liberty and comfort, while the weight of his clumsy person must still hang about him, and his unfitness to carry the same go on increasing with the bulk to be carried—­such a prospect required something more than loyalty to meet it with equanimity.  To the young and strong, adventure ought always to be more attractive than ease, but none save those who are themselves within sight of old age can truly imagine what an utter horror the breach of old habits and loss of old comforts is to the aged.

But to the good marquis it was consolation enough to repeat to himself the text from his precious Vulgate:  Scimus enim; For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

For the ladies, so long as their father-chief was with them, they were at least not too anxious.  Whatever was done must be the right thing, and in the midst of tumult and threat they were content.  If only their Edward had been with them too!

But surrender, even when the iron shot was driving his stately house into showers of dirt, the marquis found it hard indeed to contemplate.  The eastern side of the stone court was now little better than a heap of rubbish, and the hour of assault could not be far off, although as yet there had been no second summons; but he could not forget that, though the castle was his, it was not for himself but for his king he held it garrisoned, and how could he yield it without the approval of his sovereign?  The governor shared in the same chivalry with his father, and was equally anxious for a word from the king.  But that king was a prisoner in the hands of a hostile nation, and how was he to receive message or return answer?  Nay, how were they to send message or receive answer, not even knowing with certainty where his majesty was, and but presuming that he was still at Newcastle?  And not to mention difficulties at every step of the way, their house itself was so beset that no one could issue from its gates without risk of being stopped, searched, detained until it should have fallen.  For the besiegers knew well enough that lord Glamorgan was still in Ireland, straining his utmost on behalf of the king; and what more likely than that he should, with the men he was still raising in Ireland, make some desperate attempt to turn the scales of war, striking first, it might well be, for the relief of his father’s castle?

These things were all pretty freely spoken of in the family, and Dorothy understood the position of affairs as well as any one.  And now at length it seemed to her that the hour had arrived for attempting some return for Raglan’s hospitality.  No service she had hitherto stumbled upon had any magnitude in her eyes, but now—­to be the bearer of dispatches to the king!  It would suffice at least, even if it turned out a failure, to prove her not ungrateful.  But she too had her confidant, and in the absence of lord Glamorgan would consult with Caspar.