His joy at seeing his daughter safe overcame the surprise with which he would at another time have beheld her hanging as familiarly on the arm of a stranger as she might have done upon his own.
"Lucy, my dear Lucy, are you safe ?--are you well ?" were the only words that broke from him as he embraced her in ecstasy.
"I am well, sir, thank God! and still more that I see you so; but this gentleman," she said, quitting his arm and shrinking from him, "what must he think of me ?" and her eloquent blood, flushing over neck and brow, spoke how much she was ashamed of the freedom with which she had craved, and even compelled, his assistance.
"This gentleman," said Sir William Ashton, "will, I trust, not regret the trouble we have given him, when I assure him of the gratitude of the Lord Keeper for the greatest service which one man ever rendered to another--for the life of my child--for my own life, which he has saved by his bravery and presence of mind.

He will, I am sure, permit us to request----" "Request nothing of ME, my lord," said the stranger, in a stern and peremptory tone; "I am the Master of Ravenswood." There was a dead pause of surprise, not unmixed with less pleasant feelings.

The Master wrapt himself in his cloak, made a haughty inclination toward Lucy, muttering a few words of courtesy, as indistinctly heard as they seemed to be reluctantly uttered, and, turning from them, was immediately lost in the thicket.
"The Master of Ravenswood!" said the Lord Keeper, when he had recovered his momentary astonishment.

"Hasten after him--stop him--beg him to speak to me for a single moment." The two foresters accordingly set off in pursuit of the stranger.

They speedily reappeared, and, in an embarrassed and awkward manner, said the gentleman would not return.
The Lord Keeper took one of the fellows aside, and questioned him more closely what the Master of Ravenswood had said.
"He just said he wadna come back," said the man, with the caution of a prudent Scotchman, who cared not to be the bearer of an unpleasant errand.
"He said something more, sir," said the Lord Keeper, "and I insist on knowing what it was." "Why, then, my lord," said the man, looking down, "he said--But it wad be nae pleasure to your lordship to hear it, for I dare say the Master meant nae ill." "That's none of your concern, sir; I desire to hear the very words." "Weel, then," replied the man, "he said, 'Tell Sir William Ashton that the next time he and I forgather, he will nto be half sae blythe of our meeting as of our parting.'" "Very well, sir," said the Lord Keeper, "I believe he alludes to a wager we have on our hawks; it is a matter of no consequence." He turned to his daughter, who was by this time so much recovered as to be able to walk home.