THE WHITE HORSES




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Title: The White Horses
Author: Halliwell Sutcliffe
Release Date: August 24, 2013 [EBook #43551]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8


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Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: "Old Squire Metcalf, as he went out to meet him, broke
into a roar of laughter."  (Page 84.)]




                               THE WHITE
                                 HORSES


                                   BY

                          HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE

           _Author of "Ricroft of Withers," "The Open Road,"
          "A Chateau in Picardy," "The Strength of the Hills,"
                                 etc._



                       WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
                     LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
                                  1916




                         To my Sister’s Memory




                              *CONTENTS.*


CHAPTER

I.—WHO RIDES FOR THE KING?
II.—SKIPTON-IN-CRAVEN
III.—SOME MEN OF FAIRFAX’S
IV.—THE LAST LAUGH
V.—THE LADY OF RIPLEY
VI.—HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK
VII.—A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH
VIII.—HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT
IX.—THE LOYAL CITY
X.—THE RIDING IN
XI.—BANBURY CAKES
XII.—PAGEANTRY
XIII.—THE LADY OF LATHOM
XIV.—A STANLEY FOR THE KING
XV.—TWO JOLLY PURITANS
XVI.—THE SCOTS AT MICKLEGATE
XVII.—PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM
XVIII.—MARSTON MOOR
XIX.—WILSTROP WOOD
XX.—THE HOMELESS DAYS
XXI.—SIR REGINALD’S WIDOW
XXII.—MISS BINGHAM
XXIII.—YOREDALE




                            *Illustrations*


"Old Squire Metcalf, as he went out to meet him, broke into a roar of
laughter." . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ (Page 84.)

"’You’re the Squire of Nappa, sir?’ he said."

"’Yes, you can be of service,’ he whispered."

"’Say, do you stand for the King?’"

"Without a word of any kind, a third prisoner was thrown against them."

"They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight."

"’Well, sir?’ she asked sharply.  ’You rob me of sleep for some good
reason doubtless?’"

"They turned sharply as the door opened, and reached out for their
weapons."

"’We hold your life at our mercy,’ said Rupert."

"’Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or is dead for the
King.’"

"’If the end of the world came—here and now—you would make a jest of
it.’"

"Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained
the rest."




                          *THE WHITE HORSES.*



                              *CHAPTER I.*

                       *WHO RIDES FOR THE KING?*


Up through the rich valley known now as Wensleydale, but in those days
marked by the lustier name of Yoredale, news had crept that there was
civil war in England, that sundry skirmishes had been fought already,
and that His Majesty was needing all leal men to rally to his standard.

It was an early harvest that year, as it happened, and John Metcalf, of
Nappa Hall, stood at his garden-gate, watching the sunset glow across
his ripening wheat.  There were many acres of it, gold between green
splashes of grass-land; and he told himself that they would put the
sickle into the good crop before a fortnight’s end.  There was something
about Squire Metcalf—six feet four to his height, and broad in the
beam—that seemed part of the wide, lush country round him.  Weather and
land, between them, had bred him; and the night’s peace, the smell of
sweet-briar in the evening dew, were pleasant foils to his strength.

He looked beyond the cornfields presently.  Far down the road he saw a
horseman—horse and rider small in the middle of the landscape—and
wondered what their errand was.  When he had done with surmises, his
glance roved again, in the countryman’s slow way, and rested on the
pastures above the house.  In the clear light he could see two figures
standing there; one was his son Christopher, the other a trim-waisted
maid.  Squire Metcalf frowned suddenly.  He was so proud of his name, of
his simple squiredom, that he could not bear to see his eldest-born
courting defeat of this kind.  This little lady was niece to his
neighbour, Sir Timothy Grant, a good neighbour and a friend, but one who
was richer than himself in lands and rank, one who went often to the
Court in London, and was in great favour with the King.  Squire Metcalf
had seen these two together in his own house, and guessed Christopher’s
secret without need of much sagacity; and he was sorely troubled on the
lad’s account.

Christopher himself, away at the stile yonder, was not troubled at all
except by a pleasant heartache. He had youth, and Joan Grant beside him,
and a heart on fire for her.

"You are pleased to love me?" she was saying, facing him with maddening
grace.  "What is your title to love me, sir?"

"Any man has the right to love," Kit protested sturdily.  "He cannot
help it sometimes."

"Oh, granted; but not to tell it openly."

"What else should a man do?  I was never one for secrets."

Joan laughed pleasantly, as if a thrush were singing.  "You speak truth.
I would not trust you with a secret as far as from here to Nappa. If a
child met you on the road, she would read it in your face."

"I was bred that way, by your leave.  We Metcalfs do not fear the
light."

"But, sir, you have every right to—to think me better than I am, but
none at all to speak of—of love. I had an old Scots nurse to teach me
wisdom, and she taught me—what, think you?"

"To thieve and raid down Yoredale," said Kit unexpectedly.  "The Scots
had only that one trade, so my father tells me, till the Stuarts came to
reign over both countries."

"To thieve and raid?  And I—I, too, have come to raid, you say—to steal
your heart?"

"You are very welcome to it."

"But do I want it?"  She put aside her badinage, drew away from him with
a fine strength and defiance.  "Listen, sir.  My Scots nurse taught me
that a woman has only one heart to give in her lifetime; that, for her
peace, she must hide it in the branches of a tree so high that only a
strong man can climb it."

"I’m good at tree-climbing," said Christopher, with blunt acceptance of
the challenge.

"Then prove it."

"Now?" he asked, glancing at a tall fir behind them.

"Oh, sir, you are blunt and forthright, you men of Nappa!  You do not
understand the heart of a woman."

Kit Metcalf stood to his brawny six-foot height. "I’m needing you, and
cannot wait," he said, fiery and masterful.  "That’s the way of a man’s
heart."

"Then, by your leave, I shall bid you good e’en. No man will ever master
me until——"

"Until?" asked Kit, submissive now that he saw her retreating up the
pasture.

She dropped him another curtsey before going up the steep face of the
hills.  "That is the woman’s secret, sir.  It lives at the top of a high
tree, that ’until.’  Go climbing, Master Christopher!"

Kit went back to Nappa, in frank revolt against destiny and the blue
face of heaven.  There was nothing in the world worth capturing except
this maid who eluded him at every turn, like a butterfly swift of wing.
He was prepared to be sorry for himself until he came face to face with
his father at the garden gate.

"I saw two young fools at the stile," said Squire Metcalf.  "I’ve
watched you for half an hour. Best wed in your own station, Kit—no more,
no less. No Metcalf ever went dandying after great ladies yet.  We’ve
our own proper pride."

Christopher, in spite of his six feet, looked a small man as he stood
beside his father; but his spirit was equal to its stubborn strength.
"I love her. There’s no other for me," he said sharply.

The Squire glanced shrewdly at him.  "Ah, well," he said at last, "if it
goes as deep as that, lad, you’ll just have to go on crying out for the
moon.  Sir Timothy has been away in London all the summer—trouble with
the Parliament, and the King needing him, they say.  He’d have taken
Miss Joan with him if he’d guessed that a lad from Nappa thought he
could ever wed into the family."

"We’ve lands and gear enough," protested Kit.

"We have, but not as they count such matters. They’ve got one foot in
Yoredale, and t’other in London; and we seem very simple to them, Kit."

Shrewd common sense is abhorrent to all lovers, and Kit fell into a
stormy silence.  He knew it true, that he felt rough, uncouth, in
presence of his mistress; but he knew also that at the heart of him
there was a love that was not uncouth at all.

The Squire left Kit to fight out his own trouble, and fell to watching
the horseman who was more than a speck now on the landscape.  The rider
showed as a little man striding a little mare; both were weary, by the
look of them, and both were heading straight for Nappa Hall.  They had a
mile to cover.

"Father, I need to get away from Nappa," said Kit, breaking the silence.

"Ay," said the Squire, with a tolerant laugh, "love takes all men that
way in the first flush of it. I was young myself once.  You want to ride
out, lad, and kill a few score men, just to show little Miss Joan what a
likely man o’ your hands you are. Later on, you’ll be glad to be
shepherding the ewes, to pay for her new gowns and what not.  Love’s not
all mist and moonshine, Kit; the sturdier part comes later on."

Up the lane sounded the lolopping pit-a-pat of a horse that was tired
out and near to drop; and the rider looked in no better case as he drew
rein at the gate.

"You’re the Squire of Nappa, sir?" he said, with a weary smile.  "No
weary to ask the question. I was told to find a man as tall as an
oak-tree and as sturdy."

[Illustration: "’You’re the Squire of Nappa, sir?’ he said."]

"Yet it would have been like seeking a needle in a bundle of hay, if you
hadn’t chanced to find me at the gate," the other answered.  "There are
six score Metcalfs in this corner of Yoredale, and nobody takes notice
of my height."

"The jest is pretty enough, sir, but you’ll not persuade me that there’s
a regiment of giants in the dale."

"They’re not all of my height—granted.  Some are more, and a few less.
This is my eldest-born," he said, touching Christopher on the shoulder.
"We call him Baby Kit, because he’s the smallest of us all."

The horseman saw a lad six foot high, who certainly looked dwarfed as he
stood beside his father. "Gad, the King has need of you!  Undoubtedly he
needs all Metcalfs, if this is your baby-boy."

"As for the King, the whole six score of us have prayed for his welfare,
Sabbath in and Sabbath out, since we were breeked.  It’s good hearing
that he needs us."

"I ride on His Majesty’s errand.  He bids the Squire of Nappa get his
men and his white horses together."

"So the King has heard of our white horses? Well, we’re proud o’ them, I
own."

The messenger, used to the stifled atmosphere of Courts until this
trouble with the Parliament arrived, was amazed by the downright,
free-wind air the Squire of Nappa carried.  It tickled his humour, tired
as he was, that Metcalf should think the King himself knew every detail
of his country, and every corner of it that bred white horses, or roan,
or chestnut.  At Skipton-in-Craven, of course, they knew the dales from
end to end; and he was here because Sir John Mallory, governor of the
castle there, had told him the Metcalfs of Nappa were slow to leave the
beaten tracks, but that, once roused, they would not budge, or falter,
or retreat.

"The King needs every Metcalf and his white horse.  He sent me with that
message to you, Squire."

"About when does he need us?" asked Metcalf guardedly.

"To-morrow, to be precise."

"Oh, away with you!  There’s all my corn to be gathered in.  I’ll come
nearer the back end o’ the year, if the King can bide till then.  By
that token, you’re looking wearied out, you and your horse. Come
indoors, man, and we’ll talk the matter over."

The messenger was nothing loath.  At Skipton they had given an
importance to the Metcalf clan that he had not understood till now.
This was the end of to-day’s journey, and his sole errand was to bring
the six score men and horses into the good capital of Craven.

"I ask no better cheer, sir.  Can you stable the two of us for the
night?  My little grey mare is more in need of rest than I am."

Christopher, the six-foot baby of the clan, ran forward to the mare’s
bridle; and he glanced at his father, because the war in his blood was
vehement and lusty, and he feared the old check of discipline.

"Is it true, sir?" he asked the messenger.  "Does the King need us?
I’ve dreamed of it o’ nights, and wakened just to go out and tend the
land.  I’m sick of tending land.  Is it true the King needs us?"

The messenger, old to the shams and false punctilios of life, was
dismayed for a moment by this clean, sturdy zest.  Here, he told
himself, was a cavalier in the making—a cavalier of Prince Rupert’s
breed, who asked only for the hazard.

"It is true that the King needs a thousand such as you," he said drily.
"Be good to my little mare; I trust her to you, lad."

And in this solicitude for horseflesh, shown twice already, the
messenger had won his way already into the favour of all Metcalfs.  For
they loved horses just a little less than they loved their King.

Within doors, as he followed the Squire of Nappa, he found a warm fire
of logs, and an evening meal to which the sons of the house trooped in
at haphazard intervals.  There were only six of them, all told, but they
seemed to fill the roomy dining-room as if a crowd intruded.  The
rafters of the house were low, and each stooped, from long habit, as he
came in to meat.  Kit, the baby of the flock, was the last to come in;
and he had a queer air about him, as if he trod on air.

There was only one woman among them, a little, eager body, who welcomed
the stranger with pleasant grace.  She had borne six sons to the Squire,
because he was dominant and thought little of girl-children; she had
gone through pain and turmoil for her lord, and at the end of it was
thankful for her pride in him, though she would have liked to find one
girl among the brood—a girl who knew the way of household worries and
the way of women’s tears.

The messenger, as he ate and drank with extreme greediness, because need
asked, glanced constantly at the hostess who was like a garden flower,
growing here under the shade of big-boled trees.  It seemed impossible
that so small a person was responsible for the six men who made the
rafters seem even lower than they were.

When the meal was ended, Squire Metcalf put his guest into the great
hooded chair beside the fire of peat and wood.

"Now, sir, we’ll talk of the King, by your leave, and these lusty rogues
of mine shall stand about and listen.  What is it His Majesty asks of
us?"

The messenger, now food and liquor had given him strength again, felt at
home in this house of Nappa as he had never done among the intrigues of
Court life.  He had honest zeal, and he was among honest men, and his
tongue was fiery and persuasive.

"The King needs good horsemen and free riders to sweep the land clear of
Roundheads.  He needs gentlemen with the strong arm and the simple heart
to fight his battles.  The King—God bless him!—needs six-score Metcalfs,
on horses as mettled as their riders, to help put out this cursed fire
of insurrection."

"Well, as for that," said the Squire, lighting his pipe with a live peat
from the hearth, "I reckon we’re here for that purpose.  I bred my sons
for the King, when he was pleased to need them.  But I’d rather he could
bide—say, for a month—till we get our corn in.  Take our six-score men
from the land just now, and there’ll be no bread for the house next
year, let alone straw for the beasts."

The messenger grew more and more aware that he had been entrusted with a
fine mission.  This plain, unvarnished honesty of the Squire’s was worth
fifty protestations of hot loyalty.  The dogged love he had of his lands
and crops—the forethought of them in the midst of civil war—would make
him a staunch, cool-headed soldier.

"The King says you are to ride out to-morrow, Squire.  What use to pray
for him on Sabbaths if you fail him at the pinch?"

Metcalf was roused at last, but he glanced at the little wife who sat
quietly in her corner, saying little and feeling much.  "I’ve more than
harvesting to leave.  She’s small, that wife of mine, but God knows the
big love I have for her."

The little woman got up suddenly and stepped forward through the press
of big sons she had reared. Her man said openly that he loved her better
than his lands, and she had doubted it till now.  She came and stood
before the messenger and dropped him a curtsey.

"You are very welcome, sir, to take all my men on the King’s service.
What else?  I, too, have prayed on Sabbaths."

The messenger rose, a great pity and chivalry stirring through his
hard-ridden, tired body.  "And you, madam?" he asked gently.

"Oh, I shall play the woman’s part, I hope—to wait, and be silent, and
shed tears when there are no onlookers."

"By God’s grace," said Blake, the messenger, a mist about his eyes, "I
have come to a brave house!"

The next morning, an hour after daybreak, Blake awoke, stirred drowsily,
then sprang out of bed. Sleep was a luxury to him these days, and he
blamed himself for indolence.

Downstairs he found only a serving-maid, who was spreading the breakfast
table with cold meats enough to feed twenty men of usual size and
appetite.  The mistress was in the herb-garden, she said, and the men
folk all abroad.

For a moment the messenger doubted his welcome last night.  Had he
dreamed of six score men ready for the King’s service, or was the
Squire’s honesty, his frank promise to ride out, a pledge repented of
already?

He found the Squire’s wife walking in the herb-garden, and the face she
lifted was tear-stained.  "I give you good day," she said, "though
you’ve not dealt very well with me and mine."

"Is there a finer errand than the King’s?" he asked brusquely.

"My heart, sir, is not concerned with glory and fine errands.  It is
very near to breaking. Without discourtesy, I ask you to leave me here
in peace—for a little while—until my wounds are healing."

The Squire and his sons had been abroad before daybreak, riding out
across the wide lands of Nappa.  Of the hundred odd grown men on their
acres, there was not one—yeoman, or small farmer, or hind—but was a
Metcalf by name and tradition. They were a clan of the old, tough Border
sort, welded together by a loyalty inbred through many generations; and
the law that each man’s horse must be of the true Metcalf white was not
of yesterday.

Christopher’s ride to call his kinsfolk in had taken him wide to the
boundary of Sir Timothy Grant’s lands; and, as he trotted at the head of
his growing company, he was bewildered to see Joan step from a little
coppice on the right of the track.  She had been thinking of him, as it
happened, till sleep would not come; and, like himself, she needed to
get out into the open.  Very fresh she looked, as she stepped into the
misty sunlight—alert, free-moving, bred by wind and rain and sun.  To
Kit she seemed something not of this world; and it is as well, maybe,
that a boy’s love takes this shape, because in saner manhood the glamour
of the old day-dreams returns, to keep life wholesome.

Kit halted his company, heedless of their smiles and muttered jests, as
he rode to her side.

"You look very big, Christopher!  You Nappa men—and your horses—are you
riding to some hunt?"  She was cold, provocative, dismaying.

"Yes, to hunt the Roundheads over Skipton way.  The King has sent for
us."

"But—the call is so sudden, and—I should not like to hear that you were
dead, Kit."

Her eyes were tender with him, and then again were mocking.  He could
make nothing her, as how should he, when older men than he had failed to
understand the world’s prime mystery.

"Joan, what did you mean by ’until,’ last night at the stile?  You said
none should master you until——"

"Why, yes, _until_——  Go out and find the answer to that riddle."

"Give me your kerchief," he said sharply—"for remembrance, Joan."

Again she resented his young, hot mastery, peeping out through the
bondage she had woven round him.  "To wear at your heart?  But, Kit, you
have not proved your right to wear it. Come back from slaying
Roundheads, and ask for it again."

Blake, the messenger, meanwhile, had been fidgeting about the Nappa
garden, wondering what was meant by the absence of all men from house
and fields.  His appetite, too, was sharpened by a sound night’s sleep.
Remembering the well-filled table indoors, he turned about, then checked
himself with a laugh.  Even rough-riding gentry could not break fast
until the host arrived.

Presently, far down the road, he heard the lilt of horse-hoofs moving
swiftly and in tune.  The uproar grew, till round the bend of the way he
saw what the meaning of it was.

Big men on big white horses came following the Squire of Nappa up the
rise.  All who could gather in the courtyard reined up; the rest of the
hundred and twenty halted in the lane.  They had rallied to the muster
with surprising speed, these men of Yoredale.

All that the messenger had suffered already for the cause, all that he
was willing to suffer later on, were forgotten.  Here were volunteers
for the King—and, faith, what cavaliers they were! And the big men,
striding their white horses, liked him the better because his heart
showed plainly in his face.

The messenger laughed suddenly, standing to the the height of
five-foot-six that was all Providence had given him.  "Gentlemen," he
said, with the music of galloping horses in his voice, "gentlemen, the
King!"

The Squire and he, after they had breakfasted, and the mistress had
carried the stirrup-cup from one horseman to another, rode forward
together on the track that led to Skipton.  For a mile they went in
silence.  The Squire of Nappa was thinking of his wife, and youngsters
of the Metcalf clan were thinking of maids who had lately glamoured them
in country lanes.  Then the lilt of hoof-beats, the call of the open
hazard, got into their blood. A lad passed some good jest, till it ran
along the company like fire through stubble; and after that each man
rode blithely, as if it were his wedding-day.

A mile further on they saw a little lady gathering autumn flowers from
the high bank bordering the road.  She had spent a restless night on
Kit’s account, had he known it, and was early abroad struggling with
many warring impulses.  The Squire, who loved Christopher, knew what the
lad most needed now.  He drew rein sharply.

"Men of Nappa, salute!" he cried, his voice big and hearty as his body.

Joan Grant, surprised in the middle of a love-dream, saw a hundred and
twenty men lifting six-foot pikes to salute her.  The stress of it was
so quick and overwhelming that it braced her for the moment.  She took
the salute with grace and a smile that captured these rough-riding
gentry.  Then, with odd precision, she dropped her kerchief under the
nose of Kit’s horse.

He stooped sharply and picked it up at the end of his pike.  "A good
omen, lads!" he cried. "White horses—and the white kerchief for the
King!"

Then it was forward again; and Joan, looking after them, was aware that
already her knight was in the making.  And then she fell into a flood of
tears, because women are made up of storm and sun, like the queer
northern weather.




                             *CHAPTER II.*

                          *SKIPTON-IN-CRAVEN.*


"It’s a pity about that corn o’ mine, all the same," said the Squire,
with a last backward thought.  "There never was such a harvest year,
since back into the ’twenties."

"There’ll be such a harvest year, I trust," laughed Blake, "as will
bring more like you to the King. I would that every dale of the north
gave us a company like yours—men and horses riding as if they’d been
reared together from the cradle.  I tell you sir, Prince Rupert would
enrol you all at sight, if there were not more urgent need for you at
Skipton."

"As a plain man to a plain man, what does the King ask of us?" asked the
Squire of Nappa. "Mr. Lambert, you say, is laying siege to Skipton. He
should know better.  I knew him as a lad, when he lived out yonder at
Calton-in-Craven, and he had naught in common with these thick-headed
rogues who are out against the King.  He’s of the gentry, and always
will be."

"He has lost his way in the dark, then," said the other drily.  "He’s
training his cannon on Skipton Castle as if he liked the enterprise."

"So you want us to ride through Lambert’s men and into the castle to
help garrison it?" asked Squire Metcalf, with his big simplicity, his
assurance that the men he led would charge through any weight of odds.

"Heaven save us, no!  The governor has enough men to feed already, men
of usual size; your little company would eat up his larder in a week."

"We _have_ fairish appetites," the Squire admitted. "Big sacks need a
lot of filling, as the saying goes. Still, you said the King wanted us,
and we’ve left a fine harvest to rot where it stands."

The messenger captured a happiness he had not known for many days.
There were no shams about this Squire.  In all sincerity he believed
that King Charles had personal and urgent need of him; he asked simply
what it was the King commanded. It was so remote, this honesty, from the
intrigues of those who fought for places in the Court, and named it
loyalty, that the messenger was daunted for a moment.

"You are a big company, sir," he said, turning briskly round in saddle;
"but you seem oddly undivided in loyalty to the King and one another.
Strike one Metcalf, or do him a kindness, and six-score men will repay
in kind.  You have the gipsy creed, my friends."

"Ay, we’re close and trusty.  It seems you know the way of us Nappa
folk, though I never set eyes on you till yesterday."

"It is my business to know men.  The King’s riders must make no mistakes
these days, Squire."  He glanced back along the chattering group of
horse, with quick pride in the recruits he had won from Yoredale.
"You’re all well horsed, well armed."

"Why, yes.  We heard trouble was brewing up ’twixt King and Parliament,
and we got our arms in order.  What else?  Folk sharpen sickles when the
corn is ripening."

"And you have these lusty rascals at command—sharp to the word?"

Squire Metcalf smiled, a big, capacious smile. "They’ve felt the weight
o’ my hand lang syne, and know it.  My father before me trained me that
way—as you train a dog, no more, no less."

He drew rein and whistled sharply.  The horsemen, fifty yards behind,
pressed forward, and the heir of Nappa galloped at their head, drew
rein, saluted his father with sharp precision, and waited for commands.

"Oh, naught at all, Christopher," said the Squire.  "This guest of ours
doubted whether I could whistle my lads to heel, and now he knows I
can."

The messenger said nothing.  The quiet, hard-bitten humour of these
northerners appealed to him; and Mallory, the governor of Skipton, had
been right when he sent him out to Nappa, sure that the Metcalf clan
would be worth many times their actual number to the Royalists in
Yorkshire.

They came to the rise of the road where Bishopdale, with its hedges of
fast-ripening hazel nuts, strode up into the harsher lands that
overlooked Wharfedale.  They rode down the crumbly steep of road, past
Cray hamlet, set high above its racing stream; and at Buckden, half a
league lower down, they encountered a hunting-party come out to slay the
deer.  They were too busy to join either party, King’s or Parliament’s,
and offered a cheery bidding to the Metcalf men to join them in the
chase.

"We’re after bigger deer," laughed the Squire of Nappa.  "Who rides for
the King?"

Hats were lifted, and a great cheer went up.  "All of us," said a grey,
weather-beaten horseman.

"Ay, it seems like it," growled the Squire.  "Much good you’re doing
Skipton-in-Craven by hunting deer instead of Roundheads."

"Skipton can stand a twelve months’ siege.  She can whistle when she
needs us, like any other likely lass.  There’s no need to lose a
hunting-day till Sir John Mallory needs us."

The Squire found his first disillusionment along this road of glamour.
He had thought that a company of picked horsemen, armed for the King and
riding with a single purpose, would have swept these huntsmen into line.
Some few of them, indeed, had ridden forward a little, as if they liked
his message; but the grey-headed horseman, who distrusted all enthusiasm
because long since he had lost his faith in life, brought them sharply
back.

"It will be all over in a week or two, and the crop-heads back in their
kennels.  No need to lose a hunting day, my lads."

The white horses, carrying big men, trotted forward, through Starboton
and Kettlewell, where the Danes had raided, wooed, and settled long
before a Stuart came to reign over gentler times.  It was not till they
reached Linton, quiet and grey about its clear, trout-haunted stream,
that the Squire of Nappa broke silence.

"I told those hunting gentry that the King needed them, and they
wouldn’t hearken.  It seems Royalists are deaf these days to the plain
road of honesty."

"They are," said the messenger, with the surprising calm that he had
learned from lonely errands, ridden oftener by night than daytime.  "So
are most men and most women.  My heart’s singing by that token.  I’m
bringing in six-score Metcalfs to the King, all as honest as God’s
sunlight.  My luck is in, Squire."

The Squire would have none of blandishment. He could ride a good horse
or a grievance hard. "They doffed their hats when I named the King," he
growled.

"They did, but not their heart-coverings.  If they’d been keen to
ride—why, they’d have ridden, and no child’s game of deer slaying would
have stopped them.  Skipton is better off without such laggard arms to
help her."

"But the King needs them," said Metcalf stubbornly, "and we showed them
the plain road."

They rode on through Cracoe, where the trees were red-gold in their
pride of autumn, and again the Squire of Nappa broke the silence.  "What
does the King ask of us?  If it is not to garrison the town——"

"It is a pleasanter occupation.  The Governor would change places with
you willingly, Squire.  He told me so when mapping out the work for you
men of Nappa.  You’re well horsed and drilled.  You are too strong to be
attacked except in force, and they can spare few men from the assault.
Your business is to patrol the open country, to intercept and harry
Lambert’s reinforcements—to come like the wind out of nowhere, and
vanish as suddenly, till the Roundheads learn that Skipton is attacking
and besieged, both at the same time."

"There’s one big load off my mind," said Metcalf soberly.  "We shall
have the sky over our heads and room for a gallop.  I was in mortal fear
of being shut up in Skipton Castle, I own, day in, day out, and never a
wind from the pastures.  We were not bred for indoors, we Nappa folk,
and I doubt a month of it would have killed us outright."

The Squire did not understand the fine breadth of strategy that underlay
this plan mapped out for him. But the messenger was well aware of it,
for Sir John Mallory had a soldier’s instinct for the detail of
campaign, and he had explained this venture yesterday with what had
seemed a mixture of sagacity and sheer, unpractical romance.  Since
spending the night at Nappa, and journeying with the Metcalfs for half a
day, Blake realised the Governor’s sagacity more fully.  As for
romance—that, too, was vivid enough, but entirely practical.  Six-score
men on big white horses were enough to feed the most exacting poet’s
fancy; they were sufficient, too, to disturb the thick-headed, workaday
routine of Lambert’s soldiery.

They came to Rylstone, fair and modest as a maid, who hides from men’s
intrusions.  Rylstone, the village beyond praise, bordered by grey
houses and the call of ancient peace—Rylstone, that dalesmen dream of
when their strength has left them for a while and their hearts are
tender.

"She’s bonnie," said the Squire of Nappa, checking his horse from old
instinct.

"Yes, she’s bonnie," Blake agreed.  "Rylstone bred me, and a man should
know the debt he owes his mother."

Then it was forward up the hill again.  Blake was thinking of life’s
surprises—was picturing the long impatience of his manhood, because he
stood only five-foot-six to his height in a country that reared tall
men.  Since then he had learned to pit strength of soul against body
height, and now he was bringing in the finest troop of cavalry that ever
rode the dales. He was content.

As they drew near to the house known as None-go-by, Blake was full of
the enterprise planned out for these jolly Metcalf men.  He did not
propose to take them into Skipton, but left-handed into the bridle-track
that led to Embsay.  There was news that a company of Fairfax’s men was
coming round that way from Otley, to help the Roundhead siege; and he
would have fought a battle worth the while—for a small man, not too
strong of body—if he ambushed the dour rogues with his cavalry brought
out from Nappa.

Yet his well-laid plan was interrupted.  All the quiet ways of the
countryside had been thrown into surprising muddle and disorder by this
civil war that had come to range friends of yesterday on opposite sides
of the quarrel.

It should have been market-day, and the road full of sheep and cattle,
sleepy drovers, yeomen trotting on sleek horses.  Instead, there was
silence, and the Nappa folk had all the highway to themselves until they
neared the rutty track that joined their own from Thorlby and the
Gargrave country.

A stream of horsemen was pouring down this track—Parliament men riding
from the west to help Lambert with the siege.  They rode slowly, and the
Nappa men, as they drew rein and looked down the hill, counted two
hundred of them.  Then came three lumbering waggons, each with a cannon
lashed to it by hay-ropes plaited fourfold, and each drawn by a team of
plough-horses that roused Squire Metcalf’s envy.  Behind the waggons,
more horsemen rode at a foot-pace, till it seemed the stream would never
end.

"Mr. Lambert is needing more artillery, it seems," said Blake drily.
"His anxiety must be great, if three cannon need such a heavy escort."

The Squire of Nappa did not hear him.  For a moment he sat quietly in
saddle, his face the mirror of many crowded thoughts.  Then suddenly he
raised a shout—one that was to sound often through the Yorkshire
uplands, like the cock grouse’s note.

"A Mecca for the King!" he roared, lifting the pike that was as light as
a hazel wand to his great strength of arm.

Blake was at his right hand as they charged. He had only his sword, but
the speed and fury of the battle made him forget that not long since he
had longed for the strength to wield a pike instead, as all the men of
Nappa did.

It was all confusion, speed of white horses galloping down-hill to the
shock, thud of the onset.  The Roundhead guard had faced about to meet
this swirling, quick assault.  They saw a company of giants, carrying
pikes as long as their own bodies, and they met them with the stolid
Roundhead obstinacy.  It was a grim fight, and ever across it rang the
Squire of Nappa’s lusty voice.

Between the two companies of Roundhead horsemen were the three
farm-waggons carrying the guns. Those on the Skipton side were trying to
ride uphill to help their comrades; but the din of combat had sent the
plough-horses wild.  They were big and wilful brutes, and their screams
rose high above the babel of men fighting for their lives.  Then they
bolted, swerved across the road, and brought themselves and all they
carried into the ditches on either side. The cannon, as they fell,
ripped the waggons into splintered wreckage.

Between the fallen horses, through the litter of broken waggons, the men
of Nappa drove what had been the rearguard of the convoy.  They picked
their way through the fifty yards of broken ground, lifted their white
horses to the next attack, and charged the second company of Roundheads.
Those of the shattered rearguard who could not draw aside were driven
down pell-mell into their upcoming friends, bringing confusion with
them.  And through it all there rang the Squire’s voice, with its keen,
insistent cry of "A Mecca for the King!"  In that hour the Parliament
men learned that the Stuart, too, had downright servants at command, who
were not made up of dalliance and lovelocks.

The men of Nappa would not be denied.  They asked no quarter and gave
none; and they drove the Roundheads—who contested every step with
stubborn pluck—down the hill and up the gentle rise past Skipton Church,
and into the broad High Street that was the comeliest in Yorkshire.  The
Castle, with its motto of "Désormais" carved in stone against the blue
autumn sky, looked down on this sudden uproar in the street; men’s faces
showed above the battlements, eager with question and surprise.

The tumult reached Lambert’s ears, too, as he stood beside the cannon on
Cock Hill.  Knowing that reinforcements were coming over the Lancashire
border, he thought the garrison had made a sortie; and he gave a sharp
command to fire on the Castle as fast as they could load their clumsy
cannon, to bring the sortie party back to the defence.  The Roundhead
luck was out altogether, for the first cannon-ball flew high above the
carved motto of "Désormais," and the second, falling short, killed three
of the horsemen who were retreating, step by step, before the Nappa men.

Sir John Mallory, the governor, was one of the men who looked down from
the battlements.  He had a zealous heart, and his thirty years of life
had taught him that it was good to live or die for the King.  Below he
saw a swarm of giants striding white horses; saw the little messenger he
had sent to Nappa fighting as merrily as any Metcalf of them all; saw
the Roundheads retreating stubbornly.  As he watched, a cannon-ball
whistled by, a foot or two above his head, and ruffled his hair in
passing as a sharp wind might do.

"My thanks, Lambert," he said impassively. "One needs a breeze after
long confinement."

Then he went down the slippery stair; and a little later the drawbridge
rattled down, and he rode out with twenty others who were sick from lack
of exercise.

It was a stubborn business.  The Roundheads left behind with the
overturned guns, up the Rylstone road, recaptured the courage that no
man doubted, and came driving in at the rear of this pitched battle.
Lambert himself, the increasing tumult coming up to him through the
still, autumn air, got thirty of the besiegers together.  They had
ridden in at dawn, and their horses were picketed close at hand.  As
they galloped up the High Street, they were met by the weight of their
own retreating friends from Lancashire; and it was now that Lambert
showed the leadership, the power of glamouring his men, which none among
the Roundheads had since Hampden died.

"Friends," he said,—the Quaker instinct in him suggesting that odd form
of address when battle was in progress—"friends, I trust you."

Just that.  He had found the one word that is magical to strong men.
They answered him with a rousing shout, and drove up against the King’s
men. For a moment even the Nappa riders gave back; but the recoil seemed
only to help them to a fiercer onset.  They had both Cavalier speed and
Roundhead weight, these Metcalf men and horses; and Sir John Mallory,
fighting beside them for mastery of the High Street, was aware that
Yoredale had given the King a finer troop of horse than even Rupert
could command.

Across the thick of it Mallory caught Lambert’s glance, and an odd smile
played about their lips. The same thought came to both between the hurry
of the fight.  Not long ago they had dined together, had talked of the
winter’s hunting soon to come, had smoked their pipes in amity.  Now
each was thanking God that the shifting issues of the battle did not
bring them sword to sword; for civil war is always a disastrous and a
muddling enterprise.

The glance, and the memories that went to its making, were over in a
second.  It was a forward plunge again of King’s men meeting Roundheads,
hard to drive.  And suddenly there rose a cry keen as winter in the
uplands and strong as sun at midsummer.

"Now, Metcalfs," roared the Squire of Nappa, "into the standing corn—and
God for the King, say I!"

Into the standing corn they went, and it was open flight now down the
length of Skipton Street.  Time after time Lambert strove to rally his
men, using oaths that had not been taught him by the Quakers, but the
retreat swept him down, carrying him with it.  A great gentleman,
whichever side he took in this fierce quarrel, was learning for the
first time the sickness of defeat.

The Nappa men were only turned from pursuing the enemy into the teeth of
the guns on Cock Hill by Mallory, who rode forward sharply, reined about
and fronted them.

"Gentlemen of Yoredale," he said, quiet and persuasive, "the King does
not command you to be blown to bits up yonder.  He has other need of
you."

"I like to sickle the whole field once I make a start," said Squire
Metcalf.

"Ay, but there’s a biggish field in front of you.  You’ll need to sleep
between-whiles, Squire."

When they turned to ride up the High Street again, the Squire, among all
this muddle of wounded Metcalfs, and horses that were white and crimson
now, saw only a little man slipping from the saddle of a little mare.
He rode up in time to ease his fall, and afterwards felt the man’s
wounds gently, as a woman might.  And the tears were in his eyes.

"It’s Blake, the messenger, and God knows I’m sorry.  He fought like the
biggest rogue that ever was breeked at Nappa."

"His soul’s too big for his strength," said Mallory, with his
unalterable common sense.  "He’ll just have to lie by for a while."

"There’s naught much amiss, save loss o’ blood, may be.  We’ll get him
to the Castle gate, and then—why we’ll just ride up the Raikes and spike
those cannon lying in the ditch."

"You’re thorough, you men of Nappa," said Mallory, with a sudden laugh.

"Men have to be, these days," the Squire answered soberly.  "If a body
rides for the King—well, he rides for the King, and no two ways about
it."

Kit drew apart from the turmoil, and searched for the kerchief Joan
Grant had dropped in front of his horse, away in Yoredale yonder.  It
was white no longer, but reddened by a wound that he had taken.  And
quietly, in the stillness that comes after battle, he knew that he was
to follow a long road and a hard road till he was home again. It was
better—in his heart he knew it—than dallying at country stiles, sick
with calf-love for a maid too high above him.

"You look happy, lad," said the Squire, as he drew rein beside him.

"I’m climbing a tree, sir, a big tree.  There’s somebody’s heart at the
top of it."

"Ay, Miss Joan’s," growled Squire Metcalf. "Well, go on climbing, lad.
You might have chosen worse."




                             *CHAPTER III.*

                        *SOME MEN OF FAIRFAX’S.*


Joan Grant, when she bade Christopher climb a high tree if he sought her
heart, had not told him that she was taking a journey. When afterwards
she waved a farewell to him, as he rode out with his kinsfolk, she had
given no hint that she, too, was following adventure on the morrow.

The day after the Metcalfs, a hundred-and-twenty strong, journeyed to
serve King Charles, she set out on a more peaceful quest.  Her aunt,
Lady Ingilby of Ripley, had commanded this favourite niece of hers—all
in my lady’s imperious, high-handed way—to join her in the widowhood
that her husband’s absence with the Royal army enforced on her.  Her own
father was somewhere in Oxfordshire with the King, her brothers with
Prince Rupert, and in their absence Lady Grant had decided that her
daughter must obey the command.

"I was always a little afraid of my sister of Ripley," she explained, in
her pretty, inconsequent way.  "She would not forgive me if I kept you
here; and, after all, the roads may not be as dangerous as one fancies.
You must go, child."

Joan took the road with some pomp.  All the younger men had gone with
the master to the wars; but her chaise was guarded by two old
menservants who had pluck and good pistols, if no great strength to
fight pitched battles; and she had her maid Pansy with her in the
chaise.

"Do you know, mistress, what I found at the gate this morning?" asked
the maid, as they went through the pleasant vale of Wensley.

"I could not guess, Pansy."

"Why, a stirrup-iron.  Horseshoes are lucky enough, but a
stirrup-iron——"

Joan laughed eagerly; she had the country superstitions close at heart,
because she, too, was a daleswoman.  "There’s a knight riding somewhere
for me, Pansy."

"Knights are as knights do," said the other, with the Puritan tartness
ingrained in her.  "For my part, I’ll hope he’s better than most men.
It’s not asking much."

"In the doldrums, girl?  I shall have to train you.  It’s easier to
laugh, than cry—that’s the true Royalist faith."

Pansy—half maid, half confidante, and altogether spoiled—began to
whimper.  "It’s easy to laugh, with all the road in front of you, and a
riding knight ahead.  I’ve no man to think of, and that leaves a woman
lonesome-like."

"It is not for want of suitors," said Joan, humouring her maid as good
mistresses do.  "You had your choice of the dalesmen, Pansy."

Pansy bridled a little and shifted her headgear to a more becoming
angle.  "Ay, but they’re rough."  Her speech relapsed into the
mother-tongue she had tried often to forget.  "A lass that kens more
doesn’t mate with the li’le bit less.  She has her pride."

The mistress did not answer, but fell into a long reverie.  What was
true of the maid was true of herself.  Young Kit Metcalf, riding for the
King, was just "the li’le bit less," somehow.  She had a regard for him,
half real and half fanciful; but he seemed shut off from her by some
intangible difference that was not uncouthness, but something near to
it.  He was big and forthright, and shocked her daintiness.

They went through the pleasant dale.  In Wensley village they met a
waggon coming home with corn, ingathered for the threshing.  All down
the valley men were reaping in the fields.  The land yielded its
produce, and folk were gathering it as if no blight of civil war had
fallen about the land.  This, too, disturbed Joan Grant.  She had
pictured her journey to Ripley as one long road of peril—a battle to
every mile, and danger’s swift excitement scudding on before her.

"There’s no war at all, Pansy," she said fretfully, watching mile after
tranquil mile go by.  "They gather in their corn, and the peace is
undisturbed."

"We should be thankful for the mercy," said the maid austerely.

"Oh, we should, girl, but we’re not.  Undoubtedly we are not thankful."

At Skipton, the day before, there had been battle enough, as the Riding
Metcalfs knew.  When the fight was ended, and they had spiked the guns
lying wide across the highway of the Raikes, they gathered for the
forward ride.  A hundred-and-twenty of them had ridden out, and not one
was missing from their number, though half of them were carrying wounds.

Old Metcalf—"Mecca," as his kinsfolk had the name—rounded up his
company.  "The Governor tells me, lads, that a company of Fairfax’s men
are coming through.  We’ve to go wide of Skipton and ambush them."

Battle sat finely on the man.  He had no doubts, no waywardness.  He was
here for the King, to take orders from those placed above him, and to
enforce them so far as his own command went.

"A Mecca for the King!" roared Christopher, the six-foot baby of the
flock.

The cry was to sing like a northern gale through the Yorkshire
highlands; and now the running uproar of it drifted up the Raikes as
they came to the track that led right-handed down to Embsay village.
Down the pasture-lands they went, and through the small, grey township,
and forward on the road to Bolton Abbey.  Half between Bolton and Long
Addingham they met a yeoman jogging forward at a tranquil trot.

"Why, Squire Metcalf, it’s a twelve-month and a day since we set eyes on
each other," he said, reining up.  "Are you riding for Otley market?"

"Ay," said Metcalf, with a dalesman’s wariness. "Is there aught stirring
there, Demaine?"

"Nay, nowt so much—not enough to bring all your Nappa men with you,
Squire.  Maybe it’s men you’re seeking, instead of ewes and cattle."

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t."

"Well, if it’s men you’re seeking, you’ll find ’em. I overtook three
hundred of Fairfax’s soldiery just setting out from Otley."

"Oh, you did?  Were they horsed?"

"No, they were going at a sharp marching pace. They were a likely set o’
lads to look at—thick in the beam, but varry dour of face.  I take no
sides myself in this business of King and Parliament. I only say,
Squire, that a nod’s as good as a wink in troubled times."

"Thanks, Demaine," said the Squire of Nappa.

"Nay, no need.  Neighbour knows neighbour, and good day to ye."

The whole intimacy of the dales was in that brief greeting—the
freemasonry that ran like quicksilver in between the well-laid plans of
ambitious generals. Fairfax had sent three hundred of his men to
strengthen Lambert’s attack on Skipton Castle. A country squire and a
yeoman met on the highway and talked a while, and there was an ambush in
the making.

"Hi, Christopher!" said the Squire, beckoning the lad to his side.
"Ride forward on the Otley road till you see those men of Fairfax’s.
Then turn about and gallop."

Kit saluted gravely, as he or any Metcalf of them would have saluted if
the chief bade them ride through the Fiery Gate.  His wounds smarted as
he rode for Otley, and he relished the keen pain.  He was young, with
his eyes to the stars, and suffering for the King’s sake was haloed by
romance.

He went through Ilkley.  Its straw-thatched cottages clustered round the
brown stream of Wharfe; and, half a mile beyond, he saw a company of men
on foot marching with quick and limber step.  He forgot his wounds.
With a boy’s careless devilry, he galloped to meet them and reined up
within twenty paces.

"Are you my Lord Fairfax’s men?" he asked. "If so you’re needed at
Skipton.  Put your best foot forward."

"We’re Lord Fairfax’s men, sir," said the officer in command.  "Do you
come from Captain Lambert?"

"From Skipton—yes, I come from Skipton. There’s need for haste."

With a laugh and a light farewell, Kit reined about and spurred his
horse.  When he came to the top of the hill overlooking the wonderful,
quiet sweep of river that rocked despoiled Bolton Priory into dreams of
yester-year, he found his kinsmen waiting on the rise.

"What news, Kit?" asked the Squire.

"Sir, it will be butchery," said the lad, stirred by generous pity.
"There’s a big company of them, all on foot, and I—have led them into
ambush."

Squire Metcalf snarled at his baby-boy.  "The King will be well rid of
his enemies.  Men do not fight, Kit, on milk-and-water fancies."

A laugh went up from the Metcalfs—a laugh that was not easy for any lad
to bear.  "I’ve given my message, sir.  Put me in the front of the
hazard, if you doubt me."

The Squire had one of his sharp repentances. This son of his had shamed
him, and for a moment he strove with the hot temper that was the
inheritance of all the Metcalf breed.

"You shall lead us, Kit," he said at last.

The time seemed long in passing before the three hundred men of
Fairfax’s came marching at a stubborn pace into the hollow down below.
Then, with a roar of "A Mecca for the King!" Christopher was down among
them with his kinsmen.

When all was done, there was nothing left of the three hundred except a
press of fugitives, some prisoners, and many bodies scattered on the
highroad.  The garrison at Skipton might sleep well to-night, so far as
recruits to the besieging forces went.

It was the prisoners who troubled the Squire of Nappa.  His view of war
had been that it was a downright affair of enemies who were killed or
who escaped.  He glanced at the fifty captives his men had taken, massed
together in a sullen company, and was perplexed.  His roving troop of
horse could not be burdened with such a dead weight of footmen. The
garrison at Skipton Castle would not welcome them, for there were mouths
enough to feed there already.

"What shall I do with them, lads?" he asked, riding apart with his men.

Michael Metcalf, a raking, black-haired fellow, laughed carelessly.
"Best take powder and pistols from them and turn ’em adrift like sheep.
They’ll bleat to little purpose, sir, without their weapons."

The Squire nodded.  "Thou’rt not noted for great strength of head,
Michael, save so far as taking blows goes, but that was sage advice."

The Metcalfs, trusting first to their pikes, and afterwards—the
gentry-sort among them—to their swords, were disposed to look askance at
the pistols as tools of slight account, until Michael again found
wisdom. King’s men, he said, might find a use for weapons the enemy
found serviceable.

When the arms had been gathered, Squire Metcalf reined up in front of
the prisoners.  "Men of Fairfax’s," he said bluntly, "you’re a ragged
lot to look at, but there are gentlemen among you.  I do not speak of
rank or class.  The gentlemen, as the price of freedom, will take no
further part in the Rebellion.  The louts may do as they please, but
they had best not let me catch them at the fighting."

The words came hot and ready, and though the dispersed company of
prisoners laughed afterwards at the Squire’s handling of the matter,
they warmed to his faith in them.  They had volunteered from many
occupations to serve the Parliament.  Blacksmiths and clothiers and
carpenters from Otley were mingled with farmers and slips of the gentry
from the outlying country.  All answered to the keen issue Squire
Metcalf had given them.  They were trusted. On the next day twenty of
them lost hold of his message, and went in search of arms; but thirty
were constant to their pledge, and this, with human nature as it is, was
a high tribute to the Squire’s persuasiveness.

The Metcalf men rode quietly toward Skipton. For the first time since
their riding out from Nappa, they felt lonely.  They had fought twice,
and their appetite was whetted; but no other battle showed ahead.  They
were young to warfare, all of them, and thought it one happy road of
skirmish, uproar, and hard blows, from end to end of the day’s journey.

The only break in the monotony came as they rode up the steep track to
Embsay Moor.  At the top of the hill, dark against the sunlit sky, a
solitary horseman came into view, halted a moment to breathe his horse,
then trotted down at a speed that the steepness of the road made
foolhardy.  He did not see the Metcalf company until it was too late to
turn about, and trotted forward, since needs must.

"On which side of the battle?" asked Squire Metcalf, catching the
bridle.

"On which side are you, sir?"

"The King’s, but you are not.  No King’s man ever bandies questions; he
answers straight to the summons which side he stands for."

They found a message after diligent searching of his person.  The
message was in Lambert’s neat Quakerish handwriting, and was addressed
to a captain of horse in Ripon, bidding him take his men to Ripley and
keep watch about the Castle.  "That termagant, Lady Ingilby, is making
her house a meeting-place for Cavaliers," the message read. "Her husband
at the wars is one man only.  She rallies twenty to the cause each day.
See to it, and quickly."

"Ay," said the Squire, with his rollicking laugh, "we’ll see to it."

It was astonishing to see the change in this man, who until yesterday
had been content to tend his lands, to watch the dawn come up and sunset
die over the hills he loved, and get to his early sleep. His father and
his grandfather had handled big issues in the open, though he himself
had chosen a stay-at-home squire’s life; and the thing that is in the
blood of a man leaps forward always at the call of need.

Squire Metcalf, with brisk courtesy, claimed the messenger’s horse.
"Lest you ride back to Skipton with the news," he explained, "and
because a spare horse is always useful these days.  For yourself, get
back at leisure, and tell Mr. Lambert that the Riding Metcalfs have
carried the message for him."

Without another word, he glanced at the sun, guessed hastily the line of
country that pointed to Ripley, and rode forward at the head of his good
company.  It was rough going, with many turns and twists to avoid wet
ground here, a steep face of rock there; but at the end of it they came
to a high spur of moor, and beneath them, in a flood of crimson—the sun
was near its setting—they saw the tower of Ripley Castle and the long,
raking front of house and outbuildings.

