reasons (again she did not give details) she was unwilling to be separated
from her father, at any rate not until circumstances made it necessary for
them to part, and then the plan was that she should go to Chester, with
which city she was inclined to think her father had some old connexion,
and stay there with the wife of a certain cathedral dignitary of secret
but strong Jacobite inclinations. Colonel Waynflete's connexion with the
Jacobite cause had, naturally, been kept secret, but she was almost
certain that Lord Brocton had discovered it through a certain spy and
toady of his, one Major Tixall.

"Pimples all over his face?" broke in Kate.

"Yes," said Mistress Waynflete, with a little shudder.

"He was in the village this afternoon with Lord Brocton," returned Kate.

"Peace, dear one," said mother, "our turn is coming. Be as quiet as
Oliver."

"Oliver, mother dear, hasn't seen Major Tixall, whose face is enough to
make an owl talk, let alone a magpie like me."

Her right ear was near enough to me, the stool being big and I bigger, so
I pinched the pretty little pink shell, and whispered in it, "Shut up,
Kit, and think of Jack," which effectually silenced her.

Mistress Waynflete had little more to tell. They had travelled rapidly,
avoiding Coventry and Lichfield, where the royal forces had assembled, but
bending west so as to get by unfrequented roads to Stafford, and so on to
the main north road along which the Prince was now reported to be