This end of proceedings, with no Bacon to lead us, did not surprise nor disappoint me.  Then, too, the fact that I was cleared of suspicion of theft in the eyes of her I loved and her family, at least, filled me with an ecstasy which sometimes awoke me from slumber like a pain.  And though I was quite resolved not to let that beloved maid fling away herself upon me, unless my innocence was proven world-wide, and to shield her at all costs to myself, yet sometimes the hope that in after years I might be able to wed her and not injure her, started up within me.  She came to see me whenever she could steal away, Madam Cavendish being still in that state of hatred against me, for my participation in the riot, though otherwise disposed enough to give her consent to our marriage on the spot.  And every day came my brother John and Catherine, and now and then Parson Downs.  And the parson used to bring me choice spirits in his pocket, and tobacco, though I could touch only the latter for fear of inflaming my wounds, and he used to sit and read me some of Will Shakespeare’s Plays, which he bore under his cassock, and a prayer-book openly in hand, that being the only touch of hypocrisy which ever I saw about Parson Downs.

“Lord, Harry, thou dost not want prayers,” he would say, “but rather being fallen as thou art, in an evil sink of human happenings, somewhat about them, and none hath so mastered the furthest roots of men’s hearts as Will Shakespeare.  ’Tis him and a pipe thou needst, lad.”  So saying, down he would sit himself betwixt me and the fiery western window, and I got to believe more in his Christianity, than ever I had done when I had heard him hold forth from the pulpit.

’Twas from him I knew the sad penalty which they fixed upon for me, for the 29th of May, that being Royal Oak Day, when they celebrated the Restoration in England, and more or less in the colonies, and on which a great junketing had been arranged, with races, and wrestling, and various sports.

Parson Downs came to me the afternoon of the 28th, and sat gazing at me with a melancholy air, nor offered to read Will Shakespeare, though he filled my pipe and pressed hard upon me a cup of Burgundy.

“’Twill give thee heart, Harry,” he said, “and surely now thy wounds be so far healed, ’twill not inflame them, and in any case, why should good spirit inflame wounds?  Faith, and I believe not in so much bleeding and so little stimulating.  I’ll be damned, Harry, if I see what is left to inflame in thee, not a hint of colour in thy long face.  Stands it not to reason, that if no blood be left in thee for the wounds to work upon, they must even take thy vitals?  But I am no physician.  However, smoke hard as thou canst, poor Harry, if thou wilt not drink, for I have something to tell thee, and there is that about our good tobacco of Virginia—­now we have rescued it, betwixt you and me, from royal freebooters—­which is soothing to the nerves and tending to allay evil anticipations.”