The Squire laughed.  His face was aglow with pride, like the sunset’s.
"I’ve few gifts, lads, but one of them is to know Yorkshire from end to
end, as I know my way to bed o’ nights.  I’ve led you within sight of
Ripley; the rest lies with lad Christopher."

Michael, the black-haired wastrel of the flock, found voice.

"Kit will be saddle-sore if he rides all your errands. Give one o’ them
to me, sir."

The Squire looked him up and down.  "You’ve a heart and a big body,
Michael, but no head.  I tell you, Kit must take this venture forward."

So Michael laughed.  He was aware that, if wits were asked, he must give
place to Kit, whom he loved with an odd, jealous liking.

"What is your errand, sir?" asked Christopher.

The Squire put Lambert’s letter into his hand, bade him read it over and
over, then snatched it from him. "Have you got it by heart, Kit?"

Kit repeated it word by word, and his father tore the letter into shreds
and threw them to the keen west wind that was piping over the moor.
"That’s the way to carry all messages.  If you’re taken, lad, they can
turn your pockets inside out and search your boots, but they cannot find
what’s safe inside your head, not if they tap it with a sword-cut."

There was a high deed done on the moor at this hour of the declining
day.  Without a tremor or regret, the Squire of Nappa sent his son—the
one nearest his warm heart—to certain danger, to a hazard from which
there might well be no returning.

"Find Lady Ingilby," he said gruffly, "and beware of Roundheads guarding
the approaches to the house.  Give her the message."

"And then, sir?"

"It is this way, Kit," said the Squire, after a restless pacing up and
down the moor.  "Take counsel with Lady Ingilby and any Cavaliers you
find at Ripley.  Tell them the Metcalfs have picketed their horses here
on the moor, and wait for orders.  If she needs us, we are ready.  And
so good-bye, my lad."

The Metcalfs, by habit, were considerate toward the hale, big bodies
that asked good feeding.  On the way they had contrived to victual
themselves with some thoroughness, and now they unstrapped each his own
meal from the saddle.  When they had eaten, and crowned the meal with a
draught of water from the stream, Michael laughed that easy, thoughtless
laugh of his.

"When the King comes to his own, I’ll petition him to make the moors run
ripe October ale.  I never thrive on water, I."

"It’s not in you to thrive, lad," snapped the Squire.  "You’ve no gift
that way, come ale or water."

They had not been idle, any of them, since yesterday’s riding out from
Nappa; and now they were glad to lie in the heather and doze, and dream
of the cornfields ripe for harvest and the ingle-nook at home.  The
Squire, for his part, had no wish for sleep.  To and fro he paced in the
warm, ruddy gloaming, and his dreams were of the future, not the past.
Ambition, that had taken his forbears to high places, was changing all
his old, quiet outlook. The King had summoned him.  About his King there
was a halo of romance and great deserving. It was good to be asked to
fight for such a cause.

Metcalf did not know it, but his soul was ripening, like his own harvest
fields, under this fierce sun of battle and peril and hard riding.
Instead of a pipe by the hearth o’ nights, he was asked to bivouac on
the moor, to throttle sleep until Kit rode back or sent a messenger.  He
was content.  Better a week of riding for the King than years of safety
in home-fields.

He had not cared specially for thinking, save of crops and horses and
the way of rearing prime cattle for market; but to-night his mind was
clear, marching out toward big issues.  Little by little it grew plain
to him that he had been given a leadership of no usual sort.  There were
a hundred-and-twenty of them, keen to charge with the whole weight of
men and horses; but each of the six-score could ride alone on errands
needing secrecy, and summon his kinsmen when any hazard pressed too
closely. The clan was one man or six-score, just as need asked, and the
Squire was quick to realise the service they could render.  It might
well be that, long afterwards, men would tell their bairns, close
huddled round the hearth on winter nights, what share the Riding
Metcalfs had in crushing the rebellious Parliament.

As he thought about it all, his heart beating like a lad’s, his
imagination all afire, a step sounded close behind him.  He turned to
find Michael at his elbow.

"Well, scapegrace?" he asked.  "It all goes bonnily enough."

"Ay, for Christopher," growled the other.  The black mood was on him,
and at these times he had no respect of persons.  He was, indeed, like
one possessed of an evil spirit.  "Kit was a favourite always, and now
he gets all errands."

"He can keep his temper, Michael, under hardship. I’ve proved him, and I
know.  A soldier needs that gift."

Michael met the rebuke sullenly, but made no answer, and a restless
silence followed.

"My lad," said the Squire by and by, "you broke into a fine dream of
mine.  There were six-score Metcalfs, I fancied, pledged to ride
together.  Now there is one less."

"How so?  We’ve a few wounds to boast of between us, but no dead."

"One of us is dying by slow stages.  Jealousy is killing him, and I tell
you, Michael, I’d rather see the plague among us than that other
pestilence you’re nursing.  The sickness will spread.  When times are
slack—food short and nothing to be done by way of blows—you’ll whisper
in this man’s ear and in that man’s ear, and turn their blood to ice."

A great, overmastering repentance swept Michael’s devilry away.  He was
himself again.  "I love Christopher," he said very simply, "though I’m
jealous of him."

"Ay, I know!  But take this warning from me, Michael,—when the black
dog’s on your shoulder, shake him off.  Jealousy’s your prime failing.
It will break up our company one day, if you let it."




                              *CHAPTER IV*

                           *THE LAST LAUGH.*


Christopher, his shoulders very straight and his head somewhere up among
the stars, had trotted quietly down to Ripley village. His own failing
was not jealousy, but an extreme, foolhardy belief that luck was with
him always, and that blue sky watched over every day’s adventure. As he
reached the top of the street, he was thinking less of Lady Ripley and
his errand than of Joan Grant, who had sat on a stile in the
home-country while he made love to her, and had bidden him climb high.

He was roused from his dream by a company of Roundhead soldiery that
blocked the way, twenty paces or so ahead.  It did not occur to him—his
wits were country-reared as yet—that they need not know for which side
he rode, or that he was the bearer of a message.  Moreover, there was
adventure to his hand.  He put spurs to his horse, lifted his pike, and
rode in among them.  The big-hearted simplicity of his attack bewildered
the enemy for a moment; then they closed round him, plucked him from the
saddle, and held him, a man gripping him on either side, while Ebenezer
Drinkwater, their leader, looked him up and down.

"So you’re for the King?" said Drinkwater.

"I have that privilege."

"Ay, you’ve the look of it, with your easy laugh and your big air.  Have
you never heard of the Latter Judgment, and what happens to the proud
folk?"

"I’ve heard much of you canting cropheads," said Christopher suavely.
This was not the adventure he had hoped to meet, but he accepted it
blithely, as he would have met a stiff fence fronting him in the middle
of a fox-hunt.

"You’re carrying a message to Ripley Castle?"

"I am."

Drinkwater, a hard man, empty of imagination, could make nothing of this
youngster who seemed to have no thought for his life.  He ordered one of
his men to search the prisoner.  Boots and pockets, shirt and the inner
lining of his coat were ransacked. And Christopher felt no humiliation,
because laughter was bubbling at his heart.

"Well?" asked the prisoner.

Drinkwater, dour, persistent, believing what his arid experience had
taught him—that each man had his price—found a rough sort of diplomacy.
"You can go safe if you tell us where the message is."

"I never cared too much for safety," said Kit, with great cheeriness.
"Offer another bribe, good crophead."

Ebenezer, fond of food and good liquor, fell into the usual snare, and
measured all men’s appetites by his own.  "You look starved and empty.
A good supper, say, and a creaming mug of ale to top it?"

"I’ll take that draught of beer.  Supper I’m in no need of for an hour
or two."

Drinkwater laughed, without merriment, as he bade one of his men go to
the tavern and bring a measure of home-brewed.  It was brought to
Christopher, and the smell of it was good as he blew the froth away.

Between the cup and the drinking he halted. "Let us understand the
bargain.  I drink this ale—I’m thirsty, I admit—and in return I tell you
where I hide the message."

"That is the bargain," assented Drinkwater. "I always knew every man was
to be bought, but your price is the cheapest I’ve heard tell of."

Kit lingered over the draught.  "It is good ale," he said.  "Send for
another measure."

"Well, it’s not in the bond, but you can have it. Now, youngster," went
on Drinkwater, after the second measure had been despatched, "where’s
that message of yours?"

"In my head, sir," said Kit, with a careless nod. "Safe behind wooden
walls, as my father put it when he bade me learn it all by rote."

"No jesting," snapped Drinkwater, nettled by a guarded laugh from one of
his own men.  "The bargain was that you told us the message."

"That I told you where it lay—no more, no less. I have told you, and
paid for that good ale of yours."

Drinkwater was no fool.  He saw himself outwitted and wasted no regrets.
After all, he had the better of the jest.

"Tie him by the legs and arms," he said dourly, "and set him on the
bench here till we’re ready to start.  There are more ways than one of
sobering a King’s man."

Christopher did not like the feel of the rope about his limbs, nor did
he relish the attentions of stray village-folk who came and jeered at
him after his captors had gone in to supper.  One can despise louts, but
still feel the wasp-sting of their gibes.

Into the middle of it all came two horsewomen; and to Kit, seeing the
well-known horses, it was as if a breath of Yoredale and the spring came
to him. He knew the old men, too, who guarded the horse-women, front and
rear.  Under his gladness went an uneasy feeling that yesterday’s hard
riding and hard lighting, or Drinkwater’s ale, or both, had rendered him
light-headed.  It was not possible that she could be here in Ripley.

Joan Grant was tired of the uneventful journey, tired of her maid Pansy,
whose tongue ran like a brook.  "This should be Ripley, at long-last,"
she said fretfully.  "Tell me, girl, am I grey-headed yet?  It seems a
lifetime since the morning."

Pansy, looking through the right-hand window of the coach, saw a
tavern-front, its windows soft with candle-light.  On the bench in front
of it, lit by the ruddy gloaming, was a man bound with ropes, a man who
threw gibe for gibe at a company of Ripley’s cowards who baited him.

"He carries no knight’s air just now," said Pansy, with a bubble of
laughter; "but it was not for naught I found that stirrup-iron at the
gate this morning."

Joan Grant looked, and, seeing Kit there, friendless and courageous, she
felt a quickening of the wayward thing she called her heart.  She got
down from the carriage, and stepped to the bench that stood under the
inn wall; then, seeing the welcome in Kit’s eyes—a welcome near to
adoration—she withdrew a little.

"So this comes of riding for the King?" she asked, with high disdain.

And something stirred in Christopher—a new fire, a rebellion against the
glamour that had put his manhood into leading-strings.

"If this comes, or worse, I’m glad to ride for the King," he said.

"If I loosed your hands and bade you take a seat in my coach——"

"I should not take it; there is other work to do."

Joan, under the smart of the rebuff, was pleased with this man of hers.
Something had happened to him since yesterday.  He was no longer the
uncouth boy, thinking he could have the moon by asking for it.

"You’re rough and uncivil, sir."

"I am.  These lambs of the Parliament are teaching me new manners."

She bowed carelessly, drew her skirts away from the litter of the
roadway, and went perhaps ten paces toward her carriage.  Then she
turned.  "I can be of no service to you, then?" she asked coldly.

His face grew eager, but not with the eagerness that had pleased and
affronted her just now; and he tried to beckon her nearer, forgetting
that his hands were tied.  She guessed his meaning, and came to his side
again; and this time she began cutting at his bonds with a knife
borrowed from her coachman; but the villagers intervened, saying they
dared not be party to the venture.

"Yes, you can be of service," he whispered, when the onlookers had given
back again, leaving them to what they fancied was a lovers’
leave-taking. "Lady Ingilby lives close by—it will scarcely be out of
your way to take a message to her."

[Illustration: "’Yes, you can be of service,’ he whispered."]

"So little out of the way that we are bound for the Castle, my maid and
I, at the end of a fatiguing journey.  If this is civil war, I’d as lief
have peace. There were no adventures on the road."

Kit could not understand her gusty mood—for that matter, she could not
understand herself—but he was not concerned with whimsies.  Folk were
dependent on him, and he was answerable for their safety.  He recalled
that she was kin to the folk at Ripley Castle, and accepted this
surprising fortune.

"Listen, and remember," he said sharply.  "These lambs may quit their
supper any moment and disturb us.  Tell Lady Ingilby that we caught a
messenger on his way from Skipton.  His letter was to the Roundheads
here in Ripley.  ’That termagant, Lady Ingilby, is making her house a
meeting-place for Cavaliers’—have you that by heart?"

"Oh, yes," assented Joan, laughing at herself because he was not the
suitor now, but the lord paramount, who must be obeyed.  "Proceed,
Captain Metcalf—or have they made you colonel since yesterday?
Promotion comes so quickly in time of war."

"You can flout me later," said Christopher, with country stolidness.

He repeated the rest of the message, and made sure that she had it by
heart.  "My folk are up the moor," he finished.  "They’re waiting near
the High Cross till they hear what Lady Ingilby asks of them."

Joan Grant again, for no reason that she understood, grew lenient with
this man’s bluntness, his disregard of the glamour she had been able
once to weave about him as a spider spins its threads.

"Your folk are as near as High Cross, and you ask no more of me?"

"What is there to ask, except that you get into your carriage and find
Lady Ingilby?  My work’s done, now that I have a messenger."

She looked him in the face.  In all her life of coquetry and whims, Miss
Grant had never stood so close to the reality that is beauty.  She
smiled gravely, turned without a word, and got into her carriage.

"Pansy," she said, as they were covering the short journey to the
Castle, "I have met a man to-day."

"Snares o’ Belial, most of them," murmured Pansy.

"He was tied by ropes, and I think he was in pain, his face was so grey
and drawn.  It did not seem to matter.  He had all his folk at call, and
would not summon them, except for Lady Ingilby’s needs.  He forgot his
own."

"Knighthood," said Pansy, in her practical, quiet voice.  "He always had
the way of it."

So Miss Grant boxed her on the ears for her pains. "Small use in that,
girl, if he dies in the middle of the business."

She stopped the carriage, summoned old Ben Waddilove, who rode in front
to guard her journey. "Ben, do you know the High Cross on the moor?" she
asked.

"I should do, Miss Joan, seeing I was reared i’ this country before I
went to Nappa."

"Then ride for it.  You’ll find Squire Metcalf and his men there.  Tell
him that his son is sitting on a bench at Ripley, tied hand and foot."

After the loiterers of the village had watched Miss Grant’s carriage out
of sight, they turned again to baiting Christopher, until this diversion
was interrupted by Drinkwater coming with his men from supper in the
tavern.  Whether the man’s digestion was wrong, or his heart out of
place, only a physician could have told; but it happened always that a
full meal brought out his worst qualities.

"Tired of sitting on a bench, lad?" he asked, with what to him was
pleasantry.

"No," said Kit, "I’m glad to have a bench under me, after the riding
I’ve done lately.  A bench sits quiet—not like a lolopping horse that
shakes your bones at every stride."

"About this message that you carry in your head?  Would a full meal
bribe you?"

"The message has gone to Lady Ingilby, as it happens.  There’s
consolation, Puritan, in having the last laugh."

For a moment it seemed that Drinkwater would strike him on the mouth,
but he conquered that impulse.

"So the message was to Lady Ingilby?" he said. "I guessed as much."

Kit reddened.  To salve his vanity, under the humiliation he was
suffering, he had blurted out a name that should have been kept secret.
What would the old Squire say of such imprudence?

"You’re a lad at the game o’ war," went on Drinkwater. "The last laugh
is with us, I reckon.  We shall keep a stricter watch than ever on the
Castle."

Remembering the burden of the message, Kit was more keenly aware that he
had blundered.  "Perhaps I lied," he suggested.

"Most men do, but not you, I fancy.  You’ve a babe’s sort of innocence
about you.  Now, listen to me.  You can go free if you repeat that
message."

"I stay bound," said Kit impassively.

A butcher in the crowd pressed forward.  "He sent it on by a slip of
ladydom—a King Charles sort o’ lass, every inch of her, all pricked out
with airs and graces.  The lad seemed fair daft about her, judging by
his looks."

"Thanks, friend," said Drinkwater grimly.  "See you, lad, you can go
free to kiss her at the gate to-night, if you’ll tell us what Lady
Ingilby knows by now."

Kit was young to the pillory, young to his fine regard for Joan Grant.
An intolerable pain took hold of him as he heard her name bandied
between Drinkwater and the rabble.  "You lout," he said, and that was
all.  But the quietness of his loathing pierced even Drinkwater’s thick
hide.

Joan meanwhile had got to the Castle and had been welcomed by her aunt
with something near to effusiveness.

"I’ve been so lonely, child," Lady Ingilby explained.  "If one doesn’t
happen to care for one’s husband, it is fitting he should go to the
wars; but if one does—ah, if one cares!"

A little later Joan explained that she had met a mad neighbour of hers
sitting on a bench in front of the Ripley inn.  The man had showed no
care at all for his own safety, but had been zealous that she should
carry a message for him.

Lady Ingilby’s face grew harder as she listened to the message, but
still her unconquerable humour stayed with her.  "So they know me as
’that termagant.’  Good!  I’m making this house a training-school for
Cavaliers.  I stay at home while my husband rides for the King; but I,
too, am riding. Joan, the suspense would kill me if I had no work to do.
Sometimes he sends word that he is hale and busy down in Oxfordshire,
and always he calls me sweetheart once or twice in these ill-written,
hasty letters.  At my age, child, to be sweetheart to any man!"

Something of the spoiled days slipped away from Joan as she breathed
this ampler air.  The aunt who had been a little cold, austere, in
bygone years was showing her true self.

"What of your mad neighbour?" asked Lady Ingilby, repenting of her
softer mood.  "You did not leave him on the bench, surely, tied hand and
foot?  You cut the ropes?"

"The villagers would not allow it—and, indeed, why should I regret?  He
was rough with me—cold and uncivil."

"There, child!  Never wave the red flag in your cheeks.  Folk see it,
like a beacon fire.  You’re in love with the madman.  No denial, by your
leave. I’m old and you are young, and I know my world."

"He is uncouth and rude.  I hate him, aunt."

"That proves it to the hilt.  I’ll send out a rescue-party.  Men who
have no care for their own lives are precious these days."

"You have no need," said Miss Grant.  "I forgave him for his roughness."

"Tut, child!  Forgiveness won’t untie his hands."

"But I sent word, too, to his kinsmen, who are near."

"So!" laughed Lady Ingilby.  "How fierce your loathing burns, you babe
just come from the nursery!"

On the moor guarded by the High Cross the Squire of Nappa was pacing lip
and down, halting now and then to watch his kinsfolk as they slept
beside their horses.  He envied them their slumber, would have been glad
to share it after the turmoil of the last two days, but, under all
casual temptation to lie down and sleep, he knew that he was glad to be
awake—awake, with the free sky overhead and the knowledge that so many
Metcalfs needed him.

"We ought to do well for the King," was his constant thought.  "If we
fail, ’twill not be for lack of wakefulness on my part."

As dusk went down the hill, and on the edge of dark a big moon strode
above the moor’s rim, he heard the faint sound of hoofs.  None but ears
sharpened by a country life could have caught the sound; but the Squire
was already handling his pike. As the rider drew nearer, his big horse
scattering stones from the steep drift of shale, Metcalf gripped the
shaft of his weapon and swung it gently to and fro.

The moon’s light was clear now, and into the mellow gold of it the
horseman rode.

"Who goes there?" roared the Squire, lifting his pike.

It was a quavering voice that answered.  "Be ye going to fight Ben
Waddilove?  I’m old and home-weary, and we were lads together."

The Squire’s laugh should have roused his company.  "Why, Ben, I came
near to braining you! What brings you here so far from Nappa?"

"Oh, Miss Joan!  She’s full of delicate, queer whimsies.  Told me, she
did, I had to ride up the moor, as if my knees were not raw already!
Said li’le Christopher, your son, was sitting on a bench in Ripley, tied
hand and foot by Roundhead folk. So he is.  I saw him there myself."

Without pause or hesitation, the Squire turned to his sleeping kinsfolk.
Some he shook out of slumber, and kicked others to attention.  "We’re
for Ripley, lads!" was all his explanation.

With astonishing speed they unpicketed their horses and got to saddle.
The discipline of farm and field, out yonder at Nappa, had not gone for
naught. They knew this rough-tongued Squire who meant to be obeyed.

Ben Waddilove tried to keep pace with them as they skeltered down the
moor, but gave it up at last. "Nay," he muttered, "I’m not so young as I
was. I’ll just be in at the death, a bit later on."

Drinkwater and his lambs were tiring of their prisoner, who would not
speak, would not budge or accept a price for liberty, when a trumpet
call rang down the village street.

"A Mecca for the King!" roared the Squire, his voice like a mountain
burn in spate.

When all was done, and Kit’s hands loosened, the lad knew his weakness
and the galling pains about his limbs.  He lifted his head with the last
rally of his strength.

"Sir, where is Drinkwater?" he asked his father.

"Dead, my lad.  He ran against my pike."

"That’s a pity.  I wanted you to—to tell him, sir, that I had the last
laugh, after all."




                              *CHAPTER V.*

                         *THE LADY OF RIPLEY.*


They carried Christopher into the tavern, and the Squire thrust the
gaping onlookers from the room and shut the door.  He thought the lad
was dying.

Kit lay on the lang-settle.  The dancing firelight showed the pallor of
his face, the loose, helpless surrender of limbs and body.

"I cared for the lad too much, maybe," growled the Squire.  "He was
littlish, as we Metcalfs go, and a man’s heart yearns, somehow, about
the baby of a flock."

For two hours he watched, and then Kit stirred. "The louts bandied
Joan’s name about," the lad murmured.

"Ay, so they did.  Get up and fight, lad Christopher—for Joan."

Kit obeyed the summons with a promptness that dismayed the Squire.  He
got to his feet, looked about him, and moved across the floor; then his
legs grew weak under him, and he tottered to the settle.

"Tell her it doesn’t matter either way," he said. "Tell her I’m for the
King, as all the Metcalfs are."

He slept that night like a little child; and the Squire, watching beside
him, returned to his own childhood.  The bitterness of fever was over.
Kit would live, he thought.

Pansy was early astir next morning, and moved among the servants of the
Castle with an aloofness that enraged the women, with a shy, upward
glance of her Puritan eyes that enthralled the men.  She was demure and
gentle; and when a lad came into the yard with his milking-cans, and
said that there had been a bonnie fight in the village overnight, Pansy
asked him how it had fared with Master Christopher.

"Oh, he?" said the lad, his eyes big and round at sight of her.  "He was
ready to die last night; but he’s thought better of it, so they say."

Pansy did not take the news to her mistress, whose moods were not to be
reckoned with these days, but to the lady of the house.  Already she had
learned, with her quick instinct for character, that Lady Ingilby and
she had much in common.

"The Riding Metcalfs are in Ripley, by your leave," she said, with
downcast eyes.

"I’m vastly glad to hear it.  Miss Grant has told me of their loyalty.
Well?"

"Master Christopher lies wounded in the tavern—he that carried the
message so well.  It seems a shame that he should stay there with only
men to nurse him."

"Ah, Master Christopher!  I’ve heard of him, Why do you bring the news
to me, girl, instead of to your mistress?"

"Because, my lady, she’s deep in love with him, and does not know it.
I’d as lief meet a she-wolf in the open as talk of him to the mistress."

The other laughed whole-heartedly.  It was the first real laugh she had
found since her husband left her for the wars.  "You’ve a head on your
shoulders, child, and a face rather too pretty for the snares of this
world.  I thank you for the news."

An hour later Lady Ingilby went out, alone and on foot, into Ripley
street.  There was a press of Metcalfs about the roadway—brawny men who
had slept beside their horses wherever they could find room about the
fields, and who had gathered for the next day’s call to action.

"Is the Squire of Nappa here?" asked Lady Ingilby.

"He’s indoors," said Michael, with his graceless ease of bearing,
"tending Christopher, the darling of our company."

"Go in and tell him that Lady Ingilby commands."

When the Squire came out, a little dizzy with his vigil, and altogether
glad that Kit had so far slept off his weakness as to ask for breakfast,
he saw a lady with a high, patrician nose and keen, grey eyes, who
smiled at him.

"Sir, I come to inspect your company.  In my husband’s absence I
undertake his duties."

"Madam," he answered with rough grace, "my men are honoured.  The King
may have better soldiers, but has he six-score to set side by side with
mine for height and girth?"

He bade his men get to horse—as many of them as the street afforded room
for—and marshalled them briskly into line.  Lady Ingilby was astounded
by the discipline they showed.  It was as if their leader scarcely
needed to give an order; their readiness seemed to go with the command,
as if one brain guided the whole company.

She took the salute with lively satisfaction. "You dwarf our houses,
Metcalfs.  I never guessed how low the inn roof is.  You are all for the
King? Good!  That was a lusty roar."

They faced each other, the cavalry and the slim, straight lady whose
husband was at the wars. And the Nappa men answered her laugh; and from
this day forward they were comrades, she and they, and she could command
them anything.

"Undoubtedly prayers are answered, if one prays long enough," she said,
in her odd, imperative way. "There’s been a siege of Ripley Castle, a
stealthy siege, and I’ve needed men about me."

"We are free for your service," said the Squire. "Indeed, we were in
fear of idleness, after doing what was asked at Skipton yesterday."

"There’s no speed of attack in this venture."  She read the man’s need
for blows and the gallop, and would not tempt him into a promise rashly
given.  "You will understand, Mr. Metcalf, that my house is a hospital
just now.  Whenever a Cavalier takes wounds too hard for him, he drags
himself to Ripley.  The countrymen all know my mind; and, when they find
a lame dog of the King’s, they bring him to my gate.  The garrison of my
good castle, I tell you frankly, is made up of women and sick men."

"But we’re no nurses," protested the Squire, with laughable simplicity.
"You’d have six-score other ailing men if you shut us up indoors."

Lady Ingilby laughed, for the second time since her husband rode for the
King.  "We could not house you, sir.  If there’s scarce room for you in
Ripley’s street, you would overfill the castle.  I have other work for
you."

"In the open?"

"Ah, your eagerness!  Yes, in the open.  Keep our gates safe from
without, sir.  There are few hale men among the garrison, and these are
wearied out with sleeplessness.  Prowling companies of Roundheads come
this way, giving us no rest. They know Sir William Ingilby is with the
King, they know I keep open house here for Cavaliers——"

"Bid your household rest," the Squire broke in. "There are six-score of
us here—judge for yourself whether we’re big enough to guard you."

"Big enough," she assented, with a brisk, friendly nod.  "But how to
feed your company, sir?" she added, returning to the prose of
housewifery.

"We feed ourselves," laughed the Squire.  "It seemed a fat country as we
rode through.  Mutton—and corn for our horses—wherever these are,
there’s a meal for us."

Kit had left his half-finished breakfast at the sound of Lady Ingilby’s
voice outside.  It was not her quality, or the courage she was showing
under hardship, that stirred his pulses.  As she turned to go in at the
tavern door, saying she must see the wounded man, Christopher himself
crossed the threshold.

"My faith, sir," she said tartly, "you should be in your bed, by the
look of you.  You can scarce stand."

"Miss Grant is with you?" he asked, a sudden crimson in his cheeks.

"Oh, yes.  The most wonderful maid that ever came to Ripley—her eyes
like stars—she feeds on thistledown."

"You are pleased to jest," he said, aloof and chilly.

"Not so hasty, by your leave.  You’ve a message for this girl who sups
on moonbeams?"

Some kindness in her voice arrested Kit.  "Tell her that I wish her very
well."

"I shall tell her nothing of the kind, my lad. D’ye want to win her?
Then I shall tell her you were thinking of the wars—that, when I asked
if you had any message, you seemed to have forgotten her.  I shall make
much of that ugly scar across your face—taken yesterday, by the look of
it—and hazard that you may live a week, with some good luck to help
you."

"You’ve no heart," he said, the Metcalf temper roused.

"An older heart than yours—that is all.  I have lived through your sort
of moonlight, and found the big sun shining on the hill-top.  My man
went out to the wars, and I—I would not have him back just yet for all
the gold in Christendom.  Absence is teaching me so much."

"I need her.  You do not understand."

"Tut-tut!  You’ll have to wait till you’ve proved your needing."  She
looked at the Castle front, saw a star of light flicker and grow clear
in a window on the left.  "That is her room, Sir Love-too-well," she
said, with the gentlest laugh.  "When you are weary of guarding the
Castle, glance up and picture her yonder, sipping dew, with all the
fairies waiting on her."

"I thank you," said Kit, with childish gravity. "I shall know where to
look when all else in Ripley seems drab and tawdry."

Lady Ingilby beckoned Squire Metcalf to her side. "Your son is no
courtier, Mr. Metcalf," she said tartly.

"He was not bred that way.  I licked him into shape."

"And yet he is a courtier.  He loves well.  Only, by your leave, defend
my gate against all women from the Yoredale country.  I’ve Joan Grant
here, and her maid Pansy, and between them they’re turning our men’s
wits.  Two pretty women can always outflank a troop of horse."

The Riding Metcalfs had a busy season between October of that year and
the next year’s spring. So far as history-making went, the Civil War was
quiet enough.  Pym, with his sane strength, died as Christmas was
nearing, and left the Parliament in a muddle of divided leadership.  The
King summoned a Parliament at Oxford, but nothing fruitful came of it.
Yet in Yorkshire the Metcalfs found work enough to do.  Loyal to their
pledge, they always left some of their number to guard Ripley Castle;
the rest of them went harrying Puritans wherever they could find them.
Sometimes they made their way to Skipton, creating uproar and a
diversion of the siege; at other times they paid minute and embarrassing
attention to Otley, for, of all the Parliament’s officers, they detested
most the Fairfaxes, who, as old Squire Mecca had it, should have learnt
better manners from their breeding.

Kit was divided between two allegiances now. One was owing unalterably
to the light which Lady Ingilby had shown him shining from Joan’s upper
room.  The other was Prince Rupert’s.  Through all the muddled rides and
skirmishes and swift alarms of that hard winter, the Metcalfs had heard
constantly the praises of two men sung—Rupert’s and Cromwell’s.  Rupert
had succeeded in the raising of a cavalry troop that already, rumour
said, was invincible; Cromwell was building up his Ironsides, grim and
heavy, to meet the speed and headlong dash of Rupert’s men.  Gradually,
as the months went on, Kit shaped Prince Rupert to the likeness of a
hero—a little less than saint, and more than man. Whenever he came home
to Ripley, he roamed o’ nights, and looked up at Joan’s window, and
shaped her, too, to the likeness of a maid too radiant for this world.
He was in the thick of the high dreams that beset an untrained lad; but
the dreams were building knighthood into the weft and woof of him, and
no easy banter of the worldlings would alter that in years to come.

Joan played cat’s-cradle with his heart.  She would flout him for a day,
and meet him at the supper-board thereafter with downcast eyes and
tender voice; and Squire Metcalf would suppress his laughter when Kit
confided to him that women were beyond his reckoning.

Soon after dawn, on a day in late April, Kit stole out for a glance at
the left wing of the Castle, where Joan’s window grew ruddy in the
sunlight.  Rain was falling, and a west wind was sobbing up across the
sun.  And suddenly he fancied that women were not beyond his reckoning.
They were April bairns, all of them—gusty and cold, warm and full of
cheer, by turns.  He remembered other Aprils—scent of gilly-flowers in
the garden far away in Yoredale, the look of Joan as she came down the
fields to greet him—all the trouble and the fragrance of the days when
he was giving his heart to her, not knowing it.

He felt a sharp tap on his shoulder.  "Day-dreaming, Kit?" laughed the
Squire of Nappa. "Oh, she’s there, my lad, safe housed.  I was about to
knock on the gate, but I fancy you’d best take my message to Lady
Ingilby."

Kit was glad to take it, glad to be nearer by the width of the courtyard
to that upper window. Women—who, for the most part, are practical and
ruled by household worries—must laugh often at the men who care for them
with true romance.

When the gate was unbarred, and he had passed through, a kerchief
fluttered down—a little thing of cambric, ladylike and foolish.  Kit did
not see it. His glance had roved to the upper window, and there, framed
by the narrow mullions, was Joan’s face.

"You do not care to pick it up," she said with a careless laugh.  "How
rough you are, you men of Yoredale."

Kit saw the favour lying at his feet, and pinned it to his hat.  When he
glanced up again, the window overhead was empty, and Lady Ingilby,
standing at his side, was bidding him good-morrow.

"I have urgent news for you," he said, recovering from confusion.

"Not so urgent but a kerchief could put it out of mind.  But come
indoors, lest a snowstorm of such favours buries you.  You’ll have many
such storms, I hazard—you, with your big laugh and your air of
must-be-obeyed."

When they had come into the oak-parlour, and Lady Ingilby had seen that
the door was close-shut against eavesdroppers, Kit gave his message.

"A man rode in an hour ago from York.  The garrison there is near to
famine.  They’re besieged by three armies—Lord Fairfax at Walmgate Bar,
my Lord Manchester at Bootham Bar, and the Scots at Micklegate.  My
father sends me with the message, and asks if you can spare the Riding
Metcalfs for a gallop."

"Six-score to meet three armies?"

"If luck goes that way."

She stood away from him, looking him up and down.  "My husband is of
your good breed, sir. I gave him to the King, so I must spare my
six-foot Metcalfs to the cause."

Joan Grant came into the parlour.  Kit, seeing the filtered sunlight
soft about her beauty, thought that the world’s prime miracle of
womanhood, a thing dainty, far-away, had stepped into the room.

"Can I share your secrets?" she asked diffidently.

"I’ve none," said Kit, with a sudden laugh.  "I carry your kerchief,
Joan—at least, my hat does, whenever I wear it in the open, for men to
see."

Again she was aware of some new self-reliance, some ease of speech and
carriage that had been absent in the Yoredale days.  A few months of
peril had accomplished this; she asked herself, with a queer stab of
jealousy, what a year of soldiery would do.

"I dropped the kerchief by chance, sir," she said coldly.  "You will
return it."

"By and by, when it has been through other chance and mischance.  Lady
Ingilby, you shall be judge between us.  Is the kerchief mine?"

The older woman laughed.  "Yours—when you’ve proved your right to wear
it.  Meanwhile, it is a loan."

"Women always forsake each other at the pinch," said Joan, with a gust
of temper.

"To be sure, girl.  Our men-folk are so often right, in spite of their
absurdities.  This venture toward York, Mr. Metcalf?  You propose to
ride against three armies—a hundred and twenty of you?"

"No, by your leave.  We hope to get near the city in one company, and
then decide.  If York is leaguered by regiments, there’ll be an outer
rim of Metcalfs, waiting their chance of capturing news going in or
coming out."

"Good!  I begin to see how strong you are, you clan of Metcalfs.  You
are one, or two, or six-score, as need asks.  I think you are well
advised to go to York."

Joan Grant turned from the window.  Her aloofness and disdain were gone.
"Would you not stay to guard our wounded here?" she asked.

The mellow sunlight was busy in her hair.  Her voice was low and
pleading.  Kit was dizzied by temptation.  And Lady Ingilby looked on,
wondering how this man would take the baptism.

"We fight where the King needs us most—that is the Metcalf way," he said
at last.

"If I asked you not to go?  Of course, I care nothing either way.  But
suppose I asked you?"

With entire simplicity and boyishness, Kit touched the kerchief in his
hat.  "This goes white so far as I can guide it."

"Ah," said Lady Ingilby.  "The King should hear of you, sir, in days to
come."

When he had gone, Joan came to her aunt’s side. "He—he does not care,
and I would we were home in Yoredale, he and I.  I was free to flout him
there."

"Never trust men," said Lady Ingilby, with great cheeriness.  "He does
not care, of course—no man does when the battle music sounds."

"But he—he was glad to wear my kerchief."

"It is the fashion among our Cavaliers.  That is all.  He would not care
to take the field without a token that some poor gentlewoman was dying
of heart-break for his wounds."

Joan found her dignity.  "My own heart is sound," she protested.

"Then don’t accuse it, child, by protests."

"I’m so glad that he’s gone—so glad!"  She crossed to the window again,
looked out on the sunlit street.  "How drab the world is," she said
pettishly.  "There’ll be snow before night, I fancy; it grows chilly."

"The world’s drab," assented Lady Ingilby. "What else does one expect at
my years?  And our six-foot Metcalf will forget you for the first pretty
face he meets in York."

"Is he so base?  Tell me, is he so base?"

"No; he forgets—simply, he forgets.  Men do."

Without, in Ripley street, there was great stir of men and horses
getting ready for the York road. Lady Ingilby, hearing the tumult of it,
crossed to the window, and her heart was lighter by twenty years as she
watched the cavalcade ride out.

"The White Horses, and six-score giants riding them!  They’ll make
history, girl.  The pity is that not all of those six-score will sit a
saddle again. They have the look of men who do not care how and when
they die, so long as King Charles has need of them."

"Kit will return," said Joan, in a chastened voice.

"That is good hearing.  How do you know it, baby-girl?"

"Because I asked him to return.  Just to nurse his wounds would
be—Paradise, I think."

The Metcalf men were a mile on the York road by now.  Michael, the
reputed black sheep and roysterer of the clan, rode close beside
Christopher, and chattered of a face he had seen at an upper window of
the Castle.

"A face to lead a man anywhere," he finished, "Hair like wind in the
rusty brackens."

Kit touched the favour in his hat.  "It is she I fight for, Michael—for
the King and Joan."

"Are you always to have luck, just for the asking?" growled Michael.

"This time, yes, unless brother fights with brother."

For a moment they were ready to withdraw from their kinsfolk and settle
the issue in some convenient glade.  Then Michael yielded to the queer,
jealous love he had learned, long since in Yoredale, for this lad.

"Oh, we’ll not quarrel, Kit.  There’ll be another face for me at the
next town we ride through. There are more swans than one, and all turn
geese in later life."

Squire Mecca, hearing high words from the rear, rode back to learn what
the uproar was about. "So you’re at your brawling again, Michael?" he
roared.

"No, sir.  I was wishing Kit good luck for the lady’s favour he is
wearing in his hat."

"You’re a smooth-tongued rascal!  As for you, Kit, lady’s favours can
bide till we’re through with this rough work.  Moonshine is pretty
enough when the day’s over, but the day is just beginning."

They rode by way of Tockwith village, long and straggling, and forward
over a heath studded thick with gorse and brambles, and set about with
black, sullen wastes of bog.

Squire Metcalf, for all his hardihood, was full of superstition, as most
folk are who have good wits and healthy souls.  A little wind—of the
sort named "thin" in Yoredale—blew over Marston Moor, chilling the warm
sunlight.

"There’s a crying in the wind," he said, turning to Kit, who was riding
at his bridle-hand.  "I trust it’s sobbing for the end of all foul
traitors to the King."




                             *CHAPTER VI.*

                      *HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK.*


They crossed the moor, and so, through Long Marston, made forward on the
York road till they reached a hamlet three miles from the city.  Here
they captured a shepherd, known to the country speech as "an old,
ancient man," who was driving a flock of ewes from a neighbouring
pasture.  They asked him if he knew anything of the to-and-froing of the
Parliament troops.

"I’ve seen a moil o’ horsemen scummering out to York for three days
past.  But they asked me no questions, and so I asked them none.
Reckoned they were riding to a hunt.  Gentlefolk must fill up their
time, one way or another."

"But, man," snapped old Metcalf, "d’ye live so close to York and not
know there’s war between King and Parliament?"

"Nay.  I’ve been tending sheep.  Have they fallen out, like, King and
Parliament?  Well, let ’em fratch, say I.  I’m a simple man myself, with
ewes to tend."

Squire Metcalf broke into that big laugh of his that seemed to set the
world to rights.  "Forward, Mecca lads!" he said.  "We’ve ewes to tend
ourselves; but, bless you, this shepherd brings a wind from Yoredale to
us."

A half-mile further on they met a company of Fairfax’s horse, foraging
for meat and drink.  There were fifty of them, and the Metcalfs went
through them like a sickle cutting through the bearded corn. Ten were
killed, and they let all but one of the retreating forty go.  From him,
before they freed him, they learned that it was unwise to venture
further than a mile on the York road, unless they wished to try
conclusions with outposts of the Scots at Micklegate.

"One of us must find a way into York Castle," said the Squire, calling a
council of war about him.

It was part of the man’s downrightness, his faith that Providence was
kind to every stark adventure, that he was able to make the forlorn hope
seem a deed already done.

"_I_ claim the venture, sir," said Michael, with his unalterable
smoothness and the air of one who jests. "Kit, here, has had his share
already."

"Well, well, ’twill keep you out of mischief for a while.  Get you from
saddle, Michael.  Steal into York as privily as may be, and ask my Lord
Newcastle what service six-score Metcalfs can do him in the open.  We
shall be waiting for you, here or hereabouts, when you return."

Michael, as he trudged along the road, overtook a tall fellow who walked
beside a donkey-cart piled high with vegetables.  "I’ll buy that donkey,
friend," he said, "and all your cart holds, and the clothes you stand up
in."

"For how much?" asked the countryman, stolidly indifferent to all except
the call of money.

Michael took a guinea from his pocket, and watched cupidity brighten in
the rascal’s eyes as another coin was added.  Then they went aside into
a little wood beside the road, exchanged clothes there, and the bargain
was complete.

"Clothes make a difference," chuckled the countryman.  "Here’s thee,
looking as gaumless a lad as ever brought produce into camp; and here’s
me, the gentleman fro’ my head to my riding-boots. All I need is to
steal a horse; then I shall be the gentleman quite.  I knew the feel o’
stirrups once, before I drank away a snug little farm and had to take to
the road."

Something in the man’s voice, something in his sturdy height, the
devil-may-care acceptance of life as it was, roused Michael’s interest.
"You sell your wares to the Roundhead army?" he asked sharply.

"Ay, but that doesn’t say I hold wi’ them.  I’ve my living to earn, and
sell in any market."

"Have a care, man.  You’re for the King, I fancy, apart from trade.  And
how do you know that I’ll not take you by the ear and lead you into camp
for a traitor to the Commonwealth?"

The rogue looked up and down the road.  "There’s none to come in between
us," he laughed.  "I care never a stiver on which side you be.  I’m for
the King, and always was; and, if you say nay, we can fight it out here
with our fists.  We’re much of a height and girth."

This was the sort of wayfaring that tickled Michael’s humour.  "My lad,"
he said, between one break of laughter and the next, "it would be a pity
for two King’s men to fight.  Go back a mile along the road to Ripley,
and find a company of rascals as big as you and me.  When they ask your
errand, say ’A Mecca for the King,’ then tell them that I’ve sent you
with the news that all speeds well."

"This is fair dealing?" said the countryman, after a puzzled silence.

"Take it or leave it.  We Metcalfs never trust by halves."

The other clapped his hand suddenly into Michael’s. "That’s a bargain,"
he said.  "I’d liefer join your company than sell cabbages to these
durned Cropheads."

The donkey was waiting patiently in the road until they had settled
their differences.  When the new master put a hand on the bridle and
urged her forward, the brute lashed out a hind leg and scarred his leg
from knee to heel.

"Ah, there, be gentle!" laughed the rogue who was wearing Michael’s
clothes.  "My name’s Driver—Will Driver, at your service—and I allus
said—said it to gentle and simple, I did—that, though I’m named Driver,
I willun’t be druv."  He came and patted the brute’s face, talked to its
elemental obstinacy, praised some qualities that only he could find to
praise.  "There, mister!  She willun’t be druv.  Treat her kindly.
That’s the password. Don’t drag her bridle, thinking she’s going to
gallop for the King.  You’re no horseman now—just a sutler bringing his
wares to camp."

Michael, out of the harum-scarum years behind, had learned one good
thing at least—the gift to pick up sound advice when he found the rare
type of man who was fit to give it.

On the road to York his patience was sorely tried. It was easier to lead
a squad of cavalry than this crude ass that dragged a cart of garden
produce.  He tried cajolery of Will Driver’s kind, but had no gift for
it. He tried force.  Nothing served, until it occurred to him to turn
her, by sheer strength, with her face to Ripley.  She turned instantly
about, with her face to York, and thereafter the going was quick and
pleasant.

"Women have taught me something, after all," chuckled Michael, as they
went forward.

When he came into the lines, he found a press of soldiery about him.
They were ravenous, and ate raw cabbages from his cart as if they were
beef-steaks.

Michael had not known what hunger meant until he saw the faces of these
Roundheads who were beleaguering York.  He went among them with ears
open, heard that they had eaten bare the fat lands round about, until no
food was left.  However it was faring with the garrison behind the city
walls, it was certain that the besiegers were thin and mutinous from
lack of food.

When his wares were sold, he went up and down the camp, the simplest
countryman that ever brought a donkey-load to market; heard of the
dissensions among the leaders; knew, once for all, that the Puritans,
with all their dour talk of heaven waiting for those who denied all joy
in life, were much as usual men are—needing food and liquor, and finding
a grim temper when ale and victuals were denied them.  He brushed
shoulders with a thickset, rough-faced officer, who hurried by on some
business connected with the siege, and was astonished when he learned
that so plain a man was no other than Oliver Cromwell, of whose genius
for warfare and hard blows all Yorkshire had been talking lately. Later
in the day, too, he saw Cromwell’s Ironsides, and their hefty, rugged
air roused a wild impulse in him.  If only they would pick six-score of
their number, and ride out to battle with the Metcalf clan, what a fight
would be in the doing!

He was losing himself in a daydream, when a musket-ball, fired from the
city wall, whizzed so close to his cheek that he put a hand up, thinking
he had taken a wound.  So then he took his cart to the rear of the camp,
got the donkey out of harness and picketed it.  The soldiery were
digging trenches or taking their ease, some reading Bibles, others
passing lumbering jests with the women who attend on every camp.  He
passed among them unheeded, and went the round of York, seeking some way
of entry.  He saw none, till in the dusk of the April evening he found
himself on the river-bank near the grey old bridge.  With all his random
handling of life, Michael had this in common with the Riding Metcalfs—he
answered always to the high call of trust.  He was pledged to his folk
to make an entry somehow into York, and pass on his message.  One way or
another he must do it.

As he stood there, the lap-lap and gurgle of the river began to thread
itself into his thoughts.  There must be some road into York—that was
the burden of Ouse river’s song.  And then the thing grew clear. The way
into York was here beside him.  He doffed coat and boots, dived in, and
came up to the top of the roaring current just under the grey bridge.
The stream was strong, but so were his arms, thickened by plough-work,
field-sports, and many swims in the deep pool of Yore that lay beneath
his home at Nappa.  He struck out for the left bank, found it, stepped
up the muddy foreshore.  When he gained the roadway up above, a sentry
came bustling through the April moonlight and challenged him.

"A Mecca for the King goes here!" laughed Michael, in high good spirits
after his battle with the river.

"That’s not the password," said the other, fingering his pike.

"It’s all you’ll get, friend.  I seek my Lord Newcastle."

The sentry, his wits none too sharp at any time, was bewildered by this
huge man who had come dripping from the river, this man who talked of
the King and my Lord Newcastle.  As he halted, Michael rushed forward
and snatched his pike from him.

"My lord’s lodging—where is it?" he asked, with his big, easy-going air.
"Your pike in return for the news.  And, by the word of a Mecca, I’ll
come back and drown you in the river if you lie to me."

The sentry began to surmise that this man was not human, but a ghost
risen from the stream that flowed over many dead.  Moreover, it was
death to him to-morrow if he were found without his weapon at the change
of sentry.  So he directed Michael to the house where Lord Newcastle was
lodged, took the pike in his hands again, and spent a chilly vigil by
the river until relief came from his duty for the night.

Michael pressed forward through the streets and byways until he found
the house he sought.  A sentry was on guard here, too.  He answered the
challenge by running sharply in, closing with his man, and putting him
into the street.  Then he opened the door, and, after he had barred it
behind him, went down a wide passage, and heard voices from a chamber on
the right.  He pushed open that door also, and the men who were holding
a council of war within glanced up in sheer astonishment. They saw a
giant of a man standing there without boots or coat, Ouse river running
down him in little runnels that made pools about the bees-waxed floor.

Lord Newcastle was the first to recover.  He glanced across at Michael
with a scholarly, quiet smile.  "Your errand?" he asked.

"I carry a message from the Riding Metcalfs to the garrison of York,"
answered Michael, forgetting all his disarray.

"A damp sort of message," hazarded Newcastle.

"I had to swim under York bridge to bring it; and, after that, two
sentries challenged me.  Will you listen, gentlemen, when I tell you
that I’m for the King?  Or will you, too, challenge me?"

Truth is a clean sword-blade that always makes a road in front of it.
They knew him for a man who had no lies or secrecies about him; and
Newcastle, with his quick sympathy, suggested that he should drink a
bumper to counteract the chill of Ouse river before giving them his
message.

"By your leave, not till my errand is done," said Michael, with that
random laugh of his.  "When I get near a bumper, I have a trick of
forgetting many things."

They laughed with him, as men always did; and with the same easy air, as
if he jested, he told them of the Riding Metcalfs, of their readiness to
carry messages or to serve the garrison in any way in the open country
wide of York.  Before his coming there had been high words, dissensions,
warring plans of campaign; this talk of six-score men, zealous for the
King, united in their claim to serve beleaguered York in any way that
offered, brought a breath of fresh air into the council-chamber.  It was
Newcastle who first found voice.

"Go find Rupert for us," he said.

"Ay, find Rupert," echoed the others, with a hum of sharp agreement.

