But when the war ended, in 1814, although he rejoiced as much as any man in the downfall of Bonaparte, he knew that the life he liked had ended too. Not for John Staple, the boredom of military life in peace-time! He yielded at last to his mother’s solicitations, and sold out. She thought that he would find plenty to occupy him in the management of his estate, his father having died a year previously. The elder John Staple had been an indolent man, and for some months his son was busy enough. Then had come the news of Bonaparte’s escape from Elba, and a brief period of exciting activity for John. But Bonaparte had been a prisoner on St. Helena for two years now, and everyone seemed to feel that it was time John settled down to a life of civilian respectability. He felt it himself, and tried to be content, but every now and then a fit of restlessness would seize him. When that happened his subsequent actions would be unpredictable, though, as his brother-in-law gloomily said, it was safe to assume that they would be freakish, and possibly outrageous. Lord Lichfield had every reason to believe that he had once wandered for a couple of weeks with a party of gypsies; and not readily would he forget John’s sudden arrival at his house in Lincolnshire, at midnight, by way of an open window, and clad in strange and disreputable garments.

“Good God, what have you been doing?” he had exclaimed.

“Free trading!” had replied John, grinning at him. “I’m glad I’ve found you at home: I want a bath, and some clean clothes.”

Lord Lichfield had been too much shocked to do more than goggle at him for a full minute. It wasn’t, of course, as bad as John made it sound: the whole affair had been the result of an accident.

“But what I say is this, Fanny!” had complained his lordship later. “If I go sailing, and run into a squall, and have to swim for it, do I get picked up by a smuggling-vessel? Of course I don’t! No one but John would be! What’s more, no one but John would finish the voyage with a set of cut-throat rascals, or help them to land their kegs! And if it had happened to me, I shouldn’t be alive to tell the tale: they’d have knocked me on the head, and dropped me overboard.”

“I cannot conceive how it comes about that he was spared.’” Fanny had said. “Oh, I wish he would not do such things!”

“Yes,” agreed her lord. “Though, mind you, he’s very well able to take care of himself.”

“But in the power of a whole crew of smugglers!”

“I expect they liked him.”

“Liked him?”

“Well, you can’t help liking him!” pointed out his lordship. “He’s a very charming fellow—and I wish to God he’d settle down, and stop kicking up these larks!”

“Mama is right!” declared Fanny. “We must find him an eligible wife!”

Candidate after candidate for this post did Fanny and her mama find, and cunningly throw in John’s way. Apparently he liked them—all of them. This one was a most conversible girl, that one seemed to him a very lively girl, another a remarkably pretty girl. But he asked none of them to marry him. When his sister ventured to ask him once if he had ever been in love, he had replied quite seriously, Yes: he rather thought he had been desperately in love with the lodgekeeper’s wife, who used to regale him with brandy-snaps, and allowed him to keep in a hutch outside her kitchen-door the ferrets Mama had so much disliked.

Was that all? had demanded an exasperated sister. No, there had been a girl in Lisbon, when he first joined. Juanita, or was it Conchita? He couldn’t remember, but at all events she was the loveliest creature you ever saw. Dark, of course, and with the biggest eyes, and such a well-turned ankle! Had he been in love with her? “Lord, yes!” replied John. “We all were!”

He admitted that it was time he was thinking of getting married: not, of course, to Fanny, but to Mama. “Well, I know, Mama,” he said apologetically. “But the thing is I’ve got no fancy for one of these dashed suitable marriages, where you don’t really care a fig for the girl, or she for you. I don’t mean to offer marriage to any girl who don’t give me a leveller. So I daresay I shall remain a bachelor, for they don’t—any of ’em! And if one did,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s Lombard Street to a China orange you wouldn’t take to her!”

“Dearest boy, I should take to any girl whom you loved!” declared Mrs. Staple.

He grinned his appreciation of this mendacity, and gave her shoulders a hug, saying: “That was a whisker!”

She boxed his ears. “Odious boy! The fact of the matter is that it is a thousand pities we are not living in archaic times. What you would have liked, my son, is to have rescued some female from a dragon, or an ogre!”

“Famous good sport to have had a turn-up with a dragon,” he agreed. “As long as you didn’t find yourself with the girl left on your hands afterwards, which I’ve a strong notion those fellows did.”

“Such girls,” his mother reminded him, “were always very beautiful.”

“To be sure they were! Dead bores to, depend upon it! In fact, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the dragons were very glad to be rid of ’em,” said John.

Not very promising, this. But Fanny had discovered Elizabeth Kelfield, and Mrs. Staple had acknowledged, after careful and critical study of Miss Kelfield, that here was a lady who might well take John’s fancy. She was dark; she was decidedly handsome; her fortune was respectable; and although she was not quite twenty years of age she seemed older, the circumstance of her having taken from an invalid mother’s shoulders the burden of household cares having given her an assurance beyond her years. Mrs. Staple thought she had quality, and began to cultivate the ailing Mrs. Kelfield.

And now, when mother and daughter had been coaxed to Mildenhurst, off went John into Leicestershire, so that all the scheming so painstakingly undertaken on his behalf seemed likely to be wasted.

In happy ignorance of this, Captain Staple, climbing the slopes of the Pennines, found himself in a wild, moorland country, and liked it. Having a good sense of direction, he had left the pike road at the earliest opportunity, and with it, in a very short space of time, all signs of civilization. This exactly suited his mood, and he rode over the moors, at an easy pace and in a south-easterly direction. He had meant originally to have spent the night in Derby, but his late start made this impossible. Chesterfield became his objective. That was before the bay cast a shoe. When this happened, the Captain had ample time in which to regret having left the pike road, for he appeared to be in the centre of a vast desert. The only habitations to be seen for miles were an occasional cottage, and a few rough sheds dotted about the moors for the protection of shepherds.

