Months had passed. On the 6th of February, 1685, died Charles II., and James, Duke of York, succeeded to the throne. At once, through England, the story was spread that he had been poisoned by the Jesuits to secure the succession for James, and forestall the purpose of the King to declare the legitimacy of his son, the Duke of Monmouth. So great was the suspicion entertained against James, that this slander was very widely believed, and alarm and resentment grew in the hearts of the people. On the very first Sunday after his father's death James went in solemn state to Mass, and at his Coronation refused to receive the Sacrament at the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

When the crown was set on his head it slipped, and nigh fell on the floor; and this little incident was whispered, then bruited, through England, and was regarded as a token from heaven that he was not the rightful Sovereign, but an usurper.

Then came the punishment of that scoundrel, Titus Oates, richly deserved; but Oates was a popular favourite, and his chastisement raised him to the pedestal of a Protestant martyr.

It was well known that James aimed at the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act, and at the toleration—even promotion—of Popery, and the country was in fevered agitation and brooding anger at what was menaced.

Such was the condition of affairs in the spring of 1685.

There had been catching weather, a few days of bright sunshine, and then thunder-showers. Then the sky had cleared, the wind was well up to the north, and, though the sun was hot, the air was fresh. It was scented, everywhere except on the moor, with the fragrance of hay.

Julian Crymes was out of doors enjoying the balmy air and the sloping, golden rays of the evening sun. She had some embroidery in her hands; but she worked little at it. Her eyes looked away dreamily at the distant moor, and specially at a little grey patch of sycamores, that seemed—so remote were they—against the silvery moor, to be a cloud-shadow. Behind that grey tuft rose Ger Tor, strewn with granite boulders; and on one side opened the blue cleft of the Tavy, where it had sawn for itself a way from the moor-land into the low country. The dark eyes of the girl were full to spilling—so full that, had she tried to continue her needlework, she would have been unable to see how to make her stitches.

Her breath came short and quick, for she was suffering real pain—that gnawing ache which in its initiation is mental, but which becomes sensibly physical.

Julian had loved Anthony. She loved him still. When he had come that evening of the fair to Kilworthy, her heart had bounded: her head had been giddy with pleasure at seeing him again—above all, at seeing him without his wife. Towards Urith she felt implacable, corroding hatred. That girl—with no merit that she could see, only a gloomy beauty—a beauty as savage as the moors on the brink of which she lived, and on which Anthony had found her—that girl had shaken to pieces at a touch her cloud-castle of happiness, and dissolved it into a rain of salt disappointment.

Anthony was taken from her, taken from her for ever, and her own hopes laid in the dust. Julian had battled with her turbulent heart; her conscience had warned her to forget Anthony, and at times she really felt as if she had conquered her passion. No sooner, however, did she see Anthony again, than it woke up in full strength; and whenever she saw Urith, her jealous rage shook itself and sharpened its claws.

Her father was away in London, and on the seat beside her lay a letter she had that day received from him. He had written full of uneasiness at the political and religious situation. Recently the Earl of Bath had been down in the West of England with new charters to towns in Devon and Cornwall, constituting new electoral bodies, or altering the former bodies, and a hurried election had ensued, in which great pressure had been used to obtain the return of the Court party, of Catholics and Tories, by intimidation on the one side and by bribery on the other. Mr. Crymes, however, supported by the authority of the Earl of Bedford, had been returned for Tavistock in the Protestant interest, and he was now in London, sitting in the first Parliament summoned by James II.

Titus Oates, whom the Protestants, or at all events the more ignorant and prejudiced among them, believed in as a faithful witness, had been whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and two days after, again from Newgate to Tyburn, for having revealed the Popish Plot, which was declared to be a fabrication of his own imagination. He and Dangerfield, another of these witnesses, had been pilloried. The King meditated the repeal of the Habeas Corpus and the forcible introduction of the Roman Catholic religion. It was rumoured that there was a rising in Scotland, headed by the Duke of Argyle; there was a great uneasiness in London, and a disturbance of spirits throughout the country. Though the Members of Parliament had been elected in a questionable manner, so as to bring together an undue preponderance of creatures of the Court; yet it had not proved itself as submissive as the King expected. The letter concluded with the words:—"How this will all end, God knows. For myself, I doubt whether there will not be great troubles again even as there were in the times of His Sacred Majesty King Charles I. For mine own part, I would resist even unto blood, rather than see our religion set at naught, and our liberties trampled under foot by Jesuits; and my daily prayer is that the Lord will avert such things from us, and yet with such extravagance and determination do things appear to be pressed forward with this end, that I have not hope myself of a peaceable issue."

