“Tomorrow the doctor says I may leave my room.  My own idea is that I need never have been kept there at all.”

“If there had been any great occasion for you to have moved about, no doubt you might have done so,” Maria said; “but you might have thrown back your cure, and instead of your bones knitting well and soundly, as the leech says they are in a fair way to do, you might have made but a poor recovery.  Dear me, what impatient creatures boys are!”

“No, indeed I am not impatient,” Rupert said.  “You have all made me so comfortable and happy, that I should indeed be ungrateful were I to be impatient.  I only want to be about again that I may spare you some of the trouble which you bestow upon me.”

“Yes, that is all very well and very pretty,” Maria said, laughing; “but I know that you are at heart longing to be off to join your regiment, and take part in all their marching and fighting.  Do you know, an officer who came here with you after that terrible fight near Antwerp, told me that you covered yourself with glory there?”

“I covered myself with mud,” Rupert laughed.  “Next day, when I had dried a little, I felt as if I had been dipped in dough and then baked.  I am sure I looked like a pie in human shape when you first saw me, did I not?”

“It would have been difficult to tell the colour of your uniform, certainly,” Maria smiled.  “Fortunately, neither cloth nor tailors are scarce in our good town of Dort, and you will find a fresh suit in readiness for you to attire yourself in tomorrow.”

“Oh, that is good of you,” Rupert said, delighted; for he had been thinking ruefully of the spectacle he should present the next day.

As to Hugh, he had been fitted out in bourgeois clothes since he came, and had said no word as to uniform.

In another fortnight Rupert was thoroughly restored to health.  His wound had healed, his bones had perfectly set, and he was as fit for work as ever.  Even his host could not but allow that there was no cause for his further detention.  During this time Rupert had talked much with the Burgomaster, who spoke French fluently, and had told him frequently and earnestly of the grievous harm that was done to the prospects of the war by the mischievous interference with the general’s plans by the Dutch deputies, who, knowing nothing whatever of war, yet took upon themselves continually to thwart the plans of the greatest general of the age.  Van Duyk listened with great attention, and promised that when he went shortly to Haarlem he would use all his influence to abbreviate the powers which the deputies so unwisely used.

Two or three days before the date fixed for Rupert’s departure, he was walking in the town with Mynheer Von Duyk and his daughter, when he observed a person gazing intently at him from the entrance to a small bylane.  He started, and exclaimed: 

“There is that rascal, Sir Richard Fulke!”