’Cast-down Upstill, thou hast shamed thy regiment, carrying thyself thus to a gentlewoman,’ said Richard.

‘Then he fired his carbine after me,’ said Dorothy.

‘That may have been but his duty,’ returned Richard.

‘And worst of all,’ continued Dorothy, ’he said that had he known what I should grow to, he would never have made shoes for me when I was an infant.  Think on that, master Heywood!’

‘Ask the lady to pardon thee, Upstill.  I can do nothing for thee,’ said Richard.

Upstill would have knelt, in lack of other mode of petition strong enough to express the fervour of his desires for release, but Dorothy was content to see him punished, and would not see him degraded.

‘Nay, master Upstill,’ she said, ’I desire not that thou shouldst take the measure of my foot to-night.  Prithee, master Heywood, wilt thou venture thy fingers in the godly man’s mouth for me?  Here is the key of the toy, a sucket which will pass neither teeth nor throat.  I warrant thee it were no evil thing for many a married woman to possess.  I will give it thee when thou marriest, master Heywood, though, good sooth, it were hardly fair to my kind!’

So saying she took a ring from her finger, raised from it a key, and directed Richard how to find its hole in the plum.

’There!  Follow us now to the farm, and find thy wife, for we need her aid,’ said Richard as he drew by the key the little steel instrument from Upstill’s mouth, and restored him to the general body of the articulate.

Thereupon he took Dick by the bridle, and Dorothy and he walked side by side, as if they had been still boy and girl as of old—­for of old it already seemed.

As they went, Richard washed both plum and ring in the dewy grass, and restored them, putting the ring upon her finger.

‘With better light I will one day show thee how the thing worketh,’ she said, thanking him.  ’Holding it thus by the ends, thou seest, it will bear to be pressed; but remove thy finger and thumb, and straight upon a touch it shooteth its stings in all directions.  And yet another day, when these troubles are over, and honest folk need no longer fight each other, I will give it thee, Richard.’

’Would that day were here, Dorothy!  But what can honest people do, while St. George and St. Michael are themselves at odds?’

’Mayhap it but seemeth so, and they but dispute across the Yule-log,’ said Dorothy; ’and men down here, like the dogs about the fire, take it up, and fall a-worrying each other.  But the end will crown all.’

‘Discrown some, I fear,’ said Richard to himself.

As they reached the farm-house, it was growing light.  Upstill fetched his dame from her bed in the hayloft, and Richard told her, in formal and authoritative manner, what he required of her.

‘I will search her!’ answered the dame from between her closed teeth.

‘Mistress Vaughan,’ said Richard, ’if she offer thee evil words, give her the same lesson thou gavest her husband.  If all tales be true, she is not beyond the need of it.—­Search her well, mistress Upstill, but show her no rudeness, for she hath the power to avenge it in a parlous manner, having gone to school to my lord Herbert of Raglan.  Not the less must thou search her well, else will I look upon thee as no better than one of the malignants.’