“I know of no one else whom she could have had in mind,” I answered.

The lad was blushing with delight and confusion like a girl.  He cast down his eyes before me; he stammered when he spoke.  “Harry, if she but love me, I swear I could do as brave deeds as Bacon,” he said.  “I would die would she but carry about a lock of my hair on her bosom as she does his.  I would, Harry.  And you think I have some chance?”

My heart smote me lest I had misled him, for I knew with no certainty the maid’s mind.  “As much chance as any, and more than many, lad,” I said, “and I will do what I can for thee.”

“Harry,” he said, then paused and blushed and twisted his great body about as modestly as a girl, “Harry.”

“What, Sir Humphrey?”

“Once, once—­I never told of it, and no one ever knew since I was alone, and it would have been boasting—­but once—­I—­fought single-handed with that great Christopher Little, whom I met by chance when I was out in the woods, and ’twas two years since, and I, with scarce my full growth, and he pleading for mercy at the second round, with an eye like a blackberry and a nose like a gillyflower, and—­and—­Harry, you might tell her of it, and say not where you got the news, if you thought it no harm.  And, Harry, you will mind the time when I killed the wolf with naught but an oak club for weapon, and she, maybe, hath not heard of that.  And should have been to the front with Bacon, boy as I was, had it not been for my mother—­that you know well and could make her sure of.  And, and—­oh, confound it, Harry, little book wit have I in my head, and she is so clever as never was, and all I have to win her notice be in my hands and heels, for, Harry, you will remember the race I ran with Tom Talbot that Mayday; think you she knows of that?  And—­but she must know how I rode against Nick Barry last St. Andrew’s, and, and—­oh, Lord, Harry, what am I that she should think of me?  But at all odds, whether it be me or you or any other man, see to it that these goods be moved and she not be drawn into this which is hatching, for it may be as big a blaze as Bacon started before we be done with it; but shall I not help thee, Harry, and when will you move them and where?”

“I want no help, lad,” I said, and was indeed firmly set in my mind that he should know nothing about the disposal of the goods lest Mistress Mary come to grief through her love for him, and reasoning that ignorance was his best safeguard and hers.

We went forth from Locust Creek, I having promised that I would do all that I could to further his suit with Mary Cavendish, and when we reached the bend of the road, he having walked beside me, hitherto leading his horse, he was in his saddle and away, having first acquainted me anxiously with the fact that he was to wear that night to the governor’s ball a suit of blue velvet with silver buttons, and asking me if I considered that it would become him in Mistress