Had Mr. Crymes been then beside his daughter, he might have supposed that the sad political outlook had disturbed her mind, and had brought the tears to her eyes and the flush to her cheeks; but she had read his letter with indifference. His gloomy forecasts had hardly affected her at all, for her heart was filled with its own peculiar bitterness.

What prospect of happiness opened before her? She cared for no one; she could care for no one after having given up her heart to Anthony. From childhood she had looked up to him as her allotted husband—she had grown up with a daily-increasing devotion to him. His good looks, his frankness had helped to make of him an idol before whom she bowed down and worshipped. He was swept out of the horizon of her ambition, and it had left that prospect utterly blank and colourless. She had valued her fortune, her home, only as means of enriching Anthony, and giving him a worthy position in the county. Her fortune was now wholly without value to her. She would have been contented to be a beggar with him, if she could have possessed him wholly as her own.

Suddenly she started, and lost her colour; she saw Anthony coming up the drive to the house. He also saw her on the terrace, in her white gown under the yew-trees, and he waved his hat to her. She beckoned to him; she could not help herself. She knew that it would have been right for her to fly up the steps and hide in the walled garden which occupied the slope of the hill above the terraces, but she was powerless to move—to withhold her hand from signing to him to draw near.

He obeyed at once, and came up the steps to the first terrace with a shouted salutation.

How handsome he was! What dark, sparkling eyes! What wavy long hair, that fell over his brow and cheeks as he took off his broad-brimmed hat, so that he was forced to put his hands to his face and brush the thick curly locks back.

Julian did not rise; she sat on her bench as though frozen, and her blood stood still in her arteries. She looked at him with eyes large and trembling between the lashes. Then he came striding towards her, with his hearty salutation, and at once all the blood that had been arrested in her veins, as Jordan when the Ark stood in its course, rushed back in pent-up, burning floods, and so blinded and stunned her that for a moment or two she could neither see nor speak.

After a few moments, during which he stood respectfully by her, hat in hand, she looked up into his eyes, and asked why he had come.

He was warm with walking, and the drops stood on his brow, and he had a heightened glow in his face. He was handsomer than ever, she exclaimed inwardly, and then thought, "Oh! if he had been mine! been mine! as he ought to have been—as he would have been but for——" Then she checked herself, assumed a coolness she did not feel, and asked, "Has anything else brought you here than the desire to give us honest pleasure at seeing again an old friend?"

"Indeed, Julian," answered Anthony, "I have come on more self-seeking purposes. We are behind with our hay at Willsworthy. The place lies so high, and is so bleak, that we are a fortnight behind you here; and then the weather has played us tricks, so that none has as yet been saved. I want additional help; there are none save our two men and myself. Solomon Gibbs counts naught, and I cannot ask help from Hall, as you well know. I do not desire to ask a favour elsewhere, and so I have come here to see Fox, and ask his help."

"Fox is away—I believe he is at Hall. But I can answer your question, and grant your petition, which I do with a ready heart. How many men do you want? I will send all you desire—I will come myself and help toss the hay—No," she checked herself, as the thought of Urith rose within, "no, I will not go near Willsworthy myself, but I will send the workmen."

"I thank you," answered Anthony. "We do not grow rich shears of hay as you do here; but what does grow is said to be sweet. I hope it may be so, for it is not over-much."

There was a tone of disparagement in reference to Willsworthy that struck Julian.

"I have heard Fox comment on the place," she said, "and he thinks well of it."

"A thing may look well at a distance, that won't bear looking into close at hand," said Anthony.

She looked at him, and his eyes fell. He had not meant more than he had said, but when she thus glanced up with a query in her eyes, he thought that perhaps his words might apply to other things than grass fields and tumble-down farm buildings.

Julian took up the letter from the seat by her, and passed her hand lightly over the seat, as a sign to him to take it.

He did so, without more ado. He was heated and tired with his walk.

Then Julian resumed her embroidery, and bowed her head over it. She waited for him to start some topic of conversation. But he was silent. He who had formerly been full of talk and mirth, had become reserved and grave.

After a long and painful silence, Julian asked, in a low voice, "What is Urith about?"