"We’re shut up here in York," went on Newcastle, "and all the news we
have is hearsay, brought in by messengers as greatly daring as yourself.
Some of them say Prince Rupert is with the King at Oxford, some that
he’s busy in Lancashire, raising sieges there. We know not where he is,
but you must find him."

Michael reached down to touch his sword-belt, but found only the wet
breeches he had borrowed from the sutler.  "On the sword I do not carry,
gentlemen, I pledge one or other of the Metcalfs to bring Rupert to
you."

A jolly, red-faced neighbour of Lord Newcastle’s glanced across at
Michael.  "Ah, there’s the Irish blood in your veins, God bless you!
Who but an Irishman could have swum the Ouse and then pledged faith on
the hilt of a sword he left behind him?"

"Bring Rupert to us," insisted Newcastle.  "Tell him that the mere news
of his coming would put heart into the garrison—that his presence would
light a fire among our famine-stricken folk.  I dined on a tough bit of
horseflesh to-day, and was glad to get it."

"We’ll bring Rupert to you," said Michael.

When they pressed him to take a measure of the wine that was more
plentiful, for a week or so to come, than food, Michael glanced down at
his disarray. "I would borrow decent raiment before I pledge His
Majesty.  Indeed, I did not guess how ashamed I am to be wearing such
rough gear."

They found him a suit, and the Irishman, in a storm of liking for this
man, buckled his own sword on the messenger.  "That’s the sword you’d
have sworn by, sir, if you hadn’t left it behind," he explained, with
entire gravity.

Michael lifted his glass to the King’s health, and drained it at a gulp.
Responsibility always made him thirsty.  He drained a second measure;
but, when the Irishman was filling a third for him, he checked his hand.

"My thanks, but I must get out of York at once, I shall need a clear
head for the venture."

"Friend, you’ve done enough for one day," urged Newcastle.  "Sleep here
to-night."

"My folk are waiting for me," said Michael, with grim persistence.

When they asked how he proposed to make his way out of a city surrounded
on all sides, he said that he would return as he came—by water.  He
added, with a return of his old gaiety, that he preferred this time to
ride river Ouse like a horse, instead of swimming in deep waters.

"There are boats in York?" he said.  "I know the way of oars, and
there’s a moon to light me."

"You’re the man to send in search of Rupert," laughed Newcastle.
"Undoubtedly we must find a boat for you."

A half-hour later Michael was rowing swiftly up the Ouse.  Twice he was
challenged from the banks; once a pistol-ball went singing over his
head.  He reached the bridge, was nearly wrecked against a pier—the
eddies of the current were troublesome—and came through that peril into
the moonlit beauty of the open country.  He was challenged now by
Roundhead sentries, and a shot or two went playing dick-duck-drake
across the water.  He rowed on, and suddenly, across the stillness, a
donkey brayed.

Michael, left alone with Nature, was yielding to the call of
superstition in his blood.  He remembered that luck had come with buying
of a sutler’s donkey, and would not leave the brute to the tender
mercies of the soldiery.  He turned his boat for the right bank,
grounded her in the sloping bed of sand, and pushed her out again into
the stream—lest the Roundheads found a use for her—and went cheerfully
in the direction of the braying.  The whole procedure was like the man.
He was right, perhaps, to trust luck always, for he had known no other
guidance from the cradle.

Guided half by the music of her voice, half by recollection of the spot
where he had picketed her, he found the donkey.  Two hundred yards or so
behind he heard the restless clamour of the besieging camp.  In front
was the open country.

In the moonlight Michael and the donkey regarded each other gravely.  "I
came back for you, old sinner," he explained.

The brute seemed to understand him, and put a cool snout into his hand.

"I had a thought of riding you," went on Michael, pursuing his heedless
mood, "but consider the stride of my legs.  We’ll just have to jog
forward on our six feet, you and I."

Michael had a sound knowledge of any country he had trodden once, and
came without mishap or loss of route to the clump of woodland where his
people waited for him.  Old Squire Metcalf, as he went out to meet him,
broke into a roar of laughter.

"Here’s Michael and one of the company he’s wont to keep."

"True, sir," assented Michael.  "Look after this friend of mine; she has
had little to eat to-day, and I begin to love her."

For an hour they could not persuade him to tell them what he had learned
in York.  All his kinsmen’s misunderstanding of him in old days—their
distrust of the one man among them, except Christopher, who asked more
than the routine of every day—came to a head.  He was like the donkey he
had brought back from York—answerable to discipline, if it came by way
of sympathy and quiet persuasion.

The Squire understood this scapegrace son of his better than he thought.
"There, you’ll bear no grudge, lad," he said, with quick compunction. "I
only jested."

There was a look in Michael’s face that none of them had seen there in
the old days.  "Was it a jest, sir?"

"A jest.  No more."

"Then I’ll tell you what I learned at York. The Roundheads have eaten
bare the countryside. Their leaders are at variance.  Within the city
the garrison is eating horseflesh, and little of that. Lord Newcastle
bade me give you the one message. Find Rupert, and bring him here to
raise the siege. That is the message."

"Then we’ve work to do," said the Squire.

"_I_ have work to do," put in Michael peremptorily. "I took the hazard,
sir.  See you, the business would be noised abroad if six-score of us
went galloping across to Lancashire, or to Oxford, wherever he may be.
I pledge myself to find Rupert and to bring him."

"Since when did you find gravity?" asked the Squire testily.

Then Michael laughed, but not as he had done of yore.  "Since I found my
comrade and bought her for two guineas, with some market produce thrown
into the bargain.  Our folk will see to the welfare of this donkey, sir?
She’s our luck."

An hour later, as he was getting to horse, he saw Christopher come
through the clump of woodland.

"What did you learn in York, Michael?" he asked.

"What you’d have learned, if you had not been up the hill to see if you
could catch a glimpse of Ripley Castle," said Michael, roughened by a
sharp gust of jealousy.  "Ah, the guess goes home, does it? How does it
fare with Mistress Joan?"

"Oh, very well, the last I heard."

"And it fares very well with me.  I go to bring Rupert from the West—to
bring Rupert.  Ah, your face reddens at the thought of it!"

Kit was lost in one of his high day-dreams.  All that he had heard of
Rupert—the tales hard-fighting men, simple and gentle, told of him—had
been woven into a mantle of romance that separated the Prince Palatine
from those of common clay.  And Michael had the venture.

The elder brother fought a private battle of his own.  Then something in
Kit’s eager, wistful face—some recollection, maybe, of old days in
Yoredale—conquered his jealousy.  "I should ride the better for Kit’s
company," he said, turning to the Squire. "Give him to me for the
journey."

"As you will," growled Richard.  "He’ll be out of the worst o’ harm, at
any rate.  Ladies’ eyes are pretty enough in times of peace, but they
don’t match with war."

Every Metcalf of them all, save Kit himself, laughed slily.  They had
forgotten sundry backslidings of their own, in Ripley here and on the
many journeys they had taken.  And then Michael and his brother rode
out, not knowing which way led to Rupert, but following the setting sun
because it led them westward.

"Nobody seems to know, even in Ripley, that catches most news, where the
Prince is.  We’d best make for Lancashire."

Kit was already at his dreams again.  "I care not," he said cheerily,
"so long as we find him in the end."

"D’ye think he wears a halo, lad?" snapped Michael.

"Not for you to see, perhaps."

"Ah, a neat counter!  Not for my blurred eyes, eh?  Kit, you’ve been
reading fairy-lore with Mistress Joan."

So they went forward into the red of the gloaming, and each was busy
with the self-same dream—to find Rupert, and to remember Joan Grant.




                             *CHAPTER VII.*

                       *A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH.*


Nothing happened along the road as Michael and his brother rode forward
on their haphazard errand.  All was made up of an English
April—primroses in the hedgerows, bleating of lambs and fussy ewes,
wayfaring farmer-folk about their lands.

They had decided to seek Rupert in Lancashire, and their best road
westward lay through Knaresborough, and so forward by way of Skipton and
the good town of Colne.

"The game grows dull," grumbled Michael. "We had primroses and lambs in
Yoredale till I wearied of them.  I thought Blake promised war and blows
when we rode out to Nappa."

"The swim into York and the return—they were not enough for you?"

"I yawned so much in Yoredale," said the other, with his careless laugh.
"There’s much leeway to make up, babe Christopher."

As they neared Knaresborough, Michael felt his heart beat again.  The
sun was free of clouds, and shone full on a town beautiful as a man’s
dreams of fairyland.  At the foot, Nidd River swirled; and from the
stream, tier on tier, the comely houses climbed the steep cliff-face,
with trees and gardens softening all its outline.  It was a town to live
at ease in and dream high dreams, thought Kit, until the wind of a
cannon-ball lifted his hat in passing.

"Ah, we begin to live," said Michael.  "Your hat is doffed to the King,
God bless him!"

At the turn of the road they found a sortie from the garrison hemmed in
by fifty odd of Fairfax’s dour Otley men.  So Michael raised a shout of
"A Mecca for the King," and Kit bellowed the same cry.  The Fairfax men
thought an attack in force had come; the sortie party—twenty of them,
and all wounded—found new hope, and, when that affair was done, the
Metcalfs rode with their new friends through the gateway of the town.

"I give you great thanks, gentlemen," said young Phil Amory, the leader
of the sortie, as the drawbridge clashed behind them.  "But for you,
there’d have been no Knaresborough for us again."

"Oh, we happened to ride this way," laughed Michael.  "Life is like
that.  And I’m devilish hungry, since you remind me of it."

"Sir, I did not remind you.  We are trying to forget our stomachs."

"You have tobacco in the town?" asked Michael anxiously.  "Good!  It’s
better than a meal.  I smoked my last pipeful yesterday."

"Good at the fight and the pipe," said Amory. "I like you, sir."

So they came in great content—save for three of the company, whose
wounds bade them grumble—to the slope that led them to the Castle
gateway, and were met here by a handful of friends who were riding to
relieve them.  The ladies of the garrison ran down from the battlements,
and Kit was dizzied by the adulation shown him by the women.  They had
bright eyes, these ladies, and a great longing for hero-worship in and
between the tiresome hardships of the siege.  Michael was at home on the
instant; battle and ladies’ favours had always been his hobbies. But Kit
drew apart and remembered Mistress Joan, and a mantle of surprising
gravity was draped about him.

There was food of a kind in the dining-hall, with its chimney wide
enough to roast an ox. Something that was named beef—though the garrison
knew it for cold roast dog—was on the table.  There was a steaming bowl
of hot-pot, and none inquired what went to strengthening the stew of
honest peas and lentils.  But there was wine left, as at York, and
across the board hale good fellows, and good fellows who were not hale
at all, pledged Christopher and Michael.

It was a moment of sheer triumph for these two, for no healthy man can
resist the praise of soldiers approving tried soldiers in their midst.
When the toasting was done, a man in sober garments rose, lifting his
glass with a queer contralto chuckle.

"To the King, gentlemen, and to all good sorties on His Majesty’s
behalf.  For myself, as Vicar of the parish, I have no part in politics.
I take no sides in this vexed question of King and Parliament."  He let
the ripple of mirth go past him, and maintained his gravity.  "As a man,
the case is different.  As a man, you understand, I drink to His
Majesty, and confusion to all Cropheads!"

When the toasts were ended, there was much chatter of what was doing in
the outer world.  The Metcalfs, coming from the open country, were like
a news-sheet to these prisoned loyalists.  They had to tell all that was
afoot in the north, so far as they had learned the to-and-froing during
their last months of adventure in the saddle, till at last Christopher
remembered the errand they were riding on to-day.

"Gentlemen, it is time we took horse again," he said, with all the
Metcalf downrightness.  "York is a bigger town than yours, and we’ve her
safety in our keeping."

He glanced up, sure that his brother would back the protest.  He saw
Michael at the far end of the room, preening his feathers under the kind
eyes of a lady who palpably admired him.  And a little chill took him
unawares, as if the season were mid-winter, and some fool had let the
wind in through an open door.

"So two men keep the safety of all York," laughed one of the garrison.
"There’s a fine Biblical sound about it, Vicar."

"So much to the good, then," said the Vicar quietly.  "To my mind, those
days are here again, and King Charles righting the good fight.  Hey, my
masters, you’re deaf and blind to the meaning of this trouble."  He
turned to Christopher with a touch of deference that came pleasantly
from an old man to a young.  "How do you hold York’s safety?" he asked.
"What is your errand?"

"To find Rupert for them."

"And you’re riding, two of you, to search England for him?"

"That is our errand, sir."

"Ah, that is faith!  I wish good luck to your horses’ feet."

"We need Rupert as much as York needs him," said Phil Amory.  "It’s a
far cry, though; from here to Oxford."

"To Oxford?" echoed Kit, with sharp dismay. "We thought to find him in
Lancashire."

"The last news we had," said the Vicar—"true, it is a month old by
now—was that they kept Rupert in Oxford, making peace between the rival
factions, attending councils—playing maid-of-all-work there, while the
North is hungry for his coming.  Why, his name alone is meat and drink
to us."

"So they said in York, sir."

"Ay, and so they say wherever men have heard his record.  Without fear,
with a head on his shoulders and a heart in the right place—undoubtedly
you ride on a fine errand.  If I were younger, and if my cloth
permitted, I would join you in the venture."

Christopher, seeing his brother still intent on dalliance, went down the
room and tapped him on the shoulder.  "We get to saddle, Michael," he
said.

Michael, for his part, was astounded at the lad’s air of mastery.  He
was aware, in some vague way, that dalliance of any kind was a fool’s
game, and that the man with a single purpose assumes command by a law of
Nature.

"I dandled you on my knee, li’le Christopher, not long ago," he said,
with his easy laugh.

"My thanks, Michael.  I stand higher than your stirrup now, and York
needs us."

Michael had an easy-going heart and a head that was apt to forget
important matters; but he rose now, obedient to the baby of the Metcalf
clan. He paused to kiss the lady’s hand, to murmur a wish that he might
live to see again the only eyes worth looking into; and then he was a
man of action once again, keen for the ride.

Miss Bingham rose and swept them a grave curtsey.  Then she glanced at
Christopher.  "If you have a fault, sir—and all paragons have—it is a
seriousness that reminds one of the Puritan."

She had drawn blood.  It flamed in his cheeks for a moment, then died
down.  "I’m neither paragon nor Puritan—and no ladies’ man," he added,
with a touch of downright malice.

"So much is obvious.  You lack practice in the art, but you will learn
in time."

Kit, in some odd way, felt youthful and ashamed. This girl, little older
than himself, disdained his singleness of purpose, his fervour for the
cause. "Oh, I leave that to Michael," he said, clumsily enough.

She was tired of warfare and the siege, and bore Kit a grudge because he
had interrupted the diverting game of hearts that she and Michael had
been playing.  "You are riding to find Rupert?" she asked, her voice
like velvet.  "He’s the Prince to you—a paragon indeed—no ladies’ man.
Sir, when you find him, ask how it fares with the Duchess of Richmond,
and see if his face changes colour."

"It is not true," said Kit passionately.

"How downright and fatiguing boys are!  What is not true, sir?"

"All that you left unsaid."

Michael clapped him on the shoulder.  "Good for you, li’le Kit!  All
that women say is enough to drown us; but what they leave unsaid would
sink a navy."

"Go, find your Prince," said Miss Bingham, with the same dangerous
gentleness; "but, on your honour, promise to remind him of the Duchess.
I should grieve to picture such a gallant without—oh, without the grace
women lend a man."

"Michael, we’re wasting a good deal of time," said Kit, disliking this
girl a little more.  "There’ll be time enough for nonsense when we’ve
brought Rupert into York."

Michael stood irresolute for a moment, divided, as his way was, between
the separate calls of heart and head.  And into the midst of his
irresolution a guest intruded rudely.  There had been a steady
cannonading of the town, as reprisal after the sortie, and one among the
lumbering iron balls crashed through the wall of the dining-chamber,
near the roof, passed forward and brought down a heavy frame—known as a
"bread-creel" in the north here—on which oat-cakes were spread out to
dry.  With fuel scarce, they had learned to make kitchen and
dining-chamber one.  The cannon-ball buried itself in the masonry
beyond.  The bread-creel missed Miss Bingham’s pretty head by a foot or
so.  One end of it struck Kit on the shoulder, reopening a new wound;
the other tapped Michael on the skull, and put dreams of Rupert out of
mind for many a day.

The men at the far end of the hall ran forward. They found Michael lying
prone.  One cross-piece of the creel was broken, where it had
encountered his tough head, and all about the floor was a drift of the
brittle oat-cake that had been drying overhead a moment since.

"A queer beginning for their ride," said young Phil Amory.

Michael opened two devil-may-care eyes between one forgetting and the
next.  "Life’s like that, my lad.  One never knows."

They carried him to an inner room, and Miss Bingham watched Amory and
another trying to stanch Kit’s wound.

"You’re clumsy at the business," she said, putting them aside.  With
deft hands she fastened a tourniquet above the wound, and dressed it
afterwards.  Then she brought him wine; and, when a tinge of colour
returned to his face, she crossed to the window and stood there,
watching the red flare of cannonry that crossed the April sunlight.

"My thanks, Miss Bingham," said Kit, following her.

"Oh, none are needed!  I am a little proud of my nursing skill, learned
here in Knaresborough. Believe me, I would have done as much for any
trooper."

"Still, any trooper would find grace to thank you."

Her eyes met his.  There was blandishment in them, withdrawal, enmity.
Men were a game to her.  Spoiled and flattered, accustomed to homage
that had never found her heart, she thought men heartless, too, and the
game a fair one.

"Thanks mean so little.  Would you have had me watch you bleed to death?
Is there no one in the world who would have missed you?"

"I do not know," said Kit, with a thought of Yoredale and the light in
Ripley Castle.

"Ah, there’s another secret out!  She has flouted my dear Puritan."

"I will not have that name!  There was never a Metcalf yet but stood for
the King."

The cannonade outside grew louder, and Miss Bingham looked out again at
the red spurts of flame. "A painter should be here," she said, turning
at last. "My six-foot Puritan, what a picture it would make—the blue
April sky, and the little tufts of cloud, fleecy as lambs’-wool, and the
outrageous crimson flaring from the guns!  Will they contrive to hit the
Castle again, think you?  It is time their marksmanship improved."

"I was thinking of Prince Rupert," he said stubbornly.  "If Michael
cannot ride with me, I must go alone."

Miss Bingham’s heart was touched at last.  This man, who could scarce
stand from loss of blood, disdained her coquetry, and had one purpose—to
find Rupert for the raising of the siege at York. Selfless, reliant in
the midst of weakness, he saw the one goal only.

He bade her farewell, and asked Amory to find his horse for him.  "But,
sir, it is death to sit a saddle," protested the other.  "Your wound——"

"It must heal or break again.  That is the wound’s concern.  Mine is to
find Rupert, as I promised."

Amory glanced quietly at him and wondered at the hardness of the man.
"How will you get through the besiegers?  Their cannon are pretty busy,
as you hear."

"I had forgotten the besiegers.  I must leave my horse, then, and find a
way out on foot."

He got half-way to the outer gate, his weakness palpable at every step.
Then his foot tripped against a cannon-ball that had fallen yesterday.
He fell on his right shoulder, and the wound reopened in grim earnest.

Miss Bingham was the most troubled, maybe, of all the Knaresborough
garrison during the week that followed.  By all past knowledge of
herself Michael should have been her chief concern.  He was so gay and
likeable, as he recovered slowly from his head-wound; his tongue was so
smooth, his heart so bendable to the lightest breeze of a woman’s
skirts.  Yet she found herself constantly at Kit’s bedside, fighting the
evil temper that had mastered him.  He was consumed with rebellion
against this weakness that kept him abed, and his persistent cry was
that Rupert needed him, and would know that he had failed.  He was still
so young to the world that he believed all England knew what the Riding
Metcalfs were doing for their King.

On the fourth day, to ease his trouble, Miss Bingham lied.  She said
that Michael was hale and well again, and had gone out in search of
Rupert. Kit took the news quietly, and she slipped away to see that his
noon-day meal was ready.  When she returned with the tray, she found
Christopher up and dressed.  He was fumbling at the buckle of his
sword-belt with all a sick man’s impatience.

"What are you doing, sir?" she cried, in frank dismay.

"Getting ready for the road.  Michael is too easy-going to be trusted
single-handed; and York, I tell you, needs the Prince."

"It will see him none the sooner if you die by the roadside now, instead
of waiting till you’re healed."

"But Michael—you do not know him.  He means so well and dares so much;
but the first pretty face that looks out o’ window draws him."

"To be frank, he is in no danger of that kind," said Miss Bingham
demurely.  "He lies in the next room and talks to me as Colonel Lovelace
might—deft flattery and homage and what not. I thought all Cavaliers
were smooth of tongue, as he is—until I met my Puritan."

"You said that he had gone to seek Rupert."

"Oh, I said.  What will not women say?  Their tongues are wayward."

"For my part, give me men," said Kit, with blunt challenge.

The end of that escapade was a high fever, that taxed Miss Bingham’s
skill and the patience that was foreign to her.  Michael, too, in spite
of all his gaiety, saw death come very close to his bedside. It was not
the blows they had taken here in Knaresborough that had knocked their
strength to bits. In the months that had passed since the riding out
from Yoredale, each had taken wounds, time and time again, had tied any
sort of bandage round them, and gone forward to the next sharp attack.
They were proud of their tough breed, and had taken liberties with a
strength that was only human, after all.  And now they were laid by in a
backwater of life, like riddled battleships in need of overhauling.

It was when Kit was in that odd half-way land between great weakness and
returning strength that a sudden turmoil came to him.  His memory of
Joan Grant grew weak and fugitive.  With him day by day was Miss
Bingham, who had forgotten long since how to pick a quarrel.  The beauty
of an experience new to her spoiled life gave warmth and colour to a
face that had once been merely pretty.

On one of these afternoons—a spurt of rain against the windows, and the
sullen roar of guns outside—he lay watching her as she sat by the
bedside, busy with a foolish piece of embroidery.  She was very near,
had nursed him with devotion, had smoothed his pillow many times for
him.

"Agnes," he said, "what will you say to me when my strength comes back,
and I’ve brought Rupert into York?"

So then she knew that battle is not only for the men.  She met her
trouble with a courage that surprised her.  "I—I should bid my Puritan
go seek the lady who once flouted him.  Oh, boy, you’re in a dream!
When you wake, remember that I nursed you back to health."

Two days later Kit was so far recovered that he was allowed to move
abroad; and, while his strength was returning, the Vicar was his close
companion. Something in Kit’s bearing—dour hardihood half concealing
some spiritual fire that burned beneath it—had attracted this parish
priest since the lad’s first coming.  He showed him the comely
parsonage, with its garden sloping to the wide bosom of the Nidd; talked
of the town’s beauty and antiquity—topics dear to him.  Then, one
afternoon, near gloaming, he led him up the steep face of the cliff to
St. Robert’s cell.

What is sown in the time between great sickness and recovery—good or
ill—is apt to abide with a man, like impressions of the earlier
childhood.  And Kit, until he died, would not forget this hermitage,
carved out of the solid rock that bottomed the whole town of
Knaresborough.  Without, facing the world that St. Robert had known, was
his coat-of-arms, as if daring gossip to deny his record in the stress
of battle.  Within was a narrow chamber, roofed and floored by rock; at
one end an altar, at the side a bed of stone—that, and the water
dripping from the walls, and a strange sense of peace and holiness, as
if a spirit brooded round about the place.

"Here is peace, sir," said Kit, a quick fire glowing in his eyes.

"Ah, yes.  You would feel it, I was sure.  I bring few guests to this
sanctuary."

Kit glanced at him.  The kindly smile, the trust and friendship of the
parson’s voice, brought back Yoredale and a flood of memories.  When
they went out into the dusk again, a red flare spurted from the Castle
battlements, and in return there came the din of Roundhead cannon, and
Kit’s face hardened suddenly.

"True," said the Vicar, touching his arm.  "Such as you must go through
blare and gunshot before they tame their bodies.  Good luck to you, lad,
and strike shrewdly for the King."

The next day Kit was so far recovered that he would not stay under the
same roof with Miss Bingham; Memories of Joan, who was far away, warred
with his liking for this maid, who came less often to cajole and tease
him back to health.  It was easier to go out and rough it in the honest
open.  He was haunted, moreover, by the mystery and calm of that stone
cell, where a dead man had left his living presence.

Michael had been fit for the road three days before, but would not leave
his brother, since he had promised him the venture.  And, moreover, Miss
Bingham was kind again, after a season of indifference and neglect.

The old question was revived—by what means they should get through the
besieging force.  "There is only one way, obviously," said Michael, with
his rollicking laugh.  "We must go horsed.  Will not Phil Amory lead a
sortie?"

"Phil Amory will," agreed the youngster cheerily. "These rogues have
been pelting us long enough with cannon-balls."

The Governor assented willingly.  Hazard in the open was healthy for
these high-mettled lads, who were pining under the inaction of the
siege. "You shall go as you came, gentlemen," he said, with his grave
smile.  "One good turn deserves another."

They waited till one of the sentries on the battlements sent word that
the besiegers were at their mid-day meal.  He added that words had
passed between himself and three of their men, who had shouted that
pluck was dead in Knaresborough.

"Ah!" said Phil Amory.

They mounted—forty of the garrison and the two Metcalfs—and the gate
opened for them.  It was Kit—a free man again, with the enemy close in
front—who lifted the first battle-cry.

"A Mecca for the King!" he roared, and his horse went light under him,
as if it trod on air.

The besiegers ran hurriedly to their horses.  Some mounted, others had
no time.  Into the thick of them crashed the sortie, and the work was
swift and headlong in the doing.  Through the steam and odours of the
interrupted meal the attack crashed forward, till the sortie party,
breathless, with a queer glee fluting at their hearts, found themselves
at the far side of the town.

"You made a lane for us once," said Phil Amory. "Now we’ve made a lane
for you.  There’s no time for farewells, friends—put spurs to your
horses and gallop."

He gave Michael no time for the protest ready to his lips, but turned
about, and, with a bugle-cry of "Knaresborough for the King!" dashed
through the enemy again.  The Metcalfs waited till they saw the gate
close on the forty who had hacked a way to liberty for them, and Michael
half hoped they would be needed, because Miss Bingham was sheltered by
the Castle walls.

"We have the road to Rupert, now," said Kit.

"So we have, lad."

"Then why look back at Knaresborough? You’re in a dream, Michael."

"The prettiest eyes in England set me dreaming. I’ve good excuse."

So Kit, a little sore on his own account, and with a heartache hidden
somewhere, grew serious as only the very young can do.  "There is Rupert
waiting for us," he snapped.

"Ah, true, grave brother.  Let’s get to Oxford, and the Duchess of
Richmond will cure me of this folly, maybe.  There, lad, not so fiery!
It’s no crime that a duchess should have pleasant eyes. Even princes
must warm themselves at the hearth just now and then."

"What route to take?" asked Kit by and by, coming down from his pedestal
of high, romantic gravity.

"We’ll go by the sun so far as the winding roads will let us.  Oxford
lies south-west.  Chance and the sun, between them, shall decide; but we
had best keep free of towns and garrisons."

"Undoubtedly," growled Christopher.  "There would be the finest eyes in
England glancing at you through the lattices."

In this odd way the brothers, different in experience and outlook, but
bound together by some deep tie of affection, took up the hazard of a
ride that was to end, they hoped, at Oxford.  There was a fine, heedless
simplicity about it all, a trust in open country and the sun’s guidance,
that was bred in the Metcalf men.




                            *CHAPTER VIII.*

                       *HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT.*


They had not gone seven miles before they heard, wide on their
bridle-hand, the braying of a donkey.  It was not a casual braying, but
a persistent, wild appeal that would not be denied.

"Brother calls to brother," said Michael, with his diverting obedience
to superstition.  "One of his kind helped me into York.  We’ll see what
ails him."

They crossed a strip of barren moor, and came to a hollow where some
storm of wind and lightning had long since broken a fir coppice into
matchwood. And here, at the edge of the dead trunks and the greening
bracken, they found five of their kinsmen hemmed in by fourteen
stiff-built rascals who carried pikes.  On the outskirts of the battle a
donkey was lifting her head in wild appeal.

With speed and certainty, Michael and his brother crashed down into the
fight.  The surprise, the fury of assault, though two horsemen only
formed the rescue-party, settled the issue.  And in this, had they known
it, the Metcalfs were but proving that they had learned amid country
peace what Rupert had needed years of soldiery to discover—the worth of
a cavalry attack that is swift and tempestuous in the going.

"We thought you far on the road to Prince Rupert," said the Squire of
Nappa, cleaning his sword-blade on a tuft of grass.

"So we should have been, sir, but we happened into Knaresborough.  Kit
here swooned for love of a lady—on my faith, the daintiest lass from
this to Yoredale—and I could not drag him out until—until, you
understand, the elder brother stepped in and made havoc of a heart that
Kit could only scratch."

"Is this true, Christopher?"

"As true as most of Michael’s tales.  We fell ill of our wounds, sir,
that was all."

The donkey had ceased braying now, and was rubbing a cool snout against
Michael’s hand.  "Good lass!" he said.  "If it hadn’t been for your gift
of song, and my own luck, there’d have been five Metcalfs less to serve
His Majesty."

The old Squire pondered a while, between wrath and laughter.  "That is
true," he said, in his big, gusty voice.  "I always said there was room
in the world, and a welcome, for even the donkey tribe. Kit, you look
lean and harassed.  Tell us what happened yonder in Knaresborough."

Kit told them, in a brief, soldierly fashion that found gruff approval
from the Squire; but Michael, rubbing the donkey’s snout, must needs
intrude his levity.

"He forgets the better half of the story, sir. When we got inside the
Castle, the prettiest eyes seen out of Yoredale smiled at him.  And the
lad went daft and swooned, as I told you—on my honour, he did—and the
lady bound his shoulder-wound for him.  A poor nurse, she; it was his
heart that needed doctoring."

"And it was your head that needed it.  She made no mistake there,
Michael," said Squire Metcalf drily.

When the laughter ceased, Kit asked how they fell into this ambush; and
the Squire explained that a company of Roundheads had come in force to
Ripley, that they had roused a busy hive of Metcalfs there, that in the
wild pursuit he and four of his clan had outdistanced their fellows and
had found themselves hemmed in.  And in this, had he known it, there was
a foreshadowing of the knowledge Rupert was to learn later on—that with
the strength of headlong cavalry attack, there went the corresponding
weakness.  It was hard to refrain from undue pursuit, once the wine of
speed had got into the veins of men and horses both.

"We’re here at the end of it all," laughed the old Squire, "and that’s
the test of any venture."

"Our gospel, sister," said Michael, fondling the donkey’s ears, "though,
by the look of your sleek sides, you’ve thrived the better on it."

The Squire took Kit aside and drew the whole story from him of what he
hoped to do in this search for Rupert.  And he saw in the boy’s face
what the parish priest of Knaresborough had seen—the light that knows no
counterfeit.

"So, Kit, you’re for the high crusade!  Hold your dream fast.  I’ve had
many of them in my time, and lost them by the way."

"But the light is so clear," said Kit, tempted into open confidence.

"Storms brew up, and the light is there, but somehow sleet o’ the world
comes drifting thick about it. You go to seek Rupert?"

"Just that, sir."

"What route do you take?"

"Michael’s—to follow the sun and our luck."

"That may be enough for Michael; but you sleep in Ripley to-night, you
two.  You need older heads to counsel you."

"Is Joan in the Castle still?" he asked, forgetting Knaresborough and
Miss Bingham.

"Oh, yes.  She has wings undoubtedly under her trim gown, but she has
not flown away as yet. We’ll just ride back and find you quarters for
the night."

Michael, for his part, was nothing loth to have another day of ease.
There was a dizzying pain in his head, a slackness of the muscles, that
disturbed him, because he had scarce known an hour’s sickness until he
left Yoredale to accept shrewd hazard on King Charles’s highway.

"How did my friend the donkey come to be with you in the fight?" he
asked, as they rode soberly for home.

"She would not be denied," laughed Squire Mecca.  "She made friends with
all our horses, and where the swiftest of them goes she goes, however
long it takes to catch us up.  No bullet ever seems to find her."

"Donkeys seldom die," assented Michael.  "For myself, sir, I’ve had the
most astonishing escapes."

When they came to Ripley, and the Squire brought his two sons into the
courtyard, Lady Ingilby was crossing from the stables.  She looked them
up and down in her brisk, imperative way, and tapped Christopher on the
shoulder—the wounded shoulder, as it happened.

"Fie, sir, to wince at a woman’s touch!  I must find Joan for you.  Ah,
there! you’ve taken wounds, the two of you.  It is no time for jesting.
The Squire told me you were galloping in search of Rupert."

"So we are," said Christopher.  "This is just a check in our stride."

"As it happens, you were wise to draw rein.  A messenger came in an hour
ago.  The Prince is not in Lancashire, as we had hoped.  He is still in
Oxford—I can confirm your news on that head—lighting small jealousies
and worries.  Rupert, a man to his finger-tips, is fighting indoor
worries, as if he were a household drudge.  The pity of it, gentlemen!"

It was easy to understand how this woman had been a magnet who drew good
Cavaliers to Ripley. Heart and soul, she was for the King.  The fire
leaped out to warm all true soldiers of his Majesty, to consume all
half-way men.  She stood there now, her eyes full of wonder and dismay
that they could keep Rupert yonder in Oxford when England was listening
for the thunder of his cavalry.

Joan Grant had not heard the incoming of the Metcalfs.  She had been ill
and shaken, after a vivid dream that had wakened her last night, and
changed sleep to purgatory.  And now, weary of herself, prisoned by the
stifled air indoors, she came through the Castle gate.  There might be
battle in the open, as there had been earlier in the day; but at least
there would be fresh air.

Michael saw her step into the sunlight, and he gave no sign that his
heart was beating furiously.  Deep under his levity was the knowledge
that his life from this moment forward was to be settled by the
direction of a single glance.

Joan halted, seeing the press of men that filled the street.  Then,
among the many faces, she saw two only—Michael’s and his brother’s.  And
then, because all reticence had left her, she went straight to
Christopher’s side.

"Sir, you are wounded," she said, simple as any cottage-maid.

For the rest of the day Michael was obsessed by gaiety.  Whenever the
Squire began to talk of Rupert, to map out their route to Oxford,
Michael interposed some senseless jest that set the round-table
conference in a roar.

"Best go groom the donkey," snapped the Squire at last.  "If ever the
Prince gets York’s message, it will be Kit who takes it."

"Kit has the better head.  By your leave, sir, I’ll withdraw."

"No, I was hasty.  Stay, Michael, but keep your lightness under."

That night, when the Castle gate was closed, and few lights showed about
the windows, Christopher met Joan Grant on the stairway.  He was tired
of wounds that nagged him, and he needed bed. She was intent on drowning
sleeplessness among the old tomes in the library—a volume of sermons
would serve best, she thought.

They met; and, because the times were full of speed and battle, she was
the cottage maid again. All women are when the tempest batters down the
frail curtains that hide the gentle from the lowly-born.  "Was she very
good to see?" she asked, remembering her last night’s vision—it had been
more than a dream, she knew.

So Kit, a rustic lad in his turn, flushed and asked what she meant.  And
she set the quibble aside, and told him what her dream was.  She
pictured Kharesborough—though her waking eyes had never seen the
town—spoke of the gun-flare that had crossed the window-panes sometimes,
while a girl watched beside his pillow.

"I was weak with my wounds," said Kit, not questioning the nearness of
this over-world that had intruded into the everyday affairs of siege and
battle.

"How direct you Metcalfs are!  And the next time you are wounded there
will be a nurse, and you’ll grow weak again, till your heart is broken
in every town that holds a garrison."

"I leave that to Michael," he said quietly.

All that he had done—for the King, and for the light he had watched so
often in her room at Ripley here—went for nothing, so it seemed, because
he had blundered once, mistaking dreams for substance.

"I thought you were made of better stuff than Michael."

"There’s no better stuff than Michael.  Ask any Metcalf how he stands in
our regard—easy-going when he’s not needed, but an angel on a fiery
horse when the brunt of it comes up.  He’s worth two of me, Joan."

Again Joan was aware that soldiery had taught this youngster much worth
the knowing during the past months.  He was master of himself, not
wayward to the call of any woman.

"We’re bidding farewell," she said.

"Yes," said Christopher.  "To-morrow we set out for Oxford.  Do you
remember Yoredale? Your heart was at the top of a high tree, you said."

"So it is still, sir—a little higher than before."

"By an odd chance, so is mine.  I chose a neighbouring tree."

She was silent for a while, then passed by him and down the stair.  He
would have called her back if pride had let him.

Then he went slowly up to bed, wondering that some freak of temper had
bidden him speak at random.  For an hour it was doubtful whether
tiredness or the fret of his healing wounds would claim the mastery;
then sleep had its way.

"What have I said?" he muttered, with his last conscious thought.

He had said the one right thing, as it happened. Knaresborough had
taught him, willy-nilly, that there are more ways than one of winning a
spoiled lass for bride.

Next day he woke with a sense of freshness and returning vigour.  It was
pleasant to see the steaming dishes ready for Michael and himself before
their riding out, pleasant to take horse and hear the Squire bidding
them God-speed, with a sharp injunction to follow the route he had
mapped out for them.  But Joan had not come to say farewell.

Just as they started, Lady Ingilby summoned Kit to her side, and behind
her, in the shadow of the doorway, stood Joan.

"She insists that you return the borrowed kerchief," said the older
woman, with a gravity that wished to smile, it seemed.

Kit fumbled for a moment, then brought out a battered bit of cambric
that had been through much snow and rain and tumult.  The girl took it,
saw dark spots of crimson in among the weather-stains, and the whole
story of the last few months was there for her to read.  The tears were
so ready to fall that she flouted him again.

"It was white when I gave it into your keeping."

Kit, not knowing why, thought of St. Robert’s cell, of Knaresborough’s
parish priest and the man’s kindly hold on this world and the next.  "It
is whiter now," he said, with a surety that sat well on him.

The truth of things closed round Lady Ingilby. Her big heart, mothering
these wounded gentry who came in to Ripley, had been growing week by
week in charity and knowledge.  It had needed faith and pluck to play
man and woman both, in her husband’s absence, and now the full reward
had come.

Quietly, with a royal sort of dignity, she touched Kit on the shoulder.
"The man who can say that deserves to go find Rupert."

While Kit wondered just what he had said, as men do when their hearts
have spoken, not their lips only, Joan Grant put the kerchief in his
hand again.  "I should not have asked for it, had I known it was so
soiled.  And yet, on second thoughts, I want it back again."

She touched it with her lips, and gave him one glance that was to go
with him like an unanswered riddle for weeks to come.  Then she was
gone; but he had the kerchief in the palm of his right hand.

"Women are queer cattle," said Michael thoughtfully, after they had
covered a league of the journey south.

"They’ve a trick of asking riddles," asserted Kit. "For our part, we’ve
the road in front of us."

So then the elder brother knew that this baby of the flock had learned
life’s alphabet.  The lad no longer carried his heart on his sleeve, but
hid it from the beaks of passing daws.

They had a journey so free of trouble that Michael began to yawn,
missing the excitement that was life to him, and it was only Kit’s
steady purpose that held him from seeking some trouble by the way.  They
skirted towns and even villages, save when their horses and themselves
needed rest and shelter for the night.  Spring was soft about the land,
and their track lay over pasture-land and moor, with the plover flapping
overhead, until they came into the lush country nearer south.

When they neared Oxford—their journey as good as ended, said Michael,
with a heedless yawn—Kit’s horse fell lame.  It was within an hour of
dark, and ahead of them the lights of a little town began to peep out
one by one.

"Best lodge yonder for the night," said Michael.

They had planned to bivouac in the open, and be up betimes for the
forward journey; but even Kit agreed that his horse needed looking to.

Through the warm night they made their way, between hedgerows fragrant
with young leafage. All was more forward here than in the northland they
had left, without that yap of the north-easter which is winter’s dying
bark in Yoredale.  Peace went beside them down the lane, and, in front,
the sleepy lights reached out an invitation to them through the dusk.

On the outskirts of the town they met a farmer jogging home.

"What do they call the place?" asked Michael.

"Banbury," said the farmer, with a jolly laugh; "where they keep good
ale."

"So it seems, friend.  You’re mellow as October."

"Just that.  Exchange was never robbery.  First the ale was mellowed;
then I swallowed ale, I did, and now I’m mellow, too."

With a lurch in the saddle, and a cheery "Good night," he went his way,
and Michael laughed suddenly after they had gone half a mile.  "We
forgot to ask him where the good ale was housed," he explained.

In the middle of the town they found a hostelry, and their first concern
was with Kit’s horse.  The ostler, an ancient fellow whose face alone
was warranty for his judgment of all horseflesh, said that the lame leg
would be road-worthy again in three days, "but not a moment sooner."  So
Kit at once went the round of the stable, picked out the best horse
there, and said he must be saddled ready for the dawn.

"Oh, lad, you’re thorough!" chuckled Michael, as they went indoors.

"One needs be, with Rupert only a day’s ride away."

There was only one man in the "snug" of the tavern when they entered.
By the look of him, he, too, had found good ale in Banbury.  Squat of
body, unlovely of face, there was yet a twinkle in his eye, a gay
indifference to his own infirmities, that appealed to Michael.

"Give you good e’en, gentlemen.  What are your politics?" asked the
stranger.

"We have none," said Kit sharply.

"That shows your wisdom.  For my part—close the door, I pray—I’m a
King’s man, and have flown to drink—so much is obvious—for solace.
Believe me, I was never in a town that smelt so strongly of Roundheads
as does Banbury.  They meet one in the streets at every turn, and in the
taverns.  One might think there was no Royalist alive to-day in
England."

The man’s bombast, his easy flow of speech, the intonation now and then
that proclaimed him one of life’s might-have-beens, arrested Michael.

"Tell us more, friend," he said lazily.

"Gladly.  I need help.  I am making a tour, you understand, of the chief
towns of England, staying a day or more in each, until the Muse arrives.
I was ever one to hope; and, gentlemen, by the froth on my pewter-mug, I
swear that many noblemen and gentry will buy my book of verses when it’s
all completed."

"So you need our help?" asked Michael, humouring him.

"Most urgently.  I have a most diverting ditty in my head, about this
town of Banbury.  It runs in this way:

    "Here I found a Puritan one
    Hanging of his cat on a Monday
    For killing of a mouse on a Sunday."


"Good!" laughed Michael.  "It’s a fine conceit."

"Ah, you’ve taste, sir.  But the trouble is, I find no rhyme to ’Puritan
one.’  To find no rhyme, to a poet, is like journeying through a country
that brews no ale.  Believe me, it is heartache, this search for a good
rhyme."

"Puri*tane* one—the lilt running that way——"

"I have tried that, too," said the other with sorrow, "and still find no
rhyme."

The door opened sharply, and the landlord bustled in.  "Supper is
served, gentlemen.  I trust you will not mind sharing it with some
officers of the Parliament quartered here?"

"Nothing would please us better," assented Michael.  "Will our friend
here join us, host?"

"Oh, we none of us heed Drunken Barnaby. Leave him to his rhymes, sir."

Yet Michael turned at the door.  "I have it, Barnaby," he chuckled.
"Here I found a Puritane one: bid him turn and grow a sane one’—that’s
the way of it, man."

"It rhymes," said Barnaby sadly, "but the true poetic fire is lacking.
Leave me to it, gentlemen."

As they crossed the passage Kit drew his brother aside.  "Remember what
the Squire said, Michael. We need quiet tongues and a cool head if we’re
to find Rupert."

"Youngster, I remember.  That was why I played the fool to Barnaby’s
good lead.  All men trust a fool."

When they came to the parlour, they found a well-filled board, and round
it six men, big in the beam, with big, cropped heads and an air of great
aloofness from this world’s concerns; but they were doing very well with
knife and fork.  The two Metcalfs answered all questions guardedly; and
all went well until Kit saw a great pie brought in, a long, flat-shaped
affair with pastry under and over, and inside, when its crust was
tapped, a wealth of mincemeat of the kind housewives make at Christmas.

"Michael, this is all like Yoredale," said Kit unguardedly.  "Here’s a
Christmas pie."

To his astonishment, the Puritans half rose in their seats and glanced
at him as if he had the plague.  "There are Royalists among us," said
one.

"What is all this nonsense, friends?" asked Michael, with imperturbable
good temper.

"We call it mince-meat now.  None of your Christmases for us, or any
other Masses.  None of Red Rome for us, I say.  Banbury kills any man
who talks of Masses."

"We’ve blundered somehow, Kit," whispered Michael nonchalantly.

"Say, do you stand for the King?" asked the Roundhead.  "Yes or no—do
you stand for the King?"

[Illustration: "’Say, do you stand for the King?’"]

"Why, yes," said Kit.  "Come on, you six crop-headed louts."

This was the end of Kit’s solemnity, his over-serious attention to
Prince Rupert’s needs.  And then they were in the thick of it, and the
weight of the onset bore them down.  When the battle ended—the table
overturned, and three of the Roundheads under it—when Kit and Michael
could do no more, and found themselves prisoners in the hands of the
remaining three, the landlord, sleek and comfortable, bustled in.

"I trust there is no quarrel, gentlemen?" he entreated.

"None, as you see," said Michael airily.  "We had a jest, host, about
your Christmas pie.  They tell me none says Mass in Banbury because the
town is altogether heathen."

So then a blow took him unawares, and when Kit and he woke next day,
they found themselves in the town’s prison.

Michael touched his brother with a playful foot. "You blundered, Kit,
about that Christmas pie."

"Yes," said Christopher; "so now it’s my affair, Michael, to find a way
out of prison."

But Michael only laughed.  "I wish we could find a rhyme to Puritane
one," he said.  "It would help that rogue we met last night."

The grey of early dawn stole through the window of the gaol and
brightened to a frosty red as Michael and his brother sat looking at
each other with grim pleasantry.  Charged with an errand to bring Prince
Rupert to the North without delay, they had won as far as this
Roundhead-ridden town, a score miles or so from their goal, and a
moment’s indiscretion had laid them by the heels.

"Life’s diverting, lad.  I always told you so," said Michael.  "It would
have been a dull affair, after all, if we had got to Oxford without more
ado."

"They need Rupert, yonder in York," growled Kit.

"Ah, not so serious, lest they mistake you for a Puritan."

"It is all so urgent, Michael."

"True.  The more need to take it lightly.  Life, I tell you, runs that
way, and I know something of women by this time.  Flout life, Kit, toss
it aside and jest at it, and all you want comes tumbling into your
hands."

"I brought you into this.  I’ll find some way out of gaol," said the
other, following his own stubborn line of thought.

The window was narrow, and three stout bars were morticed into the
walls.  Moreover, their hands were doubled-tied behind them.  All that
occurred to them for the moment was to throw themselves against the
door, each in turn, on the forlorn chance that their weight would break
it down.

"Well?" asked Michael lazily, after their second useless assault on the
door.  "High gravity and a long face do not get us out of gaol.  We’ll
just sit on the wet floor, Kit, and whistle for the little imp me call
Chance."

Michael tried to whistle, but broke down at sight of Kit’s lugubrious,
unhumorous face.  While he was still laughing, there was a shuffle of
footsteps outside, a grating of the rusty door-lock, and, without word
of any kind, a third prisoner was thrown against them.  Then the door
closed again, the key turned in the lock, and they heard the gaoler
grumbling to himself as he passed into the street.

[Illustration: "Without a word of any kind, a third prisoner was thrown
against them."]

The new-comer picked himself up.  He was dripping from head to foot; his
face, so far as the green ooze of a horse-pond let them see it, was
unlovely; but his eyes were twinkling with a merriment that won
Michael’s heart.

"Sirs, I warned you that Banbury was no good place for Cavaliers.  I am
pained to see you here."

Michael remembered the man now—a fellow who had jested pleasantly with
them in the tavern just before they were taken by the Roundheads. "We
forgot your warning, Mr. Barnaby," he said drily, "so we’re here."

"I thank you, sir.  Drunken Barnaby is all the address they give me
nowadays.  Perhaps you would name me Mr. Barnaby again; it brings one’s
pride out of hiding."

So then they laughed together; and friendship lies along that road.  And
after that they asked each other what had brought them to the town gaol.

"You spoke of Christmas pie, with Puritans about you?" said Drunken
Barnaby.  "I could have warned you, gentlemen, and did not.  I was
always a day behind the fair.  They loathe all words that are connected
with the Mass."

"We have learned as much," said Michael.  "For your part, Mr. Barnaby,
how came you here?"

"Oh, a trifle of ale-drinking!  My heart was warm, you understand, and I
roved down Banbury street with some song of glory coming for King
Charles.  I’m not warm now, but the cool o’ the horse-pond has brought
me an astonishing sobriety."

"Then tell us how to be quit of these four walls," snapped Kit, thinking
ever of York and the need the city had of Prince Rupert.

"Give me time," said Drunken Barnaby, "and a little sleep.  Between the
forgetting and the waking, some gift o’ luck will run my way."

"Luck!" laughed Michael.  "She’s a good mare to ride."

Barnaby, with his little body and the traces of the horse-pond about
him, had seemed to the gaoler of mean account, not worth the trouble of
tying by the wrists.  The rogue sat up suddenly, just as he was falling
off to sleep.

