University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.
I MEET WITH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN DISGUISE.

With a single incident in the autumn of 1643 I pass
on.

I was one of a mounted party on a reconnoitring
expedition south of Oxford, when we saw approaching
our woodland bivouac a party of three persons, consisting
of a tall sad-looking man and a very beautiful young
girl, with the trooper who had arrested them. It soon
appeared upon the highway.

As they drew nearer, I rose quickly from the grass
upon which I was lying, and looked at them attentively,
certain that the man and girl were old acquaintances.
The last rays of sunset illumined their figures as they
came,—they had now drawn near,—and I rose to my
feet, recognizing Gregory Brandon and his daughter
Janet.

The terrible headsman, with whom I had conversed
on that night of my adventure in Rosemary Lane,
seemed older, more melancholy, and more timid.

Janet was even more beautiful; and there was something
saintly in the thin face with the white cheeks
and great soft eyes. She was perfectly calm; but her
father was trembling,—not so much from fear, I think,
as from a chronic disorder of the nerves.

The young girl, who was plainly but neatly clad,
looked around calmly. Her eyes fell upon me, and
were riveted for an instant to my face; then I saw a
slight color rise to her white cheeks.

“I see you recognize us, sir,” she said, in her low
sweet voice. “Please say that we are not enemies of
the king, but do not say aught more.”

The latter words were uttered in a whisper almost.
Her father evidently heard them, for he clasped his
hands and looked at me in a most beseeching manner.

“Who are these people?” said the young officer in
command of the reconnoitring party.

“Arrested on the high-road, lieutenant,” said the
man escorting them, touching his hat; “orders to stop
everybody and get information; found this old one and
young one out tramping, and brought 'em along.”

“Right!” said the young officer; and, turning to the
headsman,—

“Your name, and where were you going with this
damsel?” he asked.

“My name is Gregory, good sir, and I live with my
daughter yonder in the small house in the valley; we
were returning from a neighbor's when we were stopped
and brought here.”

“That account is straightforward, friend; but the
times are dangerous. You may belong to the other
faction; and I will keep you prisoner.”

“Not my daughter too, sir!” exclaimed the headsman.

“Needs must, friend.”

The headsman looked at me with a beseeching expression,
and I interposed.

“This old man is known to me, lieutenant,” I said;
“I vouch for him, and propose that you apply the
cavalier test.”

“Good!—in case you vouch for him, Mr. Cecil;
and your proposal is fair.”

A flagon was quickly produced by one of the men
and filled with wine. This was handed to the headsman,
and the young lieutenant said,—

“What is the health that all good Englishmen drink
first?”

The headsman's face flushed quickly, and, raising the
flagon, he exclaimed,—

“God save King Charles!”

He emptied the flagon to the last drop, and the young
officer clapped him gayly on the back.

“That satisfies me, old man!” he said. “No one
can bring out a round `God save King Charles!' of
that sort, and be disloyal under all. You are free, and
your pretty daughter. Return home; and as you know
this worthy man, Mr. Cecil, I counsel you to go with
him and make him give you a good supper in return
for your championship.”

I was about to refuse, but the maiden Janet looked
at me significantly and made me a slight gesture. I
therefore saluted the lieutenant, detached the bridle of
my horse from the bough over which it hung, and, walking
beside the headsman and his daughter, went towards

the small house which they had pointed out as their
dwelling.

“I humbly thank you, sir,” said the headsman, in his
earnest tremulous voice, when we were beyond hearing:
“you have been kind in procuring our release.”

“I try to repay the debt I owe you and your daughter,
sir,” I said. “But for her, I had perished one night in
London. You no longer live there?”

“I fled thence,” was the low reply. “My fearful
office of headsman became horrible in my eyes. Things
are growing frightful, and no one knows whose head
may fall.”

He groaned as he spoke.

“I know that that others know not,” he muttered,
in a terrified whisper. “The new leaders are merciless.
They are hungry for blood. Already they have resolved
to execute Archbishop Laud; and think! 'twas I who
must perforce, as headsman of London, sever the gray
head of that poor old man from the emaciated body!
You start, sir, and refuse to credit that, I see!—but
even worse may come.”

The speaker's voice was wellnigh inaudible as he
uttered the last words.

“You are a friend of the king,” he whispered: “when
you return, say to him, `Do not fall into the hands of
your enemies, or trust them.' The blood of nobles
and bishops is not enough to satisfy them.”

He turned fearfully pale.

“They thirst for his!”

It was rather an awe-struck murmur than aught else.
The thought seemed to overwhelm the speaker.

“So I fled from them,” he added, at length; “pike

or dagger at my throat would force me to my terrible
office. For I am a coward, sir,—a wretched coward!
I should not resist them: so I fled from London. Here,
in the small house you see yonder, once my father's,
I have hid myself with my Janet. God grant that we
may lie here unnoted, and that I may not break my
oath!”

I looked at the speaker, whose brow was bathed in
icy sweat.

“Your oath! What oath?” I asked, struck by his
expression of terror.

“The oath of the headsman to perform his office
whenever an order is brought him,” he whispered.
“The oath is a fearful one, and binds soul and body.
From the moment the order comes, the condemned no
longer belongs to the law. The headsman enters his
cell, touches his shoulder, and says, `You now belong
to me!”'

I could not forbear recoiling from the personage
beside me. He had thus spoken often.

“You are right, sir,” he groaned. “I am accursed,
and dare not offer my bloody hand to an honest man.”

The girl turned her eyes swimming in tears upon
him.

“But you will shed no more blood, father,” she
murmured, in a broken voice. “The past is fearful;
but it is past, and will never return; and you have me,
father,—I will take your hand.”

With a burst of tears she caught one of his hands,
and, throwing her other arm around him, leaned sobbing
upon his bosom.

The headsman raised his eyes to heaven.

“Thank God, this is left me!” he said; “the love
of the one I love best.”

We had come in front of the small house,—a cottage
under a large elm near the roadside.

“I will not ask you to come in and sup with the
headsman of London,” said the old man, in a low voice;
“but one is here now, very sick, and desirous of seeing
some one from the king's army.”

“A sick man?”

“Or child, sir; I know not which.”

“His name?”

“He calls himself Geoffrey Hudson.”