The night of the day on which the officers of the Sheriff’s court of Carlisle visited Shoulthwaite, the night of Simeon Stagg’s departure from Wythburn in pursuit of Ralph, the night of Rotha’s sorrow and her soul’s travail in that solitary house among the mountains, was a night of gayety and festival in the illuminated streets of old Lancaster.  The morning had been wet and chill, but the rain-clouds swept northward as the day wore on, and at sundown the red bars belted the leaden sky that lay to the west of the towers of the gray castle on the hill.

A proclamation by the King had to be read that day, and the ancient city had done all that could be done under many depressing conditions to receive the royal message with fitting honors.  Flags that had lain long furled, floated from parapet and pediment, from window and balcony, from tower and turret.  Doors were thrown open that had not always swung wide on their hinges, and open house was kept in many quarters.

Towards noon a man mounted the steps in the Market Place, and read this first of the King’s proclamations and nailed it to the Cross.

A company of red-coated soldiers were marched from the Castle Hill to the hill on the southwest, which had been thrown up six years before by the russet-coated soldiery who had attacked and seized the castle.  Then they were marched back and disbanded for the night.

When darkness fell over highway and byway, fires were lit down the middle of the narrow streets, and they sent up wide flakes of light that brightened the fronts of the half-timbered houses on either side, and shot a red glow into the sky, where the square walls of the Dungeon Tower stood out against dark rolling clouds.  Little knots of people were at every corner, and groups of the baser sort were gathered about every fire.  Gossip and laughter and the click of the drinking-horn fell everywhere on the ear.  But the night was still young, and order as yet prevailed.

The Market Place was the scene of highest activity.  Numbers of men and boys sat and stood on the steps of the Cross, discussing the proclamation that had been read there.  Now and again some youth of more scholarship than the rest held a link to the paper, and lisped and stammered through its bewildering sentences for the benefit of a circle of listeners who craned their necks to hear.

The proclamation was against public vice and immorality of various sorts which were unpunishable by law.  It set forth that there were many persons who had no method of expressing their allegiance to their Sovereign but that of drinking his health, and others who had so little regard for morality and religion as to have no respect for the virtue of the female sex.

The loyaly of the Lancasterians might be unimpeachable, but their amusement at the proclamation was equally beyond question.

“That from Charles Stuart!” said one, with a laugh; and he added, with more familiarity of affection for his King than reverence for his august state, “What a sly dog he is, to be sure!”