"It is a mistake, my gentles, to disdain an adversary," he said, with
that curious air of his, roystering, pedantic in the choice of phrases,
not knowing whether he were ashamed of himself and all men, or filled
with charitable laughter at their infirmities.  "Our friend with the
blue-bottle nose left my hands free, you observe, while yours are bound.
Much water has gone into my pockets—believe me, I shall dislike all
horse-ponds in the future—but the knife-blade there will not have rusted
yet."

With a great show of strategy, still laughing at himself and them, he
drew a clasp-knife from his breeches-pocket, opened it, and cut their
thongs.

"That’s half-way on the road to Oxford," laughed Kit, rubbing the weals
about his wrists.  "It was kind of you to drink too much ale, Barnaby,
and join us here."

Michael glanced at his young brother.  "Humour returns to you," he said,
with an approving nod. "I told you life was not half as serious as you
thought it."

They tried the window-bars, the three of them, but found them sturdy.
They battered the doorway again with their shoulders; it did not give.
Barnaby drew a piece of wire from his pocket, and used great skill to
pick the lock; he might as well have tried to pierce steel armour with a
needle.

"There’s nothing to be done to-night, gentles," he said, with a noisy
yawn; "and, when there’s nothing to be done, I’ve found a safe and
gallant rule of conduct—one sleeps.  Some day, if I find the Muse
propitious, I shall write an ode to sleep.  It is the fabled elixir of
life.  It defies all fevers of the daytime; it is the coverlet that
Nature spreads about her tired children.  But, gentlemen, I weary you."

"You make me laugh," asserted Michael.  "Since I left Yoredale, I’ve met
none who had your grasp of life."

They settled themselves by and by to sleep, as best they could, on a wet
floor, with the warmth of the new day rousing queer odours from their
prison-house.  There was the stealthy tread of rats about their bodies.
It was Barnaby, after all, who was false to his gospel of deep slumber.
At the end of half an hour he reached over and woke Michael from a
thrifty dream of Yoredale and corn yellowing to harvest.

"What is it?" growled Michael.

"I cannot sleep, sir.  You recall that, in the tavern yesterday, I
confessed myself a poet.  The rhymes I have made, sir, are like the
sands of the sea for multitude.  I was never troubled till I came to
Banbury."

"Then journey forward.  There are other towns."

"You do not understand me.  Towns to be taken by assault, by any rhymes
that offer, do not entice me.  It is the hardship of attack that tempts
your true soldier.  You will grant me that?"

"I’ll grant you anything, Barnaby, so long as you let me sleep on this
wet floor.  I dreamed I was lying on a feather-bed."

"But the rhyme?  You remember how the poem went: ’Here I found a Puritan
one, hanging of his cat on a Monday, for killing of a mouse on a
Sunday.’  A fine conceit, sir, but I can find no rhyme for _Puritan_
one, as I told you."

Kit, for his part, was awake, too, and some jingle of a poem, in praise
of his mistress at Ripley in the north, was heating his brain.  But the
lad was learning wisdom these days, and held his peace; there was no
need to bring other men to Joan Grant by undue singing of her praises.

"Believe me, this verse-making is a fever in the blood," protested
Barnaby.  "Naught serves until the rhyme is found.  It is a madness,
like love of a lad for a maid.  There is no rhyme to Puritan."

"Friend," said Michael, "I need sleep, if you do not.  Remember what I
said last night.  Puri*tane* one—try it that way.  Get your man round to
the King’s cause, and he becomes a _sane one_."

"But, sir——"

Michael smiled happily.  "We have a saying in Yoredale: ’I canna help
your troubles, friend; I’ve enough of my own.’  Take it or leave it at
Puri*tane* one.  For myself, I’m going to sleep."

Barnaby sat wrestling with the Muse.  His mind, like all men’s, was full
of hidden byways, and the most secret of them all was this lane that led
into the garden of what, to him, was poetry.  A tramp on life’s highway,
a drinker at taverns and what not, it was his foible that he would be
remembered by his jingling verses—as, indeed, he was, centuries after
the mould had settled over his unknown grave.

It might be five minutes later, or ten, that Kit stirred in sleep, then
sat bolt upright.  He heard steps on the cobbled street outside, the
turning of a rusty key in the lock.  Then the door opened, and he saw
the squat figure of the gaoler, framed by a glimpse of Banbury street,
grey and crimson in the clean light of the new day.  Without haste he
got to his feet, stretched himself to the top of his great height, then
went and picked the gaoler up and swung him to and fro lightly, as if he
were a child.

"Michael," he said, "what shall we do with this fellow?  Michael, wake,
I tell you!"

When Michael came out of his sleep, and Drunken Barnaby out of his
rhyming, they sat in judgment on the gaoler.  They tried him for high
treason to King Charles.  They sentenced him to detention in His
Majesty’s gaol _sine die_, and went into the street, locking the door
behind them.

"You shall have the key, Mr. Barnaby," said Michael.  "Release him when
and how you like. For ourselves, we ride to Oxford."

"Nay, you walk," said Barnaby, with great solemnity.  "Oh, I know your
breed!  You’re all for going to the tavern for your horses.  It will not
do, gentles.  The town is thick with Roundheads."

"How can we walk twenty miles, with our errand a day or two old
already?" said Kit.

"Beggars must foot it, when need asks.  Do you want to sing ’Christmas
Pie’ again all down Banbury street, and have your errand spoiled?
Listen, sirs. This town does not suit my health just now; it does not
suit yours.  Permit me to guide you out of it along a byway that I
know."

Kit was impatient for the risk, so long as they found horses; but
Michael saw the wisdom underlying Barnaby’s counsel.  The three of them
set out, along a cart-track first, that led between labourers’ cottages
on one hand and a trim farmstead on the other, then into the open
fields.  A league further on they struck into the Oxford highway, an
empty riband of road, with little eddies of dust blown about by the
fingers of the quiet breeze.

"Here we part, gentles," said Barnaby, with his air of humorous
pedantry.  "Oxford is for kings and prelates.  I know my station, and my
thirst for a brew of ale they have four miles over yonder hill."

They could not persuade him that, drunk or sober, he had rescued them
from Banbury, that they would be glad of his further company.  He turned
once, after bidding them farewell, and glanced at Kit with his merry
hazel eyes.  "I’ve got that song of Banbury," he said.  "It all came to
me when I saw you dandling the gaoler with the blue-bottle nose. Strife
and battle always helped the poets of a country, sir, since Homer’s
time."

"There goes a rogue," laughed Michael, listening to the man’s song of
Banbury as he went chanting it up the rise.  "Well, I’ve known worse
folk, and he untied our hands."




                             *CHAPTER IX.*

                           *THE LOYAL CITY.*


They jogged forward on the road, and the day grew hot with thunder.  The
slowness of a walking pace, after months in the saddle, the heat to
which they were unused as yet, after the more chilly north, seemed to
make a league of every mile. Then the storm burst, and out of nowhere a
fierce wind leaped at them, driving the rain in sheets before it.  The
lightning played so near at times that they seemed to be walking through
arrows of barbed fire.

"A pleasant way of reaching Oxford, after all one’s dreams!" grumbled
Kit.

"Oh, it will lift.  I’m always gayest in a storm, my lad.  The end on’t
is so near."

The din and rain passed overhead.  A league further on they stepped into
clear sunlight and the song of soaring larks.  Here, too, their walking
ended, for a carrier overtook them.  He had a light load and a strong,
fast horse in the shafts; and, if their way of entry into the city of
his dreams jarred on Kit’s sense of fitness, he was glad to have the
journey shortened.

The carrier pulled up at the gateway of St. John’s, and the wonder of
their day began.  Oxford, to men acquainted with her charm by daily
intercourse, is constantly the City Beautiful; to these men of Yoredale,
reared in country spaces, roughened by campaigning on the King’s behalf,
it was like a town built high as heaven in the midst of fairyland.  As
they passed along the street, the confusion of so many streams of life,
meeting and eddying back and mixing in one great swirling river, dizzied
them for a while.  Then their eyes grew clearer, and they saw it all
with the freshness of a child’s vision. There were students, absurdly
youthful and ridiculously light-hearted, so Kit thought in his mood of
high seriousness.  There were clergy, and market-women with their
vegetables, hawkers, quack doctors, fortune-tellers, gentry and their
ladies, prosperous, well-fed, and nicely clothed.  A bishop and a dean
rubbed shoulders with them as they passed.  And, above the seemly hubbub
of it all, the mellow sun shone high in an over-world of blue sky
streaked with amethyst and pearl.

"Was the dream worth while?" asked Michael, with his easy laugh.

"A hundred times worth while.  ’Twould have been no penance to walk
every mile from Yoredale hither-to, for such an ending to the journey."

They went into the High Street, and here anew the magic of the town met
them face to face.  Oxford, from of old, had been the cathedral city,
the University, the pleasant harbourage of well-found gentry, who made
their homes within sound of its many bells.  Now it was harbouring the
Court as well.

Along the street—so long as they lived, Christopher and Michael would
remember the vision, as of knighthood palpable and in full flower—a
stream of Cavaliers came riding.  At their head, guarded jealously on
either side, was a horseman so sad and resolute of face, so marked by a
grace and dignity that seemed to halo him, that Kit turned to a butcher
who stood nearest to him in the crowd.

"Why do they cheer so lustily?  Who goes there?" he asked.

"The King, sir.  Who else?"

So then a great tumult came to Christopher. When he was a baby in the
old homestead, the Squire had woven loyalty into the bones and tissues
of him. Through the years it had grown with him, this honouring of the
King as a man who took his sceptre direct from the hands of the good
God.  Let none pry into the soul of any man so reared who sees his King
for the first time in the flesh.

With Michael it was the same.  He did not cheer as the crowd did; his
heart was too deeply touched for that.  And by and by, when the
townsfolk had followed the cavalcade toward Christ Church, the brothers
found themselves alone.

"It was worth while," said Kit, seeking yet half evading Michael’s
glance.

They shook themselves out of their dreams by and by, and, for lack of
other guidance, followed the route taken by the King.  The Cavaliers had
dispersed. The King had already gone into the Deanery.  So they left the
front of Christ Church and wandered aimlessly into the lane that
bordered Merton, and so through the grove where the late rains and the
glowing sun had made the lilacs and the sweet-briars a sanctuary of
beaded, fragrant incense.

From Merton, as they dallied in the grove—not knowing where to seek
Rupert, and not caring much, until the wine of Oxford grew less heady—a
woman came between the lilacs.  Her walk, her vivacious body, her air of
loving laughter wherever she could find it, were at variance with the
tiredness of her face.  She seemed like sunlight prisoned in a vase of
clouded porcelain.

Perhaps something of their inborn, romantic sense of womanhood showed in
the faces of the Metcalfs as they stepped back to make a way for her.
One never knows what impulse guides a woman; one is only sure that she
will follow it.

However that might be, the little lady halted; a quick smile broke
through her weariness. "Gentlemen," she said, with a pretty foreign lilt
of speech, "you are very—what you call it?—so very high.  There are few
men with the King in Oxford who are so broad and high.  I love big men,
if they are broad of shoulder.  Are you for the King?"

"We are Metcalfs of Nappa," said Kit.  "Our loyalty is current coin in
the north."

The little lady glanced shrewdly at them both, her head a little on one
side like a bird’s.  "Are you of the company they call the Riding
Metcalfs?  Then the south knows you, too, and the west country, wherever
men are fighting for the King.  Gentlemen, you have a battle-cry before
you charge—what is it?"

"A Mecca for the King!"

She laughed infectiously.  "It is not like me to ask for passwords.  I
was so gay and full of trust in all men until the war came.  The times
are _difficile, n’est pas_, and you were unknown to me.  What is your
errand here?"

"We came to find Prince Rupert," said Kit, blurting his whole tale out
because a woman happened to be pretty and be kind.  "The north is
needing him.  That is our sole business here."

"Ah, then, I can help you.  There’s a little gate here—one goes through
the gardens, and so into the Deanery.  My husband lodges there.  He will
tell you where Rupert finds himself."

Michael, because he knew himself to be a devil-may-care, had a hankering
after prudence now and then, and always picked the wrong moment for it.
If this unknown lady had chosen to doubt them, and ask for a password,
he would show the like caution.  Moreover, he felt himself in charge
just now of this impulsive younger brother.

"Madam," he answered, his smile returning, "our errand carries with it
the whole safety of the north.  In all courtesy, we cannot let ourselves
be trapped within the four walls of a house.  Your husband’s name?"

"In all courtesy," she broke in, "it is permitted that I laugh!  The
days have been so _triste_—so _triste_.  It is like Picardy and apple
orchards to find one’s self laughing.  You shall know my husband’s name,
sir—oh, soon!  Is it that two men so big and high are afraid to cross an
unknown threshold?"

Michael thrust prudence aside, glad to be rid of the jade.  "I’ve seldom
encountered fear," he said carelessly.

"Ah, so!  Then you have not loved."  Her face was grave, yet mocking.
"To live one must love, and to love—that is to know fear."

She unlocked the gate with a key she carried at her girdle, and passed
through.  They followed her into gardens lush, sweet-smelling, full of
the pomp and eager riot of the spring.  Then they passed into the
Deanery, and the manservant who opened to them bowed with some added
hint of ceremony that puzzled Michael.  The little lady bade them wait,
went forward into an inner room, then returned.

"My husband will receive you, gentlemen," she said, with a smile that
was like a child’s, yet with a spice of woman’s malice in it.

The sun was playing up and down the gloomy panels of the chamber, making
a morris dance of light and shade.  At the far end a man was seated at a
table.  He looked up from finishing a letter, and Christopher felt again
that rush of blood to the heart, that deep, impulsive stirring of the
soul, which he had known not long ago in the High Street of the city.

They were country born and bred, these Yoredale men, but the old Squire
had taught them how to meet sharp emergencies, and especially this of
standing in the Presence.  Their obeisance was faultless in outward
ceremony, and the King, who had learned from suffering the way to read
men’s hearts, was aware that the loyalty of these two—the inner
loyalty—was a thing spiritual and alive.

The Queen, for her part, stood aside, diverted by the welcome comedy.
These giants with the simple hearts had learned her husband’s name.

"I am told that you seek Prince Rupert—that you are lately come from
York?" said the King.

He had the gift—one not altogether free from peril—that he accepted or
disdained men by instinct; there were no half measures in his greetings.
Little by little Christopher and Michael found themselves at ease.  The
King asked greedily for news of York. They had news to give.  Every word
they spoke rang true to the shifting issues of the warfare in the
northern county.  It was plain, moreover, that they had a single
purpose—to find Rupert and to bring him into the thick of tumult where
men were crying for this happy firebrand.

The King glanced across at Henrietta Maria. They did not know, these
Metcalfs, what jealousies and slanders and pin-pricks of women’s tongues
were keeping Rupert here in Oxford.  They did not know that Charles
himself, wearied by long iteration of gossip dinned into his ears, was
doubting the good faith of his nephew, that he would give him no
commission to raise forces and ride out. The King and Queen got little
solace from their glance of Question; both were so overstrained with the
trouble of the times, so set about by wagging tongues that ought to have
been cut out by the common hangman, that they could not rid themselves
at once of doubt.  And the pity of it was that both loved Rupert, warmed
to the pluck of his exploits in the field, and knew him for a gentleman
proved through and through.

"Speak of York again," said the King.  "London is nothing to me, save an
overgrown, dull town whose people do not know their minds.  Next to
Oxford, in my heart, lies York.  If that goes, gentlemen, I’m widowed of
a bride."  He was tired, and the stimulus of this hale, red-blooded
loyalty from Yoredale moved him from the grave reticence that was eating
his strength away.  "It is music to me to hear of York.  From of old it
was turbulent and chivalrous.  It rears strong men, and ladies with the
smell of lavender about them.  Talk to me of the good city."

So then Michael, forgetting where he stood, told the full tale of his
journeying to York.  And the Queen laughed—the pleasant, easy laughter
of the French—when he explained the share a camp-follower’s donkey had
had in the wild escapade.

"You will present the donkey to me," she said. "When all is well again,
and we come to praise York for the part it took in holding Yorkshire for
the King, you will present that donkey to me."

And then the King laughed, suddenly, infectiously; and his Queen was
glad, for she knew that he, too, had had too little recreation of this
sort.  They went apart, these two, like any usual couple who were mated
happily and had no secrets from each other.

"How they bring the clean breath of the country to one," said Charles.
"Before they came, it seemed so sure that Rupert was all they said of
him."

"It was I who made you credit rumours," she broke in, pretty and
desolate in the midst of her French contrition.  "I was so weary, and
gossip laid siege to me hour by hour, and I yielded.  And all the while
I knew it false.  I tell you, I love the sound of Rupert’s step.  He
treads so firmly, and holds his head so high."

The King touched her on the arm with a deference and a friendship that
in themselves were praise of this good wife of his.  Then he went to the
writing-table, wrote and sealed a letter, and put it into Michael’s
hands.

"Go, find the Prince," he said, "and give him this.  He is to be found
at this hour, I believe, in the tennis-court.  And when you next see the
Squire of Nappa tell him the King knows what the Riding Metcalfs venture
for the cause."

Seeing Kit hesitate and glance at him with boyish candour, the King
asked if he had some favour to request.  And the lad explained that he
wished only to understand how it came that the Riding Metcalfs were so
well known to His Majesty.

"We have done so little," he finished; "and the north lies so far away."

The King paced up and down the room.  The fresh air these men had
brought into the confinement of his days at Oxford seemed again to put
restlessness, the need of hard gallops, into his soul.

"No land lies far away," he said sharply, "that breeds honest men, with
arms to strike shrewd blows. Did you fancy that a company of horsemen
could light the north with battle, could put superstitious terror into
the hearts of malcontents, and not be known?  Gentlemen, are you so
simple that you think we do not know what you did at Otley Bridge—at
Ripley, when the moon shone on the greening corn—at Bingley, where you
slew them in the moorland wood?  It is not only ill news that travels
fast, and the Prince, my nephew, never lets me rest for talk of you."

To their credit, the Metcalfs bore it well. Bewildered by this royal
knowledge of their deeds, ashamed and diffident because they had done so
little in the north, save ride at constant hazard, they let no sign
escape them that their hearts were beating fast.

The King asked too much of himself and others, maybe, stood head and
shoulders above the barter and cold common sense of everyday.  The
Metcalf spirit was his own, and through the dust and strife he talked
with them, as if he met friends in a garden where no eavesdroppers were
busy.

They went out by and by, the Queen insisting, with her gay, French
laugh, that the donkey should be presented to her later on.  They found
themselves in the street, with its pageantry of busy folk.

"Well, Kit," asked Michael.  "We’ve fought for the King, and taken a
wound or so.  Now we’ve seen him in the flesh.  How big is he, when
dreams end?"

"As big as dawn over Yoredale pastures.  I never thought to meet his
like."

"So!  You’re impulsive, lad, and always were, but I half believe you."

They came again into the High Street.  It was not long, so far as time
went, since these Nappa men had fancied, in their innocence, that
because a messenger rode out to summon them to Skipton, the King and all
England must also know of them.  Now the King did know of them, it
seemed.  Six months of skirmish, ambush, headlong gallops against odds,
had put their names in all men’s mouths.  Quietly, with a sense of
wonder, they tested the wine known as fame, and the flavour of it had a
sweetness as of spring before the languor of full summer comes.

"We were strangers here an hour since," said Kit, watching the folk
pass, "and now we come from Court."

"What did I tell you, babe Christopher, when I tried in Yoredale to lick
your dreaming into shape? Life’s the most diverting muddle.  One hour
going on foot, the next riding a high horse.  We’d best find the
tennis-court before the King’s message cools."

A passer-by told them where to find the place. The door was open to the
May sunlight, and, without ceremony or thought of it, they passed
inside. Prince Rupert was playing a hard game with his brother Maurice.
Neither heard the Metcalfs enter; in the blood of each was the crying
need for day-long activity—in the open, if possible, and, failing that,
within the closed walls of the tennis-court.  The sweat dripped from the
players as they fought a well-matched game; then Rupert tossed his
racquet up.

"I win, Maurice," he said, as if he had conquered a whole Roundhead
army.

"It is all we do in these dull times, Rupert—to win aces from each
other.  We’re tied here by the heels.  There’s the width of England to
go fighting in, and they will not let us."

Rupert, turning to find the big surcoat that should hide his frivolous
attire between the street and his lodging, saw the two Metcalfs standing
there.  He liked their bigness, liked the tan of weather and great
hardship that had dyed their faces to the likeness of a mellowed wall of
brick. Yet suspicion came easily to him, after long association with the
intrigues of the Court at Oxford, and instinctively he reached down for
the sword that was not there, just as Michael had done when he came
dripping from Ouse river into York.

"You are Prince Rupert?" said Michael.  "The King sends this letter to
you."

Rupert broke the seal.  When he had read the few lines written
carelessly and at speed, his face cleared.  "Maurice," he said, "we need
play no more tennis.  Here’s our commission to raise forces for the
relief of York."

He was a changed man.  Since boyhood, war had been work and recreation
both to him.  In his youth there had been the Winter Queen, his widowed
mother, beset by intrigue and disaster, with only one knightly man about
her, the grave Earl of Craven, who was watch-dog and worshipper.
Craven, hard-bitten, knowledgeable, with the strength of the grey
Burnsall fells in the bone and muscle of him, had taught Rupert the
beginnings of the need for warfare, had sown the first seeds of that
instinct for cavalry attack which had made Rupert’s horsemanship a
living fear wherever the Roundheads met them. First, he had had the
dream of fighting for his mother’s honour; when that was denied him he
had come into the thick of trouble here in England, to fight for King
Charles and the Faith.  And then had come the cold suspicion of these
days at Oxford, the eating inward of a consuming fire, the playing at
tennis because life offered no diversion otherwise.  It is not easy to
be denied full service to one’s king because the tongues of interlopers
are barbed with venom, and these weeks of inaction here had been eating
into his soul like rust.

The first glow of surprise over, Rupert’s face showed the underlying
gravity that was seldom far from it.  The grace of the man was rooted in
a rugged strength, and even the charm of person which none denied was
the charm of a hillside pasture field, flowers and green grass above,
but underneath the unyielding rock.

"Maurice, these gentlemen are two of Squire Metcalf’s lambs," he said,
"so the King’s letter says. For that matter, they carry their
credentials in their faces."

"Tell us just how the fight went at Otley Bridge," said Maurice, with
young enthusiasm.  "We have heard so many versions of the tale."

"It was nothing," asserted Kit, still astonished to find their exploits
known wherever they met Cavaliers. "Sir Thomas Fairfax came back one
evening from a skirmish to find we held the bridge.  He had five-score
men, and we had fifty.  It was a good fight while it lasted.  Forty of
our men brought back wounds to Ripley; but we come of a healthy stock,
and not a limb was lost."

Rupert had no easy-going outlook on his fellows; his way of life did not
permit such luxury.  He was aware that rumour had not lied for once—that
the magic of the Metcalf name, filtering down from Yorkshire through
many runnels and side-channels, was no will-o’-wisp.  Two of the clan
were here, and one of them had told a soldier’s tale in a soldier’s way,
not boasting of the thirty men of Fairfax’s they had left for dead at
Otley Bridge.

"I shall be for ever in your debt," he said impassively, "if you will
answer me a riddle that has long been troubling me.  Who taught you
Metcalfs the strength of cavalry, lightly horsed and attacking at the
gallop?"

"Faith, we were never taught it," laughed Michael. "It just came to us
as the corn sprouts or the lark sings.  The old grey kirk had something
to do with it, maybe, though I yawned through many a sermon about
serving God and honouring the King.  One remembers these little matters
afterwards."

"One does, undoubtedly," said Rupert.  "Now, sir," he went on, after a
grave silence, "I have a great desire.  I’m commissioned to raise forces
for the relief of York, and I want you men of Yoredale for my first
recruits.  They are already busy in the north, you’ll say.  Yes, but I
need them here. Six-score of your breed here among us, or as many as
their wounds permit to ride, would bring the laggards in."

"With you here?" said Kit impulsively.  "The laggards should be stirred
without our help."

"By your leave, they are tiring of me here in Oxford.  The tales of your
doings in the north are whetting jaded appetites.  Bring your big men
south on their white horses, and show the city what it covets.  I’ll
send a horseman to York within the hour."

"That need not be," said Michael.  "We wasted a whole night in Banbury,
and your messenger need ride no further than that town, I fancy.  The
first of our outposts should be there by now."

"You will explain, sir," put in Rupert, with grave question.

"It is simple enough.  Six-score men—and I think all of them will ride,
wounded or no—cover a good deal of country, set two miles apart.  That
was my father’s planning of our journey south—a horseman playing sentry,
on a fresh horse, at every stage, until we sent news that you were
coming to the relief of York."

"Thorough!" said Rupert.  "Strafford should be here, and Archbishop
Laud—they understand that watchword."

The Prince was housed at St. John’s, where Rupert had known
light-heartedness in his student days. That evening the Metcalfs supped
there—just the four of them, with little ceremony about the crude affair
of eating—and afterwards they talked, soldiers proven in many fights,
and men who, by instinctive knowledge of each other, had the self-same
outlook on this dizzy world of battle, intrigue, and small-minded folk
that hemmed them in.  To them the King was England, Faith, and
constancy.  No effort was too hard on his behalf; no east wind of
disaster, such as Rupert had suffered lately, could chill their steady
hope.

"There’s one perplexity I have," said Rupert, passing the wine across.
"Why are your men so sure that they can find fresh horses for the asking
at each two-mile stage?  Horses are rare to come by since the war broke
out."

So Michael explained, with his daft laugh, that a Yorkshireman had some
occult gift of scenting a horse leagues away, and a stubborn purpose to
acquire him—by purchase if he had the money, but otherwise if Providence
ordained it so.

"Has the rider gone to Banbury?" he asked.

"Yes, two hours since, by a messenger I trust, He is from Yorkshire,
too—one Nicholas Blake, who never seems to tire."

Kit’s eagerness, blunted a little by good fare and ease after months of
hardship, was awake again. "Blake?" he asked.  "Is he a little man, made
up of nerves and whipcord?"

"That, and a pluck that would serve three usual men."

"I’m glad he has the ride to Banbury.  It was he who first brought us
out of Yoredale into this big fight for the King.  When last I saw him,
he was limping in the middle of Skipton High Street, with blood running
down his coat—I thought he had done his last errand."

"Blake does not die, somehow.  Sometimes, looking at him, I think he
longs to die and cannot. At any rate, he rode south last autumn with a
letter for me, and I kept him for my own private errands. One does not
let rare birds escape."

The next moment Rupert, the gay, impulsive Cavalier, as his enemies
accounted him, the man with grace and foolhardiness, they said, but
little wit, thrust the _débris_ of their supper aside and spread out a
map upon the table.  It was a good map, drawn in detail by himself, and
it covered the whole country from London to the Scottish border.

"I am impatient for the coming of your clan, gentlemen," he said.  "Let
us get to figures. Mr. Blake is at Banbury already, we’ll say, and has
found your first outpost.  _He_ covers two miles at the gallop, and the
next man covers two, and so to Knaresborough. How soon can they win into
Oxford?"

"In five days," said Michael, with his rose-coloured view of detail.

Prince Rupert challenged his reckoning, and the puzzle of the
calculation grew more bewildering as the four men argued about it.  They
had another bottle to help them, but the only result was that each clung
more tenaciously to his opinion.  Maurice said the journey, allowing for
mischances and the scarcity of horses, would take eight days at least;
Kit Metcalf hazarded a guess that seven was nearer the mark; and at last
they agreed to wager each a guinea on the matter, and parted with a
pleasant sense of expectation, as if a horse race were in the running.
Soldiers must take their recreations this way; for they travel on a road
that is set thick with hazard, and a gamble round about the winning
chance is part of the day’s work.

"I give you welcome here to Oxford," said Rupert, as he bade them
good-night.  "Since the tale of your exploits blew about our sleepy
climate, I knew that in the north I had a company of friends.  When the
Squire of Nappa rides in, I shall tell him that he and I, alone in
England, know what light cavalry can do against these men of
Cromwell’s."

The Metcalfs, when they said farewell, and he asked where they were
lodging for the night, did not explain that they had come in a carrier’s
cart to Oxford, without ceremony and entirely without change of gear.
They just went out into the street, wandered for an hour among the scent
of lilacs, then found a little tavern that seemed in keeping with their
own simplicity.  The host asked proof of their respectability, and they
showed him many guineas, convincing him that they were righteous folk.
Thereafter they slept as tired men do, without back reckonings or fear
of the insistent morrow.  Once only Kit awoke and tapped his brother on
the shoulder.

"They’ll be here in seven days, Michael," he said, and immediately began
to snore.




                              *CHAPTER X.*

                            *THE RIDING IN.*


Through the quiet lanes Blake, the messenger, rode out to Banbury.
Nightingales were singing through the dusk; stars were blinking at him
from a sky of blue and purple; a moth blundered now and then against his
face.  He understood the beauty of the gloaming, though he seemed to
have no time to spare for it.  Prince Rupert had sent him spurring with
a message to the big rider of a white horse, who was to be found
somewhere on the road leading from the north to Banbury; and the
password was "A Mecca for the King."  That was his business on the road.
But, as he journeyed, a strange pain of heart went with him.  The
nightingales were singing, and God knew that he had forgotten love-songs
long ago, or had tried to.

Spring, and the rising sap, and the soft, cool scents of eventide are
magical to those climbing up the hill of dreams; to those who have
ceased to climb, they are echoes of a fairyland once lived in, but now
seen from afar.  It had all been so long ago. Skirmish and wounds, and
lonely rides in many weathers, should have dug a grave deep enough for
memories to lie in; but old ghosts rose to-night, unbidden.  If it had
been his sinning, he could have borne the hardship better; he had the
old knightly faith—touched with extravagance, but haloed by the Further
Light—that all women are sacrosanct. If he had failed—well, men were
rough and headstrong; but it was she who had stooped to meaner issues.
And it was all so long ago that it seemed absurd the nightingales should
make his heart ache like a child’s.

Fame was his.  The Metcalfs, big on big horses, had captured the fancy
of all England by their exploits in the open.  Yet Blake, the
messenger—riding alone for the most part, through perils that had no
music of the battle-charge about them—had his own place, his claim to
quick, affectionate regard wherever Cavaliers were met together. They
laughed at his high, punctilious view of life, but they warmed to the
knowledge that he had gone single-handed along tracks that asked for
comrades on his right hand and his left.  But this was unknown to Blake,
who did not ask what men thought of him. It was enough for him to go
doing his journeys, carrying a heartache till the end came and he was
free to understand the why and wherefore of it all.

It was a relief to see the moonlight blinking on the roofs of Banbury as
he rode into the town.  There were no nightingales here; instead, there
was the hum and clamour of a Roundhead populace, infuriated by the news
that two Cavaliers had broken prison in the early morning and had locked
the gaoler in.

Blake found his bridle seized roughly, and it was doubtful for a moment
whether he or his high-spirited mare, or the two of them, would come to
grief.

"Well, friend?" he asked of the burly Puritan who held the bridle.

"Your business here?"

"To sell cloth.  I come from Oxford, and have done much business there
with the Court."

"Then why come selling wares in Banbury? Court fashions find no favour
here."

"Cloth is cloth," said Blake impassively, "and I’ve some remnants going
cheap."

A woman in the crowd pressed forward.  "How much the yard?" she asked.

With his tired knowledge of the world, he named a price that made the
woman ask eagerly for a sample. "I have no samples.  The cloth itself
will come in by carrier to-morrow.  I’m tired and hungry," he said,
smiling at the man who held his rein. "Perhaps you will direct me to a
lodging for the night?"

"Was there great stir among the sons of Belial in Oxford?" asked his
captor, with a shrewd sideways glance.

"They were like bees in a busy hive," assented Blake cheerily.

"You learned something, maybe, of their plans?"

"I did, friend."

"That might be worth free lodging to you for the night, and a supper of
the best.  What did you learn?"

"Why, that they planned to buy a good deal of my cloth.  That’s how I
measure a man—with the eye of a merchant who has cloth to sell.  You,
sir—your clothes are of the shabbiest, if you’ll pardon my frankness.
Will you not come to the tavern to-morrow, after the carrier has brought
my bales, and let me show you some good broadcloth—cloth of a sober
colour, suited to the pious habits you profess? To-day I clothe a
Cavalier, to-morrow a gentleman who fights on the Parliament side—a
merchant knows no niceties of party."

Blake had thrust home.  This man, named gentle for the first time in his
busy life as tradesman, traducer of the King’s good fame, and the prime
stirabout of anarchy in Banbury, was filled with a heady, spurious
pride.  This merchant had sold cloth to the dandies of the Court,
perhaps to the King himself, and now it was his turn.  There were men of
this odd, cringing habit among the sterner Roundhead stuff, and Blake
knew them as a harpist knows the strings he plays on.

The end of it was that he was directed to a comfortable tavern, was
given, though he scarcely seemed to ask for it, the password that
ensured him the freedom of the streets, and parted from his captor with
an easy-going reminder that the cloth should reach Banbury about nine of
the next morning.

The password was useful to him more than once. It saved much trouble
with soldiery who held him up at every turn.  It saved appeal to the
pistol he carried in his holster; and that would have meant the rousing
of the town, and odds against him that would put his whole errand into
jeopardy.

He halted once only, at the front of the tavern which had been
recommended to him.  An ostler was standing at the door, chewing a straw
and waiting for some fresh excitement to stir these strenuous days.
Blake slipped a coin into his hand, and explained that, about nine of
the next morning, a townsman would come asking for a merchant who had
cloth to sell.

"You will explain, ostler, that I am called away on business—business
connected with the two Cavaliers who broke gaol last night.  Explain,
too, that I hope to return to your town in a few days’ time.  The
townsman’s name was Ebenezer Fear-the-Snare—I remember it because of its
consuming drollery."

With a cheery nod and a laugh that might mean anything, Blake left the
other wondering "what devilment this mad fellow was bent on," and rode
out into the beauty of the summer’s night that lay beyond the outskirts
of Banbury.  Here, again, the nightingales assailed him.  They could not
rest for the love-songs in their throats; and ancient pain, deep where
the soul beats at the prison-house of flesh, guided his left hand on the
reins until, not knowing it, he was riding at a furious gallop.  Then he
checked to a sober trot.

The land was fragrant with the warmth of wet soil, the scent of flowers
and rain-washed herbage.  The moon shone blue above the keen white light
of gloaming, and the road ahead stretched silver, miraculous, like some
highway of the old romance that was waiting for the tread of kings and
knights, of ladies fair as their own fame.

Old dreams clambered up to Blake’s saddle and rode with him—wild
heartaches of the long ago—the whetstone of first love, sharpening the
power to feel, to dare all things—the unalterable need of youth to build
a shrine about some woman made of the same clay as himself.  They were
good dreams, tasted again in this mellow dusk; but he put them by at
last reluctantly.  He had a live ambition before him—to bring a company
of riders, bred in his own stiff Yorkshire county, for the Cavaliers of
Oxford to appraise.

He slackened pace with some misgiving.  The two Metcalfs, when he bade
farewell to them in Oxford, had been so sure that one of their kinsmen
would have reached the outskirts of Banbury, would be waiting for him.
The horseman, they had explained, would not approach the town too
closely, knowing its fame as a place of Parliament men who watched
narrowly all Oxford’s incoming and outgoing travellers; but Blake had
travelled three miles or so already, and he grew impatient for a sight
of his man.

Through the still air and the complaint of nightingales he heard the
whinny of a horse.  His own replied.  The road made a wide swerve here
through the middle of a beech wood.  As he rounded it and came into the
open country, he saw a broken wayside cross, and near it a horseman
mounted on a white horse as big and raking in the build as its rider.

"A Mecca?" asked Blake, with the indifference of one traveller who
passes the time of day with another.

"Nay, that will not serve," laughed the other. "Half a sixpence is as
good as nothing at all."

"A Mecca for the King, then, and I was bred in Yorkshire, too."

The freemasonry of loyalty to one King, to the county that had reared a
man, is a power that makes all roads friendly, that kills suspicion and
the wary reaching down of the right hand toward a pistol-holster.

"How does Yoredale look," went on Blake, with a little, eager catch in
his voice, "and the slope of Whernside as you see it riding over the
tops from Kettlewell?"

"Bonnie, though I’ve not seen either since last year’s harvest.  This
King’s affair of ride and skirmish is well enough; but there’s no time
to slip away to Yoredale for a day and smell the wind up yonder.  Are
Kit and Michael safe?"

"They are in Oxford, accepting flattery with astounding modesty."

"They’ve found Prince Rupert?  The Metcalfs—oh, I touch wood!—keep a
bee-line when they know where home lies."

"That is no boast, so why go touching wood? I tell you the King knows
what your folk have done and hope to do.  The Prince is raising cavalry
for the relief of York, and will not rest until you Metcalfs join him.
How soon can your company get south?"

The horseman thought the matter over.  "It will take five days and a
half," he said at last.

"Good for you!" snapped Blake.  "Even your brother Christopher, with the
starry look o’ dreams about his face, was sure that it would take seven
days.  I wager a guinea to a pinch o’ snuff that you’re not in Oxford in
five days and a half."

"That is a wager?"

"I said as much, sir."

"Then lend me the pinch of snuff.  I emptied my box in waiting for you,
and was feeling lonely."

Blake laughed as he passed his box over.  There was an arresting humour
about the man, a streak of the mother-wit that made the Metcalf clan at
home in camp or city.  "I’ll see you to the next stage," he said,
reining his horse about—"that is, if you care for an idle man’s company.
I’ve nothing in the world to do just now."

The other only nodded, touched his horse sharply with the spur, and
Blake found himself galloping with a fury that, even to his experience
of night adventures, seemed breakneck and disastrous.  At the end of a
mile their horses were in a lather; at the end of two they had to check
a little up the rise of a hill.  On the top of the hill, clear against
the sky, they saw a horseman sitting quiet in saddle.  They saw, too,
that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight.

[Illustration: "They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the
moonlight."]

"A Mecca!" panted Blake’s companion.

"Cousin does not slay cousin," said the man on the hill-top, rattling
his sword into the sheath again. "Have they found Rupert?"  The second
rider was given his errand briefly and without waste of breath.  Then he
flicked his horse, and Blake was tempted to follow him, too.  There was
something uncanny, some hint of mystery and deep, resistless strength
about this picketing of the road north. Blake had a quick imagination;
he saw this chain of riders, linking York with Oxfordshire, spurring
through a country fast asleep—only they and the moon and the
nightingales awake—until, kinsman passing the message on to kinsman at
each two-miles stage, the last rider came in with his tale of "Boot and
saddle."

Indeed, Blake urged his mare to follow the second horseman; but she was
reluctant, and was sobbing under him after the headlong gallop.

"I had forgotten.  She has carried me from Oxford already," he said,
turning to his companion.

"She’s a good little mare," said Metcalf, with instinctive judgment of
all horseflesh.  "She will have time to rest if you’re minded to share
the waiting time with me."

"Your five days and a half?" laughed the other, as they returned at a
quiet pace to their first meeting-place.  "Yes, I shall stay, if only to
claim my wager.  It is not in human power for your company to muster in
the time."

"It is a game we have played often during these last months.  Lord
Fairfax, in the north, swears there’s witchcraft in it, because we have
carried news from York to Skipton, from Skipton into Lancashire, while
single messengers were spurring half-way on the road."

"_I_ am a messenger of the lonely sort," put in Blake—with a touch of
spleen, for he was tired. "Well, I propose to see what comes of your new
way of galloping."

"The first that comes"—Metcalf yawned and stretched himself with an air
of complete strength and bodily content—"will be my Cousin Ralph, who
took the message on just now.  When he has passed it on, he rides
hitherto.  We may expect him in a half-hour or so."

Blake, himself something of a mystic, who rode fine errands by help of
no careful planning, but by intuition, was interested in this man, who
stood for the Metcalf thoroughness, in detail and in hot battle, that
had made their name alive through England.  He learned, here in the
moonlight, with the _jug-jug_ of nightingales from the thickets on their
right, and the stir of moths about their faces, how carefully the old
Squire had planned this venture. The clan was a line of single links
from Oxford to the north, so long as the message needed to be carried
swiftly; but afterwards each messenger was to ride back along the route
to Banbury, until the company mustered on its outskirts grew big enough
to hold attack from the town in check.

As they talked, and while Metcalf was pushing tobacco—borrowed, like the
snuff, from Blake—into the bowl of a clay pipe, there came a little
sound from up the road.  It was a rhythmical, recurrent sound.

"That is my Cousin Ralph," said Metcalf unconcernedly.

The music grew louder by degrees, till the din of nightingales was lost
in the rat-a-tat of hoofs.

"The first to the tryst," laughed Blake, as the new-comer dismounted and
picketed his horse close to their own.  "We have a wager that your folk
will not be in Oxford within five days and a half."

"For my part," said Ralph, "I have a hunger that eats inwards.  Have you
found nothing for the larder, cousin, all this time of waiting?"

Will Metcalf had, as it happened.  Near sundown he had set two
traps—simple contrivances of looped wire—in a neighbouring rabbit
burrow; and, a little while before Blake rode out from Banbury, he had
dismounted to find a coney in each snare.

"We shall do well enough," said Will.

Again Blake was astonished by the downrightness of these people.  Ralph,
who had not tasted food since noon, was sure that his cousin would have
made due provision.  Methodically they sought for a likely hollow,
screened from the rising wind, gathered brushwood and fallen branches,
and made a fire. While it was burning up, they skinned and cleaned the
rabbits.

"Gentlemen," said Blake, while their meal was in the cooking, "do you
give no homage to the god known as chance?  All is planned out, from
here to York; but I’ve travelled the night-roads—have them by heart, as
a man knows the whimsies of his wife. Suppose some of your men were
thrown badly, or killed by Roundheads, how would it fare with the
message up to York?"

Ralph Metcalf turned the rabbits with nice regard for the meal overdue.
Then he glanced up.  "If there was a gap of four miles, instead of two,
the rider would gallop four.  If he found another dead man at the next
stage, he would gallop six."

So then Blake laughed.  "We are well met, I think.  I was jealous of
your clan, to be candid, when I was told their speed put us poor
night-riders to shame.  Yet, friends, I think we carry the same
loyalty."

Their meal was scarcely ready when again there came the fret of distant
hoof-beats.  Another giant joined their company.  In face and sturdiness
he was like the rest; but he happened to be six-foot-four, while his
kinsmen here were shorter by two inches. He, too, was hungry.

"That’s good hearing," said Ralph.  "I was puzzling how to carve two
rabbits into three, but it’s easy to split them into twice two."

"Half a coney to feed my sort of appetite?"

"Be content.  If it had not been for Will here we’d have had no food at
all."

The newcomer drew a bottle from the pocket of his riding-coat.  "I
forget whether I stole it or paid honest money.  It’s a small bottle,
but it will give us the bite of the northern winds again."

When they had ended this queer supper, and had borrowed from the store
of tobacco that to Blake was better than a meal, they fell into silence.
The languorous beauty of the night wove its spell about them; and the
fourth Metcalf, when he rode in presently, jarred them roughly out of
dreams. The newcomer, as it happened, had contrived to snatch supper
while he waited, six miles further north, to take on the message.  He
did not ask for food; after picketing his horse, he just wrapped himself
in the blanket hastily unstrapped from saddle, turned over once or twice
in a luxury of weariness, and snored a litany to the overarching
heavens.

Through that night Blake did not sleep or ask for slumber.  The
nightingales were tireless, as if their throats would break unless they
eased them.  The Metcalf riders were tireless, too.  At longer and at
longer intervals they came in from the north, their horses showing signs
of stress.  Two miles from outpost to outpost was a trifling distance;
but, before the last of that night’s company joined the muster here at
Banbury, he had travelled forty miles.

Blake lay, his face to the moonlight, and could not stifle memory.  The
sleepy fragrance, the scent of moist earth and flowering stuff, took
him, as by sorcery, to a walled garden in Knaresborough and a summer
that had been, and the end of blandishment. There had been no
nightingales—it lay too far north, that garden, to tempt them—but a
stronger song had stirred him.  And there had been the same lush smell
of summer, the same hovering of bats across the moon’s face.

It was as if she sat beside him again—they two listening to the ripple
of Nidd River far below—and her voice was low and tender as she chided
him for love-making.  There had been other meetings—stolen ones and
brief—and all the world a-maying to Blake’s view of it.

He would not let the dream go—played with it, pretended he had not
learned long since what it meant to love a light-of-heart.  Her face, of
the kind that painters dote on when they picture maiden innocence, the
shifting play of light and colour in her eyes, the trick she had of
making all men long to be better than they were—surely he could rest
this once from many journeyings, and snatch another stolen meeting,
there in Knaresborough, with all the roses blowing kisses to them.

As he lay there, the two Metcalfs who were sentrying their little camp
grew tired of pacing to and fro, each on his own short beat, and halted
for a gossip.  Blake did not heed them until they began to talk of
Knaresborough, of Michael’s dash into the Castle, of a Mistress Bingham
he had met there.

"Michael met his match for once," laughed one sentry.  "You know his
gift of finding the finest eyes in England housed under every other
woman’s brows?  Well, Mistress Demaine plays a good game at hearts, too,
they say.  Michael was touched in earnest this time.  Oh, the jest of
it!"

"It would be a better if they began by playing, and ended with the
silken noose.  Can you picture Michael wedded—Michael, with cut wings
and drooping comb, seeking no more for fairest eyes?"

Blake left his dreams as if they scorched him. So Mistress Bingham had
been two years ago; so she would be, doubtless, when the King had come
to his own again, and had reigned long, and passed on the crown.  There
is a stability about inconstancy, Blake realised.

He got to his feet, crossed to where the sentries stood, and yawned.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I cannot sleep for hunger; and there will be
others in my case before the night ends.  Can I borrow two of your
company to make up a forage-party?"

One of the sentries pointed to a distant belt of wood, high up against
the sky.  "When dawn rides over the trees yonder, our watch is ended.
We’ll join you, Mr. Blake, if only because you have the most diverting
laugh I ever heard, except Michael’s when he’s seen a pair of pretty
eyes."

A half-hour later they kicked the fresh sentries out of sleep.  Then
Blake and they went up the pasture-lands on foot.  It was a good night
for foraging; every pitfall of the ground, every farmstead sleeping in
the bosom of its guardian trees, showed clear in the dawn-light.  And
none of the three men had qualms about the business, for the Banbury
country, through and through, was traitorous to the King.

They returned two hours later in high spirits. The Metcalfs asked for a
good deal of feeding, after a night in the open had set a razor-edge to
appetite; and the scouting-party had commandeered a farmer’s horse and
gig to bring their booty into camp.

"Who goes there?" snapped the sentries, running to meet this intrusion
on the night’s quiet.

"A Mecca, lad," laughed the driver, "bringing fowls and cheese, and good
home-cured bacon—ay, and a little barrel of rum that nearly bounced out
o’ the gig when I came to a rutty place in the road."

"’Twould have been a pity to have lost the rum.  Where are Blake and
your cousin Nicholas?"

"Oh, following!  The gig would not hold us all. As for Blake, he has few
cares in life.  Not one to have his heart touched by a woman—he.  He
laughs by habit, till you’re forced to laugh with him."




                             *CHAPTER XI.*

                            *BANBURY CAKES.*


At Oxford, there was expectation threading the routine of Court life.
The fine light of devotion to lost causes—causes lost because they were
ever too high for mean folks’ understanding—had cradled this good city.
Chivalry, the clean heart and the ruddy, fervid hope, had built her
wonderland of colleges and groves and pleasant streets.  Men of
learning, of passionate fervour for the things beyond, had lived and
died here; and such men leave about the place of their bodily sojourn a
living presence that no clash of arms, no mire of human jealousies, can
overcome.

For this reason, all Oxford awaited the coming of the Metcalfs.  They in
the north—men well content, not long ago, to follow field-sports and the
plough—were different in breed and habits from these folk in the comely
city.  But, in the matters that touch dull workaday into a living flame,
they were of the same company—men who hoped, this side or the other of
the veil, to see the Standard floating high above life’s pettiness.
And, for this reason, Oxford waited the Metcalfs’ coming with an
expectancy that was oddly vivid.  The gamesters of the Court wagered
heavily as to the hour of their arrival. Grave dons, who happened to be
interested in the mathematics more in favour at the sister University,
drew maps of the route from Banbury to York, calculated the speed of
messengers spurring at the gallop north, and the return pace of riders
coming south on horses none too fresh.  These had recourse to algebra,
which seemed only to entangle the argument the more.

Queen Henrietta Maria and the ladies of the Court made no calculations.
Michael and Christopher were here, big, wind-browned men, who seemed
unaware that they had done anything worth praise; and the Queen, with
her French keenness of vision, her late-learned English view of life,
knew that two gentlemen had come to Oxford, men made in the image of
chivalry, ready to live or die with gallantry.

So the two brothers were spoiled outrageously, until, on the second day,
Kit was despatched alone to Lathom House in Lancashire.

"Take all the quieter byways," said Rupert, as he saw him get to saddle.
"Tell the Lady of Latham to hold out a little longer.  And tell her from
me, _Well done_!"

