“Dear Mary!” she said, “my great wish now is to see you don just such a dress as this wedding-gown of mine.”

“Oh la!  Betty, bethink you of my age,” cried Mary, but tears of genuine emotion rose to her eyes.

“Yet would I fain see you my father’s wife,” said Betty.  She put her hands on her shoulders, and looked down from her greater height into her face.

“Say yes, Mary, say yes,” she said.

“I must wait till the right person asks me that question,” answered Mary, half sobbing, half laughing; but Betty persisted: 

“Say yes, Mary dear!”

“Well then yes, if so it must be,” answered Mary.  “You are a good girl, Betty,” and she kissed her warmly, and hurried away to the glass to rearrange her elaborate curls of hair.

Mr. Ives came home full of excitement:  he had heard great news in Wancote, the whole town was ringing with it.

“What do you think has happened?” he cried as he came into the room.

“Has John come home?” asked Betty eagerly.

“No, child, and the servants say that they never expect him until he appears, he is often away like this for a few days.  The news is quite otherwise—­Wild Jack has been taken.”

“Ah!” cried the women in a breath, and Betty turned white as a sheet.

“What will they do with him!” asked Mary.

“He was taken on the king’s highway, some twenty miles from here on the Newbury Road, on the cross roads where the steep way comes down from the downs.  It seems that an important paper had fallen into the possession of some individual here, convicting many well-known gentlemen about Wancote of loyalty to him that is over the sea, and Sir Harry Clare was to carry the paper to Newbury to-night.  I warrant some not very distant friends of ours were shaking in their shoes.”

“They rode four together and all well-armed; but Wild Jack was too much for them—­he and two others attacked the party; he seized the paper himself, after a short encounter with young Clare, whose horse he shot dead.  That accomplished, all made off.  The paper was lost.  Some say Wild Jack burnt it as he rode, some that he swallowed it, some that he tore and scattered it to the four winds of heaven.  Then, when in full flight, his horse stumbled and fell, and the four gentlemen came up with him.  Entangled as he was by the fallen horse, he fought and kept all at bay with his marvellous fencing powers till his men were far out of sight.  Then he broke his sword across his knee, saying that never should his trusty weapon fall into the hands of the king’s enemies.  He was badly wounded.”

“Well?” cried Mary breathlessly.  Betty sat down, she felt cold and faint.

“Well, they took him that night to the nearest village, bound hand and foot.  At first they hardly knew the value of their captive, for he was not riding his famous horse Seagull; had he been mounted as usual, small chance would they have had of capturing Wild Jack.  There was a hasty assembly of magistrates, such as could be induced to come.  I warrant some would have died sooner than join in what followed.  They caused a gallows to be erected forty feet high on the king’s high road, and there they hanged Wild Jack.”