Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

322 own direct duty, as it appeared to me—un- less there was some other way of saving honor—was to inform not only Bunyan of his error, but our general of the great fact which I had stumbled upon: = * Suppose I did? And I did suppose it in order to clear the situation in my addled mind. What then? Cromwell would at once rush a com- pany of troopers to Eveleigh Manor, sur- round the house, and seize the king. And he would probably arrest every other per- son in the house—Mistress Joyce, Ruth Prynne, and old Henry Falconer. No doubt others (as yet unknown to me) who were in sympathy with the house, if not in actual knowledge of its secret, would also suffer. Jonas Slythey would see to that; for now I thought I saw reason for his spying upon the manor, although not clearly his motive for attempting to have Joyce de- stroyed as a “ witch.” Slythey having no love for either Bun- yan or me, and being an adept liar, might even twist facts and motives to involve Hobgoblin and myself, although any such charges must fall flat were I the informer whose word brought about the capture of the king. I the informer whose word brought about the arrest, trial, and probable death of En- gland’s king! My blood turned cold at the thought. For the first time I under- stood that weak hesitancy. of Manchester . and Essex in the matter of doing violence to the king himself. Something in my blood, the old innate respect for the king’s person, made me shrink from the thought of being such an instrument, right and righteous as the people’s cause might be. - Such an exploit as opened before me, beckoned me, commanded me by my sworn oath as a soldier of Parliament, would bring me much fame of a sort, undoubtedly pro- motion, preferment, the restoration of my late father’s estate in Somerset, which shire must inevitably fall to Lord Fairfax pres- ently. But against all this—and my honor as a soldier—the eyes of Mistress Joyce looked at me through a cloud of anger and re- proach. To be the agency of bringing such ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. sorrow and probable humiliation upon Joyce, who, I now saw, was sacrificing her- self to her loyalty—that hurt! _ I groaned as I sat there by the roadside with my head in my hands and my eyes fixed blankly on (I think) the toes of my jackboots. Now I understand all things, except the incident. The rest was clear, and the se- quence of happenings at the manor became established in my mind. Charles, after Naseby, had played the game of the fox, doubling back on his pur- suers and taking to earth where least and last he might be looked for—not a mile from Cromwell’s camp. I could establish almost to within a few hours when he arrived at the manor. He could not have been there that day when Mistress Joyce and Ruth Prynne talked at the kitchen door with Tinker Bunyan and his apprentice. But between that time and the following morning, when Ruth shut the door in our faces, something had developed in that house which made the presence of Roundheads particularly unwelcome. Then Ruth’s letter to Jack Bunyan. Ah! She had spoken the truth when she said that a great misery was like to fall upon the manor, and further ill upon her mis- tress. No doubt Ruth had been indiscreet, but her indiscretion in that letter was born of love for her mistress, fear for her wel- fare, and the desire for a strong man’s ad- vice. Being a woman, she had perhaps forgotten Bunyan’s honor as a soldier in thinking of him-as a man who would not fail her in any emergency. What she had thought to profit by Jack’s advice I do not know. She could hardly have proposed to reveal the some- what unwelcome guest’s identity to Bun- yan. And yet she may have. Who knows the workings of a woman’s reasoning? Per- haps she believed it quite possible to reveal the king’s presence to Hobgoblin Jack and have that Roundhead trooper aid her in some way without doing his soldierly duty. But she did not foresee what did happen —that which promptly made her perceive the fallacy of any such hope of solution— when she discovered the king ahd John a _/ _——~ "sae, AG | ales FD TATE TING OLR EL TOOLS 1] \ ) | A IC attitude of Jonas Slythey in the duck-pond - CGOUL