Rupert sighed as he turned away.  He was fretting to be at Shrewsbury,
raising his company for the relief of York; but he was kept in Oxford
here by one of those interminable intrigues which had hampered him for
months past.  The older men whose counsel the King trusted—Culpepper,
Hyde, and the rest—were jealous of Rupert’s conspicuous genius for
warfare.  The younger men were jealous of the grace—a grace clean-cut,
not foppish, resolute—which endeared him to the women of the Court. He
was accused of treachery at Bristol, of selling his honour for a sum of
gold; it was said that he dallied here in Oxford for reasons known to
the Duchess of Richmond.  No lie was too gross to put in circulation, by
hint, or question, or deft innuendo. Day by day, hour by hour, men were
dropping poison into the King’s ear and the Queen’s; and at the
Councils, such as this that kept him here just now, he saw across the
table the faces of men obstinately opposed to him.  Whatever he
suggested was wrong because he was the spokesman; whatever was in blunt
contradiction to his view of the campaign was applauded.  The Duke of
Richmond, his friend and ally, was with him, and one or two younger men
who had no gift of speech in these times of stress. For the rest, he was
alone, a man of action, with his back to the wall in a battle of
tongues.

He carried himself well enough even to-day, when the meeting was more
stormy than usual. His dignity was not a cloak, but an inbred strength
that seemed to grow by contact with adversity.

"So, gentlemen," he said, at the close of the Council, "you have had
your way so far as talk goes.  Now I have mine.  I hold a commission
from the King to raise forces for the relief of sundry garrisons.  I
shall relieve those garrisons in my own way.  Meanwhile, you may hold
Councils without number, but I would recommend tennis to you as a
healthier pastime."

They watched him go.  "The d—d young thoroughbred!" spluttered
Culpepper.  "We’ll get a bit between his teeth, one of these days, and
teach him discipline."

Rupert made his way across the High Street, a curious soreness at his
heart.  Discipline?  He had learned it in his teens—the self-restraint,
the gift of taking blows and giving them with equal zest. But this new
school he was passing through was harsh, unlovely.  There was York,
waiting for relief; there was Lathom House, defended with courage
unbelievable by Lady Derby and a handful of hard-bitten men; there were
twenty manors holding out in hope of the succouring cavalry who did not
come; and he was kept here to attend a Council, to listen to veiled
jealousy and derision, when all he asked for was a horse under him and
grace to gather a few thousand men.

As he neared Christ Church, intent on seeking audience of the King, and
stating frankly his own view of his enemies, he encountered Michael
Metcalf crossing hurriedly from a side street.

"Well, sir?" he asked, with a sense of friendship at sight of a man so
obviously free of guile.  "Have they done wagering in Oxford as to the
hour your kinsmen ride in?"

"I think the play runs even faster.  Some learned dons have brought the
heavy guns of algebra to bear on it, and all the town is waiting for
their answer to the riddle."

"All’s topsy-turvy," laughed the Prince.  "If dons have taken to giving
the odds on a horserace, where will Oxford end?  But you were hurrying,
and I detain you."

Michael explained that the King had commanded his presence at the
Deanery; and the other, after a brief farewell, turned on his heel.
After all, his own business with the King could wait until this reigning
favourite in Oxford had had his audience.

Just across the way was Merton, where the Queen’s lodging was.  Rupert
had had his fill of disillusion and captivity here in the loyal city; he
was human, and could not hide for ever his heartache to be out and
doing, lest it ate inward with corrosion.  He crossed to Merton, asked
for the Queen, and was told that she had gone out a half-hour since to
take the air.  The Duchess of Richmond was within, he learned in answer
to a second query.

The Duchess was stooping over a table when he was announced.  She added
a few quick strokes to the work she was engaged on, then rose.

"You, my Prince?" she said, with frank welcome. "You come from the
Council?  I hoped that you would come.  Were they as always?"

"My lord Cottington’s gout was at its worst, and he in the same mood as
the disease.  Digby’s mouth was more like a Cupid’s bow than ever, and
he simpered well-groomed impertinences.  How I loathe them, Duchess."

"You would."

She turned for a moment to the window, looked out on the May sunlight
and the dancing leaves. All the vigour of their loyalty to the King—her
husband’s and her own—all the dreams they had shared of monarchy secure
again, and rebellion trampled underfoot, were summed up in Rupert’s
person.  He had done so much already; he was resolute to go forward with
the doing, if the curs of scandal and low intrigue would cease snapping
at his heels.

She turned from the window.  "My Prince," she said, touching his arm
with the grace that gives courage to a man, "you do well to come here
for sanctuary between the pauses of the battle.  If you knew what my
husband says of you, if you guessed the many prayers I send you——"

The keen, happy smile broke through from boyhood’s days.  "Duchess," he
said very simply, "I am well rewarded.  What were you busy about when I
intruded?"

She showed him her handiwork.  "One must do something these dull days,"
she explained, "and it was you who taught me this new art of etching. Am
I an apt pupil?"

Rupert looked at the work with some astonishment. The art was in its
infancy, and difficult; yet she had done very well, a few crudities
apart. The etching showed a kingfisher, triumphant on a rock set in
midstream; at its feet lay a half-eaten grayling.

"It is not good art, because it is an allegory," she explained, with the
laughter that had been oftener heard before the troubled days arrived.
"You, my Prince, are the kingfisher, and the grayling the dull-witted
fish named Parliament."

At the Deanery Michael was in audience with the King, whose imagination
had been taken captive by the exploits of the Riding Metcalfs, by the
stir and wonderment there was about the city touching the exact hour of
their coming.  Michael, because wind and hazard in the open had bred
him, carried himself with dignity, with a reverence rather hinted at
than shown, with flashes of humour that peeped through the high gravity
of this audience.  He explained the wagering there was that York would
be relieved, spoke of the magic Rupert’s name had in the north.  At the
end of the half-hour the King’s face was younger by ten years.  The
distrust of his nephew, wearing faith away as dropping water wears a
rock, was gone.  Here, by God’s grace, was a gentleman who had no lies
at command, no private grudge to serve.  It was sure, when Michael took
his farewell, that the commission to raise forces for the relief of York
would not be cancelled.

The King called him back, bade him wait until he had penned a letter.
The letter—written with the sense that his good angel was looking over
his shoulder, as Charles felt always when his heart was free—was a
simple message to his wife.  He had not seen her for a day, and was
desolate.  He could not spare time to cross the little grove between
this Merton, because he had letters still unanswered but hoped to sup
there later in the day.  He was a fine lover, whether of Church, or
State, or the wife who was lavender and heartsease to him; and, after
all, they are three kingly qualities.

He sealed the letter.  "You will be so good as to deliver it into the
Queen’s hand, Mr. Metcalf; there may be an answer you will bring."

Michael, when he knocked at the gate of Merton, was told the Queen was
abroad.  He said that he would wait for her return; and, when the
janitor was disposed to question, he added that he came direct from the
King, and, if he doubted it, he would pitch him neck and crop into the
street.  He was admitted; for the janitor, though sturdy, was six inches
shorter.

When he came into the room—that would have been gloomy between its
panelled walls, if it had not been for the sunlight flooding it with
gold and amber—he saw Rupert and the Duchess of Richmond standing near
the window.  Sharp, like an east wind from Knaresborough, where he had
marked time by dalliance with pretty women, he heard Miss Bingham’s
voice as she bade him, when he came to Oxford, ask Rupert how the
Duchess of Richmond fared.

Michael did not need to ask.  With a clean heart and a conscience as
easy as is permitted to most men, he saw these two as they were—loyal
woman helping loyal man to bind the wounds that inaction and the rust of
jealousy had cankered.

"By your leave," he said, "I have a letter for the Queen."

"It will be safe in my hands, Mr. Metcalf."

The Prince was surprised by the other’s gravity, his air of perplexity.
"I would trust all I have to you," said Michael, "all that is my own.
But this letter is the King’s, and he bade me give it to the Queen
herself.  I can do no less, believe me."

"Sir," said Rupert coldly, "you risk your whole advantage here at
Court—make me your enemy for life, perhaps—because you stand on a
punctilio the King himself would not ask from you."

The Duchess watched the faces of these men. Michael had been the
laughter-maker in the midst of disastrous days; his gift of story, his
odd susceptibility to the influence of twenty pairs of bright eyes in a
day, had made him a prime favourite. Now he was as hard and
simple-minded as his brother Christopher.  She approved the man in his
new guise.

"I stand on the strict command the King gave me," said Michael quietly.
"Sir, how could a man do otherwise?"

Rupert turned suddenly.  "Duchess," he said, "we stand in the presence
of a man.  I have tried him.  And it always clears the air, after
Councils and what not, to hear the north wind sing.  I wish your clan
would hurry to the muster, sir, if they’re all as firm as you are for
the King."

An hour later the Queen returned, read the letter, penned a hasty
answer.  "Ah, it is so good to see you, Monsieur Metcalf, so good!  You
have the laughter ready always—it is so good to laugh! There is—what you
call it?—too much salt in tears, and tears, they fall so quick if one
allows it.  Now, you will tell me—before you take my letter—when does
your big company ride in?  Some say to-day, others two, three days
later.  For myself, I want to see your tall men come.  They will make
light the King’s heart—and he so _triste_—ah, _croyez-vous_ that he is
_triste_!"

With her quick play of hands and features, her pretty broken English,
the air of strength and constancy that underlay her charm, the Queen
touched Michael with that fire of pity, admiration, selfless love, which
never afterwards can be forgotten. She had bidden him laugh, lest for
her part she cried. So he made a jest of this ride of the Metcalfs
south. He drew pictures, quick, ludicrous pictures, of men calculating
this queer game of six-score men travelling fast as horseflesh could
bring them to the loyal city.  He explained that he alone had the answer
to the riddle, because he was unhampered by Christopher’s obstinacy on
the one hand, by the grave algebra of dons on the other.  All Oxford had
been obsessed by the furious gallop of horsemen north between stage and
stage.  They could reach York in fifteen hours.  It was the return
journey, of units gathering into companies, of companies resting their
horses when need compelled, that fixed the coming of the White Horses
into Oxford.  And the last of these—the one mustered nearest York—was of
necessity the one that guided the hour of coming.

In the north ride, speed and road-dust under the gallop; in the canny
muster toward the south, a pace of tiresome slowness.

"How long since we came in, Christopher and I?" asked Michael.

"Six days," said Rupert.  "They’s been leaden days for me, and so I
counted them."

"Then look for our folk to-morrow, somewhere between dawn and sunset."

On the northern road, beyond Banbury, there had been a steady muster of
the Metcalfs day by day. Blake, the night-rider, watched the incoming of
these northern men—each day a score of them, big on their white
horses—with wonder and a keen delight.  Those already mustered were so
sure of the next day’s company; and these, when they rode in, carried
the same air of buoyancy, of man-like hardihood and child-like trust.

A new, big dream was stirring round Blake’s heart.  Six days ago he had
lain awake and heard two sentries talk of Miss Bingham, of the coquetry
she practised still in Knaresborough, and his old wound had opened.  He
had staunched the bleeding with prompt skill; and now his heart was
aching, not for fripperies over and done with, but for the thing that
Oxford was to see, if all went well.  He had ridden out to spur the
first Metcalf forward with his message to the north.  He would bring
this gallant company into the city—he, small of body, used only to the
plaudits of barn-owls and farmhouse dogs as he galloped over hill and
dale on lonely errands—he would come into the full sunlight of Oxford’s
High Street with the stalwarts he had gathered in.

There’s no stimulus so fine as a dream nurtured in good soil.  Blake
went foraging by day, taking his share of other camp work, too; and,
when his sleep was earned o’ nights, he lay watching the stars instead
and pictured this good entry into Oxford.  The dream sufficed him; and,
unless a man can feel the dream suffices, he might as well go chewing
pasture-grass with other sleepy cattle.

On the sixth evening, when a grey heat-mist was hiding the sun an hour
before his time, the last of the Metcalfs came in, the old Squire of
Nappa at their head.  And Blake put a question to the Squire, after they
had known each other half an hour—a question that none of the others had
known how to answer, though he had asked it often.  "We have had
excursions and alarms from Banbury, sir—a few skirmishes that taught
them the cost of too great inquisitiveness—and I asked your folk why we
gathered here, instead of skirting a town so pestilent."

"They did not tell you," chuckled the Squire, "because they could not,
sir.  I am used to asking for obedience.  My lads learn the reason later
on. But you shall know.  I shall never forget, Mr. Blake, that it was
you who brought me in my old age to the rarest frolic I ever took part
in."

He explained, with a jollity almost boyish, that Banbury was notorious
in Northern gossip as a hotbed of disloyalty, its folk ever on the watch
to vex and hinder Oxford.  So he proposed to sweep the town as clean as
might be before riding forward.

Soon after dawn the next day, men and horses rested, they set about the
enterprise.  The sentry posted furthest north of Banbury ran back to
give word that the camp was astir; the soldiers and townsmen, not
knowing what was in the mind of this company that had been gathering on
its borders these six days past, got to arms and waited.  And then they
heard a roar, as it were of musketry, as the Metcalfs gave their
rally-call of "A Mecca for the King!"

There was no withstanding these men.  They had more than bulk and good
horses at their service. The steadfastness that had brought them south,
the zeal that was like wine in their veins, made them one resistless
whole that swept the street.  Then they turned about, swept back again,
took blows and gave them.  The Banbury men were stubborn. They took the
footman’s privilege, when matched against cavalry, of trying to stab the
horses; but the Metcalfs loved the white horses a little better than
themselves, and those who made an essay of the kind repented it.

At the end of it Squire Metcalf had Banbury at command.  "We can
breakfast now, friends," he said, the sweat streaming from his jolly
face. "I told you we could well afford to wait."

His happy-go-lucky prophecy found quick fulfilment. Not only was the
place rich in the usual good food dear to the Puritans, but it happened
that the wives of the town had baked overnight a plentiful supply of the
cakes which were to give Banbury its enduring fame.  "They’re good
cakes," laughed the Squire of Nappa.  "Eh, lads, if only Banbury loyalty
had the same crisp flavour!"




                             *CHAPTER XII.*

                              *PAGEANTRY.*


Oxford was keeping holiday.  The Queen, sure that her husband was facing
trouble at too short a range, persuaded him—for her own pleasure, she
asserted—to hold a pageant in a field on the outskirts of the city.  It
was good, she said, that well-looking cavaliers should have a chance of
preening their feathers until this dull waiting-time was over—good that
tired ladies of the Court should get away from men’s jealousies and
wrangles, and air their graces.  So a masque had been written and
arranged within a week, the zest in it running side by side with the
constant expectation of the Metcalfs’ coming.

The masque was fixed for twelve o’clock; and, an hour before noon, the
company of players began to ride up the High Street on their way to the
playing field.  Mary of Scots passed badinage with a Franciscan friar as
they rode in company; a jester went by, tickling Cardinal Wolsey in the
ribs until the great crowd lining either side the street laughed
uproariously.  The day was in keeping with it all—sunlight on the
storied houses, lush fragrance of the lilac, the song of birds from
every branch of every tree.

From up the street there came, sudden as a thunder-clap, the clash of
horses’ feet.  The masqueraders drew aside, to right and left, with
little heed for wayfarers.  And down the lane, bordered thick with
faces, there came a band of men who did not ride for pageantry.

In front of them—he had been thrust into leadership by the Squire of
Nappa, who had guessed his ambition and his dream—rode a little man on a
little, wiry mare.  Blood was dripping from a wound on his cheek; his
right arm hung limp.  He did not seem to be aware of all this disarray,
but rode as a conqueror might do.  The dream sufficed him.

A draper in the crowd, whose heart was bigger than the trade that hemmed
him in, raised a strident cry: "Why, it’s little Blake!  Wounds over
him, from head to foot—but it’s little Blake."

And then Blake’s dream came true.  To the full he tasted the incense of
men’s praise, long worked for, yet unsought.  All down the High Street
the running murmur went that Blake was here; and the people saw his
wounds, the gay, courageous smile in answer to their greeting, and their
cheers redoubled.

The pageant-makers, thrust aside by the steady, uncompromising trot of
the Metcalfs, lost their first irritation—forgot the boredom that had
settled on them during these idle days—and raised a cheer as lusty as
the townfolks’.  The street was one sunlit length of white horses moving
forward briskly, four by four; the big men on them were white with dust,
and ruddier splashes of the warfare at Banbury showed here and there.
It was as if the days of old were back again, and Northmen riding, with
a single heart and purpose, to a second Flodden. They moved, not as
six-score men, but as one; and when the old Squire drew rein presently,
they, too, pulled up, answering the sharp command as a sword answers to
the master’s hand.

"By your leave, sir," said the Squire, "we come in search of Prince
Rupert.  Can you direct us to his lodging?"

It happened that it was Digby he addressed—Digby of the soft voice, the
face like a cherub’s, and the tongue of an old, soured woman.  "I could
not say," he answered.  Of all the Cavaliers there, he only was unmoved
by the strength and fine simplicity of these riders into Oxford.  "If I
were aware where the Duchess of Richmond is to be found, I could direct
you."

A stormy light came into the Squire’s grey eyes. "We have heard of the
Duchess.  Her name is fragrant in the North, sir, save where ostlers
gather at the tavern and pass gossip on for gaping yokels."

"Countered, you dandy!" laughed Digby’s neighbour. "Grooms in Oxford and
grooms in the North—hey, where’s the difference?"

"We shall prove it, sir, at dawn to-morrow," said Digby, his hand
slipping to his sword-hilt.

"Oh, content.  I always liked to slit a lie in two, and see the two
halves writhe and quiver."

The Squire of Nappa, looking at these two, guessed where the danger of
the King’s cause lay.  Men see clearly when heart and soul and purpose
are as one. If two of his own company had offered and accepted such a
duel openly, he would have taken them, one in either hand, and knocked
their heads together, in the interests of discipline.  In Oxford, it
seemed usual that private differences should take precedence of the
King’s service, and the Squire felt chilled for the first time since he
rode out from Yoredale.

Prince Rupert had shared a late breakfast with the Duke of Richmond and
the Duchess, who was, in heart and soul, a great lady beyond the reach
of paltry malice.  Rupert was moody, irritable.  He was sick for
pageantry in the doing—gallop of his cavalry with swords glancing on
Roundhead skulls—blows given for the health of the reigning King,
instead of play-acting to the memory of buried monarchs.  He was
passionately disdainful of this pageant in which he was to play a part,
though at the moment he was donning mediaeval armour.

"I should have held aloof from it all," he protested.

"No," said the Duchess.  "There could have been no pageantry without
you.  Believe me, it is good for us to have action, if only in the
playing—it lights dull days for us."

Rupert strode up and down the floor with his restless, long-legged
stride.  "I’m to figure as Richard the Crusader," he said, tired of
himself and all things.  "I ask you, friends, do I show like a
Crusader?"

"Your temper of the moment does not, but a man’s past goes with him,"
she broke in, with her soft, infectious laugh.  "Of all the King’s
gentlemen I know, my husband here, and you, stand nearest to the fine
crusading days.  To please us both, you will play your part?"

Rupert was beyond reach of blandishment. There was a fire from the
over-world about him; men and women grew small in the perspective, and
only the vigour and abiding zeal he had for the King’s service remained
to guide him, like a taper shining through a night of trouble.

"Friends," he said, simply as a child, "I had a dream last night.  I
dreamed that prayers were answered at long last, and that the sea rode
into Oxford—a gallant sea, creamed with white horses riding fast."

"How should that be?" laughed the Duke. "It was a tired man’s dream."

"It was more," said Rupert sharply.  "It was a true vision of the days
to come.  I tell you, the white horses rode into Oxford like a crested
sea. I knew they came to help me, and I grew tired of pageantry."  He
smiled at his own gravity, and reached out for his Crusader’s sword.
"Come," he broke off, "Coeur de Lion should be punctual to the tryst."

They came into the High Street, the three of them; and Rupert checked
his horse with a thrill of wonderment.  Not until now had he guessed
what the strain of these last idle days had been. He saw the gallant sea
ride into Oxford, as in his dream—saw it ride down to meet him, creamed
with white horses moving at the trot.  He was a free man again.

And then the crowd’s uproar ceased.  They saw Rupert, their idol, spur
forward sharply, saw the company of Metcalfs halt as one man when their
Squire drew rein.

"You are the Metcalfs, come from York, I think," said Rupert.  Ten years
seemed lifted from him in a moment.  "Gentlemen, we’ve waited for you.
The King will make you very welcome."

"We came to find Prince Rupert," said the Squire of Nappa, uncovering,
"and, God be thanked, I think we’ve found him.  You are like my picture
of you."

The Squire’s errand was accomplished.  By hard stages, wakefulness o’
nights, banter or the whiplash of his tongue by day, he had brought
these high-mettled thoroughbreds into Oxford.  It was a relief to take
orders now, instead of giving them.

"Sir, they’re asking for pageantry in Oxford," said the Prince, "and, by
Richard Coeur de Lion, they shall have their fill.  Permit me to command
your troop."

The Duchess, not for the first time, was surprised by the
right-to-be-obeyed that Rupert carried with him.  Instinctively the
Metcalfs made a lane between their sweating horses, and she found
herself riding through the pleasant reek of horseflesh until they came
to the end of this long avenue of men.

Rupert was himself again—no longer an idler, exchanging growls with
enemies in Council, but a man, at the head of the finest cavalry even
his proved judgment had encountered so far.  When they came to the
pageant field, he bade them dismount and do as they pleased for an hour;
at the hour’s end they were to be ready and alert.

When the King arrived by and by with his Queen, a great wave of loyalty
went put to greet them. However it fared with his shifting fortunes, he
was here among friends, and knew it.  The knowledge was heartening; for
Charles had gone through bitter struggle to keep an unmoved face when
all he loved seemed racing to disaster.

The pageant moved forward; but the crowd was lukewarm until Richard the
Crusader came, and then they went mad about the business.

"How they love him!" said the King, his face flushed with pleasure.

The Queen touched him on the arm as only wives do who have proved their
men.  "And you—how the good city loves you!  To have captured Oxford’s
heart—ah, will you not understand how big your kingdom is?  In
London—oh, they are shopkeepers. In Oxford there is the great heart
beating.  Gain or loss, it does not matter here."

When the Crusading scene was ended, and while some affair of royalty
granting a Charter to dull-witted burgesses was in the playing, Rupert
came to the King’s side.  "There’s a modern episode to follow, sir, if
you are pleased to watch it."

"Ah, no!" pleaded the Queen, with her pretty blandishment.  "It would be
a pity, Rupert, to be less than Coeur de Lion.  The armour fits you like
a glove."

"I think you lived once in those days, Rupert of the fiery heart,"
laughed the King; "but no man thrives on looking back.  Go, bring your
modern mummers in!"

Rupert brought them in.  He doffed his mediæval armour somewhere in the
background of the field, and donned the raiment he liked better.

"Are you ready, Metcalfs?" he asked, pleasantly.

With the punctilio that was part of the man, he insisted that the Squire
of Nappa should ride beside him at the head of this good company.  They
thundered over the field, wheeled and galloped back.  It was all oddly
out of keeping with the pageantry that had gone before.  In playing
scenes of bygone centuries men gloss over much of the mud and trouble of
the times; but here were six-score men who had the stain of present
traffic on them.

The King himself, grave and reticent since the troubled days came,
clapped hands as he watched the sweeping gallop, the turn-about, the
precision of the troop when they reined in and saluted as if one man had
six-score hands obeying the one ready loyalty.  But the Queen grew
pitiful; for she saw that most of these well-looking fellows carried
wounds and a great tiredness.

"What is this scene you play?" asked the King.

"Sir, it is the Riding Metcalfs, come to help me raise recruits for the
relief of York.  Coeur de Lion died long ago, but these Northmen are
alive for your service."

"My thanks, gentlemen," said Charles.  "By the look of you, I think you
could relieve York without other help."

Rupert pressed home his point.  "Grant us leave, sir, to go wide through
Lancashire and raise the siege of Lathom first.  My Lord Derby was here
only yesterday, after long travel from the Isle of Man."

The Queen, knowing how persistently Lord Derby had been maligned, how
men had poisoned the King’s mind against him, caught Rupert’s eye and
frowned at him.  His nimble wit caught the challenge and answered it.

"Sir," he said, with the swiftness and assurance of a cavalry attack,
"remember Lady Derby there at Lathom.  She has held out for weary
months—a woman, with a slender garrison to help her—has held out for the
honour of the Stuart.  Give me my Metcalfs, and other troops to raise,
and grant us leave to go by way of Lathom House."

The King smiled.  "I thought you a fighter only, Rupert.  Now you’re an
orator, it seems.  Go, rescue Lady Derby; but, as you love me, save
York. There are only two cities on the map to me these days—York and
Oxford.  The other towns count loss and gain, as tradesmen do."

Long stress of misunderstanding, futile gossip of courtiers unemployed,
dripping poison into the King’s mind, were swept away.  "As God sees me,
sir, I ride only for your honour.  The Metcalfs ride only for your
honour."

"Ah, Coeur de Lion," laughed the King, "have your own way of it, and
prosper."

At Lathom House, three days ago, there had been a welcome addition to
the garrison.  Kit Metcalf—he of the sunny smile, because he loved a
maid and was not wedded to her whimsies yet—had ridden to the outskirts
of the house, had dismounted, left his horse to roam at large, and had
crept warily through the moonlight that shone on sleeping men and
wakeful sentries.  On the left of the moat, near the rounded clump of
sedge that fringed its turning, he saw two sentries chatting idly
between their yawns.

"It’s a poor affair, Giles, this of keeping awake to besiege one woman."

"A poor affair; but, then, what could you look for from an officer of
Rigby’s breed?  Sir Thomas Fairfax had no liking for the business.
We’ve no liking for it."

Kit ran forward through the moonlight, gripped them with his right hand
and his left—neither hand knowing just what the other was doing—and
knocked their skulls together with the strength given him by Providence.
They tumbled forward over the brink of the moat, and Kit himself dived
in.

When he came to the water’s top again, he swam quietly to the further
bank, then went in great tranquillity up the grassy slope that led him
to the postern gate, and was surprised when he was challenged sharply.
Remembering what he had gone through for the Stuart, he thought, in his
simple country way, that comrades of the same breed would know him, as
dog knows brother-dog, without further parley.  When he was asked who
went there, his temper fired, though the wet of his crossing should have
damped its powder.

"A Mecca for the King, you wastrel!  Have you not heard of us?"

"By your leave, yes," said the sentry, with sudden change of front.
"All Lancashire has heard of you. What is your business here?"

"To see Lady Derby instantly."

He was passed forward into the castle, and a grey-headed man-servant
came to meet him.  Again he said curtly what his business was.

"It is out of question, sir," the man protested. "My lady has had three
sleepless nights.  She gave orders that she should not be roused till
dawn, unless, indeed, there was danger from the enemy."

Kit was headstrong to fulfil his errand to the letter.  "Go, rouse her!"
he said sharply.  "I come from the King at Oxford, and my news cannot
wait."




                            *CHAPTER XIII.*

                         *THE LADY OF LATHOM.*


All folk, even grey and pampered servants, obey the ring of true command
in a man’s voice; and after Kit had waited for what seemed a week to his
impatience, a great lady came down the stair and halted at a little
distance from him, and looked him up and down.  Her face was lined with
trouble; there were crows’-feet about her eyes; but she was dressed
fastidiously, and her head was erect with challenge.

"Well, sir?" she asked sharply.  "You rob me of sleep for some good
reason, doubtless.  Sleep? You could have asked no dearer gift.  But the
King himself commands, you say?"

[Illustration: "’Well, sir?’ she asked sharply. ’You rob me of sleep for
some good reason doubtless?’"]

Kit faced her ill-temper, and she liked him for it.

"My lady," he said, "Prince Rupert bids me tell you that he comes your
way, for the relief of Lathom.  He bids me tell you that Lathom House
has lit a fire of loyalty from one end to the other of your county."

"So Rupert comes at last?" she asked eagerly.

"As soon as he can gather forces.  Meanwhile, he sends me as his deputy,
and that’s one more sword-arm at your service."

Again she looked him up and down; and smiled. "I like big men.  They
help to fill this roomy house I’m defending for my husband and the
King—for the King and my husband, I should say, if I were not a better
wife than courtier."

Kit, for his part, could not take his eyes away from her.  Two women of
the breed he had seen before, and two only—the Queen, with courage
gloved by French, disarming courtesy, and the downright mistress of
Ripley Castle.  As Lady Derby stood there, the traces of her twelve
months’ Calvary were apparent, because she had been roused suddenly from
sleep, and pride had not asserted full control as yet.  Under her tired
eyes the crows’-feet showed like spiders’ webs; her face was thin and
drawn; and yet there was a splendour about her, as if each day of each
week of hardship had haloed her with grace.  She was, in deed as in
name, the great lady—so great that Kit felt dwarfed for a moment.  Then
his manhood returned, in a storm of pity to protect this woman.

"Go sleep again," he said.  "I was wrong to rouse you with my news."

She laughed, low and pleasantly, like a breeze blowing through a
rose-garden.  "I slept with nightmares.  You are forgiven for rousing me
with news that Rupert comes."

Then she, too, saw how weary this Riding Metcalf was, and touched him on
the arm with motherly admission of his tiredness.  "You need food and
wine, sir.  I was thoughtless."

The grey old servant, standing like a watch-dog on the threshold, caught
her glance, and came in by and by with a well-filled tray.

"Admit that we are well-provisioned, Mr. Metcalf. The siege has left
some niceties of the table lacking, but we do well enough."

She nibbled at her food, intent on keeping his riotous appetite in
countenance.  By the lines in his face, by the temperate haste with
which he ate and drank, she knew him for a soldier older than his years.

"Tell me how it sped with your riding from the North?" she asked.

"It went bonnily—a fight down Skipton Raikes, and into the market-place.
Then to Ripley, and running skirmishes; and, after that, the ride to
Oxford.  I saw the King and Rupert, and all the prayers I ever said were
answered."

"Oh, I’m tired here, waiting at home with gunshots interrupting every
meal.  Tell me how the King looked."

"Tired, as you are—resolute, as if he went to battle—and he bade me give
you the frankest acknowledgment of his regard."

"Ah, he knows, then—knows a little of what we’ve done at Lathom?"

"He knows all, and Rupert knows."

On the sudden Lady Derby lost herself.  Knowledge that the King praised
her, sheer relief that the Prince was marching to her aid, came like
rain about her, breaking up the long time of drought.  Then she dried
her eyes.

"I, too, have fought," she explained, "and have carried wounds.  Now,
sir, by your leave, are you rested sufficiently?  Well, then, I need you
for a sortie by and by."

From the boy’s laughter, his sharp call to attention, she knew again
that he was of the soldier’s breed.

"Weeks ago—it seems years by now—this Colonel Rigby who besieges us
planted a mortar outside our gates.  Our men sallied and killed many,
and brought the mortar in."

"Good," said Kit.  "I saw it as I came through the courtyard, and
wondered whether you or they had put it out of action."

"My folk put it out of action.  And now they’ve brought up another
mortar.  We dare not let it play even for a day on crumbling walls.
There’s to be a sortie within the hour.  One of my officers is dead, and
two are wounded.  Sir, will you lead a company for me?"

"Luck always comes my way," assented Kit.

"But you do not ask what strength you have to follow you?"

"What strength you can give me.  I am at your service."

When Lady Derby mustered all she could spare from her slender garrison,
Kit found himself the leader of twenty men, some hale enough, others
stained with the red-rust that attends on wounds.

"Friends," he said, "the moon is up, and there’s light enough to guide
us in the open."

They liked him.  He wasted no speech.  He was mired with travel of wet
roads, and his face was grey and tired, but they knew him, for they had
seen other leaders spur them to the hazard.

Some went out through the main gate of Lathom, and waited under shadow
of the walls.  Others joined them by way of little doors, unknown to the
adversary.  They gathered, a battered company, led by officers half
drunk with weariness, and ahead they saw the moonlight shining on the
mortar, reared on its hillock.

Beyond the hillock a besieging army of three thousand men slept in
security, save for the hundred who kept guard about the mortar.  These
five-score men were wakeful; for Colonel Rigby—a weakling cloaked in
self-importance—had blustered round them an hour ago, had assured them
that Lady Derby was the Scarlet Woman, known otherwise as Rome, and with
quick invective had threatened them with torture and the hangman if they
allowed this second mortar to go the way its predecessor had taken weeks
ago.  He had sent an invitation broadcast through the countryside, he
explained, bidding folk come to see the mortar play on Lathom House
to-morrow.

Through the dusk of the moonlight Kit and the rest crept forward.  Quick
as the sentry shouted the alarm, they were on their feet.  They poured
in a broadside of musketry at close range, then pressed forward, with
swords, or clubbed guns, or any weapon that they carried.  It was not a
battle, but a rout.  In ten minutes by the clock they found themselves
masters of the field.  The mortar was theirs, and for the moment they
did not know what to do with it.  From behind came the sleepy roar of
soldiery, new-roused from sleep by the retreating guardians of the
mortar, and there was no time to waste.

One Corporal Bywater, a big, lean-bodied man, laughed as he touched Kit
on the arm.  "Had a wife once," he said.  "She had her tantrums, like
yond mortar—spat fire and venom with her tongue.  I cured her with the
help of a rope’s end."

Bywater, remembering the previous escapade, had lashed two strong ropes
about his body, in readiness for this second victory.  The cordage, as
it happened, had saved him from a death-wound, struck hurriedly by a
Parliament man.  He unwrapped it now with a speed that seemed leisurely.
Rigby’s soldiery, from the moonlit slopes behind, buzzed like a hornet’s
nest.  There was indeed no time to waste.

Christopher Metcalf was not tired now, because this hazard of the Lathom
siege had captured his imagination.  His soul was alert, and the
travel-stained body of him was forgotten.  Captain Chisenhall detached
fourteen of the sortie party to drag the mortar into Lathom House.  The
rest he sent forward, raised a sudden shout of "For God and the King!"
and went pell-mell into the first of Rigby’s oncoming men.  Though on
foot, there was something of the dash of cavalry in this impetuous
assault, and for a while they drove back the enemy; then weight of
numbers prevailed, and Kit, his brain nimble, his heart singing some old
pibroch of the hills his forefathers had tilled, entrenched his men on
the near side of the earthworks Rigby had built to protect his mortar.
There was some stark, in-and-out fighting here, until the Roundheads
began to deploy in a half circle, with intent to surround Kit’s little
company.  Then he drew back his men for a score yards, led a last
charge, and retreated to the Lathom gateway in time to see the mortar
dragged safely into the main courtyard.

When the gate was closed, and Kit came out of the berserk madness known
as war, he saw the Lady of Lathom in the courtyard.

"But, indeed, sir, you’ve done very well," said she, moving through the
press of men to give him instant greeting.

"It was pastime."  Kit’s voice was unsteady yet, his head swimming with
the wine that drips, not from red grapes, but from the sword that has
taken toll of human life.  "We brought the mortar in."

"You did, friends.  Permit me to say good-night. I have need to get to
my knees, thanking God that he sends so many gentlemen my way."

After she was gone, and the men were gathered round the peat fire in the
hall, Kit was aware that he was at home.  All were united here, as the
Metcalfs were united.  Private jealousies were lost in this need to
defend Lathom for the King.  Captain Chisenhall was here, stifling a
yawn as he kicked the fire into a glow, Fox, and Worrall and Rawstorn,
and others whose faces showed old with long service to this defence of
Lathom—the defence that shone like the pole star over the descending
night that was to cover kingship for a while.

They asked news of the Riding Metcalfs; and that, in turn, drew them to
talk of Lathom’s siege. They told him of Captain Radcliffe, who had led
twelve sorties from the house, and had spread dismay among the enemy
until they feared even the whisper of his name.

"I was never one for my Lady Derby’s prayerful view of life," said
Rawstorn, his gruff voice softening, "but Radcliffe was on her side.
He’d slip away before a sortie, and we knew he was praying at the altar
of the little chapel here.  Then he would come among us, cracking a
jest; but there was a light about his face as if the man were
glamoured."

"I know that glamour, too," said Kit, with his unconquerable simplicity.
"There’s a cracked bell rings me in on Sabbath mornings to our kirk in
Yoredale."

"What do you find there, lad?" asked a rough elder of the company.

"Strength undeserved, and the silver sheen of wings."

So then they were silent; for they knew that he could fight and
pray—-two qualities that men respect.

It was the big-jowled elder who broke the silence. "Say, laddie, can you
drink?" he growled.

"A bucketful, if I’m not needed on this side of the dawn."

Comfort of the usual kind might be lacking here at Lathom, but the
cellar was well filled.  And Kit, as the wine passed round, learned the
truth that comes from unlocked tongues.  They talked of the siege, these
gallants who had kept watch and ward; they told how Lady Derby had
trained her children not to whimper when cannon-shot broke roughly into
the dining-hall; they told how Captain Radcliffe, his head erect, had
gone out for the thirteenth sortie, how they had warned him of the
ill-omen.

"Oh, he was great that day," said Rawstorn. "’If I were Judas, I should
fear thirteen,’ said he. ’As the affair stands, I’m stalwart for the
King.’  He was killed in an attack on the east fort; and when we sortied
and brought his body in, there was a smile about his lips."

Little by little Christopher pieced together the fragments of that long
siege.  Lady Derby’s single-mindedness, her courage and sheer charm,
were apparent from every word spoken by these gentlemen who drank their
liquor.  The hazards of the men, too—the persistent sorties, the
give-and-take and pathos and laughter of their life within doors—were
plain for Kit to understand.  At Oxford and elsewhere there had been
spite and rancour, jealousy of one King’s soldier against another.  Here
at Lathom there was none of that; day by day of every month of siege,
they had found a closer amity, and their strength had been adamant
against an overpowering force outside their gates.

Kit learned much, too, of Colonel Rigby, who commanded the attack.  A
hedge-lawyer by training—one who had defended night-birds and skulkers
of all kinds—he had found himself lifted to command of three thousand
men because Sir Thomas Fairfax, a man of sound heart and chivalry, grew
tired of making war upon a lady.  Rigby enjoyed the game. He cared never
a stiver for the Parliament, but it was rapture to him to claim some
sort of intimacy with the titled great by throwing cannon-balls and
insults against my Lady Derby’s walls.

"As for Rigby," said the man with the big jowl, "I wish him only one
thing—to know, to the marrow of him, what place he has in the thoughts
of honest folk.  Mate a weasel with a rat, and you’ll get his breed."

Captain Chisenhall, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the hall,
halted in front of Kit.  "It was a fine device of yours, to entrench on
this side of their own earthworks.  I never had much head myself, or
might have thought of it. But, man, you’re spent with this night’s
work."

"Spent?" laughed Kit.  A sudden dizziness took him unawares, and their
faces danced in a grey mist before his eyes.  "I was never more
wide-awake. D’ye want another sortie, gentlemen?  Command me."

With that his head lolled back against the inglenook.  He roused himself
once to murmur "A Mecca for the King!" then slept as he had done on
far-off nights after harvesting of hay or corn in Yoredale.

"There’s a game-pup from over the Yorkshire border among us," laughed
Chisenhall.  "Let him sleep.  Let me get up to bed, too, and sleep.  Of
all the toasts I ever drank—save that of the King’s Majesty—I like this
last bumper best.  Here’s to the kind maid, slumber, and good night to
you, my friends."

The next morning, soon after dawn, Kit stirred in sleep.  Through the
narrow mullions great, crimson shafts of light were stealing.  A thrush
outside was recalling bygone litanies of mating-time. Sparrows were busy
in the ivy.  It was so like Yoredale and old days that he roused
himself, got to his feet, and remembered what had chanced last night.
He had slept hard and truly, and had profited thereby. His bones were
aching, and there was a nagging cut across his face; for the rest, he
was ready for the day’s adventure.

Last night, when he returned from battle, the moonlight had shown him
only a littered courtyard, full of men and captured cannonry.  He could
not guess where the most valiant of cock-throstles found anchor for his
feet; and, to settle the question, he went out.  The song greeted him
with fine rapture as he set foot across the doorway; and in the middle
of the yard he saw the trunk of a big, upstanding walnut-tree.
Three-quarters of the branches had been shot away, but one big limb
remained.  At the top of the highest branch a slim, full-throated
gentleman was singing to his mate.

"Good Royalist!" said Kit.  "Go singing while your branch is left you."

His mood was so tense and alert, his sympathy with the throstle so
eager, that he started when a laugh sounded at his elbow.  "I knew last
night a soldier came to Lathom.  He is a poet, too, it seems."

The wild, red dawn—sign of the rainiest summer known in England for
fifty years—showed him Lady Derby.  The lines were gone from her face,
her eyes were soft and trustful, as a maid’s eyes are; it did not seem
possible that she had withstood a year of siege.

"I was just thanking God," she explained, "that picked men come my way
so often.  There are so many Rigbys in this world, and minorities need
all their strength."

She was so soft of voice, so full of the fragrance which a woman here
and there gives out to hearten roughened men, that Kit began to walk in
fairyland. So had Captain Chisenhall walked long since, Rawstorn and the
other officers, the private soldiery, because the Lady of Lathom was
strong, courageous, and secure.

"How have you kept heart so long?" asked Kit, his boy’s heedless pity
roused afresh.

"And you, sir—how have you kept heart so long?" she laughed.

"Oh, I was astride a horse, plying a sword or what not.  It was all
easy-going; but for you here——"

"For me there was the bigger venture.  You have only one right hand for
the spear.  I have control of scores.  My dear soldiery are pleased to
love me—I know not why—and power is sweet. You will believe, sir, that
all this is pastime to me."

Yet her voice broke.  Tired folk know tired folk when they are climbing
the same hill of sadness; and Kit touched her on the arm.  "Rough
pastime, I should call it," he said, "and you a woman."

She gathered her courage again.  Laughter played about her charitable,
wide mouth.

"You’re in love, Mr. Metcalf—finely in love, I think, with some chit of
a girl who may or may not deserve it.  There was a reverence in your
voice when you spoke of women."

Kit’s face was red with confession of his guilt. "There’s none else for
me," he said.

"Ah, then, I’m disappointed.  This zeal last night—it was not for the
King, after all.  It was because some woman tempted you to do great
deeds for her own pretty sake.’

"We’ve been King’s men at Nappa since time began," said Kit stubbornly.
"My father has sounded a trumpet from Yoredale down to Oxford. All
England knows us stalwart for the King."

Lady Derby allowed herself a moment’s happiness. Here was a man who had
no shams, no glance forward or behind to see where his loyalty would
take him.  There was nothing mercantile about him, and, in these muddled
times, that was so much to be thankful for.

"Believe me," she said very gently, "I know your breed.  Believe me,
too, when I say that I am older than you—some of the keen, blue
dawn-lights lost to me, but other beauties staying on—and I ask you,
when you meet your wide-eyed maid again, to put it to the question."

"I’ve done that already."

Again laughter crept round Lady Derby’s mouth. "I meant a deeper
question, sir.  Ask her whether she had rather wed you and live at ease,
or see you die because the King commands."

"She would choose death for me—I should not love her else."

"One does not know.  There are men and women who have that view of life.
They are few.  Put it to the question.  Now I must go indoors, sir, to
see that breakfast is readying for these good men of mine. Pluck is a
fine gift, but it needs ample rations."

Kit watched her go.  He was amazed by her many-sidedness.  One moment
tranquil, fresh from her dawn-prayers; the next a woman of the world,
giving him motherly advice; and then the busy housewife, attentive to
the needs of hungry men. Like Strafford, whose head was in the losing,
she was in all things thorough.

He went up to the ramparts by and by.  The sentry, recognising him as
one who had shared the sortie over-night, saluted with a pleasant grin.
Kit, as he looked down on the trenches, the many tokens of a siege that
was no child’s play, thought again of Lady Derby, her incredible, suave
courage. Then he fell to thinking of Joan, yonder in the North.  She,
too, was firm for the cause; it was absurd to suggest doubt of that.
Whether she cared for him or no, she would be glad to see him die in the
King’s service.

He was in the middle of a high dream—all made up of gallop, and a death
wound, and Joan weeping pleasant tears above his prostrate body—when
there came a sharp, smoky uproar from the trenches, and a bullet plucked
his hat away.

"Comes of rearing your head against the sky," said the sentry
impassively; "but then they’re no marksmen, these whelps of Rigby’s."

Another bullet went wide of Kit, a third whistled past his left cheek;
so that he yielded to common sense at last, and stooped under shelter of
the parapet.  The besiegers then brought other artillery to bear.  A
harsh, resonant voice came down-wind to them:

"Hear the news, you dandies of Lady Derby’s! Sir Thomas Fairfax has
routed your men at Selby. Cromwell is busy in the east.  Three of our
armies have surrounded your Duke of Newcastle in York. Is that enough
for my lady to breakfast on, or would you have further news?"

The sentry—old, taciturn, and accustomed through long months to this
warfare of the tongue—bided his time.  He knew the habits of these
spokesmen of Rigby’s.  When no answer came from the ramparts, further
taunts and foul abuse swept upward from below.  Still there was no
reply, till the man, in a fierce rage of his own making, got up and
showed head and shoulders above the trench.  The sentry fired, without
haste.

"One less," he growled.  "It’s queer to see a man go round and round
like a spinning top before he tumbles out of sight."

"Was his news true?" asked Kit, dismayed by the tidings.

"Ah, that’s to prove.  Liars speak truth now and then.  Stands to reason
they must break into truth, just time and time, by chance."

Kit left the rampart presently, and found a hungry company of men at
breakfast.

"Why so grave, Mr. Metcalf?" laughed Lady Derby, who was serving
porridge from a great bowl of earthenware.  "You are hungry, doubtless.
There’s nothing else brings such gravity as yours to a man’s face."

"I was thinking of last night’s sortie," said Kit.

"So that hunger, too, grows on you as on my other gentlemen?  But,
indeed, we propose to rest to-day. Even we have had enough, I think."

He told them the news shouted from the trenches. Rough-riding, zeal, and
youth had given him a persuasiveness of his own.  "The news may be true
or false," he said, looking down at them from his full height; "but,
either way, it will put heart into the enemy.  By your leave, we must
harass them."

He had his way, and, knowing it, sat down to a breakfast that astonished
all onlookers.

"I find many kinds of admiration for you, sir," drawled Captain
Chisenhall, "but especially, I think, for your gift of feeding that fine
bulk of yours."

"I’m just like my own homeland in Yoredale," assented Kit; "it needs
feeding if strong crops are to follow."

That night they made three sorties on the trenches, five on the next,
and for a week they kept the pace. A few of the garrison were killed,
more were wounded, but speed and fury made up for loss of numbers, and
Colonel Rigby sent a messenger galloping to Manchester for help in need.
The besiegers, he explained, were so harassed that they were dropping in
the trenches, not from gun-fire, but from lack of sleep.

The sentries on the walls had no chance nowadays to pick off orators who
rose from cover of the trenches to shout ill tidings at them.  From
their vantage-ground on the ramparts they could hear, instead, the oaths
and uproar of a disaffected soldiery who voiced their grievances.

On the seventh morning, an hour before noon, a man came into Lathom, wet
from the moat, as Kit had been on his arrival here.  He told them that
Prince Rupert, the Earl of Derby with him, had crossed the Cheshire
border, marching to the relief of Lathom.

"So," said Captain Chisenhall, "we’ll give them one last sortie before
the frolic ends."

Lady Derby smiled pleasantly.  "That is your work, gentlemen.  Mine is
to get to my knees, to thank God that my husband is so near to me."

When they sortied that night, they found empty trenches.  The moonlight
showed them only the disorder—a disorder unsavoury to the nostrils—that
attended a forsaken camp.  One man they found with a broken leg, who had
been left in the rear of a sharp retreat.  He had been bullied by Rigby,
it appeared, and the rancour bit deeper than the trouble of his broken
limb.  He told them that Rigby, and what were left of his three
thousand, had pushed down to Bolton, and he expressed a hope—not
pious—that all the Cavaliers in England would light a bonfire round him
there.

When they gathered for the return to Lathom, the futility about them of
hunters who have found no red fox to chase, Kit saluted Captain
Chisenhall. "My regards to Lady Derby," he explained; "tell her I’m no
longer needed here at Lathom.  Tell her that kin calls to kin, and where
Rupert is, the Metcalfs are.  I go to warn them that Rigby lies in
Bolton."

"Good," said Chisenhall.  "Rigby has lied in most parts of the country.
Go hunt the weasel, you young hot-head."

When they returned, Lady Derby asked where Kit Metcalf was, and they
told her.  "Gentlemen," she said, with that odd, infectious laugh of
hers, "I have no favourites, but, if I had, it is Kit Metcalf I would
choose to bring Prince Rupert here. There’s the light of youth about
him."

"There is," said Chisenhall.  "I lost it years ago, and nothing else in
life makes up for it—except a sortie."




                             *CHAPTER XIV.*

                       *A STANLEY FOR THE KING.*


Christopher Metcalf had learned the way of hazard, the need to say
little and hear all.  As he rode from Lathom House through the summer’s
dawn, the land was full of blandishment. Last night’s heavy rain had
brought keen scents to birth—of primrose and leafage in the lanes, of
wallflowers in the homestead gardens that he passed.  Scents tempt a man
to retrospect, and he wondered how it was faring with Joan—remembered
the nearness of her and the fragrance, as they roamed the Yoredale hills
together in other springs.

He put blandishment aside.  There was no before or after for him—simply
the plain road ahead. Wherever he found a countryman to greet, he drew
rein and passed the time of day, and got into talk with him.  Before he
had covered six miles, he learned that Rigby, with the three thousand
men withdrawn from the siege of Lathom, had in fact retreated behind the
walls of Bolton, and that the town was strongly fortified.  A mile
further on his horse cast a shoe, and, while he waited at the door of a
wayside smithy, he joined a company of gossips seated on the bench
outside.

"Thanks be, the Lady o’ Lathom is safe," said a grey old shepherd.

"A rare game-bird, she," assented the jolly yeoman on his left.

