And when her lips had touched the cold damp brow—­

“There—­My fourth seven.  At last!  The change is come.  Old—­ impish—­evil—­self left behind.  At last!  Thanks to Him who treads down Satan under our feet.  Thanks!  Take her away now.”

Charles took her away, scarce knowing where they went,—­out into the spring sunshine, on the slopes above the turf bowling-green, where the captive King had beguiled his weary hours.  Only then would awe and emotion let them speak, though his arm was round her, her hand in his, and his first words were, as he looked at the scarf that still bore up her arm, “And this is what you have borne for me?”

“It is all but healed.  Don’t think of it.”

“I shall all my life!  Poor fellow, he might well bid me deserve you.  I never can.  ’Tis to you I owe all.  I believe, indeed, the ambassador might have claimed me, but he is so tardy that probably I should have been hanged long before the proper form was ready; and it would have been to exile, and with a tainted name.  You have won for me the clearing of name and honour—­home, parents and child and all, besides your sweet self.”

“And it was not me, but he whom we so despised and dreaded.  Had I not been seized, I could only have implored for you.”

“I know this, that if you had not been what you are, my boy would have borne a dishonoured name, and we should never have been together as now.”

It was in truth their first meeting in freedom and security as lovers; but it could only be in a grave, quiet fashion, under the knowledge that he, to whom their re-union was chiefly owing, was breathing out the life he had sacrificed for them.  Thus they only gently and in a low voice went over their past doings and feelings as they walked up and down together, till Dr. Woodford came in the sunset to tell them that the change so longed for had come in peace, and with a smile that told of release from the Evil Angel.

* * * * *

Peregrine’s wish was fulfilled, and he was buried in Portchester Churchyard at Mrs. Woodford’s feet.  This time it was Mr. Horncastle, old as he was, who preached the funeral sermon, the In Memoriam of our forefathers; and by special desire of Major Oakshott took for his text, ‘At evening time there shall be light.’  He spoke, sometimes in a voice broken, as much by feeling as by age, of the childhood blighted by a cruel superstition, and perverted, as he freely made confession, by discipline without comprehension, because no confidence had been sought.  Then ensued a tribute of earnest, generous justice to her who had done her best to undo the warp in the boy’s nature, and whose blessed influence the young man had owned to the last, through all the temptations, errors, and frenzies of his life.  Nor did the good man fail to make this a means of testifying to the entire neighbourhood, who had flocked to hear him, all that might be desirable to be known