The room into which the travellers had been smuggled was a wing of the old house, open to the whitewashed rafters, and with the customary broad hearth.  Armor hung about the walls—­a sword here, a cutlass there, and over the rannel-tree a coat of chain steel.  It was clearly the living-room of the landlord’s family, and was jealously guarded from the more public part of the inn.  But when the door was open into the passage that communicated with the rest of the house, the loud voices of the Royalists could be heard in laughter or dispute.

When the family vacated this room for the convenience of Ralph and Sim, they left behind at the fireside, sitting on a stool, a little boy of three or four, who was clearly the son of the landlord.  Ralph sat down, and took the little fellow between his knees.  The child had big blue eyes and thin curls of yellow hair.  The baby lips answered to his smile, and the baby tongue prattled in his ear with the easy familiarity which children extend only to those natures that hold the talisman of child-love.

“And what is your name, my little man?” said Ralph.

“Darling,” answered the child, looking up frankly into Ralph’s face.

“Good.  And anything else?”

“Ees, Villie.”

“Do they not say you are like your mother, Willie?” said Ralph, brushing the fair curls from the boy’s forehead.  “Me mammy’s darling,” said the little one, with innocent eyes and a pretty curve of the little mouth.

“Surely.  And what will you be when you grow up, my sunny boy?”

“A man.”

“Ah! and a wit, eh?  But what will you be at your work—­a farmer?”

“Me be a soldier.”  The little face grew bright at the prospect.

“Not that, sweetheart.  If you have luck like most of us, perhaps you’ll have enough fighting in your life without making it your trade to fight.  But you don’t understand me yet, Willie, darling?”

The little one’s father entered the room at this moment, and the opening of the door brought the sound of jumbled voices from a distant apartment.  The noisy party of Royalists apparently belonged to the number of those who hold that a man’s manners in an inn may properly be the reverse of what they are expected to be at home.  The louder such roysterers talk, the more they rap out oaths, the oftener they bellow for the waiters and slap them on the back, the better they think they are welcome in a house of public entertainment.

Amidst the tumult that came from a remote part of the inn a door was heard to open, and a voice was distinguishable above the rest calling lustily for the landlord.

“I must go off to them,” said that worthy.  “They expect me to stand host as well as landlord, and sit with them at their drinking.”

When the door closed again, Sim lifted the boy on to his knee, and looked at him with eyes full of tenderness.  The little fellow returned his gaze with a bewildered expression that seemed to ask a hundred silent questions of poor Sim’s wrinkled cheeks and long, gray, straggling hair.