"Ay.  She’s plucked a few fine feathers from Rigby.  Rigby?  I mind the
time when he was skulking in and out—trying to find wastrel men who’d
pay him to prove black was white in court. And now he calls himself a
Captain."

"Well, he’s as he was made, and of small account at that," said the
yeoman.  "The man I blame is Colonel Shuttleworth.  One o’ the gentry,
he, and likeable.  There’s no good comes, say I, when the gentry forget
their duty to their King.  They go to kirk each Sabbath, and pray for
the King’s health—well, they mean it, or they don’t mean it, and there’s
no middle way."

Kit felt at home.  These men were of the country stock he knew by heart.
"Friends," he said, "I’m a stranger here in Lancashire.  Who is Colonel
Shuttleworth?"

"Oh, just a backslider!"  The yeoman’s face was cheery by long habit,
even when he condemned a man.  "He’s sent fifteen hundred men to help
Rigby garrison the town of Bolton.  The likes of him to help the likes
of Rigby—it makes us fancy the times are upside down."

Kit Metcalf, when his horse was shod, rode forward swiftly.  A league
this side of Bolton, where the track climbed steep between banks of ling
and bilberry, he saw a man striding a white horse.  Man and horse were
so big that they blotted out a good part of the sky-line; so he knew
that there was a kinsman waiting for him.

"Yoi-hoi!" yelled Kit.  "A Mecca for the King."

The horseman shielded his eyes against the sun as he watched the
up-coming rider.  Then a laugh that Kit remembered floated down-wind to
him.

"Why, Michael, what are you doing here?" he asked, as he drew near.

"To be frank, I was yawning just before you came.  I’ve been waiting
since daybreak for some messenger from Lathom.  And at the end of it you
come, white brother of the Metcalf flock—you, who have the luck at every
turn."

"I had luck this time—fifteen sorties since I saw you last.  Michael,
you should have been there with us.  We brought their mortar in——"

"Good," drawled Michael.  "You had the luck. For my part, I’ve been
sitting on a horse as thirsty as myself for more hours than I remember.
Let’s get down to camp and a brew of ale there."

"And afterwards we sortied—sortied till we drove them into hiding, like
rabbits.  The Lady of Lathom welcomed us home each night, her eyes on
fire."

"No doubt, brother.  The tale will warm me by and by.  Meanwhile I don’t
care a stiver what fire shone in my lady’s eyes—blue, or grey, or black.
Give me honest ale, of the true nut-brown colour."

"You’re a wastrel, Michael," laughed the younger brother, glad to pass
badinage again with one of his own folk.

"I am, my lad, and know it.  There’s luck in being a wastrel—folk expect
nothing from a man. He goes free, while such as you—babe Kit, if you
guessed how prisoned up you are!  They look for sorties, gallops against
odds, moonshine of all sorts every day you live.  You’ve a nickname
already in Oxford.  They name you the White Knight."

"Oh, be done with banter," snapped Christopher. "There’s little
knighthood about me.  Let’s get down to camp and see the colour of that
ale of yours."

When they came to the heathery, rising land wide of Bolton, and the
sentry had passed them forward, Kit found himself face to face with
Prince Rupert once again.

"The White Knight brings news," Michael explained in his off-handed way.

"Pleasant news?" the Prince asked.  "Is Rigby dead, or the siege
raised?"

"By your leave," said Kit, "the siege is raised. Rigby has gone to
Bolton-le-Moors, to hide there. He has what are left of his three
thousand men, and fifteen hundred others.  The town is strong."

"Good, sir!"  Fire—deep, glowing fire—showed in Rupert’s eyes.  "Lady
Derby is a kinswoman of mine; and if Rigby is in Bolton, I know where to
find the fox she loathes."

A big, tired figure of a man pushed his way through the soldiery.  "I
heard someone speak of Lady Derby?" he said.

Prince Rupert touched him on the shoulder.  "_I_ did, friend," he said,
with a quiet laugh.  "There’s none so touchy as a husband who chances to
be his wife’s lover, too.  My Lord Derby, this is Mr. Metcalf, known
otherwise as the White Knight.  He brings news that Rigby the fox has
slunk into Bolton. Best put our hounds in and drive him out of cover."

"Give me the assault," said Lord Derby drily.

"I cannot.  Your name glamours Lancashire. I will not have you risk all
in driving a red fox into the open."

Derby yielded to the discipline engrained in him, but with a bad grace.
The Prince, himself eager for the assault, but ashamed to take a
leadership which on grounds of prudence he had refused the other, asked
for volunteers.  When these were gathered, the whole force marched on
Bolton and halted within five hundred yards of the stout walls.  Then
the assaulting party came forward at the double.

"Not you, Mr. Metcalf," said Rupert, detaining Christopher as he ran
forward to join in any lively venture.  "We cannot spare you."

What followed was a nightmare to the lookers-on. They saw the volunteers
reach the wall and clamber up—saw a fierce hand-to-hand struggle on the
wall-top, and the assault repulsed.  And then they saw the victors on
the rampart kill the wounded in cold blood.

Some pity, bred of bygone Stuart generations, stirred Rupert.  Wrath and
tears were so mingled that his voice was harsh.  "I give you freedom,
Derby, to lead the next attack."

Without pause or word of thanks, Lord Derby got his own company
together.

"We fight for my wife, who holds Lathom well," he said to his men.

Then they ran to the attack.  Kit, looking on, was astonished to see
that Prince Rupert, who had talked of prudence where lives of great men
were concerned, was running with the privates of Lord Derby’s company.
So he, too, ran.

The fight on the wall was bitter, but the King’s men prevailed.  Over
the bodies of their friends, massacred against all rules of war, they
leaped into the town.  The first man Lord Derby met was a groom, lately
in his service at Lathom, who had gone over to the enemy.  The man
struck a blow at him with the clubbed end of a musket, and Derby parried
it, and gave the rogue a better death than he deserved—at the sword’s
point.

They pressed forward.  Once they were hemmed in—six of them—after a
fierce rally of the garrison had swept the Royalists aside.  One of the
six was Prince Rupert; and Kit Metcalf felt the old Yoredale loyalty
stir in his veins—a wildness and a strength.  He raised a deep-bellied
cry of "A Mecca for the King!" cut down the thick-set private who was
aiming a blow sideways at Rupert’s head, and then went mad with the lust
of slaying.  Never afterwards could he recall that wonderful, swift
lunacy.  Memory took up the tale again at the moment when their comrades
rallied to their help and thrust back the garrison.

Three of the six were left—the Prince, and Kit, and a debonair,
grey-eyed gentleman whose love-locks were ruddied by a scalp-wound.  The
three went forward with the rest; and, after all was done, they met
again in the market-square.

"You, my White Knight?" said the Prince, touching Kit on the arm.  "Are
you touched? No more than the gash across your cheek?  I’m glad of that.
Captain Roger Nowell here tells me that I should be lying toes up to the
sky if your pike had not been handled nicely.  For my part, I saw
nothing but Roundhead faces leering at me through a crimson mist."

The instinctive, boyish romance came back to Christopher.  He had always
been a hero-worshipper, and turned now to the grey-eyed gentleman, who
was bandaging his head with a strip torn from his frilled shirt.  "You
are of the Nowells of Reed Hall?" he asked.

"I am, sir—a queer, hot-headed lot, but I’m one of them."

"My nurse reared me on tales of what your folk did in days gone by.  And
at Lathom they told me of your sorties.  Sir, they thought you dead in
your last effort to break through the lines, to bring relief in.  They
will be glad."

The Prince and Nowell glanced at each other with a quick smile of
sympathy.  Here, in the reek and havoc of the street, was a
simple-minded gentleman, fresh as dawn on the hills that bred him—a man
proved many times by battle, yet with a starry reverence for ancient
deeds and ancient faith.

"May your nurse rest well where she lies," said Roger Nowell, the
laughter in his grey eyes still. "In spite of a headache that throbs
like a blacksmith’s anvil, I salute her.  She reared a man-child. As for
those at Lathom, I share their gladness, I admit.  A bandaged head is
better than none at all."

Then all was bustle and uproar once again.  Men came bringing captured
colours to the Prince; and in the middle of it Lord Derby found them.

"Welcome, Derby," said the Prince, "though, for the first time since I
knew you, you wear the favours of both parties."

"Be pleased to jest," laughed the other.  "For my part, I know my wife
will soon be seeing me at Lathom."

"But, indeed, you wear both favours—rebel blood on your clothes, and a
warmer crimson running from your thigh."

Derby stooped to readjust the bandage.  Sickness of body was nothing.
Long battle for the King who did not trust him was forgotten, as a
service rendered freely, not asking for return.  "It is permitted, these
bleak days, that a man ask grace to love his wife and hurry to her
side?"

"Get home to Lathom, but not just yet.  I have a gift for that brave
wife of yours."

Through the uproar came other zealots, bringing captured colours in,
until seven-and-twenty were gathered in the market-square.

"These speak for the strength of the attack on Lathom," said Rupert, his
voice lifted for all men to hear.  "Take them to Lady Derby as a token
of my high regard.  Tell her that it is easy for men to charge at speed
and win their battles, but hard for women to sit behind crumbling walls
and hold the siege.  If I were my Lord Derby, I should be proud of such
a wife."

"Your Highness would," assented Derby with sharp, humorous simplicity.
"I have husbanded her, and know her mettle."

Again the ebb and flow of the battle scarcely ended swept across their
talk.  A hot-headed band of Cavaliers was bringing fifteen prisoners
through at the double.

The captain of the Royalist band, drunk with the wine of victory,
laughed stridently.  "To the ramparts with them.  Give them short shrift
on the walls!  Measure for measure, say I, and curse these psalm-singing
butchers."

Through the laughter of the troop came Rupert’s voice, harsh and
resonant.  "Who are these, Captain Sturgis?"

Sturgis saluted.  He had heard that voice more than once in the thickest
of the onset, while Rupert was winning his spurs as a leader of light
cavalry. The wine of victory left him.  "A few crop-headed folk, your
Highness," he said lamely.  "We proposed to make them a warning to other
butchers of Cromwell’s following."

"Captain Sturgis, I am sorry.  We have shared many fights, and yesterday
you were a gentleman of the King’s."

There was silence in the market-place; and presently Sturgis saluted
Rupert with extreme precision.  "To-morrow, by your leave, I shall
report myself.  I shall spend a sleepless night."

Rupert laughed pleasantly.  "There’s no need to waste a night’s sleep,
Sturgis.  It was a madness, and it has left you, that is all."

Then all again was uproar as men pressed up and down the street, some
with prisoners, others hurrying to slake their thirst at a convenient
tavern.

"Where’s Rigby?" asked Lord Derby suddenly "I have a long account to
settle with him."

A jolly yeoman caught the question as he went by.  "Gone away, like the
fox on a hunting morn.  I had a thrust at him myself just now, but
missed him; and he leaped the ramparts where we broke it at the
coming-in."

"So!" growled Derby.  "The fox will give us sport another day."

"My lord," said the Prince, his voice grave and full of courtesy, "I
give you twenty-seven standards, captured from Rigby’s forces.  I give
you a hundred of my men as a guard of honour.  Eat and drink, and then
get forward to Lathom, where your wife awaits you.  Let the red fox
skulk until a more convenient date."

"And you?"

"I stay on here for a while.  It seems to be my business these days to
batter walls down, and to stay on afterwards to build them up again.
This town is worth defending for the King.  Tell Lady Derby that my
march to the relief of York will go by way of Lathom, if I may claim her
hospitality."

Kit Metcalf found himself among the hundred chosen to accompany Lord
Derby; and he was glad, for in Oxford—with its deep, unconquerable love
of attaching mystic glamour to a person or a cause—the Lady of Lathom
had grown to be a toast drunk silently, as if she were above and beyond
the noise of praise.

That evening, as the sundown reddened over Lathom House—the sultry,
rain-packed heat aglow on broken battlements—they came through the camp
deserted lately by Colonel Rigby.  A sentry challenged them; and Lord
Derby laughed as any boy might do.

"A Stanley for the King!  Have I been away so long, Thornthwaite, that
you do not know your lord?"

The master, as usual, had the keener vision. In the clear light he had
recognised the sentry as one old in service to his household.  They
passed through; and in the courtyard Lady Derby was standing near the
captured mortar, talking of ways and means with one of her captains.

To Kit, looking on, it was like fairyland come true.  Lady Derby heard
her husband’s step, glanced up, and ran to meet him.

"My lord—my dear, dear lord, have you come back?"

"Ay, like a bridegroom, wife."

They forgot the onlookers, forgot turmoil and great hardship.  There
comes seldom to any man and wife so fine a forgetting.  It was well, Kit
thought, to carry three wounds to his knowledge—and some lesser ones
that did not count—to have seen these two with the red halo of the
sundown round them.

"The Prince sends me with the twenty-seven standards, wife, that
beleaguered you."

"Oh, my thanks; but, my lord, he sends me you.  What care have I for
standards?"




                             *CHAPTER XV.*

                         *TWO JOLLY PURITANS.*


Three days later Rupert came in, after seeing to the needs of Bolton.
He came for rest, before pushing on to York, he asserted; but his way of
recreation, here as elsewhere, was to set about the reconstruction of
battered walls.  Christopher Metcalf, raw not long ago from Yoredale,
wondered, as he supped with them that night, why he was privileged to
sit at meat with these gentles who had gone through fire and sword,
whose attire was muddied and bloodstained, for the most part, but who
kept the fire of loyalty like a grace that went before and after the
meat they ate hungrily.  He was puzzled that Lord Derby toasted him,
with the smile his own father might have given him—was bewildered when
the men rose to the toast with a joyous roar.

"The young Mecca for the King—the White Knight for the King!"

All he had dreamed in Yoredale was in the doing here.  Kit was
unsteadied by it, as if wine were mounting to his head.

"My thanks, gentlemen," he said.  "Be pleased to nickname me.  For my
part, I feel like the ass Michael rode to York—patient and
long-suffering, but no knight at all."

"How did Michael ride to York?" asked Derby, with a gust of laughter.

So then Kit told the tale, losing his diffidence and pointing the
narrative with dry, upland humour.

"Good, Mr. Metcalf," said Lady Derby.  "I have not laughed since my lord
rode out, until to-day.  Where is this Michael who rode to York?"

"With the rest of the good Metcalfs," said Rupert. "I left the whole
fine brood to guard Lathom from without.  They go north with me in two
days’ time.  You shall see them—six-score on their white horses."  A
shadow crossed his face; the so-called failing of the Stuart temperament
was his, and he counted each man lost as a brother to be mourned for.

"Why the cloud on your face, Prince?" asked Lady Derby.

"There are only five-score now.  When we counted our dead at Bolton,
there were some gallant Metcalfs lying face upward to their God."

A sickness came to Christopher.  He turned aside, and longed for the
mother who had sheltered his young days.  Bloodshed and wounds he had
foreseen; but to his boy’s view of life, it seemed incredible that any
of the jolly Yoredale clan should die—should go out for ever, beyond
reach of hand-grip.

"Was my father with the slain—or Michael?" he asked by and by.

"Neither, lad."  Rupert came and touched him on the arm.  "Oh, I know, I
know!  The pity of one’s dead—and yet their glory—it is all a muddle,
this affair of war."

It was on the second morning afterwards, while Rupert was getting his
army in readiness for the march on York, that Lady Derby saw Christopher
standing apart, the new sadness in his face.

"You are thinking of your dead?" she said, in her brisk, imperative way.
"Laddie, do you not guess that the dead are thinking, too, of you?"

"They rest where they lie," he said, stubborn in his grief.

"Oh, go to kirk more often, and learn that they know more than we do.
These twenty Yoredale men, they are not dead—they watch you from the
Heights."

"My lady," said Christopher, with a smile made up of weariness, "I am a
plain man of my hands, like all my folk.  I have no gift for dreams."

"Nor I," she agreed.  "When wounds conquer all your pride of
strength—when you are laid by, and weak as a little child—ask yourself
if I spoke dreams or living truth."

He glanced once at her.  There was an odd look about her, a light in her
eyes that he could not understand.

He forgot it all when he joined his folk to ride behind Rupert for the
relief of York.  The high adventure was in front, like a good fox, and
his thoughts were all of hazard and keen blows.  They crossed the
Lancashire border; and, when Kit learned that the route lay through
Skipton-in-Craven, his heart warmed to the skirmish that his fancy
painted.  He was looking backward to that crashing fight—the first of
his life—when the White Horsemen drove through the Roundhead gun-convoy
and swirled down to battle in the High Street.  He was looking forward,
as a boy does, to a resurrection of that fight, under the like
conditions.

Instead, he found the business of market-day in full swing.  The Castle
was silent.  Lambert’s guns, away on Cock Hill, were dumb.  Farmers were
selling ewes and cattle, were standing at inn doors, wind and wine of
the country in their honest faces.

"What is all this?" asked Rupert of a jolly countryman.

"Skipton Fair—naught more or less.  There’s a two days’ truce, or some
such moonshine, while either side go burying their dead.  For my part,
I’ve sold three heifers, and sold ’em well.  I’m content."

Rupert had had in mind to go into the Castle, and snatch a meal and an
hour of leisure there while he talked with the Governor.  He could not
do it now.  Punctilio—the word spelt honesty to him—forbade it.  He
glanced about and saw Kit close beside him.

"Knock at the gate, Mr. Metcalf, and bid Sir John Mallory come out and
talk with me."

The drawbridge was down in accordance with the truce, and Kit clattered
over it on his white horse. He knocked at the gate, and sent Prince
Rupert’s message forward.  In a little while Mallory came out, a
pleasant gentleman, built for hard riding and all field sports, whom
Providence had entrusted with this do-nothing, lazy business of sitting
behind walls besieged.

"The Prince commands you, Sir John," said Kit, with great precision.

Formality was ended on the instant; for Mallory clapped him on the
shoulder and laughed like a boy let loose for play.  "By the Lord Harry,
I’m glad to get out of doors—and for Rupert, of all men."

In the great sweep of roadway that mounted to the Castle gate—the grey,
comely church beside it—Prince Rupert met Mallory with hand
outstretched.

"Well done, friend!  If it had not been a day of truce, I had hoped to
come indoors and crack a bottle with you.  As matters stand, we hope to
slake our thirst at a more convenient time."

"There’s no hindrance, your Highness.  Lambert, who besieges us, is
doubtless entertaining friends at the Quaker meeting-house in this good
town.  Why should you not accept the warmer sort of hospitality we
Cavaliers affect?"

"Oh, a whim.  I can tell you in the open here—No Man’s Ground—what I
came to tell you.  It would not be fair to hide my news behind closed
gates."

Mallory glanced sharply at him.  Rupert’s fury in attack, his relentless
gallop through one battle after another—-the man’s whole record—had not
prepared him for this waywardness of scruple. The next moment Rupert’s
face was keen and hard.

"We ride for York, Sir John," he said, "and I give you the same errand I
shall give Knaresborough’s garrison later on.  Keep Lambert busy. Sortie
till these Roundheads have no rest, day or night.  Turn siege into
attack.  The Lady of Lathom has taught us what a slender garrison may
do."

"Does she hold out still?" asked the other eagerly.  "We have so little
news these days."

"She has captured twenty-seven standards, friend, and is rebuilding her
walls in preparation for the next siege."

"God be thanked!" said Sir John, lifting his hat. "There are so few
great ladies in our midst."

"And so few great gentlemen, Mallory.  Nay, friend, do not redden
because I praise you to your face.  We know Skipton’s story."

Lambert was not at the Quakers’ meeting-house, as it chanced.  He was on
Cock Hill, passing the time of inaction away by looking down on the
Castle that had flouted him so often.  His thrifty mind was busy with
new methods of attack, when he saw Rupert with his advance-guard come up
the High Street. The light—a strong sun beating down through heavy
rain-clouds—-showed a clear picture of the horsemen. By the carriage of
their heads, by the way they sat their horses, Lambert knew them for
Cavaliers. As he was puzzling out the matter—loth to doubt Sir John
Mallory’s good faith—a man of the town came running up.

"The truce is broken, Captain Lambert.  Here’s a rogue with
love-locks—they say he’s Prince Rupert—come with a press of horsemen.
He’s talking with Sir John Mallory fair in front of the Castle gateway."

Lambert’s temper fired.  What he had seen accorded with the townsman’s
view.  Something quixotic in the man’s nature, that always waited on his
unguarded moments, bade him go down and ask the meaning of it all.  It
seemed to him that his faith in all men would go, root and branch, if
Sir John Mallory were indeed less than a simple, upright gentleman.  He
reached the High Street, and made his way through the press of soldiery
and townsfolk till he reached the wide space, in front of church and
Castle, where the Prince stood with Mallory.

"Sir John," he said very coldly, "I come to ask if you break truce by
free will or compulsion."

"By compulsion, sir," said Rupert, with a quick smile.  "I ride too fast
for knowledge of each town’s days of truce.  Sir John here came out at
my request, to talk with me.  You are Captain Lambert, I take it?  Ah,
we have heard of you—have heard matters to your credit, if you will
permit an adversary so much freedom."

Lambert yielded a little to the other’s easy charm; but it was plain
that the grievance rankled still.

"Well, then, I’ll give you punctilio for punctilio, sir," went on
Rupert.  "The King’s needs are urgent I could not wait—truce or no, I
had to give my orders to Sir John here.  To be precise, I urged him to
harry you unceasingly.  I told him that we were pressing forward to the
relief of York. Is honour satisfied?  If not, name a convenient hour for
hostilities to open.  My men are here.  Yours are on the hill yonder,
where your guns look down on us."

Lambert’s humour, deep-hidden, was touched at last.  "Press on to York,
by your leave.  Mallory, I’m in your debt.  I doubted your good faith
just now."

"That was unwise, Lambert.  Eh, man, the troubled days will soon be
ended—then, if we’re both alive, come sup with me as of old."

Kit, when they took the road again, was bewildered a little by the
shifting issues of this madness known as civil war.  The Prince,
Lambert, and Sir John—three men conspicuously survivals from Crusading
days—had talked in the High Street of honour and punctilio—-had shown
the extreme courtesy of knights prepared to tilt against each other in
the ring at any moment—-and all this with the assault of Bolton and the
red havoc of it scarcely ended, with rough fights ahead, and York’s
garrison in piteous need of succour.

"Why so moody, li’le Christopher?" asked Michael, riding at his
brother’s bridle-hand.

"I fancied war was simple, and I’m losing myself among the mists,
somehow."

"An old trick of yours.  Mistress Joan taught it you.  There was a lady,
too, in Knaresborough, who gave you lessons in the pastime."

"But this Captain Lambert is besieging Skipton, and Mallory defends it,
and one asks the other to sup with him when the affair is over.  That is
not stark fighting, Michael."

"Why not, lad?  Lambert’s cannon will thunder just as merrily when the
truce is ended.  The world jogs after that fashion."

It was when they were pressing on to York the next day—after a brief
night’s sleep in the open and a breakfast captured by each man as best
he could—that the Prince rode back to the white company of horses that
carried the Metcalf clan. He reined about on finding Michael.

"You found your way into York once for me, sir. You will do it a second
time.  Bid them be ready. Tell them we travel as quickly as may be, and
sorties from their three main gates, when the moment comes, will be of
service."

"My thanks for the errand.  May I ask a second boon, your Highness?"

"Oh, I think one would grant you anything in reason.  A man with your
merry eyes is privileged."

"I had a sutler’s donkey with me in the first attempt.  She brought me
luck, undoubtedly—we had the like temperament, she and I—but we lost her
during these forced marches.  Can I have Christopher here to share the
venture?"

Kit reddened, then laughed the jest aside.  And the Prince, as he looked
at these two, so dissimilar and yet so full of comradeship, thought of
his own brother Maurice, and wished that he were here.

"Ay, take him with you," he said; "he will steady your venture.  And,
gentlemen, take your route at once."

"You heard what he said?" asked Christopher, after the Prince had
spurred forward to the main body.  "I shall steady your venture.
There’s a counter for your talk of donkeys, Michael."

Michael said nothing.  As one who knew his brother’s weakness, he waited
till they were well on their way to York, and had reached a finger-post
where four cross-roads met.

"We might go by way of Ripley," he hazarded, pointing to the left-hand
road.

"Why, yes," said Kit unguardedly.  "It is the nearest way, and the road
better—

"The road even viler, and the distance a league more.  I said we _might_
take the Ripley way.  In sober earnest, we go wide of Mistress Joan."

"Who spoke of Joan Grant?"

"Your cheeks, lad, and the note in your voice. Nay, no heat.  D’ye think
the Prince gave us this venture for you to go standing under yon Ripley
casement, sighing for the moon that lives behind it?  York would be
relieved and all over, before I steadied you."

"You’ve no heart, Michael."

"None, lad; and I’m free of trouble, by that token."

And Kit, the young fire in his veins, did not know that Michael was
jesting at the grave of his own hopes.  That upper chamber—the look of
Mistress Joan, her pride and slenderness—were matters that had pierced
the light surface of his life, once for all.

"The York country was eaten bare when I last went through it," he said,
after they had ridden a league in silence.  "It will be emptier now.
Best snatch a meal at the tavern here, Kit, while we have the chance.
Our wits will need feeding if we’re to find our way into York."

They found a cheery host, a table well spread with cold meats.  When the
host returned with wine, ordered hastily, he glanced at his guests with
an air that was half humorous and half secretive.

"Here is the wine, Mr. Metcalf," he said—"the best of a good cellar,
though I say it."

"Eh?" drawled Michael, always most indolent when surprised.  "You know
my name, it seems."

"Well, sir, if two big, lusty gentry choose to come riding two white
horses—and all the Plain o’ York ringing with news of the Riding
Metcalfs—small blame to me if I guessed your quality.  I’m a King’s man,
too."

"You’d best prove it quickly," said Michael, with a gentle laugh.  "The
business we ride on asks for sacrifice, and a fat host or two would not
be missed."

"I am asking to prove it."  The way of the man, the jolly red of his
face, and the eyes that were clear as honesty, did not admit of doubt.
"In the little room across the passage there are three crop-headed
Puritans dining—dining well, and I grudge ’em every mouthful.  They’re
not ashamed to take their liquor, too; and whether ’twas that, or
whether they fancied I was as slow-witted as I seemed, they babbled of
what was in the doing."

"I always had the luck," said Michael impassively. "Had they the
password through the ranks besieging York?"

"Ay, that; and more.  They had papers with them; one was drying them at
the fire, after the late storm o’ rain that had run into his pocket, and
it seemed they were come with orders for the siege. I should say they
were high in office with the Puritans, for they carried the three
sourest faces I’ve seen since I was breeked."

"The papers can wait.  What was the password, host?"

"_Idolatry_.  It seemed a heathenish word, and I remembered it."

"Good," laughed Michael.  "To-morrow it will be Mariolatry, doubtless,
and Red Rome on the next day.  How these folk love a gibe at His
Majesty’s sound Churchmanship!  They carry papers, you say?  It is all
diverting, host.  My brother here will not admit that luck, pure and
simple, is a fine horse to ride.  Kit, we must see that little room
across the passage."

Michael got to his feet, finished his wine in three leisurely gulps,
then moved to the closed door, which he opened without ceremony.  The
three Parliament men had their heads together at the board, and one was
emphasising an argument by drumming with a forefinger on the papers
spread before them.  They turned sharply as the door opened, and reached
out for their weapons when they saw Michael step into the room, followed
by a lesser giant.

[Illustration: "They turned sharply as the door opened, and reached out
for their weapons."]

"_Idolatry_, friends," said Michael suavely.

The three looked at each other with puzzled question.  These strangers
wore their hair in the fashion dear to Cavaliers, and they carried an
intangible air that suggested lightness of spirit.

"You have the password," said one; "but your fashion is the fashion of
Belial’s sons.  What would you?"

"We come with full powers to claim your papers and to do your errand
with the forces now besieging York.  To be candid, you are suspect of
eating more and drinking more than sober Parliament men should—and,
faith, your crowded table here bears out the scandal."

The three flushed guiltily, then gathered the dourness that stood to
them for strength; and Kit wondered what was passing through his
brother’s nimble brain.

"Your credentials," snapped the one who seemed to be leader of the
three.

Michael, glancing round the board, saw a great pasty, with the mincemeat
showing through where the knife had cut it.  "Oh, my own password is
_Christmas-pie_, friends!  I encountered the dish at Banbury, and a
great uproar followed when my brother gave it the true name."

And now the Roundheads knew that they were being played with.  So great
was their party’s abhorrence of anything which savoured of the Mass,
that a dish, pleasant in itself, had long since grown to be a
shibboleth.

The first man raised a pistol—a weapon that seemed out of keeping with
his preacher’s garb—but Kit, longing for action instead of all this play
of words, ran in with a jolly laugh, lifted his man high, as one lifts a
child in frolic, and let him drop. The pistol fell, too, and the trigger
snapped; but the Parliament man, however strong his trust in Providence
might be, had forgotten Cromwell’s other maxim—that he should keep his
powder dry.

Michael’s voice was very gentle.  "I said we came with full powers.  It
would be wiser not to play with fire.  Indeed, we do not wish you ill,
and, in proof of friendship, we are willing to change clothes with you."

A little later Michael and Christopher came out, locking the door behind
them.  They asked the astonished host for scissors, and bade him clip
their locks as close as he could contrive without knowledge of the
barber’s art.  And it was odd that these two, who six months ago had
been close-cropped in Yoredale, resented the loss of the lovelocks they
had grown in deference to fashion.  To them it seemed as if they were
losing the badge of loyalty, as if the fat host played Delilah to their
Samson.

"Keep that easy carriage of your bodies down, gentles, if you’re bent on
play-acting," said Boniface, with a cheery grin.

"How should we walk, then?"

"With a humble stoop, sir—a very humble stoop—that was how the three
Parliament men came in and asked for the best victuals I could give
’em."

Michael’s laugh was easy-going; but, for all that, his orders were
precise and sharp.  Their horses, of the tell-tale white, were to be
stabled securely out of eyeshot, and well tended until called for.  He
and Kit would ride out on the pick of the three Roundhead cattle.

"As for that, sir, there’s no pick, in a manner of speaking.  They rode
in on the sorriest jades I ever saw at a horse-fair."

"We’ll take the rough luck with the smooth."

Yet even Michael grew snappish when he saw the steeds they had to ride.
It was only when Kit laughed consumedly at sight of them that he
recovered his good humour.

"After all, sir," suggested Boniface, "it proves the loyalty of the
country hereabouts.  They couldn’t get decent horseflesh, for love or
money. Our folk would only sell them stuff ready for the knacker’s
yard."

"That has a pleasant sound for us, with all between this and York to
travel."

"Take two o’ my beasts, gentles, if there’s haste. You’re cropped
enough, and in quiet clothes enough, to ride good horses—always granting
their colour doesn’t happen to be white.  As for these two o’ mine, one
is a roan, t’other a darkish bay."

Michael was arrested by the host’s thoroughness and zeal, his disregard
of his own safety.  "And you, when you unlock the door on these rogues?"

"I shall fare as I shall fare, and not grumble either way.  For your
part, get away on the King’s business, and God guide him safe, say I."

"But at least there’s our reckoning to pay."

"Not a stiver.  Nay, I’ll not hear of it.  Am I so poor a King’s man
that I grudge a cut from the joint and a bottle to the Riding Metcalfs?"

Michael warmed afresh to the man’s loyalty. "Our thanks, host.  As for
the three in yonder, they’ll not trouble you.  I told them the door
would be unlocked in an hour’s time, explained that my folk were in the
neighbourhood, and warned them to save their skins as best they could.
You’ll laugh till there are no more tears to shed when you see two of
them in their bravery.  Till I die that picture will return—their two
sad faces set on top of our gay finery."

With a nod and a cheery call to his horse, he took the road again; and
Kit and he spurred fast to recover the lost ground until they reached a
steep and winding hill.  For their cattle’s sake they were compelled to
take a breather at the top, and Kit looked over the rolling wolds with a
heart on fire for Rupert and the errand.  Somewhere yonder, under the
blue, misty haze, lay York, the city old to courage and the hazard.  New
hazards were in the making; it behoved Michael and himself to give no
spoiled page to York’s long story.

"What a lad for dreams it is!" said Michael, in his gentlest voice.

Kit turned, and the sight of Michael habited in sober gear, with a
steeple hat to crown the picture, broke down his dreams.  It is good
that comedy and the high resolve are friends who seldom ride apart. "The
two we changed gear with, Michael—you would not laugh at them if you
could see yourself."

"I have a good mirror, Kit, in you."

So they eyed each other for a while, and took their fill of merriment.
Then they went forward.  What the end of the venture was to be, they
hazarded no guess; but at least they had papers and a garb that would
pass them safely through the lines at York.

Another Royalist was abroad, as it happened, on a venture that to her
own mind was both hazardous and lonely.  The donkey that had helped
Michael to secure his first entry into York—the patient, strong-minded
ass that had followed the Riding Metcalfs south and had grown to be the
luck of their superstitious company—had been lost on the march between
Lathom House and Skipton.  She had been stolen by a travelling pedlar,
who found her browsing in a thistle-field a mile behind the army she
hoped to overtake a little later on.  He owned her for a day; and then,
high spirit getting the better of dejection, she bided her time, shot
out two hind-feet that left him helpless in the road, and set out on the
quest that led to Michael—Michael, who might command her anything,
except to go forward in the direction of her head.

To Elizabeth—her name among the Metcalfs—the forward journey was full of
trouble and bewilderment. She followed them easily enough as far as
Skipton, and some queer instinct guided her up the High Street and into
the country beyond Otley. Then tiredness came on her, and she shambled
forward at haphazard.  At long last she blundered into Ripley; and,
either because she knew the look of the Castle gateway, or because she
gave up all for lost, she stood there and brayed plaintively.

A sentry peered from the top of the gate-tower. "Who goes there?" he
demanded gruffly.

Elizabeth lifted up her head and brayed; and presently William Fullaboy,
guardian of the little door set in the main gateway, opened and peered
out into the flood of moonlight.  Lady Ingilby came running, with Joan
Grant, to learn the meaning of the uproar; alarms and sharp assaults had
been frequent since the Metcalfs left to find Prince Rupert.

"Why, ’tis Elizabeth, my lady," laughed William—"Elizabeth, the snod,
li’le donkey we grew so fond of."

"Give her supper and a warm bed for the night," said Lady Ingilby.  "The
luck comes home at last."

"But does it?" asked Joan Grant, a pitiful break in her voice.  "We have
lain warm abed while Kit was nursing his wounds on the open moors——"

"True, girl.  He’ll be none the worse for it. Lovers have a trick of
coming home, like their four-footed kindred."

She would listen to no further trouble of Joan’s, but patted Elizabeth’s
smooth ears, and talked to her, and fed her.  The wife of a strong man,
and the mother of strong sons, is always tender with four-footed things.




                             *CHAPTER XVI.*

                       *THE SCOTS AT MICKLEGATE.*


Michael was in high spirits as he rode for York with Christopher.  He
wore Puritan raiment, and it was troublesome to keep his steeple-hat
safely on his head; but the wine of adventure was in his veins, and
clothing mattered little.

"Once into York, my lad," he said, breaking a long silence, "and we
shall get our fill of turmoil. There’ll be sorties and pitched battle
when Rupert comes."

Kit was always practical when he had his brother for companion.  "We are
not into York as yet. What plan have you, Michael?"

"My usual plan—to trust to luck.  She’s a bonnie mare to ride, I tell
you."

"But the papers we took from the three Roundheads in the tavern—we had
best know what they pledge us to."

"The Prince was right, after all.  He said that you would steady me.  It
is odd, Kit, but it never entered my daft head to look at the papers; it
was enough that they were our passport."

They drew rein, and Michael ran his eye down the papers.  "They say that
Rupert is marching fast for the relief of York—that will be no news to
them by this time—that the Prince has inflicted disastrous reverses on
their cause, at Bolton and by relieving Lathom House, and that, at any
cost of life, York must be reduced before his coming.  Oh, my lad, how
all this plays into Rupert’s hands!"

There was only one weakness in Michael’s gay assurance that all was
speeding well.  When they reached the outposts of the enemy’s lines,
their way led them, as it chanced, to that quarter of the city which the
Scots beleaguered.  Their garb, Michael’s peremptory demand that the
sentry should pass them forward to the officer in command, backed up by
showing of his papers, had their effect.  It was when they found
themselves in the presence of five Parliament officers, seated at a
trestle table ill supplied with food, that they began to doubt the
venture.

"Who are these?" asked one of the five, regarding the strangers with
mingled humour and contempt.

"They were passed forward by the sentry, Captain. That is all I know."

"Who are they?" laughed a young lieutenant. "Why, Puritans, both of
them, and preachers, too, by the look of their wearing-gear.  It needs
no papers to prove that."

Michael was always steadied by surprise.  They had garbed themselves so
carefully; they were acknowledged as friends of the Parliament cause; he
was at a loss to understand the chilliness of their reception.
"Puritans undoubtedly," he said, with a hint of his old levity, "but
we’ve never been found guilty of the charge of preaching."

Captain Fraser glanced through the papers, and his air of rude
carelessness changed.  "This is of prime importance.  By the Bruce,
sirs, the Parliament has chosen odd-looking messengers, but I thank you
for the bringing of your news."

Within ten minutes the Metcalfs were ushered into the presence of a
cheery, thick-set man, who proved to be Leslie, the general in command
of the Scots.  He, too, read the papers with growing interest.

"H’m, this is good news," he muttered.  "_At any cost of life_.  That
leaves me free.  I’ve been saying for weeks past that famine and
dissensions among ourselves will raise the siege, without any
intervention from Prince Rupert.  Your name, sir?" he asked, turning
sharply to Michael.

Michael, by some odd twist of memory, recalled Banbury and the name of a
townsman who had given him much trouble there.  "Ebenezer Drinkwater, at
your service."

"And, gad, you look it!  Your face is its own credential.  Well, Mr.
Drinkwater, you have my thanks.  Go seek what food you can find in
camp—there may be devilled rat, or stewed dog, or some such dainty
left."

Kit, who did not share his brother’s zest in this play of intrigue, had
a quick impulse to knock down the general in command, without thought of
the consequences.  The insolence of these folk was fretting his temper
into ribbons.

"Come, brother," said Michael, after a glance at the other’s face.  "We
can only do our work, not needing praise nor asking it.  Virtue, we are
told, is in itself reward."

A gruff oath from Leslie told him that he was acting passably well; and
they went out, Kit and he, with freedom to roam unmolested up and down
the lines.

"What is your plan?" asked Kit impatiently.

"We must bide till sundown, and that’s an hour away.  Meanwhile, lad, we
shall keep open ears and quiet tongues."

They went about the camp, and everywhere met ridicule and a hostility
scarcely veiled; but there was a strife of tongues abroad, and from many
scattered drifts of talk they learned the meaning of the odd welcome
they had found.  The Scots, it seemed, had found the rift grow wider
between themselves and the English who were besieging York’s two other
gates.  The rift had been slight enough when the first joy of siege, the
hope of reducing the good city, had fired their hearts.  Week by week
had gone by, month after month; hunger and a fierce drought had eaten
bare the countryside, and hardships are apt to eat through the light
upper-crust of character.

The Metcalfs learned that the dour Scots and the dour Puritans were at
enmity in the matter of religion; and this astonished them, for they did
not know how deep was the Scottish instinct for discipline and order in
their Church affairs.  They learned, too—and this was voiced more
frequently—that they resented the whole affair of making war upon a
Stuart king.  They had been dragged into the business, somehow; but ever
at their hearts—hearts laid bare by privation and ill-health—there was
the song of the Stuarts, bred by Scotland to sit on the English throne
and to grace it with great comeliness.

It was astounding to the Metcalfs, this heart of a whole army bared to
the daylight.  There had been skirmishes, they heard, between Lord
Fairfax’s men and the Scots.  The quarrel was based ostensibly on some
matter of foraging in each other’s country; but it was plain that the
Scots were glad of any excuse which offered—plain that they were more
hostile to their allies than to the common enemy.  Then, too, there was
mutiny breeding among the soldiery, because their scanty pay was useless
for the purchase of food at famine prices.

"We must find a way in," said Michael by and by. "The garrison should
know all this at once.  They could sortie without waiting for the
Prince’s coming."

The Barbican at Micklegate was too formidable an affair to undertake.
What Michael sought was some quieter way of entry.  They had reached the
edge of the Scottish lines by now.  The clear, red light showed them
that odd neck of land bounded by Fosse Water and the Ouse, showed them
the Castle, with Clifford’s Tower standing stark and upright like a
sentry who kept watch and ward. Within that neck of land were Royalists
who waited for the message, as lovers wait at a stile for a lady
over-late.

"We _must_ win in," said Michael.

"Well, brothers," said a gruff voice behind them, "are you as sick to
get into York as we are? You’re late come to the siege, by the well-fed
look of you."

"Just as sick," assented Michael cheerfully. "By the look of you, you’re
one of Lord Fairfax’s men at Walmgate Bar.  Well, it is pleasant to be
among good Puritans again, after the cold welcome given us by the Scots
at Micklegate."

So then the trooper talked to them as brother talks to brother.  Within
five minutes they learned all that the English thought of their Scottish
allies, and what they thought would not look comely if set down on
paper.

Michael warmed to the humour of it.  The man with the heart of a
Cavalier and the raiment of a Puritan hears much that is useful from the
adversary. He told of their late errand, the safe delivery of their
papers, and the contents.  He explained—confidentially, as friend to
friend—that he had an errand of strategy, and must get into York before
sundown. Was there any quiet way of entry?

"Well, there’s what they call a postern gate nigh handy," said the
trooper, with the burr in his speech that any Wharfedale man would have
known. "D’ye hear the mill-sluice roaring yonder?  Though it beats me
how she can roar at all, after all this droughty season."

"It has been a dry time and a dreary for our friends," put in Michael,
with unctuous sympathy.

"Drear?  I believe ye.  If I’d known what war and siege meant, the King
might have bided at Whitehall for ever—Star Chamber taxes or no— for
aught I cared.  At first it rained everything, save ale and victuals;
and then, for weeks on end, it droughted.  There’s no sense in such
weather."

"But the cause, friend—the cause.  What is hardship compared with the
Parliament’s need?"

"Parliament is as Parliament does.  For my part, I’ve got three teeth
aching, to my knowledge, and other-some beginning to nag.  You’re a
preacher, by the look o’ ye.  Well, spend a week i’ the trenches, and
see how it fares with preaching.  There’s no lollipops about this cursed
siege o’ York."

Kit could only marvel at his brother’s grave rebuke, at the quietness
with which he drew this man into talk—drew him, too, along the bank of
Fosse Water till they stood in the deafening uproar of the weir.

"There’s the postern yonder," said the trooper—"Fishgate Postern, they
call it.  Once you’re through on your errand, ye gang over Castle Mills
Brigg, and the durned Castle stands just beyond."

Michael nodded a good-day and a word of thanks, and hammered at the
postern gate.  A second summons roused the sentry, who opened guardedly.

"Who goes there?" he asked, with a sleepy hiccough.

Kit thrust his foot into the door, put his whole weight against it, and
only the slowness of rusty hinges saved the sentry from an untimely end.
"You can talk well, Michael, but give me the doing of it," he growled.

Kit gripped the sentry, neck and crop, while Michael bolted the door.
Then they pushed their captive across Mills Bridge, and found themselves
in the evening glow that lay over St. George’s Field. For a moment they
were bewildered.  The roar of the mill-sluice had been in their ears so
lately that the quietness within York’s walls was a thing oppressive.
The sounds of distant uproar came to them, but these were like echoes
only, scarce ruffling the broad charity and peace of the June eventide.
They could not believe that eleven thousand loyalists, horse and foot,
were gathered between the city’s ramparts.

The sentry, sobered by the suddenness of the attack and Kit’s rough
handling, asked bluntly what their business was.  "It’s as much as my
skin is worth, all this.  Small blame to me, say I, if I filled that
skin a trifle over-full.  Liquor is the one thing plentiful in this
cursed city.  What is your business?"

"Simple enough," said Michael.  "Go find my Lord Newcastle and tell him
two Puritans are waiting for him.  They are tired of laying siege to
York, and have news for his private ear."

"A likely tale!"

"Likelier than being throttled where you stand. You run less risk the
other way.  What is the password for the day?"

"Rupert of the Rhine," said the other sullenly.

"That’s a good omen, then.  Come, man, pluck your heart out of your
boots and tell Lord Newcastle that we knocked on the gate and gave the
counter-sign. Tell him we wait his pleasure.  We shall shadow you until
you do the errand."

The sentry had a gift of seeing the common sense of any situation.  He
knew that Newcastle was in the Castle, closeted with his chief officers
in deliberation over the dire straits of the city; and he went in search
of him.

Newcastle listened to his tale of two big Puritans—preachers, by the
look of them—who had found entry through the postern by knowledge of the
password.  "So they wait our pleasure, do they?" said Newcastle
irascibly.  "Go tell them that when my gentlemen of York go out to meet
the Puritans, it will be beyond the city gates.  Tell them that spies
and informers must conform to their livery, and come to us, not we to
them.  If they dispute the point—why, knock their skulls together and
pitch them into Castle Weir."

"They are big, and there are two of them, my lord."

A droll Irishman of the company broke into a roar of laughter.  The
sentry’s face was so woebegone, his statement of fact so pithy, that
even Newcastle smiled grimly.  "Soften the message, then, but bring them
in."

To the sentry’s astonishment, the two Puritans came like lambs at his
bidding; and after they were safely ushered into the Castle dining-hall,
the sentry mutely thanked Providence for his escape, and went in search
of further liquor.  As a man of common sense, he reasoned that there
would be no second call to-night at a postern that had stood
un-challenged for these three weeks past.

Michael, when he came into the room, cast a quick glance round the
company.  He saw Newcastle and Eythin, and a jolly, red-faced Irishman,
and many others; and memory ran back along the haps and mishaps of
warfare in the open to a night when he had swum Ouse River and met just
this band of gentlemen at table.  He pulled his steeple-hat over his
eyes and stood there, his shoulders drooping, his hands crossed in front
of him.

"Well," demanded Newcastle, his temper raw and unstable through long
caring for the welfare of his garrison.  "If we are to discuss any
business, you may remove your quaint head-gear, sirs.  My equals
uncover, so you may do as much."

"Puritans do not, my lord," Michael interrupted. "What are men that we
should uncover to them?"

"Men circumstanced as we are have a short way and a ready with cant and
steeple-headed folk."

"Yet the password," insisted the other gently. "_Rupert of the Rhine_.
It has a pleasant sound. They say he is near York’s gates, and it was we
who brought him."

The Irishman, thinking him mad or drunk, or both, and irritated beyond
bearing by his smooth, oily speech, reached forward and knocked his hat
half across the room.

"Oh, by the saints!" he roared; "here’s the rogue who came in last
spring, pretty much in the clothes he was born in, after swimming Ouse
River—the jolly rogue who swore he’d find Rupert for us."

"At your service, gentlemen—as dry as I was wet when we last
encountered.  Will none of you fill me a brimmer?"

Lord Newcastle, if something raw in experience of warfare and its
tactics, was a great-hearted man of his world, with a lively humour and
a sportsman’s relish for adventure.  He filled the brimmer himself, and
watched Michael drain half of it at one thirsty, pleasant gulp.  "Now
for your news," he said.

"Why, my lord, I pledged the Metcalf honour that we’d bring Rupert to
you, and he lies no further off than Knaresborough."

"Good," laughed the Irishman.  "I said you could trust a man who swore
by the sword he happened not to be carrying at the moment."

"And your friend?" asked Newcastle, catching sight of Christopher, as he
stood moving restlessly from foot to foot.

"Oh, just my brother—the dwarf of our company. Little, but full of meat,
as our Yoredale farmers say when they bring small eggs to market. To be
precise, Kit here is worth three of me.  They call him the White Knight
in Oxford."

So Kit in his turn drank the heady wine of praise; and then Michael,
with swift return to the prose of everyday, told all he knew of Rupert’s
movements, all that he had learned of the famine and dissension outside
the city gates.

"The Prince bade you all be ready for the sortie when he came," he
finished.  "For my part, I think we might sortie now and save him the
trouble of scattering these ragabouts."

"Ah, life’s a droll jade," murmured the Irishman. "We fancied they were
doing fairly well out yonder, while we were cooped up here like chickens
in a pen. Will you give me the sortie, my lord?  The light’s waning
fast."

"Ay, lead them, Malone," laughed Newcastle. "I shall be glad to give
mettled colts their exercise."

The sentry at the Mills postern gate was suffering evil luck to-night.
He had scarcely settled himself on his bench inside the gate, a tankard
of ale beside him, and a great faith that the odds were all against his
being disturbed twice in the same evening, when there came a splutter of
running feet outside and a knocking on the door.  Memory of the earlier
guests was still with him, sharpened by the sting of aches and bruises.

"No more gentle Puritans for me," he growled. "They can knock as they
list; for my part, I’m safer in company with home-brewed ale."

He listened to the knocking.  Drink and his rough experience of awhile
since, between them, brought a coldness to his spine, as if it were a
reed shivering in some upland gale.

Then warmth returned to him.  A voice he knew told him of what had
happened outside York, and insisted that its bearer should bring the
good news in.

"Why, Matthew, is it only thee?" asked the sentry, his mouth against the
spacious keyhole.

"Who else?  Open, thou durned fool.  My news willun’t bide."

