclaimed Lord Windermoor, “I love you like a son.  Le’ ’s have another bowl.”

“My lord, for both our sakes, you will excuse me,” replied Mr. Archer.  “We both require caution; we must both, for some while at least, avoid the chance of a pursuit.”

“Archer,” quoth his lordship, “this is a rank ingratishood.  What?  I’m to go firing away in the dark in the cold po’chaise, and not so much as a game of écarté possible, unless I stop and play with the postillion, the postillion; and the whole country swarming with thieves and rascals and highwaymen.”

“I beg your lordship’s pardon,” put in the landlord, who now appeared in the doorway to announce the chaise, “but this part of the North Road is known for safety.  There has not been a robbery, to call a robbery, this five years’ time.  Further south, of course, it’s nearer London, and another story,” he added.

“Well, then, if that’s so,” concluded my lord, “lé’ ‘s have t’ other bowl and a pack of cards.”

“My lord, you forget,” said Archer, “I might still gain; but it is hardly possible for me to lose.”

“Think I’m a sharper?” inquired the peer.  “Gen’leman’s parole’s all I ask.”

But Mr. Archer was proof against these blandishments, and said farewell gravely enough to Lord Windermoor, shaking his hand and at the same time bowing very low.  “You will never know,” says he, “the service you have done me.”  And with that, and before my lord had finally taken up his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but imperiously on the arm, and left the room.  In face of the outbreak of his lordship’s lamentations she made haste to follow the truant.