"I beg your pardon?" asked Anthony, roused out of a reverie. "Urith—what about Urith?"

"I asked what she was about."

"I cannot tell. Nothing in particular, I suppose."

The same tone as that in which he had spoken about Willsworthy.

"Your marriage does not seem to have improved your spirits. I miss your olden gaiety."

"I have enough to take that out of me. There is my father's continued ill-humour. What think you of that, Julian? Is there any immediate prospect of his coming to a better mind?"

"My brother could answer this question better than I, for I have no occasion or opportunity for speaking with your father, whereas Fox is over at Hall twice or thrice in the week."

"What makes him go there?"

"There you ask me what once more I cannot answer. But let us say he goes in your interest. He is your friend."

"About the only friend I have left," said Anthony, with bitterness.

"Fox is not the man I would choose if I had the selection," said Julian. "I should know him better than most, as he is my brother—that is to say, my half-brother. I thank God—only my half-brother. Take heed to yourself, Anthony, that he does not play you a scurvy trick."

"What can he do?"

"You are generous and forgiving. Fox is neither. He has not forgiven you that blow with the glove that injured his eye."

"You wrong him, Julian."

"All I can say to you is—do not trust him. I never—never trust him. If he says one thing he means the contrary. Did he tell you that he went to Hall with the end of persuading your father to forgive you?"

"He did not even mention to me that he saw my father often."

"Well," said Julian, drawing a long breath, "whilst we are together, which is not often now, not as it was, let us talk of matters more pleasant than the habits and ways of action of Fox."

"What shall we talk about?"

"There!" said Julian, putting her father's letter into his hand. "Read that. If you cannot find a topic, I must help you to one."

Anthony read the letter with an elbow on each knee and his legs wide apart, so that his head was bent low. As he read, Julian's eyes were on him. Involuntarily a sigh escaped her bosom. If he thought of it at all he attributed it to sympathy with her father's anxiety; had he looked up and seen her face, he would have been undeceived. It was well for him that he did not.

The letter interested him greatly. Like the bulk of the young men of the West, he was keenly alive to the political situation, and was a hot partisan. The gathering together of the men in taverns led to eager discussion of politics; the orderly Government of the Protector, and the extravagance and exactions of the restored Royalty, had aroused comparison. Under Old Noll the name of England had been respected abroad, and the English people could not forget and forgive the humiliation of the Dutch fleet in the Medway and the burning of Chatham. Those who had no love for Puritanism were, nevertheless, ardent supporters of Liberty, and firmly resolved that their country should not be brought under Roman Catholic despotism. The ill-treatment of the Waldenses had roused great feeling in England, collections for them had been made in every parish church, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was not forgotten, the exiled Protestants filled all England with the tale of the cruelties and oppression to which they had been subjected, and had helped to deepen to a dogged determination in men's hearts the resolve never to suffer the Roman religion to obtain the mastery again in the land.

Anthony's brow darkened and his lips tightened as he read. When he had done the letter he started to his feet, planted his hat on his head, and exclaimed:

"My God! I wish it would come to blows, and that I could carry a pike."

"Pshaw!" said Julian; "what excitable creatures you men are concerning matters that move us not a whit. I have forgotten what my father wrote about. Against whom would you trail a pike? With whom come to blows?"

Anthony did not answer, for it was not easy to reply to these questions. He would fight for liberty and religion. But against whom? He dare not breathe even to himself the thought that it would be against his King.

"And, pray, why come to blows?"

"If you had read your father's letter with attention, you would know. For my part, I should hail war, if there were a chance of it, that I might have some occupation for my hands."

"You have the hay," said Julian, ironically.

"I want space to move, air to breathe. I am cramped. I—I do not know what I want," he said, and dashed his hat on the ground again, and threw himself into the seat by Julian.

"How would Urith relish you taking the pike for any cause?"

Anthony did not answer. He was looking sullenly, musingly before him. He had found out what troubled him—what took the brightness out of his life. The circle in which he moved, in which his energies were expended, was too cramped. To make hay! Was that a fitting work to occupy his mind and powers of body? His world—was that to be the little two-hundred-acre estate of Willsworthy?

"You have not been married above two months, and you are already sighing with impatience to be away in a battle-field—anywhere but at home, poor Anthony!" Her face was turned from him that he might not see how her cheeks flamed.

He said nothing. He did not even bid her a good-by; but he rose, resumed his hat, and walked away, with his head down, absorbed in his thoughts.