Lord Newcastle had scarcely given consent to the sortie, when the sentry
came again to the dining-chamber, pushing in front of him a lean, ragged
figure of a man who seemed to have found a sudden shyness, until Michael
burst into a roar of laughter. "Here’s a gallant rogue!  It was by his
help I won into York last spring.  Sutler, I thank you for the donkey
purchased from you."

"Is she well, sir?" asked the other eagerly. "I aye had a weakness for
the skew-tempered jade."

"Come, your news?" snapped Newcastle.

"It’s this way, gentles.  I can talk well enough when I’m selling
produce for the best price it will fetch—and prices rule high just now,
I own—but I’m shy when it comes to talking wi’ my betters."

"Then put some wine into your body," laughed Malone.  "It’s a fine
remedy for shyness."

"And thank ye, sir," said the rogue, with a quiet, respectful wink.
"I’m aye seeking a cure for my prime malady."

"Well?" asked Newcastle, after the cup was emptied.

"It tingles right down to a body’s toes, my lord—a very warming liquor.
As for what I came to say, ’tis just this.  I’m for the King myself.  I
never could bide these Parliament men, though I sell victuals to ’em.  I
come to tell ye that there’s no siege of York at all."

He told them, in slow, unhurried speech, how news had come that Rupert
lay at Knaresborough, how the Parliament men had gone out to meet him on
the road to York, glad of the chance of action, and trusting by weight
of numbers to bear down the man who had glamoured England with the
prowess of his cavalry.

Confusion followed the sutler’s news.  Some—Newcastle himself among
them—were eager to send out what men they could along the Knaresborough
road to aid Rupert.  Others insisted that the cavalry, men and horses,
were so ill-conditioned after long captivity that they could not take
the road to any useful purpose.  A sharp sortie, packed with excitement,
was a different matter, they said, from a forced march along the
highway.

When the hubbub was at its loudest, another messenger came in.  The
Prince sent his compliments to Lord Newcastle, and had taken his route
by way of Boroughbridge, "lest the enemy should spoil a well-considered
plan," that Goring was with him, that they might look for him between
the dusk and the daylight.  The messenger added that the Prince had his
good dog Boye with him, and he knew that the hound carried luck even in
fuller measure than his master.

"Ah, the clever head of the man!" said Malone. "I never owned that
quality myself.  He’ll be meaning to cross Swale by way of Thornton
Brigg, and all as simple as a game of hide-and-seek."

It was not quite so simple.  An hour later word came that Rupert had
encountered a strong force of Parliament men at the Brigg.  They were
guarding a bridge of boats that stretched across the Swale; but Rupert
had scattered them, and still pressed forward.

Throughout York the contagion spread—the contagion of a fierce unrest, a
wild thanksgiving, a doubt lest it were all a dream, too good to take
real shape and substance.  For this they had longed, for this they had
suffered hunger and disease—hoping always that Rupert of the Rhine would
come on a magic horse, like some knight of old, to their relief.  And he
was near.

The watch-towers were crowded with men looking eagerly out into the
gloaming; but a grey mist shrouded all the plain beyond the walls.
Women were sobbing in the streets, and, when asked their reason by some
gruff passer-by, explained that they must cry, because joy hurt them so.

And then, after long waiting, there came a shouting from the mist
outside, a roar of horsemen and of footmen.  And they knew the good
dream had come true at last.

There is a grace that comes of hero-worship:—grace of the keen young
buds that burst in spring. It knows no counterfeit.

Rupert was here.  Privation was forgotten. Wounds became so many lovers’
tokens, and the world went very well with York.

"As God sees me, gentlemen," said Lord Newcastle to those about him, "I
take no shame to bend my knees and thank Him for this gallant business."

A message came from Rupert.  He would camp outside the walls that night,
and would be glad if my Lord Newcastle and his friends would come to him
on the morrow.  "We shall breakfast—if any is to be had—a little late,"
the message ended. "My men have had a forced march."

"Ay, always his men and their needs," laughed Malone, the Irishman.
"What a gift he has for leadership."

When the morrow came, Michael and Kit were astonished that Lord
Newcastle bade them join the few officers he took with him to meet the
Prince outside the walls.

"It was you who brought him to us, gentlemen," he explained, with a
cheery nod.  "We hold you in peculiar honour."

The meeting itself was unlike Kit’s hot-headed pictures of it, framed
beforehand.  Prince Rupert, straight-shouldered and smiling, was
obviously dead weary.  His body was that of a usual man, but his head
and heart had been big enough to guide some thousands of soldiers who
trusted him from Oxford to the plain of York; and none goes through that
sort of occupation without paying the due toll.  His eyes were steady
under the high, wide brows; but the underlids were creased and swollen,
and about his mouth the tired lines crossed and inter-crossed like
spider’s webs.  Only Boye, the hound, that had gathered superstition
thick about his name, was true to Kit’s dream of the meeting; and Boye,
remembering a friend met at Oxford, came and leaped up to lick his hand.

"Homage to gallantry, Lord Newcastle," said Rupert, lifting his hat.
"The defence of York goes beyond all praise."

"It was well worth while," said Newcastle, and got no further, for his
voice broke.

"The day augurs well," went on the other by and by.  "I like to fight in
good weather.  Wet clothes are so devilish depressing."

"But the siege is raised, your Highness.  All York is finding tattered
flags to grace your welcome in."

"They are kind, but flags must wait.  We propose to harry the retreat."

"The retreat," said Eythin quietly, "is so ready for civil war among
itself that we should be well advised to leave it to its own devices."

Michael, with the eye that saw so much, caught a glance of challenge
that passed from Eythin to the Prince.  And he guessed, in his random
way, that these two were enemies of long standing.  He did not wonder,
for he had met few men whom he misliked as he did Eythin.

"Indeed," put in Newcastle, in great perturbation, "we are very rusty.
Our men and horses are cramped for want of exercise and food."

"Ah, the gallop will unstiffen them.  My lord, we pursue and give
battle.  It is my own considered judgment—and, more, the King’s orders,
which I carry, are explicit on that point."

So Newcastle heaved a sigh of relief.  The King commanded, and that
decided the matter.  For himself, he was so glad to be free of wakeful
nights and anxious days, so willing to hand over the leadership he had
carried well, that imminent battle was in the nature of recreation.

Rupert had mapped out his plans with a speed as headlong and unerring as
his cavalry attacks. The rebel army was encamped on the high ground
bordering Marston Moor.  He would take the route at once, and my Lord
Newcastle must follow with the utmost expedition.  He could wait with
his men, before giving battle, until the garrison of York joined forces
with him.  Even united, they would be outnumbered; but they were used to
odds.  They must this day sweep treason out of the North, once for all,
and send good news to the King.

Rupert carried them with him.  He was on fire with victories won, with
faith in victories to come. The one man unmoved was Eythin, who,
disappointed in himself and all things, had long since kennelled with
the cynics.

"The higher one flies, the bigger the drop to ground," he muttered.

"Ay," said Michael, who was standing close beside him, "but the man who
never dares to fly—he lives and dies an earthworm."

"I shall cross swords with you for that pleasantry," drawled Eythin.

"Here and now, then," snapped Michael.

Rupert, who never forgot the record of friend or enemy, interposed.
"Gentlemen, I am in command. You may kill each other afterwards, if
Marston Moor does not dispatch the business without further trouble.
Mr. Metcalf," he added, "you will ride with me—and your brother.  It is
as well to keep spark from gunpowder just now, and Lord Eythin has work
to do in York."

When they set out along the dusty road, the brothers mounted on horses
going riderless about the late Roundhead camp, Rupert would have them
trot beside him, and chatted pleasantly.  They could not understand the
quiet deference and honour given them at every turn of these
rough-riding days. But Rupert understood.  Into the midst of jealousies
at Oxford—petty rivalries of man against man, when the crown and
soldiers’ lives were in the losing—had come the Riding Metcalfs, honest
and selfless as God’s sunlight, brave to fight well and to be modest.

The day grew insufferably hot.  Rupert’s promise of good weather proved
him no true prophet. Any farmer could have told him what was meant by
the stifling heat, the steely sky, the little puffs of wind that were
hot and cold by turns.

"A lover’s wind," said Rupert lightly, as a fiercer gust met them up the
rise of Greet Hill.  "It blows east and west, twice in the same minute."

"It blows for a big storm, your Highness," Kit answered, in all
simplicity.  "The belly of the hills is crammed with thunder."

"Let it break, then, if it must.  Meanwhile, our clothes are dry.  And,
talking of lover’s weather, Master Christopher, I was entrusted with a
message to you from Knaresborough.  I met a lady there, as we passed
through—a pretty lady, well-gowned and shod in spite of these disastrous
times—and she asked me if a little six-foot youth of the Riding Metcalfs
were still alive."

"But who should ask for me in Knaresborough?"

"Were there so many, then?  I begin to doubt you, my White Knight."

It was later, as they neared Marston, that the Prince drew Christopher
aside.  He seemed to have a queer tenderness for this lad to whom life
showed a face of constancy and trust.  "I told Miss Bingham you were in
rude health; and I break confidence, maybe, when I tell you that her
eyes filled with tears.  Well, forget her till after this day’s work is
done."

Kit answered nothing, and showed instinctive wisdom.  Miss Bingham was
no more than a pleasant ghost who had nursed his weakness, and
afterwards had sat beside him on the ferry-steps that dipped to the
waters of Nidd River.  His thoughts lately had been all of battle and of
high endurance; but now, as he remembered Joan Grant and the way of her,
and the primroses that had starred the lanes of his wooing time in
Yoredale, he knew that he must do well at Marston Moor.

The dust and swelter of the ride grew burdensome. Boye, the hound, ran
beside his master with lolling tongue.

"Never look so woebegone," laughed Rupert, leaning from saddle to pat
the brute’s head.  "We’re to have a glorious day, Boye, and you the luck
of it."

Kit had first realised at Oxford how deeply Boye was embroiled in this
war of King and Parliament. To the Royalists he was their talisman, the
touchstone of success.  To the enemy he was a thing accursed, the evil
spirit harbouring the body of a dog; they had essayed to shoot and
poison him, and found him carrying a charmed life.  Their unkempt fancy
ran so wild as to name him the worst Papist of the Stuart following,
because he went often with Rupert to kirk, and showed great reverence in
a place holy to his master.  Christopher recalled how the Prince had
laughed once when a friend had told him what the Roundhead gossip was.
"It’s an odd charge to lay against a dog," he had said, "that he’s a
better Catholic than they."

And now, with battle close ahead and the big deed in the making, Rupert
had found leisure to see Boye’s hardship and to cheer him forward on the
dusty road.  He caught Christopher’s glance of wonder—as, indeed, he saw
most things in these days of trouble—and smiled with disconcerting
humour.

"After all, Master Christopher, I’ve found only three things to love in
my hard life—loyalty to the King, and my brother Maurice, and the good
Boye here.  Love goes deep when its bounds are set in such a narrow
compass."

He said nothing of his fourth love—the high regard he had for the
Duchess of Richmond—the love that had so little of clay about it, so
much of the Pole Star’s still, upleading glamour.  Instead, he bustled
forward on the road; and about noon the vanguard of his army found
itself on Marston Moor.  It was a wild country, clumps of bog and gorse
and heather islanding little farmsteads and their green intaken acres.
On the slopes above, wide of Tockwith village, they could see the smoke
of camp fires and the passing to and fro of many Roundheads, hefty in
the build.

"They were ever good feeders," said Rupert lightly.

His whole face was changed.  The lines of weariness were gone.  The
surety of battle near at hand was stirring some vivid chord of
happiness.  It was a sane happiness, that sharpened brain and eye. The
country was so flat that from the saddle he could see the whole range of
this battlefield in prospect.  He marked the clumps of
intake—bean-fields white with flower, pastures browned by the drought,
meadows showing fresh and green after last week’s ingathering of the
crop.  He saw Wilstrop Wood beyond, and the ditch and ragged fence half
between Wilstrop and the hill on which the Parliament men were eating a
good dinner for the first time in many months.

"My right wing takes position this side the ditch," said the Prince at
last, pointing to a gap in the hedge where a rough farm-lane passed
through it.  "Now that is settled, gentlemen, I’m free of care. Mr.
Metcalf," he added, turning to Michael, "go find your kinsmen and bid
them join me.  It is the only honour I can give them at the moment; and
the King’s wish—my own wish—is to show them extreme honour."

Christopher remained in close attendance on the Prince.  The most
surprising matter, in a nine months’ campaign of surprises, was Rupert’s
persistent memory for the little things, of grace and courtesy, when
battle of the starkest kind was waiting only for the arrival of Lord
Newcastle and the garrison of York.

"They’ll not be here within the hour," said Rupert, "and this is a
virgin country, so far as food goes.  My men shall dine."




                            *CHAPTER XVII.*

                    *PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM.*


He knew his men.  After a rousing charge, and a red lane mown along the
track their horses took, he had no control of them; they must pillage as
they listed.  Before the combat, he could trust their pledge to take no
more than an hour to dine, to be prompt at the muster afterwards, as he
trusted his own honour.

It was an odd hour of waiting.  Messengers galloped constantly from the
York road, saying there was no speck of dust to show that Newcastle was
coming with reinforcements.  Rupert’s men, with the jollity attending on
a feast snatched by unexpected chance, began to reassemble.  Two o’clock
came, and the heat increasing.  Overhead there was a molten sky, and the
rye-fields where the enemy were camped showed fiery red under the lash
of a wild, pursuing wind.

It was not until another hour had passed that Rupert began to lose his
keen, high spirits.  He was so used to war in the open, to the instant
summons and the quick answer, that he could not gauge the trouble of
York’s garrison, the slowness of men and horses who had gone through
months of wearisome inaction.  It is not good for horse or man to be
stabled overlong out of reach of the free pastures and the gallop.

About half after three o’clock some of his company brought in to Rupert
a big, country-looking fellow, and explained that they had captured him
spying a little too close to the Royalist lines.

"What mun we do to him?" asked the spokesman of the party, in good
Wharfedale speech.  "We’ve hammered his head, and ducked him i’ th’
horse-pond, and naught seems to serve.  He willun’t say, _Down wi’ all
Croppies_."

"Then he’s the man I’m seeking—a man who does not blow hot and cold in
the half-hour.  Your name, friend?"

"Ezra Wood, and firm for the Parliament."

"We hold your life at our mercy," said Rupert, with a sharp, questioning
glance.  "Tell us the numbers and disposition of Lord Fairfax’s army."

[Illustration: "’We hold your life at our mercy,’ said Rupert."]

"As man to stark man, I’ll tell ye nowt.  My mother sat on one stool
while she nursed me, not on two."

Rupert had proved his man.  The pleasure of it—though Ezra Wood happened
to be fighting on the other side—brought the true Prince out of hiding.
Through fatigue of hurried marches, through anxiety because York’s
garrison lingered on the way, the old Crusader in him showed.

"Is Cromwell with your folk?" he asked.

"He is—staunch in prayer and staunch indeed."

"Then go free, and tell him that Prince Rupert leads the right wing of
the attack.  I have heard much of his Ironsides, and trust to meet them
on the left wing."

Ezra Wood had no subtleties, which are mistaken now and then for
manners.  He looked Rupert in the face with a hard sort of deference.
"So thou’rt the man they call Rupert?" he said.  "Well, ye look it, I
own, and I’ll carry your message for ye gladly."

"And you will return, under safe-conduct, with his answer."

About five of the afternoon—all Marston Moor ablaze with a red,
unearthly light—the first of the York men came in.  Rupert’s impulsive
welcome grew chilly when he saw that Lord Eythin led them; and Boye,
whose likes and dislikes were pronounced, ran forward growling.

"Whistle your dog off, sir—whistle him off," said Eythin irritably.

Rupert, with a lazy smile, watched Boye curvet round Eythin in narrowing
circles.  "Why should I?" he asked gently.  "He never bites a friend."

Eythin reddened.  Memory of past years returned on him, though he had
thought the record drowned in wine and forgotten out of sight.  He asked
fussily what plans Rupert had made for the coming battle.

"Monstrous!" he snapped.  "Oh, I grant you’ve a knowledge of the charge,
with ground enough in front to gather speed.  But what are your cavalry
to make of this?  You stand to wait their onset, and their horses are
heavy in the build."

Rupert nodded curtly.  "Get your men into line, sir.  You are here to
fight under orders, not to attend a council of war."

As Eythin withdrew sullenly, a sudden uproar came down the wind.  Then
the shouting, scattered and meaningless at first, grew to a rousing cry
of "A Mecca for the King!"  Michael glanced at Christopher, and pride of
race showed plainly in their faces.

"Ah," laughed Rupert, "it was so they came when we played pageantry
before the King at Oxford.  Go bring your folk to me, Mr. Metcalf."

They came, drew up with the precision dear to Rupert’s heart, saluted
briskly.  "Gentlemen," he said, "I am proud to have you of my company.
Is my Lord Newcastle near Marston yet?"

The Squire of Nappa explained that those under Newcastle’s command had
suffered during the late siege—men and horses were so weak from illness
that no zeal in the world could bring them faster than a foot-pace.  He
knew this, because he had passed them on the road, had had speech of
them. Lord Newcastle himself, a man no longer young, had kept a long
illness at bay until the siege was raised, and now he was travelling in
his coach, because he had no strength to sit a horse.

"Oh, I had forgotten!" said Rupert.  "All’s in the losing, if they take
overlong.  I should have remembered, though, that the garrison needed
one night’s sleep at least."

While they talked, Ezra Wood returned with the trooper sent to give him
safe-conduct through the lines and back again.  He did not salute—simply
regarded Rupert with dour self-confidence. "General Cromwell sends this
word to Prince Rupert—that, if his stomach is for fighting, he shall
have it filled."

Rupert was silent.  Cromwell, it seemed, had missed all the meaning of
the challenge sent him; war had not taught him yet the nicer issues that
wait on bloodshed.  He stooped to pat Boye’s head with the carelessness
that had angered many a council of war at Oxford.  Then he glanced at
Ezra Wood.

"There is no General Cromwell.  The King approves all commissions of
that kind.  Go tell Mr. Cromwell that we are waiting for him here."

Cromwell, when Ezra Wood returned and found him, was standing in the
knee-deep rye, apart from his company.  His eyes were lifted to the sky,
but he saw none of the signs of brewing storm. He was looking into the
heaven that he had pictured day by day and year by year when he rode in
the peaceful times about his snug estate in Rutland. Then, as now, he
was cursed by that half glimpse of the mystic gleam which hinders a man
at times more than outright savagery.  Always he was asking more than
the bread and meat of life; always he was seeking some antidote to the
poisonous self-love, the ambition to be king himself, which was his
hidden sore.  And now he was praying, with all the simplicity his tricky
mind permitted, for guidance in his hour of need.

As one coming out of a trance, he listened to Ezra Wood, repeating his
message for the fourth time. The light—half false because it was half
mystic only—left his face.  Its borrowed comeliness passed by. He showed
features of surprising plainness—eyes heavy-lidded, thick nostrils, and
a jaw broad with misplaced obstinacy.

"So he is waiting?" he said grimly.  "Well, princes must wait these
days.  We shall seek him by and by."

In that queer mood of his—half prayer and half keen calculation—which
went before his battles, Cromwell had found a plan of action.  He
crossed the field with quick, unwieldy steps, found the other leaders,
and stated his own view of the attack.  As usual, his ruggedness of mind
and purpose carried the day; and Rupert, down below, was left to wonder
why the enemy did not take advantage of his rash challenge and attack
before the main body of his reinforcements came.

It was an eerie day—clouds that came packing up, livid and swollen with
rain that would not fall—a wind that was cold and scorching hot by
turns—a frightened rustle of the leafage in Wilstrop Wood—a rustle that
sounded across the flat waste of Marston Moor like the sound of surf
beating on a distant shore.  Boye kept close to Rupert’s side, and
whined and growled by turns.  He knew his master’s restlessness, as four
of the afternoon came and still Lord Newcastle had not reached the
field.

At half-past four the pick of Newcastle’s men rode in, and were
marshalled into their appointed place between the left wing and the
right.  Rupert galloped down to give them the good cheer he lacked
himself.

"Welcome, Whitecoats.  You look tired and maimed; but they tell me you
have sworn to dye those coats of yours a good, deep crimson—your own
blood or the Roundheads’."

The sound of his voice, his strong simplicity of purpose that burned
outward like a fire, lifted their jaded spirits.  York was forgotten,
and its hardships.

"For God and the King!" they answered lustily.

"I need you, gentlemen," said Rupert, and passed on to where Lord
Newcastle’s coach was standing at the roadside.

He was shocked to see the change in Newcastle—the weariness of mind and
body palpable, now that an end had come to his guardianship of York.

"My lord, you have served the King too well," he said, putting a hand on
the other’s shoulder with instinctive deference to age and great
infirmity.

"Oh, nothing to boast of—a little here and there, to keep our walls
secure.  Tell me, is there to be a battle to-day?  I’m good for a gallop
yet, if the battle does not last too long."

"There’s no chance of it at this late hour.  They saw our weakness from
the hill, and yet would not attack.  They’re tired out, I think, as we
are."

"Good," said Newcastle, with his gentle laugh. "For my part, I shall
claim an old man’s privilege—to step into my coach and smoke a pipe or
two, and then get off to sleep.  I shall be ready when you need me."

"Would my hound, Boye, disturb you?" asked Rupert, turning after he had
said good-night. "I like to have him out of harm’s way at these times."

"Is he a good sleeper?" demanded Newcastle whimsically.

"With a friend, the staunchest sleeper that I know."

Boye demurred when he was bidden to get inside the coach; but, like
Rupert’s cavalry, he knew the tone of must-be-obeyed, and scrambled in
with no good grace.

Near seven of the evening a strange thing happened on Marston Moor.  On
the hill above there was the spectacle of Parliament men standing with
bowed heads as Cromwell sent up fervent prayers. On the moor below, the
chaplain of the King’s men was reading evensong.  Over both armies was a
sky of sullen wrath.

As the service closed, Lord Eythin protested, with an oath, that now
this child’s play was over, he proposed to go in search of food.

"My lord," said Rupert sharply, "wise men do not mock at prayer, in face
of what is waiting for us all to-morrow."

Eythin, nettled by the hum of approbation, lost his temper.  "I was
never wise, your Highness, as you know, but wise enough to advise you
that this escapade is madness."

"We shared another battle, long ago when you were General King."
Rupert’s voice was icy. "Do you remember it?"

The Riding Metcalfs, this once again, were dismayed by the private
quarrels, the jealousies, that were threaded through the skein of war.
Eythin’s insolence of bearing, his subtle incitement to distrust of his
commander, asked no less from Rupert; but the pity of it, to bluff
Squire Metcalf, single of heart, owing none a grudge except the King’s
enemies, was hard to bear.

From the extreme left of the camp, just as the Royalists were settling
down for a brief night’s slumber, there came a running yelp, a baying,
and a splutter of wild feet.  Lord Newcastle had left the window of his
coach open when he had smoked his third pipe and found the sleep he
needed; and Boye, his patience ended, had leaped out into the freedom
that spelt Rupert to him.  When he found him, he got to his hind legs,
all but knocked down his master in his tender fury, and licked his face
with a red and frothy tongue.

"Boye!" said Rupert.  "Oh, down, Boye—you smother me.  I was to have a
lonely supper, I fancied, and you come.  There’s all in the world I care
for, come to sup with me."

From over the hill, where the Parliament men had scarcely finished their
devotions, there came a clap of thunder and a light spit of rain.

"We shall be wet to the skin to-night, Boye, you and I," laughed Rupert.
"We’ve proved my tent, and it is not weather-sound."

He had scarcely finished some beef collops, ready for him in his tent,
and was cajoling Boye to perform a newly-taught trick of begging for a
morsel, when the flap was pulled aside.  Michael Metcalf, framed by the
red light out of doors, showed bigger even than his wont.

"They are coming down from the rye-fields," he said, with a reckless
laugh.  "Let it go how it will, sir, so long as we drive Cromwell out of
bounds."

"I have promised him as much," said Rupert gravely.




                            *CHAPTER XVIII.*

                            *MARSTON MOOR.*


Rupert got to horse, and rode through the press and uproar of the camp.
Confusion was abroad.  To the Cavaliers, though some of them might
regard evensong lightly, it meant at least a truce until the next day’s
dawn; and now they were attacked by an enemy who did not scruple to
combine prayer with craftiness.  Down from the rye-fields they saw the
horsemen and the footmen come, and only Rupert could have steadied them
in this black hour.

"We meet Cromwell’s horse," he cried, getting his own men into line this
side the little ditch, "and, gentlemen, we owe Cromwell many debts."

Stiff and stour it was, that fight at the ditch. The old, stark battles
were recalled—Crecy, and Agincourt, and Flodden—for it was all at
pitiless close quarters.  First they exchanged pistol-shots; then,
throwing their pistols in each other’s faces with a fury already at
white heat, they fell to with sword and pike.  Overhead the storm broke
in earnest.  The intermittent crackle of gunshots, from the
sharpshooters lining the hedges, mingled with the bellow of the thunder
and that clamour of hard-fighting men which has the wild beast note.

Newcastle, asleep in his coach at the far side of the Moor, was roused
by the uproar.  He did not know what had chanced, but the waking was of
a piece with the nightmares that had haunted his brief slumber.  His
limbs ached, the weariness of York’s long siege was on him, but he ran
forward, sword in hand, and asked the first man he met what was in the
doing.  Then he sought for his company and could not find them, except a
handful of the gallant Leightons; so he pressed forward, unmounted,
crying his name aloud, and asking all who heard him to make up a troop.
He gathered drift and flotsam of the running battle—he whose dream had
been of a mounted charge, with picked cavalry behind him—and they fought
on the left wing with a wild and cheery gallantry.

On the right, the Ironsides still faced Rupert’s men, and neither would
give way.  Once, in a lull of the berserk struggle, when either side had
withdrawn a little to take breath, a great hound pressed his way through
the Royalists and came yelping forward in search of Rupert.  He came
into the empty space between the King’s men and Cromwell’s, and a
gunshot flashed; and Boye struggled on the sodden ground, turned his
head in dying search for Rupert, the well-beloved, and so lay still.

From the Ironsides a storm of plaudits crossed a sudden thunder-clap.
"There goes the arch-Papist of them all," came a voice drunk with
battle.

And something broke at Rupert’s heart.  It was as if he stood alone
entirely—as if the world were ended, somehow.  "Ah, Boye," he murmured.
And then he led a charge so furious that the Ironsides all but broke.
It was Cromwell rallied them, and for an hour the fight went forward.
The hedge was levelled now, and the ditch filled in by the bodies of the
slain.  Time after time Rupert found himself almost within striking
distance of Cromwell. They were seeking each other with a settled,
fervent purpose.  And the fight eddied to and fro; and the rain came
down in wild, unending torrents.

The chance sought by Rupert came to Michael Metcalf, as it chanced.
Pushed to one side of the press, he found himself facing a rough-hewn
Parliament man in like case, and parried a fierce sword-cut with his
pike.  Then he drew back the pike, felt it quiver like a live thing in
his hands, and drove it through the other’s fleshy neck.  It was only
when the man wavered in saddle, and he had leisure for a moment’s
thought, that he knew his adversary. A trooper of the Parliament
snatched the wounded rider’s bridle, dragged his horse safely to the
rear, and Michael raised a wild, impulsive shout:

"Cromwell is down!  A Mecca for the King."

Rupert heard the cry, and drew his men a little away, to get speed for
the gallop.  His crashing charge drove back the Roundheads twenty paces,
and no more.  They were of good and stubborn fibre, and the loss of
Cromwell bade them fight with sullen hardihood.  At the end of, it might
be, fifteen minutes they had regained a foot or two of their lost
ground, and Cromwell, getting his wound bandaged at the thatched cottage
up above, asked another wounded Roundhead, who came for the like
succour, how it fared.

"As may be," growled the other.  "If so thou’rt not dead, as we fancied,
get down and hearten them."

"I’ve a thick throat, and the pike took the fleshy part," said Cromwell,
with a deep, unhumorous laugh.  "I’ll get down."

He mounted with some difficulty.  Pluck cannot always conquer in a
moment great loss of blood and weakness of the body.  Once in the
saddle, his strength returned to him; but he rode down too late.
Rupert’s men had followed their old tactics, had retreated again to gain
speed for the onslaught, and were driving the enemy before them in hot
pursuit.

Cromwell, after narrow escape of being ridden down by his own folk,
after vain efforts to rally them again, found himself alone.  The wound
in his throat was throbbing at its bandages.  The rain ran down him in
rivulets, and the world seemed filled with thunder and the cries of men.
Word reached him that Eythin, too, had broken through, and that all
Parliament men were bidden to save themselves as best they might.  And
so he left the field; and the sickness of defeat, more powerful than
body-sickness, caught him as he neared the smithy, this side of Tockwith
village.  A farm-lad, returning from selling a cow at Boroughbridge,
found him in the roadway, fallen from his horse, and carried him into
the smithy-house.  They tended his wound.  Within an hour his lusty
strength of purpose came to his aid.  He asked for meat and ale, and
said he must get ready for the road.  He was known by this time; but
even the blacksmith, Royalist to the core of his big body, would not
hinder his going.  A man of this breed must be given his chance, he
felt.

"After all," he muttered, watching Cromwell ride unsteadily down the
moonlit road, "they say Marston Moor has lost Yorkshire to the
Parliament for good and all.  Some call him Old Noll, and othersome Old
Nick—but he’ll do little harm i’ these parts now, I reckon."

"A soft heart and a big body—they go always fools in company," said his
goodwife.  "I’d not have let him go so easy, I."

"Ay, but ye wod, if I’d been for keeping him. Ye’re like a weather-cock,
daft wife.  When I point south, thou’st always for veering round to
north—or t’other way about, just as it chances."

Cromwell rode back toward Marston, to find his men.  He was kin to
Rupert in this—disaster or triumph, he must find those who needed him.
At the end of a half-mile he met a rider cantering up the rise.  The
moonlight was clear and vivid, after the late storm, and the rider
pulled his horse up sharply.

"The battle is ours, General, and I’ve my Lord Fairfax’s orders for
you."

"The battle is ours?" demanded Cromwell gruffly.  "I do not understand."

"None of us understand.  Fairfax was three miles away, sleeping in a
farmstead bed-chamber, when we roused him with the news.  It was
Leslie’s men who broke their centre and drove round Rupert’s flank.  The
thunder was in all our brains, I fancy."

Cromwell laughed.  All his austerity, his self-pride warring against the
humility he coveted, were broken down, as Rupert’s cavalry had been.
"Then it’s for the siege of York again?" he asked.

"Fairfax says the risk is too great.  The Moor is full of our dead, and
we’re not strong enough. He bids you get your men together and hold
Ripley, going wide of Knaresborough—which is a hornet’s nest—until
further orders reach you.  That is my message, General."

"Good," said Cromwell, tightening the bandage round his throat.  "Where
are my men?"

He found them—those who were left—in scattered companies.  And a lusty
roar went up as they saw him ride through the moonlight, swaying on the
thick farm-cob that carried him.

"It’s fourteen miles to Ripley, lads, but we’ll cover it."

On Marston Moor the Royalists had pursued their advantage to the full.
Rupert’s men and Eythin’s had run wild on the ridge-fields up above.
And Leslie saw his chance.  With his Scots he charged down on the White
Coats, weakened by siege before the fight began.  They kept their
pledge; their coats were dyed with crimson martyrdom—and so they died to
a man, resisting Leslie’s charge.

Leslie himself paused when the work was done. "They were mettled
thoroughbreds," he said huskily. "And now, friends, for the ditch that
Rupert leaves unguarded."

It was so, in this incredible turmoil of storm and fight and havoc, that
the battle of Long Marston was lost to the King.  Rupert, getting his
men in hand at long last, returned to face another hand-to-hand
encounter.  With the middlewing past sharing any battle of this world,
the affair was hopeless. Rupert would not admit as much.  The Metcalfs,
a clan lessened since they joined in evensong an hour ago, would not
admit it.  To the last of their strength they fought, till all were
scattered save a few of them.

Down the rough lane past Wilstrop Wood—a lane pitted deep with ruts—the
Royalists fled headlong.  And at the far side of the wood, where the
lane bent round to a trim farmstead, there was a piteous happening.  A
child, standing at the gate in wonderment at all the uproar and the
shouting, saw a press of gentry come riding hard, and began to open the
gate for them, bobbing a curtsey as the first horseman passed.  He did
not see her.  Those behind did not see her, but, pressing forward
roughly—pressed in turn by those behind—the weight of them was thrust
forward and broke down the gate.

After their passing a woman came from the farmsteading, eager to go out
and see how it had fared with her husband, a volunteer for Rupert.
Under the broken gate she found a little, trampled body; and all her
heart grew stony.

"Lord God," she said, "Thou knows’t men make the battles, but the women
pay for them."

On Marston Moor the Squire of Nappa had found his coolness return when
it was needed most.  The Prince, and he, and Christopher, their horses
killed under them long since, had just won free of a hot skirmish at the
rear of their retreating friends, and were left in a quiet backwater of
the pursuit.

"Best get away," he said.  "You’re needed to see to the aftermath of
this red harvest."

His sturdy common sense had struck the true note.  Rupert had had in
mind to die fighting, since all else was lost.  And now the little,
fluting note of trust came to him through the havoc.  He was needed.

They came, these three, to the clayey lands—wet and sticky to the
feet—that bordered Wilstrop Wood.  The storm, tired of its fury, had
rent the clouds apart with a last soaking deluge, and the moon shone
high, tender as a Madonna yearning to bring peace on earth.

A fresh pursuit came near them, and they turned into a field of
flowering beans on their left.  They heard the pursuit go by.  Then they
heard a litany of pain come out from Wilstrop Wood, where wounded
Cavaliers had taken refuge.  And from Marston Moor there was the
ceaseless crying—not good to hear—of horses that would never again, in
this world, at least, find the stride of a gallop over open fields.

To these three, hidden in the bean-field, came an odd detachment from
the pity and the uproar of it all.  Nothing seemed to matter, except
sleep. The heat, and rain, and burden of that bitter hour just ended
were no more than nightmares, ended by this ease of mind and body that
was stealing over them.  It was good to be alive, if only to enjoy this
pleasant languor.

The Squire of Nappa laughed sharply as he got to his feet.  "At my age,
to go sleeping in a field of flowering beans!  As well lie bed-fellow
with poppies.  D’ye guess what I dreamed just now?  Why, that I was
crowned King in London, with Noll Cromwell, dressed as Venus, doing
homage to me."

"Ah, don’t rouse me, father," grumbled Kit. "I’m smelling a Yoredale
byre again, and hear the snod kine rattling at their chains."

But Rupert, when at last he, too, was roused, said nothing of his dream.
It had been built of moons and Stardust—made up of all the matters he
had lost in this queer life of prose—and he would share it with no man.

When they got to the pastures again—blundering as men in drink might
do—the free, light air that follows thunder blew about their wits.  It
was Rupert who first spoke.  He remembered that men in flight were
trusting him, were needing a leader.

"Friends," he said, "I’m for York.  Do you go with me?"

The noise from Wilstrop Wood, the cries from the Moor, grew small in the
hearing as they made their way to a speck of light that showed a
half-mile or so in front.  Two farm-dogs sprang out on them when they
reached the farmstead; but the fugitives knew the way of such, and
passed unhindered.

"Are ye fro’ Marston, gentles?" asked the farmer, limping out to learn
what the uproar was about. "Ay?  Then how has the King sped?"

"We are broken," said Rupert simply.

"Well, I’m sorry.  Step in and shelter.  Ye’d be the better for a meal,
by the look o’ ye.  ’Tis the least I can do for His Majesty, seeing my
two rheumy legs kept me fro’ riding to his help."

"Have you three horses we can borrow, friend?"

"Nay, I’ve but two.  You’re welcome to them; and they’re sound-footed,
which is more than their master can say of himself."

While they snatched a meal of beef and bread, Christopher glanced at the
Prince.  "I know my way on foot to Ripley, and they may need me there,"
he said.

"The fields will be packed with danger, lad.  Run at my stirrup, till by
good luck we find a third horse on the road to York."

"Let him be," growled the old Squire.  "There’s a lady lives at Ripley.
Lovers and drunkards seldom come to harm, they say."

"Ah, so!"  For a moment there was a glow of tenderness in Rupert’s
sombre eyes.  "It is good to hear the name of lady after the late
happenings. Get forward, sir, and guard her."

Christopher saw them get to horse and take the track that led to York.
Then he fared out into the moonlit pastures, took his bearings, and
headed straight for Ripley.  The distance was less than twelve miles by
the field-tracks; but, by the route he took, it was slow to follow.  The
clay-lands were waterlogged by the late storm; the hedges to be broken
through were high and thorny; but these were not the greatest of his
troubles.  It had been no velvet warfare, that hour’s fight on the Moor.
Constantly, as Kit went forward, he heard a groan from the right hand or
the left, and stayed to tend a wounded comrade.  There was peril, too,
from horses roaming, maddened and riderless, in search of the masters
they had lost.

The first two miles were purgatory, because Kit’s heart was young, and
fiery, and tender, because he felt the sufferings of the wounded as his
own.  The flight, on this side of the Moor, went no further; and for the
rest of the journey he had only trouble of the going to encounter.  He
came late to Ripley Castle; and the sentry who answered to his knocking
on the gate opened guardedly.

"Who goes?" he asked.

"Christopher Metcalf, sick with thirst and hunger."

The door was thrown open suddenly.  In the ill-lighted hall he saw Ben
Waddilove, the old manservant of the Grants, who had ridden—long since,
when last year’s corn was yellowing to harvest—in charge of Mistress
Joan.

Marston Moor was forgotten.  The troubles of the day and night were
forgotten, as sunlight dries the rain.  Kit was a lover.  "How is the
mistress, Ben?" he asked.

"Oh, her temper’s keen and trim.  Mistress Grant ails naught.  I suppose
Marston’s lost and won? Well, it had to be, I reckon.  Who brought the
news to Ripley, think ye?"

"I couldn’t guess, you old fool."

"Oh, may be old—but not so much of a fool, maybe.  He’s in yonder,
closeted wi’ Lady Ingilby in the parlour.  I kenned him at first sight
by the lap of his ugly jaw.  Come hitherto on the tips of your toes,
Master Christopher."

The parlour door stood open, and within Kit saw a scene of such amazing
oddity that he did not know whether he watched tragedy or comedy in the
doing.  The hearth was red with crackling logs. At the far end of the
table sat Lady Ingilby, a cocked pistol lying close to her right hand;
seated opposite her was a thick bulk of a man, with a rusty bandage tied
round his neck; between them were four candles, burning with a tranquil
flame.

"So you come, Mr. Cromwell, to quarter yourself here?" Lady Ingilby was
saving.

"I do, madam."

"You come alone, knowing we are a house of women and of wounded men?
Oh, the courage of you!  And even our wounded have left us—not one of
them so crippled but the news of Rupert’s coming spurred him on to
Marston."

"The news of Rupert’s going will comfort them, maybe," growled Cromwell.

"He thrashed you handsomely.  Oh, we have the news!  First, a runner
came, telling how Lord Fairfax and the leader of the Ironsides had left
the field."

Cromwell’s quick temper took fire.  "You claim a woman’s privilege——

"No, my pistol’s.  We talk as man to man.  I say that we have the news.
And then a second runner came and told us Leslie’s Scots had won the
battle. And we sorrowed, but not as if it had been you who claimed the
victory."

The man was dead weary; but her scorn, quiet and assured, roused him.
"Am I so hated, then, by your side of this quarrel?"

"Hated?  That is a little word."

"Good!  Any wayside fool can be loved—it takes a man to earn hatred."

"A man of sorts—granted.  You will tell me, Mr. Cromwell, what your
purpose was in coming to this house.  My husband may be lying dead on
Marston Field.  Perhaps you came, in courtesy, to distract my grief."

"I came because Lord Fairfax bade me," said Cromwell bluntly.  "We have
no courtesy in Rutland, as you know.  Mere folly must have bidden me
leave my men outside, lest they intruded on you over-roughly."

"How many of them did Rupert leave you for a guard?"  She was aware of
an unexpected courtesy in the man’s voice.  It seemed no more than
smooth hypocrisy.

"A few within call.  They are not gentle."

"Nor I.  As man to man—I stand for the husband who may return or may
not—we are here, we two.  You have a body of surprising strength, but it
is I who hold the pistol.  Believe me, Mr. Cromwell, I have learned your
proverb well; I trust in Providence and keep my powder dry."

Christopher, watching them from the dusk of the passage, turned away.
It did not seem that Lady Ingilby needed him.  Yet he turned for a last
glance—saw Cromwell’s head fall prone on his hands. Weariness had
captured him at length.  The mistress of Ripley sat with upright
carriage, seeing dream-pictures in the glowing fire of logs; and some
were nightmares, but a silver thread ran through them—the knowledge
that, whether he lived or lay dead, she had her husband’s love.

"She bested him, and proper," chuckled Ben Waddilove.  "When he came in,
he looked like a man who might well go to sleep for good and all. We’ll
hope as much—and I was ever a prayerful man, as men go."

At the turn of the passage, where a lamp was smoking evilly, Kit saw a
ghost come with unsteady step to meet him—a comely ghost, in white,
fleecy draperies, a ghost that carried a sputtering candle. After
Marston, and the carnage, and the desolate, long journey from the Moor
to Ripley here, Christopher was ripe to fancy all beauty an illusion.
It was only when he saw the red-brown hair, falling disordered about the
whiteness of her gown, that his eyes grew clear.

"So you have come?" asked Joan Grant.  "I did not summon you."

"Is that true, Joan?"

She would not meet his glance.  "Why should I summon you?"

"Oh, that’s for you to know.  As we lay in the bean-field—the Prince,
and father and I—you came and whispered."

"I travelled far, then, and must have galloped home at speed."

Old Waddilove, who knew his world, moved down the passage noisily.  "For
my part," he said, talking to himself, and thinking he only murmured, "I
allus said like mun wed like, choose what pranks come between.  They’re
fratching already, and that’s a good sign.  A varry good sign.  There
was niver two folks fit for wedlock till they’ve learned how to fratch.
It clears their heads o’ whimsies."

The draughty passage seemed full of Ben’s philosophy.  They could hear
nothing else, except the steady swish of thunder-rain outside.  And Joan
laughed, because she could not help it.

There was no concealment then.  Laughter opens more doors than the high
gravity that lover-folk affect.

"My dear, you know that you came," said Kit.

"I know that I lay awake, sick with terror for you.  I saw you
fighting—oh, so gallantly—saw Rupert steal, a broken man, into a field
of flowering beans, with only the Squire and you to guard him. And then
I fell asleep—as if the bean-scent had stifled me, too—and I dreamed——"

"Well, Joan?"

"That you were hindered, somehow.  That you came to great honour and
forgot me."

"And that troubled you?" said Kit adroitly.

"Oh, till I woke!  Then it seemed to matter little. My heart sits on the
top of a high tree, Master Christopher, as I told you long ago."

All that he had fancied in the gaining seemed lost, all that the
suffering and long anxiety of war had taught him.  She was dainty,
elusive, provocative, just as she had been in Yoredale, before her
baptism of fire.

"Then why were you sick with terror for me?" he asked, as if
downrightness served as well with women as with men.

"Why?  Because, perhaps, it is rather cold in the tree-tops, and a heart
comes down now and then for a little warmth.  I shall bid you
good-night, sir. You’re in need of rest, I think."

"Joan," he said, "I love you very well."

She halted a moment.  The light from her candle showed Kit a face made
up of spring-time in a northern lane.  Long battle, long abstention from
a glimpse of her, brought the old love racing back at flood.  And yet it
was a new love, deepened and widened by the knowledge gained between the
riding out from Yoredale and the stark misery of Marston Moor.

"You will let me go," she said at last.  "Is it a time for ease of
heart, when our men are dead, or dying, or in flight?  They have told me
how it sped at Marston—and, Kit, what of the King, when the news goes
spurring south to him?"

What of the King?  Their own needs—for one caress, one taste of
happiness amid the rout—went by.  Their loyalty was not a thing of
yesterday; its roots lay thick and thrifty in soil centuries old.

"God forgive me," said Christopher.  "I had forgotten the King."




                             *CHAPTER XIX.*

                            *WILSTROP WOOD.*


At four of the next morning Lady Ingilby’s vigil was ended.  There came
a Parliament man to the gate of Ripley, asking urgently for General
Cromwell.  When he was admitted to the dining-chamber, he saw Cromwell
with his head still prone upon the table—saw, too, the grim figure of a
lady, who turned to level a pistol at his head.

"Your errand?" asked Lady Ingilby.

"With General Cromwell.  He is needed at Long Marston."

"They are welcome to him.  He’s not needed here."

Cromwell shook himself out of sleep.  "Who asks for me?" he said,
getting to his feet.

For the moment he thought he was tenting in the open, with only one eye
and ear closed in sleep before the next day’s march began.  Then he
glanced round the parlour, saw Lady Ingilby’s grim, contemptuous face.
When the Parliament man had whispered his message, word for word,
Cromwell, with grim irony, thanked his hostess for the night’s
hospitality, and asked if he were free to take the road.

"None more free.  On the road, sir, you will meet the democracy whom you
befriend—will meet your equals."

Humour had some hiding place in Cromwell’s soul, after all.  As they
passed out, the messenger and he, he laughed quietly.  "She’s of
Rupert’s breed.  They’d make good Parliament men, the two of them, if we
could persuade them to our side of the battle."

Lady Ingilby opened the parlour window, listened till Cromwell’s sharp
command had brought his troopers into line, and heard them go on weary
horses down the street.  Then she went to the hall, in search of cloak
and hood, and encountered Christopher.

"Good morrow, Mr. Metcalf," she said, after the first start of surprise.
"One of your clan always comes when I’m most in need of you.  My
husband—does he lie dead on Marston Moor?"

"He was alive when we broke Cromwell’s Ironsides, for I heard his cheery
shout.  After that Leslie routed us, and—I do not know."

"He may be alive, you think?"

"Why not?  I shared the trouble with him, and I’m here."

Impetuous, strong for the deed, and strong for yielding to emotion
afterwards, she came and touched him on the shoulder.  "My thanks—oh,
indeed, my thanks.  Only to fancy him alive is peace to me.  I need
you," she added briskly.  "You will take charge of my women-folk here,
until I return from—from an errand of mercy."

"Let me take the errand."

"Ah, but you could not.  Only I can do it. Sir, is it no welcome change
for you to tend helpless women?  You have had your holiday at Marston."

"It was a queer merry-making."

"But your wounds show to the public eye—wounds of honour.  You carry the
red badge of knighthood, sir, while I have only a few more grey hairs to
show for all these months of waiting."

"You cannot go alone," he protested.  "The roads will be full of raffish
men."

"The roads must be as they will.  For my part, I have to take a journey.
Come, saddle me a horse, sir, by your leave.  My grooms were all out
with the King’s party yesterday."

When they crossed to the stables, a shrill cry of welcome greeted them;
and, for all the gravity of what was past, Kit could not check a sudden
laugh.  "Why, ’tis Elizabeth, the good ass that helped Michael into
York!  We thought to have lost her somewhere between this and Lathom
House."

Elizabeth came and licked Kit’s face; even if he were not Michael, the
master well-beloved, he was at least near the rose.  And then Kit pushed
her aside; it was no time for blandishment.

There were two horses only, left behind because unfit for battle.  They
looked oddly lonesome, with the six empty stalls beside them stretching
out into the lights and shadows thrown by the lantern.

"A man’s saddle," said Lady Ingilby briskly. "You’ll find it in the
harness chamber yonder."

Kit, when the livelier of the two horses was ready, understood why she
had chosen a man’s saddle. It carried a holster; and into this, after
looking at the priming and uncocking it with masculine precision, she
slipped the pistol that had over-watched Cromwell’s slumbers not long
ago.  And his wonder grew; for, during months of intimacy with Ripley’s
household, he had learned that Lady Ingilby, at usual times, was
motherly, unwarlike, afraid of powder and the touch of sharpened steel.

As he led her horse to the mounting-steps at the far side of the
stable-yard, the lilt of tired hoofs came up the roadway.  Young dawn
was busy up the hills, and into the grey and rosy light rode Michael.
He was not dressed for a banquet.  His clothes were yellow with the clay
of Marston Moor, his face disordered by wounds lately dried by the
night’s east wind.  But the soul of him was Michael’s—wayward and
unalterable.

"At your service, Lady Ingilby," he said.  "I heard a donkey bray just
now, and fancied it was Elizabeth, crying over milk spilled at Marston."

"It was no white milk, Mr. Metcalf, by the look of you."

"The thunder-rain was red in the ditches.  It was a good fight, and it’s
ended.  So, baby Kit, we’re first to the tryst, we two.  I’ve been
wondering, all from Marston hitherto, whether you were dead or living."

Christopher found one heartache stanched.  The sense that Michael was
here, instead of on the wet ground of the Moor out yonder, was vivid
happiness. "Elizabeth will be glad," he said indifferently. "She was
crying for you not long ago."

Then he was urgent that Michael should be left here on guard, and he had
his way.  He borrowed the other’s horse; and, after all, Lady Ingilby
was glad to have an escort through the roads.

"You have news of my husband?" she asked Michael, without hope of any
answer that sufficed.

"None," said Michael, "save that we were in the thick of it—Kit, and he,
and I—and I heard a man near me say that Ingilby was fighting as if
three men’s strength were in his body."

"That is no news," said the other drily.  "He was ever that sort of
man."

When they had ridden out, she and Kit, and had come to the hollow where
dog-roses and honeysuckle were blooming spendthrift to the warmer air of
dawn; she turned in saddle.  "Your brother spoke of coming to a tryst.
What tryst?"