It was dusk when the Captain, leading Beau, dropped off the moor into a small village, which boasted not only a forge, but an alehouse as well. The smith had gone home, and by the time he had been fetched from his cottage, and the fire had been blown up again, not only had the last of the daylight vanished, but the rain, which had held off all day, had begun to fall. There was no possibility of racking up for the night at the alehouse, but bait was forthcoming for man and beast. Captain Staple ate a hearty meal of ham and eggs, lit one of his Spanish cigarillos, and went out to see what hope there might be of the weather’s clearing. There was plainly none. The rain was falling with persistent steadiness, and not a star was to be seen.

The Captain resigned himself to a wet ride, and sought counsel of the landlord. This was his undoing. The worthy man not only knew of a comfortable inn a few miles distant, but, anxious to be helpful, directed the Captain to it by what he assured him was the shortest route. He said that the Captain could not miss it, and no doubt the Captain would not have missed it if the landlord had not omitted to tell him that when he bade him take the first lane on the right he did not mean the track which, as every native of those parts knew, led winding upwards to the moor, and ended at a small farmstead. It was an hour later when the Captain, trusting his instinct, and riding steadily southward, found a lane which, rough though it was, seemed likely to lead to some village, or pike road. He followed this, noting with satisfaction that it ran slightly downhill, and within a short space of time knew that his guess had been correct. The lane ran into a broader road, which crossed it at right angles. Captain Staple had no very certain idea where he was, but he was reasonably sure that Sheffield lay to the east, probably at no great distance, so he turned left-handed into the larger road. The rain dripped from the brim of his hat, and mud generously splashed his topboots, but the heavy frieze cloak had so far kept him fairly dry. He leaned forward to pat Beau’s streaming neck, saying encouragingly: “Not much farther now, old chap!”

A bend in the road brought into view an encouraging sight. A small light glowed ahead, which, from its position, the Captain judged to be the lantern hung upon a tollgate. “Come, now, Beau!” he said, in heartening accents. “We’re on the right track, at all events! If this is a pike road, it must lead to some town!”

He rode on, and soon saw that he had indeed reached a pike. The light, though very dim, enabled him to see that it was shut, and guarded, on the northern side of the road, by a gatehouse. No light was visible in the house, and the door was shut. “Cross-country road, not much used,” the Captain informed Beau. He raised his voice, shouting imperatively: “Gate!”

Nothing happened. “Do I dismount, and open it for myself?” enquired the Captain. “No, I’ll be damned if I do! Gate, I say! Gate! Turn out, there, and be quick about it!”

The door in the centre of the gatehouse opened a little way, and a feeble glimmer of lantern light was cast across the road. “Well, come along!” said the Captain impatiently. “Open up, man!”

After a moment’s hesitation, this summons was obeyed. The gatekeeper came out into the road, and revealed himself, in the light of the lantern he carried, to be of diminutive stature. The Captain, looking down at him in some surprise, as he stood fumbling with the gate-tickets, discovered him to be a skinny urchin, certainly not more than thirteen years old, and probably less. The lantern’s glow revealed a scared young face, freckled, and slightly tear-stained.

He said: “Hallo, what’s this? Are you the gatekeeper?”

“N-no, sir. Me dad is,” responded the youth, with a gulp.

“Well, where is your dad?”

Another gulp. “I dunno.” A ticket was held up. “Frippence, please, your honour, an’ it opens the next two gates.”

But the Captain’s besetting sin, a strong predilection for exploring the unusual, had taken possession of him. He disregarded the ticket, and said: “Did your dad leave you to mind the gate for him?”

“Yes sir,” acknowledged the youth, with a somewhat watery sniff. “Please, sir, it’s frippence, and——”

“Opens the next two gates,” supplied the Captain. “What’s your name?”

“Ben,” replied the youth.

“Where does this road lead to? Sheffield?”

After consideration, Ben said that it did.

“How far?” asked the Captain.

“I dunno. Ten miles, I dessay. Please, sir——”

“As much as that! The devil!”

“It might be twelve, p’raps. I dunno. But the ticket’s frippence, please, sir.”

The Captain looked down into the not very prepossessing countenance raised anxiously to his. The boy looked frightened and overwatched. He said: “When did your dad go off?” He waited, and added, after a moment: “Don’t be afraid! I shan’t hurt you. Have you been minding the gate for long?”

“Yes—no! Dad went off yesterday. He said he’d be back, but he ain’t, and please, sir, don’t go telling no one, else Dad’ll give me a proper melting!” begged the youth, on a note of urgent entreaty.

The Captain’s curiosity was now thoroughly roused. Gatekeepers might have their faults, but they did not commonly leave their posts unattended except by small boys for twenty-four hours at a stretch. Moreover, Ben was badly scared; and to judge by the furtive glances he cast round he was scared by something besides the darkness and his loneliness.

The Captain swung himself to the ground, and pulled the bridle over Beaus head. “Seems to me I’d better stay and keep you company for the night,” he said cheerfully. “Now, where am I going to stable my horse?”

Ben was so much astonished that he could only stand staring up at the Captain with his mouth open and his eyes popping. The Captain knew that the generality of country gatehouses had small gardens attached to them with, often enough, rough sheds erected for the storage of hoes, swap-hooks, and wood. “Have you got a shed?” he demanded.