'I know why you are unwilling to go,' Whitaker remarked amiably. 'It's the king's reputation with women. You fear he'll make an attempt upon your virtue.'

'Yes, Robert,' Alice said drily. 'Of course.'

'I hardly think' - Tryphena had been listening carefully and now she frowned - 'that the king would make any attempt upon Mother. His interest is only in women who are young and beautiful.'

So it was agreed that Alice should go and that she should take little Betty with her. 'Perhaps', Alice said wryly, 'the sight of the child may soften the king's heart, even if the sight of me is unlikely to excite him.'

While Tryphena prepared the girl for her outing, Alice did, all the same, take some trouble over her own appearance so that, as she surveyed herself in the glass, she could murmur a little wistfully: 'John Lisle didn't marry such an ill-looking woman, at least.'

It was noon when they left Albion House and started up the lane that led northwards towards the small ford. They missed their visitor, approaching from the south, by only a few minutes.

Gabriel Furzey rode slowly through the gate to Albion House. He'd been glad when Stephen Pride went off with his son Jim, so that none of the Prides was around to see him as he went on his errand.

The truth was Gabriel Furzey was in trouble.

The presence of Charles II in the New Forest that year was not entirely a matter of royal whim. The Forest was very much in the royal mind just then. The merry monarch was always on the lookout for extra income and, like his father before him, he had realized after a time that the royal forests might be a useful asset. The second King Charles was going about things in a much jollier manner; but he was just as thorough. He did more than institute a Forest Eyre; his Commission of Inquiry was going into everything. The regarders were checking every boundary in the Forest. The encroachments and land grants were all carefully recorded; timber selling, charcoal selling, the administration of the forest officers - all were inspected. The king was letting them know that his Forest was to be properly managed in future. There was even a deer census, which revealed that the New Forest still contained some seventy-five hundred fallow and nearly four hundred red deer. Clearly the king wanted to know exactly what the place was truly worth. And, the largest task of all, his justices were ordered to record exactly who held what rights in the Forest and what they should be paying for them.