"It was this way.  Before the relief of York, it was agreed among the
Riding Metcalfs that, if the battle sped, Ripley could look to its own
needs. If the fight was lost, we were to come soon or syne—those left of
us—to guard you."

Lady Ingilby reined in—an easy matter with the pensioner that carried
her.  "In these evil modern times, are there still so many of the elder
breed?  One here and there I could understand, but not six-score of
you."

"There are fewer now.  We lost a few at Bolton, and Marston Moor was
worse.  Those who are left will come in.  Their word is pledged."

The spaciousness of summer on the hills returned to Lady Ingilby.
Siege, and hardship, and the red fight at Marston went by.  Here was a
man who had fought, lost blood and kindred to the cause—a man simple,
exact to the promise made.

"I am glad of your escort, after all," she said. "You were breeked in
the olden time, I think."

"What is our route?" asked Christopher by and by.

"To Marston.  If my husband is abroad, well. If he’s dead or dying, he
may need me."

It seemed to Kit, through all the perils of the road, through the
instant dangers that beset them from the thievish folk who hang upon the
skirts of war, that a little, silver light went on ahead, guarding their
passage.  But he was country-born and fanciful. At Ripley, Michael the
careless went indoors and found the old man-servant fidgeting about the
hall.

"Well, Waddilove," he said, throwing himself on the long-settle, and
holding his hands to the fire-blaze, "it seems long since I knew you as
body-servant to Sir Peter Grant in Yoredale.  I’ve fought and marched,
and had my moments—ay, Ben, moments of sheer rapture when we charged—and
now I come from Marston, and all’s ended, save a thirst that will drink
your cellars dry before I slake it."

Waddilove did not know "Maister Michael" in this mood of weariness.  "Ye
used to be allus so light-hearted, come shine or storm," he muttered.

"That is the worst of a high reputation.  One falls to earth, old
sinner.  I’ve no jest, no hope, nothing but this amazing thirst.  If
there’s wine left in the Castle, bring it."

Ben was literal in interpretation of an order. When he returned, he
brought two bottles of Madeira and a rummer-glass.

"Oh, good!" said Michael, with something of his old laugh.  "Fire and
wine—I need them."  He kicked the logs into a blaze.  "It seems odd to
need warmth, with midsummer scarce past, but I’ve brought a great
coldness from the Moor.  Gentlemen of the King’s—men who should be
living for him—are lying where they fell.  There was no room for a
horse’s hoofs; one had to trample the loyal dead.  Wine, Ben!  Pour me a
brimmer for forgetfulness."

And now Waddilove understood that this gay wastrel of the Metcalfs was
on the edge of sickness—not of the body only, or the mind, but of the
two.  In his eyes there was a fever and a dread.  Not knowing what to
do—whether wine were friend or adversary—he obeyed the order.  Michael
drained the glass in one long, satisfying gulp.  "One can buy peace so
easily—at a price," he said.  "Fill again for me, Daniel, and we’ll
drink confusion to Noll Cromwell."

While the wine was between the bottle and the glass, a little lady came
into the hall.  She had a carrot in her hand, and trouble was lurking in
her young, patrician face.

"Who is this, Ben?" she asked, withdrawing a step or two, as she saw the
patched and mud-stained figure on the settle.

"Michael Metcalf, at your service.  No need to ask your servant vouch
for me."

He had risen.  From his great height, shivering and unsteady, he looked
down at her.

"But, sir, you are unlike yourself.  Your eyes are wild."

"So would your pretty eyes be, Mistress Joan, if you’d shared Marston
Fight with me.  I’ve seen a King lose his cause—his head may follow."

Joan was aware of some new strength behind the man’s present disarray.
"Does your love for the King go so deep, then?  We thought you light of
heart."

"Always the same gibe.  I have talked with the King, and I know.  Our
lives were slight in the losing, if we had given him the battle.  But we
lost it.  What matters now, Joan?"

"This, sir—that the King still needs his gentlemen."

Michael stood to attention.  She had always bettered his outlook on
life, even in his careless days. Now, with every nerve at strain, she
showed him a glad, narrow track that went upward, climbing by the ladder
of adversity.

"As for that," he said, with an odd smile, "I thank you for a word in
season.  It will keep Sir William’s cellars from a period of drought."

Waddilove, watching the man, could only wonder at his sharp return to
self-control.  He did not know that, so far as Michael was concerned,
Joan Grant brought always the gift of healing.

"Heartsease, that’s for remembrance," said Michael, after a troubled
silence, "and carrots, they’re for Elizabeth the well-beloved."

She caught the sudden hope, the challenge in his glance.  Clearly as if
he had put the thought into speech, she knew that he clung to the old
love, told more than once in Yoredale.  He hoped—so wild a lover’s fancy
can be—that, because she fed his ass with dainties, she did it for the
master’s sake.

"Ah, no," she said sharply.  "It is not good to play at make-believe.
There is trouble at our doors—the King’s cause drowning, and men lying
dead out yonder.  I go to feed Elizabeth, and you, sir, will stay here
to guard the house."

Michael kicked the logs into a blaze, and watched the flames go up with
a steady, thrifty roar.  He turned presently, to find Waddilove asking
whether he did not need a second brimmer of Madeira.

"To-morrow, you old fool!  For to-night, I’ve the house to guard.
Meanwhile, I’ve lit a lively fire—all my hopes, Ben, and most of my
prayers, have gone scummering up the chimney-stack. I trust they find
good weather out o’ doors."

Christopher and Lady Ingilby, about this time, were nearing Marston
Moor.  As they reached Tockwith village, and were passing the farmstead
where Cromwell had dressed the wound in his neck not long ago, five men
rode out at them through the rosy light of dawn.  Christopher, with
battle still in his blood, shot the first at close quarters—a red and
messy business.  Then he reined about, with the instinct taught him by
Rupert’s cavalry, turned again, and charged the four remaining.

He found himself in the stour of it; for they were thick-set rogues, and
had little to lose in this world or the next.  It seemed that they must
bear him down, after he had accounted for another of their number with
his sword.  Then a second pistol-shot rang out, and the man nearest Kit
dropped from saddle as a fat, red plum falls from an autumn branch.  His
horse stampeded, and the two riders left galloped headlong for the
woods.

Kit returned to find Lady Ingilby with a smoking pistol in her hand.
Her voice was tremulous.

"Sir, if this is to feel as men do—ah, thank the good God I was born a
woman.  I aimed truly, and—and I have no pride in it."

Through the sunrise and the hot, moist scent of flowering hedgerows they
made their way down the narrow farm-track which was henceforth to be
known as Rupert’s Lane.  At the ditch and the battered hedgerow where
Cromwell’s horse had been driven back, a man on foot asked sharply who
went there.

"Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or is dead for the
King."

[Illustration: "’Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or
is dead for the King.’"]

"I cannot tell you, madam.  There are so many dead, on both sides of the
battle."

"But I must know.  Give us free conduct through the lines, my friend
here and myself; it is a little thing to ask."

The Parliament man was muffled in a great-coat, an unwieldy hat drawn
over his eyes.  But Christopher knew him, though Ingilby’s wife, her
heart set on one errand only, saw beyond and through him, scarce knowing
he was there save as an obstacle to progress down the lane.

"It is granted," said the Roundhead, "if you permit me to bandage your
eyes until we come to the place where Sir William fought.  I know the
place, because our men brought in high tales of his strength and
courage."

"But why the bandage?" she asked peremptorily.

"Because, between here and where he fought, there are sights not good
for any woman’s eyes."

"Ah, tut!  I’ve nursed men at Ripley who were not good to see.  Their
wounds were taken for the King, and so were pleasant."

They went through what had been the centre of the King’s army—went
through all that was left of the Whitecoats, thick-huddled with their
faces to the sky.  For a moment even Ingilby’s wife was dizzy and
appalled.  There was no scent of summer hedgerows now.  Then she took
hold again of her unalterable courage.

"Oh, they died well.  Lead on."

They came to the place where Sir William’s company had fought; and the
sun, gaining strength already to drive through the mists of last night’s
thunderstorm, showed her the faces of many folk remembered, but not her
husband’s.

"I thank God," she said simply.  Then, as she turned to retrace her
steps, the inbred courtesy of the woman surmounted the pain that had
gone before, the passionate thanksgiving that followed.  "I thank you,
too, for conduct through the lines. What is your name, that I may
remember it in my prayers?"

"At Ripley they would name me Noll Cromwell. I ask no thanks, and need
none."

It was all muddled and astounding, as the battle of last night had been.
The man she had scolded not long ago at Ripley—the man whose soul she
had whipped raw, though she did not guess it—had offered courtesy.  For
this hour, at any rate, Cromwell was a mystic, seeing with the clearer
vision and knowing the kind lash of penance.  Since this wild campaign
began, drawing him from his quiet estate in Rutland, he had known no
happiness till now.  This woman had flouted him; yet he was glad, with
an amazing gladness, to succour her in need.

A man came running, and said that General Cromwell was needed in
Tockwith village, where some trouble had broken out among his men.  The
mystic disappeared.  The Cromwell of sheer flesh and blood showed
himself.  "Trouble, is there?" he snapped.  "I’ve a short way with
trouble of that sort.  As for you, Lady Ingilby, the password is
_Endeavour_, and I would recommend you to secure your retreat at once."

With a half-defiant salute he was gone, and, as they came again to the
place where the Whitecoats lay, a party of Roundhead horsemen, riding
by, halted suddenly.

"You are on the King’s side," said the leader, with a sharp glance at
Christopher.  "I am Captain Murray, at your service, of Leslie’s horse.
I know you because you all but killed me in that last rally Rupert made.
What, in the de’il’s name, are you doing here—and with a lady?"

"We are under safe-conduct through the lines. Cromwell gave us the word
_Endeavour_ not five minutes since."

"Well, I need you, as it happens.  There are many of your dead in
Wilstrop Wood, and General Leslie has a soft heart—after the fight is
done—like most Scotsmen.  He sends me to find a King’s man who can name
the dead.  ’They have wives and bairns, nae doot,’ said Leslie in his
dry way, ’and ill news is better than no news at a’, for those who bide
at hame.’"

Lady Ingilby was not sorry when her request to go with Kit was refused.
After all, she had breakfasted on horrors and could take no further meal
as yet.

"If he is there, Christopher," she whispered, "you will take me.  If you
do not find him, well. Either way, there is the God above us."

When they came to Wilstrop Wood—Lady Ingilby staying on the outskirts
with three dour Scotsmen as a guard of honour—the wind was rustling
through the trees.  And from the ground there was a harsher rustle—the
stir and unrest of men who could not die just yet, however they longed
for the prison-gate of flesh to open.

The red-gold sunlight filtered through the cobwebs spun from tree to
tree of Wilstrop Wood.  And even Murray, who counted himself
hard-bitten, stood aghast at what he saw.  The underwood was white with
bodies of the slain.

A great wrath and pity brought Kit’s temper to a sudden heat.  "Captain
Murray," he said, "these dead have been robbed of all that hides their
nakedness. I say it is a foul deed.  Better have lost the fight
than—than this."

"You will tell it to the world?" stammered Murray.

"Yes, if I win free of this.  It shall be blazoned through the North,
till there’s none but knows of it."

Murray halted irresolute.  If the Scotsman had been of grosser make, Kit
would have joined the company of King’s men who slept in Wilstrop Wood.
It was easy, with the men he had at call, to silence this hot-headed
youngster.

"That is your resolve?" he asked slowly.

"D’ye doubt it?  Captain Murray, it is a loathsome business enough to
pick the pockets of the dead, but to take clothes and all——"

"The Scots had no hand in it, I tell ye.  Our lads hae over-muckle care
for the dead of either side. But I aye mistrusted those Psalm-singing
rogues. Will ye take it at that?"

"There’s a sickness in the middle of me," said Christopher, with tired
simplicity.  "What is your business with me here in Wilstrop Wood?"

Murray conquered his first impulse to put Kit’s tongue out of harm’s way
once for all.  "As I told you, sir, General Leslie’s heart is tender as
a maudlin woman’s—now the battle is won, and his own wounds patched
up—and needs must that you identify the dead."

Christopher, who seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve, was a true
Dalesman.  By letting the world see the froth and bubble of the upper
waters, he hid the deeper pools.  As they went through the wood, the
sunlight filtering through on ground for ever to be haunted, he knew, by
the whiteness of their skins, that the greater part of the fallen were
gentry of the King’s.  Instinct, quick to help a man, told him it was
unwise to admit the loss of so many officers to the cause, though he
knew many faces there—faces of men who had shared fight or bivouac with
him somewhere between this and Oxford.

"They must rest where they lie, for all the help I can give you," he
said impassively, "and may God have mercy on their souls."

"Sir, I wonder at your calm," snapped Murray; "but now I understand.
All you Papists have that quiet air of ease."

"Up in Yoredale we heard nothing of the Pope, but much of prayers for
those who crossed the fighting-line ahead of us."

Murray thought he made nothing of this lad; yet at heart he knew that,
through all the moil and stench of Marston, he, too, was going back
along the years—going back to the knees of his mother, whose prayers for
him he thought forgotten long since.

As they were making their way through the wood again, a slim youngster,
stark naked, lifted himself on an elbow and babbled in his weakness.
"Have we won, friend?" he asked, looking at Kit and Murray with starry,
fevered eyes.

"Aye," said Murray, Scottish pity warring with regard for truth.  "We’ve
won, my laddie."

"Then unfasten this bracelet from my wrist. Oh, quick, you fools—the
time’s short!  Take it to Miss Bingham, out at Knaresborough yonder, and
tell her I died as well as might be.  Tell her Marston Moor is won for
the King."

And with that there came a rattle in his throat. And he crossed himself
with a feeble forefinger.

"Dear God," said Murray, "the light about his face!  You simple gallants
have the laugh of us when it comes to the high affair of dying."

Christopher said nothing, after closing the eyes of a gentleman the King
could ill afford to lose. And so they came out of Wilstrop Wood, and
found Lady Ingilby again.

"Does he lie there?" she asked sharply.

"I did not see him," answered Kit.

"I am almost—almost happy.  You did not find him?  Come; they’ll be
needing us at Ripley."




                             *CHAPTER XX.*

                          *THE HOMELESS DAYS.*


Marston Moor was fought and ended.  A mortal blow had been struck at the
King’s cause in the North; and yet the Metcalfs, rallying round Lady
Ingilby at Ripley, would not admit as much.  The King must come to his
own, they held, and Marston was just an unlucky skirmish that mattered
little either way.

York capitulated, and Squire Metcalf, when the news was brought at
supper-time, shrugged his shoulders.

"It’s a pity," he said.  "We must get on without the good town of
York—that is all."

Lady Ingilby glanced across at him.  For the first time since Marston
Moor she smiled.  "And if all is lost, will you still believe that the
world goes very well?"

A great sob broke from the Squire, against his will or knowledge.  "Lady
Ingilby, there are fewer Metcalfs than there were," he explained
shame-facedly. "I went through Marston Fight, moreover. It is not my
faith that weakens—it is just that I am human, and my courage fails."

None spoke for a while.  The mistress of Ripley, on her knees in the
chapelry, or busying herself about her men’s needs, had learned what the
Squire had learned.  Those who had gone through the stress and anguish
of the late battle, and the women who had waited here between closed
walls for news to come, all caught the wonder of this moment.  It was as
if some Presence were among them, interpreting the rough strife of sword
and pike.

"If there were two Metcalfs left of us all," said the Squire, his big
voice humorous in its gentleness, "we should still believe that all was
well with King Charles.  And, if one fell, t’other would be glad to be
the last to die for His Majesty."

The moment passed.  It was too intimate, too filled with knowledge of
the over-world, for long continuance.  Metcalf filled his glass afresh.
The men were glad to follow his good example.

"Your health, Lady Ingilby—your good health," said the Squire.

While they were drinking the toast, the outer door was opened hurriedly,
and a little, wiry man came in.  His face was tired, and his clothes
were stained with rain and mud.

"Gad, here’s Blake!" laughed Kit Metcalf. "Blake, the rider—I saw him
bring the Metcalfs into Oxford."

Blake nodded cheerily.  "Life has its compensations. I shall remember
that ride down Oxford High Street until I die, I think.  Lady Ingilby,
I’ve a message from your husband, for your private ear."

A great stillness had come to Lady Ingilby, a certainty of herself and
of the men about her. "He was always a good lover.  You can give his
message to the public ear."

"He escaped from Marston with twenty men, and hid in Wilstrop Wood.
There was carnage there, but your lord escaped.  And afterwards he fell
in with Prince Rupert, returning with volunteers from the garrison at
York.  He bids me tell you he is safe."

"Was that all his message, Mr. Blake?"

"No, it was not all, but—but the rest is for your private ear, believe
me."

"I—am very tired.  My courage needs some open praise.  What was my
lord’s message?"

Blake stooped to whisper in her ear, and Lady Ingilby laughed.  Keen
youth was in her face. "Gentlemen, it was a vastly tender message.  I am
proud, and—and a woman again, I think, after all this discipline of war.
My husband bids me hold Ripley Castle for as long as may be, if the
Metcalfs come."

"There never was much ’if’ about a Metcalf," said the old Squire.  "Our
word was pledged before ever Marston Fight began."

"Oh, he knew as much, but you forget, sir, that many hindrances might
have come between your pledged word and yourselves.  You might have died
to a man, as the Whitecoats did—God rest them."

The Squire’s bluntness softened.  The tenderness that is in the heart of
every Yorkshireman showed plainly in his face.  "True.  We might all
have died.  As it is, there are many gaps that will have to be explained
to the goodwife up in Yoredale."

And again there was a wonder and a stillness in the hall, none knowing
why, till Lady Ingilby broke silence.  "Such gaps need no explaining.
They are filled by a golden light, and in the midst of it a rude wooden
cross, and over it the words ’For Valour.’  There, gentlemen, I weary
you with dreams.  Lest you think me fanciful, let me fill your glasses
for you.  It will do you no harm to drink deep to-night, and the
sentries are ready at their posts."

They could make nothing of her.  Gay, alert, she went about the board,
the wine-jug in her hands. The message from her lord that Blake had
whispered seemed to have taken a score years from her life, as strong
sun eats up a rimy frost.  When she bade them good-night and passed out,
it was as if a spirit of great charm and well-being had gone and left
them dull.

On the morrow there was work enough to keep them busy.  The fall of York
had sent Cromwell’s men like a swarm of bees about the land.  Dour and
unimaginative in battle, they ran wild when victory was theirs.  Men who
had been plough-boys and farm-hinds a year since were filled with heady
glee that they had helped to bring the great ones low.  Some of their
officers could not believe—honestly, each man to his conscience—that
there was any good or usefulness in gentlemen of the King’s who wore
love-locks because it was the habit of their class, and who chanced to
carry a fine courage under frivolous wearing-gear.

The Squire of Nappa was roused, somewhere about five of the clock, by a
din and shouting from the courtyard underneath his bed-chamber.  At
first he fancied he was back on Marston Field again, and raised a sleepy
challenge.  Then, as the uproar increased, he got out of bed, stretched
himself with one big, satisfying yawn, and threw the casement open.

The summer’s dawn was moist and fragrant. His eyes, by instinct, sought
the sky-line where, in Yoredale, hills would be.  Here he saw only
rolling country that billowed into misty spaces, with a blurred and
ruddy sun above it all.  The fragrance of wet earth and field flowers
came in with the warm morning breeze.  He was a countryman again, glad
to be alive on a June day.

Then he returned to soldiery, looked down on the press of men below, and
his face hardened.  "Give you good-morrow, Cropheads," he said gently.

"And who may you be?" asked the leader of the troop.

"A Mecca for the King.  Ah, you’ve heard that rally-call before, I
fancy.  Your own name, sir?"

"Elihu Give-the-Praise."

"Be pleased to be serious.  That is a nickname, surely."

A storm of protest came from the soldiery, and Elihu took heart of grace
again.

"Idolaters and wine-bibbers, all of you," he said, vindictiveness and
martyrdom struggling for the mastery.  "Since I forswore brown ale and
kept the narrow track, men know me as Elihu Give-the-Praise."

"Then, as one who relishes brown ale, I ask you what your business is,
disturbing a Riding Metcalf when he needs his sleep?"

"Our business is short and sharp—to bid you surrender, or we sack the
Castle."

"Your business is like to be long and tedious," laughed the Squire, and
shut the casement.

He crossed to the landing and lifted a hale cry of "Rouse yourself,
Meccas!  What lads you are for sleeping!"  And there was a sudden tumult
within doors louder than the din of Puritans outside. It was then, for
the first time, that Lady Ingilby, running from her chamber with a loose
wrap thrown about her disarray, understood the full meaning of clan
discipline.

The men who answered the rally-call were heavy with sleep and in no good
temper; but they stood waiting for their orders without protest.  When
the Squire told them what was in the doing, their faces cleared.  Sleep
went by them like a dream forgotten. The Roundheads underneath fired
some random shots, as a token of what would follow if there were no
surrender; and, in reply, spits of flame ran out from every loophole of
the Castle front.  They were not idle shots.  Elihu Give-the-Praise,
with a stiff courage of his own, tried to rally his men, in spite of a
splintered arm; but a second flight of bullets rained about them, and
panic followed.

"A thrifty dawn," said the Squire of Nappa, as if he danced at a
wedding.

For that day, and for three days thereafter, there was little sleep
within the Ripley walls.  Parliament men, in scattered companies,
marched to replace the slain and wounded.  There were sorties from the
Castle, and ready fire from the loopholes overhead; and in the courtyard
space lay many bodies that neither side could snatch for decent burial.
There was not only famine sitting on the Ripley threshold now, but
pestilence; for the moist heat of the summer was not good for dead or
living men.

In the middle watch of the fourth night, Squire Metcalf heard a company
of horsemen clatter up to the main gate.  He thrust his head through a
casement of the tower—the loopholes had been widened in these modern
days—and asked gruffly the strangers’ errand.

"Surrender while you can, Nappa men," said the foremost horseman.

"It is not our habit."

"There’s a company of Fairfax’s men—a thousand of them, more or
less—within call."

"Ay, so are a thousand cuckoos, if you could whistle them to hand.  Who
are you, to come jesting at the gates?"

"Nephew to Lord Fairfax, by your leave."

"That alters matters.  I’m Metcalf of Nappa, and aye had a liking for
the Fairfaxes, though the devil knows how they came into t’other camp.
Their word is their bargain, anyhow."

Fairfax laughed.  The sturdy bluntness of the man was in keeping with
all he had heard of him. "That is true.  Will you surrender—leaving all
arms behind you?"

"No," said the Squire of Nappa.  "Bring your thousand cuckoos in, and I
promise ’em a welcome."

He shut the casement, called for his son Christopher to take his
sentry-place, and sought Lady Ingilby.

"There’s a good deal to be done in five minutes," he said, by way of
breaking the news to her.

"Oh, you think only of speed these days, and I—believe me, I am tired."

"’Tiredness butters no haver-bread,’ as we say in Yoredale.  There are
two ways open to us—one to surrender by and by, the other to ride out
to-night."

"But my husband—-oh, he left me here to hold the Castle."

"For as long as might be.  He’ll not grumble when he learns the way of
our riding out.  Better leave Ripley now, with honour, than wait till
they starve us into surrender."

He had his way.  In silence they made their preparations.  Then Metcalf
lifted a noisy rally-cry as he led his men into the courtyard.  And the
fight was grim and troublesome.  When it was done, the Metcalfs
turned—those who were left—and came back for the womenfolk; and some of
the white horses, saddled hastily, fidgeted when for the first time they
found women’s hands on the bridle.

Michael was one of those who gave his horse, lest a woman should go on
foot; and at the courtyard gate, while the press of folk went through,
he halted suddenly.

"Kit," he said, "there’s li’le Elizabeth braying as if all her world
were lost.  ’Twould be a shame to forget her, after what she did for me
at York."

Christopher was young to defeat.  "It’s no time to think of donkeys,
Michael," he snapped, humour and good temper deserting him in need.

"I defend my own, lad, whether Marston Moor is lost or won.  I’m fond of
Elizabeth, if only for her skew-tempered blandishments."

When he returned from the humble pent-house where they had lodged the
ass, the Squire had got his company ready for the march, and was
demanding roughly where Michael was.

"Here, sir," said Michael, with the laugh that came in season or out.

"Making friends with your kind, lad," snapped the other.  "Well, it’s a
thrifty sort of common sense."

The odd cavalcade went out into the dewy, fragrant dawn.  About the land
was one insistent litany of birds—merle and mavis, sleepy cawing of the
rooks, and shrill cry of the curlews and the plover.  A warm sun was
drinking up lush odours from the rain-washed fields and hedgerows.

"Eh, but to see my growing corn in Yoredale!" sighed Squire Metcalf.
"As ’tis, lads, we’re heading straight for Knaresborough, to learn how
they are faring there."

Joan Grant had been content, till now, to sit Christopher’s horse and to
find him at her stirrup.

"I do not like the Knaresborough country," she said, with gusty
petulance.

"Not like it?  Their garrison has kept the Cropheads busy."

"Oh, ay, Master Christopher!  There’s nothing in the world save sorties
and hard gallops.  To be sure, we poor women are thrust aside these
days."

"What is it?"

"What is it, the boy asks.  I thought you grown since Yoredale days; and
now, Kit, you’re rough and clumsy as when you came a-wooing and I bade
you climb a high tree—if, that is, you had need to find my heart."

They rode in silence for a while.  Christopher thought that he had
learned one thing at least—to keep a still tongue when a woman’s temper
ran away with her.  But here, again, his wisdom was derided.

"I loathe the tongue-tied folk!  Battle, and audience with the King, and
wayfaring from Yoredale down to Oxford—have they left you mute?"

"Less talkative," he agreed; "I’ve seen men die."

For a moment she lost her petulance.  "You are older, graver, more
likeable.  And yet I—I like you less.  There was no need—surely there
was no need to—to let others tell me of the ferry-steps at
Knaresborough."

"The ferry-steps?"

"So you’ve forgotten that poor maid as well.  I pity Miss Bingham now.
Why do women hate each other so?  Instead, they should go into some
Sisterhood of Pity, hidden away from men."

"They should," assented Christopher; "but few of them do, ’twould seem."

"And now you laugh at me.  Oh, I have heard it all!  How pleasantly Nidd
River runs past the ferry-steps.  She is beautiful, they tell me."

"I have no judgment in these matters.  Ask Michael—he was there with me
in Knaresborough."

Michael had chanced to overtake them at the moment, Elizabeth following
him like a dog.  "Nidd River—yes, she is beautiful."

"It was Miss Bingham we talked of.  I—oh! I have heard such wonderful
tales of her.  She glamours men, they say."

Michael, for a breathing-space or two, was silent. Then he recaptured
the easy-going air that had served as a mask in harder times than this.
"She glamoured me, Miss Grant—on my faith, she did—whenever Kit would
leave her side.  The kindest eyes that ever peeped from behind a
lattice."

"Miss Bingham seems to be prodigal of the gifts that heaven has given
her."

"True charity, believe me—to spend what one has, and spend it royally."

"She seems, indeed, to be a very perfect hoyden. Oh, I am weary!
Marston Moor is lost.  Ripley is lost.  Are we going to ride for ever
along dreary roads?"

"Three of us go on foot—Kit the baby, Elizabeth and I.  We have no
grumbles."

She turned on him like a whirlwind.  "If the end of the world came—here
and now—you would make a jest of it."

[Illustration: "’If the end of the world came—here and now—you would
make a jest of it.’"]

"’Twould sweeten the end, at any rate.  There’s Irish blood in me, I
tell you."

From ahead there sounded a sharp cry of command.  "Hi, Meccas, all!  The
enemy’s in front."

War had lessened the ranks of the Metcalfs, but not their discipline.
Michael and his brother clutched each a horse’s bridle, after helping
the women to alight, and sprang to the saddle.  Even Elizabeth shambled
forward to take her share of hazard, and Joan found herself alone.  And
the gist of her thoughts was that she hated Kit, and was afraid that he
would die.

She watched the Metcalfs spur forward, then slacken pace as they neared
the big company coming round the bend of the road.  The old Squire’s
voice rang down-wind to her.

"King’s men, like ourselves?  Ay, I see the fashion of you.  And where
may you be from, gentles?"

"I’m the late Governor of Knaresborough, at your service."

"And I’m the Squire of Nappa, with all that the Cropheads have left of
my Riding Metcalfs."

The Governor saluted with extreme precision. "This almost reconciles me
to the loss of Knaresborough, sir.  We have heard of you—give you
good-day," he broke off, catching sight of Michael and Christopher.  "We
have met in happier circumstances, I think."




                             *CHAPTER XXI.*

                        *SIR REGINALD’S WIDOW.*


There is nothing so astounding, so muddled by cross-issues and
unexpected happenings, as civil war.  Not long ago Marston Moor had
heard the groans of Cavaliers as they lay naked to the night-wind, and
prayed for death in Wilstrop Wood.  York had surrendered.  The garrisons
of Knaresborough and Ripley, met together on the dusty highroad here,
were weak with famine and privation.  Yet they stood chatting—the ladies
of both garrisons passing laughter and light badinage with the men—as if
they were gathered for a hunting-party or falconry.  The intolerable
pressure of the past months was ended for a while, if only by disaster;
and from sheer relief they jested.

Joan Grant, in the middle of the chatter, edged her mare near to a
sprightly horse-woman who had just dismissed Michael with a playful tap
of her whip across his cheek.

"You are Miss Bingham?  Ah, I guessed it."

"By what token?"

"By your beauty, shall we say?  Gossip has so much to tell about it, and
about the Vicarage garden, with Nidd River swirling past the
ferry-steps."

They eyed each other with the wariness of duellists. "The good Vicar is
fortunate in his garden," assented Miss Bingham, with the most charming
courtesy.

"And in his water-nymphs, ’twould seem.  I think you would be like some
comely dream—on an April evening, say, with the young leafage of the
trees for halo."

"Oh, it is pleasant to be flattered!  But why this praise of me?  We
were strangers not an hour ago."

"I have heard so much of you.  You were so kind to the men who sortied
from Knaresborough and returned with wounds.  You sat by the
ferry-steps—all like a good angel—and bound their hurts afresh when they
smarted.  Oh, indeed, we have heard of your pleasant skill in healing."

While they faced each other, there came the thud and racket of
horse-hoofs down the road.  The rider drew rein amid a swirl of dust,
cleared his eyes with a hand that trembled, and looked from one face to
another.  His tired face lit up when at last he saw the Governor of
Knaresborough.

"Give you good-day, sir.  I was riding to seek aid from you."

"The devil you were," growled the other.  "The man sups lean who trusts
to my help, Graham. Knaresborough’s in other hands since—since Marston."

"It would be.  I had forgotten that.  But you’re here."

"What is your need, lad?"

"A few men to help me, over at Norton Conyers. I rode to ask if you
could lend them me."

"All of us, if we’re needed.  We were jesting on the road here, for lack
of other occupation.  What is it?  But, first, is your uncle safe—tough
Reginald Graham?  I love him as I love the steep rock-face of
Knaresborough."

"It was this way.  My uncle would have me near him at Marston.  We were
with Rupert on the right wing, and were close behind one of the Riding
Metcalfs—I know not which, for they’re all big men and as like as two
peas in a pod—and saw him cut Cromwell through the throat.  We were
together when we broke the Roundheads and pursued too far. It was when
we came to the ditch again, and found Leslie there with his Scots, that
I lost Sir Reginald. I took a wound or two in the stampede that
followed, and was laid by in a little farmstead near Wilstrop Wood.  The
good-wife was kind to me—said she had lost a bairn of her own not long
since, trampled down by flying horsemen at the gate."

"Ay, lad; but why d’ye not get forward with your news of Sir Reginald?"

"Because I cannot trust myself to speak of him without some folly in my
throat.  Give me time, sir—give me time.  I got about again in a day or
two, and stumbled home somehow to Norton Conyers.  And I—I met a black
procession—all like a nightmare, it was—journeying to the kirkyard.  So
I joined them; and one man nudged another, and asked who this was coming
in his tatters to the burial without mourning-gear.  And I pointed to my
wounds and laughed.  ’Mourning-gear enough,’ said I.  ’Mourners go in
blood and tatters since Marston.’  And then, they tell me, I fell, and
lay where I fell.  That was all I knew, till I got up next day with all
my limbs on fire."

There was silence among those looking on—a deep and reverent silence.
This youngster, out of battle and great pain, had captured some
right-of-way to the attention of strong men.

"When I was about again, they told me how it chanced.  Sir Reginald took
a mortal hurt at Marston, but rode with the best of his strength to
Norton Conyers.  He found Lady Graham at the gate, waiting for news of
him; and he stooped from saddle, so they say, and kissed her.  ’I could
not die away from you, wife,’ he said."

"Ay," growled the Governor, "he was like that—a hard fighter, and a
lover so devout that his wife had reason to be proud."

"She tried to help him get from horse; but he shook his head.  ’The
stairs are wide enough,’ was all his explanation.  Then he rode in at
the main door and up the stair, and bent his head low to enter the big
bed-chamber.  He got from the saddle to the bed, lay with his eyes on
fire with happiness, and so died."

"A good ending," said the Squire of Nappa roughly, because he dared not
give his feelings play. "What I should call a gentleman’s ending—leal to
King and wife.  Oh, you young fool, no need to make a tragedy about it!"

Graham answered gamely to the taunt that braced him.  "As for that, sir,
tragedy is in the making, if no help comes to Norton Conyers.  We had
word this morning that a company of Roundheads was marching on the
Hall—the worst of the whole brood—those who robbed the dead and dying in
Wilstrop Wood."

It was not the Governor of Knaresborough who took command.  Without
pause for thought of precedence, Squire Metcalf lifted his voice.

"A Mecca for the King, and bustle about the business, lads!"

The road no longer showed like a meeting-place where idle gentry
foregathered to pass the time of day.  The Governor, with some envy
underlying all his admiration, saw the Metcalfs swing into line behind
their leader.

"Our horses are fresh," explained the Squire over shoulder, with a
twinge of punctilio.  "Do you follow, sir, and guard the women-folk."

"I shall guard them," said the Governor, laughing quietly.

Miss Bingham saw Joan watching the dust swirl and eddy in the wake of
the Riding Metcalfs, saw that the girl’s face was petulant and wistful.
"He did not pause to say good-bye," she said, with gentlest sympathy.

"I did not ask him to."

"But, indeed, men are fashioned in that mould. I am older than you,
child."

"So much is granted," said Joan sharply.

"And women are fashioned in their mould, too, with feet of velvet and
the hidden claws.  Yes, I am older.  You drew blood there."

"Miss Bingham, I am in no mood for petty warfare of our sort.  Our men
have done enough, and they are riding out again.  We women should keep
still tongues, I think, and pray for better guidance."

"How does one pray?  You’re country-bred and I am not."  The voice was
gentle, but the sideways glance had venom in it.  "It comes so easily to
you, no doubt—scent of hay, and church bells ringing you across the
fields, and perhaps _he_ will meet you at the stile, to share the
self-same book—is that what prayer means?"

"No," said the Governor, interposing bluntly. "Ask Lady Derby what
prayer means—she who has made Lathom House a beacon for all time.  Ask
Ingilby’s wife, who held Ripley for the King’s wounded—ask Rupert——"

"The Prince—is he, too, among the listeners to church bells?" asked Miss
Bingham airily.

"To be precise, he is.  I talked yesterday with one who was at York when
Rupert came to raise the siege. The Prince was spent with forced
marches, dead-weary, soul and body.  He had earned his praise, you would
have thought; but, when they cheered him like folk gone mad, he just
waited till the uproar ceased, and bared his head.  ’The faith that is
in me did it, friends, not I,’ he said, and the next moment he laughed,
asking for a stoup of wine."

"He cared for his body, too, ’twould seem," murmured Miss Bingham.

"A soldier does, unless by birth and habit he’s an incorrigible fool.
I’ve even less acquaintance than you with prayer; but I’ve seen the
fruits of it too often, child, to sneer at it."

"To be named child—believe me, sir, it’s incense to me.  Miss Grant here
was persuading me that I was old enough to be her mother.  I was
prepared to kneel at the next wayside pool and search there for grey
hairs."

"Search in twenty years or so—time enough for that.  Meanwhile, we have
to follow these hot-headed Metcalfs, and discipline begins, Miss
Bingham."

"Oh, discipline—it is as tedious as prayer."

The Governor cut short her whimsies.  "The tedium begins.  This is no
ballroom, I would have you understand."

Miss Bingham sighed as their company got into order.  "Why are not all
men of that fashion?" she asked languidly.  "It is so simple to obey
when one hears the whip, instead of flattery, singing round one’s ears."

Joan glanced at her in simple wonderment.  She had no key that unlocked
the tired, wayward meaning of this woman who had played many games of
chess with the thing she named her heart.

The Metcalfs, meanwhile, had gone forward at a heady pace.  As of old,
one purpose guided them, and one rough master-mind had leadership of
their hot zeal.  They encountered many piteous sights by the
wayside—stragglers from Marston, Knaresborough, York—but the old Squire
checked his pity.

"It’s forrard, lads, forrard!" he would roar from time to time, as they
were tempted to halt for succour of the fallen.

His instinct guided him aright.  When they came through the dust of
thirsty roads and the dead heat of a thunderstorm that was brewing
overhead, to the high lands overlooking Norton Conyers, they caught a
glint below them of keen sunlight shining on keen steel.

"It’s always my luck to be just in time, with little to spare," said
Blake, the messenger, who was riding at the Squire’s bridle-hand.  "D’ye
see them yonder?"

Metcalf saw a gently-falling slope of pasture between the Roundheads and
themselves, with low hedges separating one field from another.
"Tally-ho, my lads!" he laughed.  "I’ll give you a lead at the fences—a
Yoredale sort of lead."

The Parliament men checked their horses, gaped up at the sudden uproar,
and had scarce braced themselves for the encounter when the Metcalfs
were down and into them.  The weight of horseflesh, backed by speed,
crashed through their bulk, lessening the odds a little.  Then it was
hack, and counter, and thrust, till the storm broke overhead, as it had
done at Marston, but with a livelier fury.  They did not heed it.  Time
and again the yell of "A Mecca for the King!" was met by the roar of
"God and the Parliament!"  And Squire Metcalf, in a lull of the eddying
battle, found the tart humour that was his help in need.

"Nay, I’d leave half of it out, if I were ye, after what chanced in
Wilstrop Wood.  Fight for Parliament alone, and all its devilries."

That brought another swinging fight to a head; and the issue shifted
constantly.  The lightning danced about the men’s armour.  The thunder
never ceased, and the rain lashed them as if every sluice-gate of the
clouds were opened.

Very stubborn it was, and the din of oaths and battle-cries leaped out
across the thunder-roar, stifling it at times.

"The last shock, Meccas!" cried the Squire. "Remember Wilstrop Wood."

In the harsh middle of the conflict, the Squire aimed a blow at the
foremost of the Roundheads who rode at him.  His pike dinted the man’s
body-armour, and the haft snapped in two.  Little Blake rode forward to
his aid, knowing it was useless; and, with a brutish laugh, the
Roundhead swung his sword up.

And then, out of the yellow murk of the sky, a friend rode down to the
Squire’s aid—rode faster than even Blake had done on the maddest of his
escapades.  Kit, unpressed for the moment after killing his immediate
adversary, saw a blue fork of flame touch the uplifted sword and run
down its length.  The Roundhead’s arm fell like a stone dropped from a
great height, and lightning played about horse and rider till both
seemed on fire. They dropped where they stood, and lay there; and for a
moment no man stirred.  It was as if God’s hand was heavy on them all.

The Squire was the first to recover.  "D’ye need any further battle, ye
robbers of the dead?" he asked.

Without further parley they broke and fled. Panic was among them, and
many who had been honest once in the grim faith they held saw wrath and
judgment in this intervention.

The Metcalfs were hot for pursuit, but their leader checked them.  "Nay,
lads.  Leave the devil to follow his own.  For our part, we’re pledged
to get to Norton Conyers as soon as may be."

His kinsmen grumbled at the moment; but afterwards they recalled how
Rupert, by the same kind of pursuit, had lost Marston Field, and they
began to understand how wise their headstrong leader was.

The sun was setting in a red mist—of rain to come—when they reached
Norton Conyers; and an hour later the Governor of Knaresborough rode in
with the mixed company he guarded.  The men of his own garrison, the
women-folk of Knaresborough and Ripley, odds and ends of camp followers,
made up a band of Royalists tattered enough for the dourest Puritan’s
approval.

"Where is li’le Elizabeth?" asked Michael plaintively.  "For my sins, I
forgot her when the Squire told us we were hunting the foxes who raided
Wilstrop Wood."

"Who is Elizabeth?" snapped the Governor, in no good temper.

"Oh, a lady to her hoof-tips, sir—loyal, debonair, a bairn in your hands
when she loves you, and a devil to intruders."  He turned, with the
smile that brimmed out and over his Irish mouth. "Meccas all, the
Governor asks who Elizabeth is. They knew in Oxford, and praised her
grace of bearing."

A lusty braying sounded through the lessening thunder-claps, and a roar
of laughter came from Michael’s kinsmen.

"Twins are never far apart, if they can help it," said Christopher.  "It
is daft to worry about Elizabeth, so long as Michael’s safe."

From long siege on land there comes to men something of the look that
manners have whose business is with besieging seas.  The Governor’s eyes
were steady and far away.  He seemed bewildered by the ready laughter of
these folk who had ridden in the open instead of sitting behind castle
walls.  But even his gravity broke down when Elizabeth came trotting
through the press, and look about her, and found Michael.  She licked
his hands and face.  She brayed a triumph-song, its harmony known only
to herself.

"One has not lived amiss, when all is said," said Michael.  "You will
bear witness, sir, that I have captured a heart of gold."

The Governor stopped to pat Elizabeth, and she became an untamed fury on
the sudden, for no reason that a man could guess.

"I—I am sorry, sir," Michael protested.

"Oh, no regrets!  She is a lady to her hoof-tips, as you said, and my
shins are only red-raw—not broken, as I feared."

It was well they had their spell of laughter in between what had been
and what must follow. When they came to Norton Conyers, it was to find
the mistress dull with grief, and hopeless.  All she cared for lay
buried, with pomp and ceremony enough, in the kirkyard below.  She was
scarcely roused by the news that fire and rapine would have raided the
defenceless house if the Riding Metcalfs had not come on the stroke of
need.

"I thank you, gentlemen—oh, indeed, I thank you.  But nothing matters
very much.  He waits for me, and that is all."

She was past argument or quiet persuasion.  They ate and drank their
fill that night, because they needed it—and their needs were the King’s
just now—and on the morrow, when they had cursed their wounds, and
prayed for further sleep, and got up again for whatever chanced, they
found Graham’s widow still intractable.  They told her that the safety
of many women-folk was in her hands.

"I trust them to you," she said.  "There’s an old nurse of mine lives up
in a fold of the hills yonder. They will not find me there, and I care
little if they do.  Meanwhile, I shall get down each night and morning
to pray for the soul of a gallant gentleman who has unlocked the
Gate"—her eyes were luminous with a temperate fire—"unlocked it a little
ahead of me.  He has left it on the latch."

The Squire bent to her hand.  "Madam," he said, his roughness broken up,
as honest moorland soil is broken when it is asked to rear pleasant
crops—"madam, I’ve a wife in Yoredale, I.  She carries your sort of
heart, I think.  Of your charity, pray for her till I come."

"I shall pray, sir."

And so the Riding Metcalfs went from Norton Conyers, with an added
burden of women-folk, but with a sense of rosemary and starshine, as if
they had tarried for a while in some wayside Calvary.




                            *CHAPTER XXII.*

                            *MISS BINGHAM.*


It was no usual comradeship that held between the Royalists who gathered
in one company after Marston Moor was lost to the King. They travelled
through vile roads—roads broken up by incessant rains—they camped
wherever they found a patch of drier ground for the night’s sleep. But
never for a moment did they lose the glamour that attached to the person
of King Charles.  Like a beacon-light, the thought of the
half-vanquished Stuart went steadily in front of them.  Their strength
lay in this—that, whether death or life arrived, they knew the venture
well worth while.

The life had a strange savour of its own.  The Nappa Squire, the late
Governor of Knaresborough and his officers, Lady Ingilby—all had known
the weight of harsh responsibility so long as the King’s cause was alive
in the North.  The cause was dead now.  There was no need to be at
strain, sleeping or waking, with the sense that it rested with each of
them to keep the monarchy secure. There was asked of them only a
haphazard and stimulating warfare, of the sort dear to all hillmen.

Scarborough Castle fell, and when the news was brought—they were dining
at the moment in a wooded dell between Beamsley and Langbar—the Governor
lifted his hat with pleasant gravity.

"God rest the gentlemen of Scarborough.  They have earned their holiday,
as we have."

Michael was busy with the stew-pot, hanging gipsy-wise on three sticks
above a fire of gorse and fir-cones.  "It’s hey for Skipton-in-Craven,"
he said with a cheery smile.  "I aye liked the comely town, and now the
King will know that she was the last in all the North to stand for him."

"Maybe Skipton has fallen, too, by this time," chided the Squire.  "You
were always one for dreams, Michael."

Michael was silent till the meal was ended.  Then he mowed a swath of
thistles with his sword, and brought the spoil to Elizabeth, tethered to
a neighbouring tree.  She brayed at him with extreme tenderness.

"Now that we’re well victualled, friends," he said lazily, "who comes
with me to hear how it fares with Skipton?"

The Governor did not like the venture—the hazard of it seemed too
great—but Squire Metcalf did.

"How d’ye hold together at all, Michael?" roared the Squire.  "So much
folly and such common sense to one man’s body—it must be a civil war
within yourself."

Michael glanced at Joan Grant with an instinct of which he repented
instantly.  "It is, sir.  Since I was born into this unhappy world,
there has been civil war inside me.  I need an outlet now."

"You shall have it, lad."

"And you call this common sense?" asked the Governor, with good-tempered
irony.

"Ay, of the Yoredale sort.  A blow or two in Skipton High Street—who
knows what heart it might give the garrison?"

"I must remind you that we have women-folk to guard, and our wounded."

"But, sir, this is a Metcalf riding, all like the olden time.  We never
meant your Knaresborough men to share it."

Yet some of the Knaresborough men would not be denied; and the Governor,
as he saw the sixty horsemen ride over and down to
Beamsley-by-the-Wharfe, wished that his private conscience would let him
journey with them.  He stood watching the hill-crest long after they had
disappeared, and started when a hand was laid gently on his arm.

"It is hard to stay?" asked Lady Ingilby.

"By your leave, yes.  Why should these big Metcalfs have all the
frolic?"

"Ah, frolic!  As if there were naught in life but gallop, and cut and
thrust, and——sir, is there no glory in staying here to guard weak?"

The Governor was in evil mood.  He had seen the King’s cause go, had
seen Knaresborough succumb, had watched the steadfast loyalty of a
lifetime drift down the stream of circumstance like a straw in a
headlong current.

"Lady Ingilby," he said wearily, "there is no longer any glory anywhere.
It has gone from the land."

"It is here among us.  Till we were broken folk, I did not know our
strength.  None but the Stuart, friend, could have kept us in such
friendliness and constancy.  Oh, I know!  I saw you glance round for
your horse when the Metcalfs went—saw your struggle fought out, sir—and,
believe me, you were kind to stay."

They finished their interrupted meal at leisure; and it was not till
about four of the clock that Miss Bingham, who had strayed afield to
pick a bunch of valley lilies, came running back to camp.  The two men
in pursuit blundered headlong into the enemy before they saw their
peril; and they found scant shrift.

Miss Bingham, thoroughbred beneath her whimsies, halted a moment to
regain her courage.  "These are but outposts, sir," she said.  "From the
hill-top I could see a whole company of Roundheads."

"Their number," asked the Governor—"and are they mounted?"

"More than our own, I think, and they go on foot."

"And half of us wounded.  Come, gentlemen, there’s no time to waste."

His weariness was gone.  Alert, masterful, almost happy, he bade the
women get further down the hill, out of harm’s way.  He gave his men
their stations—little knots of them cowering under clumps of gorse and
broom—until the land seemed empty of all human occupation.  Only
Elizabeth, the wayward ass, lifted up her voice from time to time, after
finishing the last of the thistles Michael had given her.  And suddenly,
as they waited, the Governor let a sharp oath escape him.

"This comes of letting women share a fight. In the name of reason, why
is Miss Bingham running up the hill again?"

They peered over the gorse, saw the tall, lithe figure halt, clearly
limned against the sky-line.  They heard her voice, pitiful and
pleading.

"Parliament men, I am alone and friendless. Will you aid me?"

A steel-capped Roundhead showed above the hill-crest.  "There are plenty
to aid such a comely lass as thee," he said, his rough Otley burr
cutting the summer’s silence like a blunt-edged knife.

"Then follow quickly."

The Governor laughed gently as he watched Miss Bingham turn and race
down the hill.  "A rare plucked one, she," he muttered, "kin to Jael, I
fancy, wife of Heber the Kenite."

She passed close by him on her breathless run down hill and joined the
women-folk below.  And the next moment the red havoc of it began.  The
Roundheads saw their leader race forward, and followed in close order.
Down the slope they poured, and every clump of gorse spat out at them
with a red and murderous fire.  Then the Knaresborough men were up and
into them, and when their leader got back to Otley with the remnants of
his men, he protested that "he’d fancied, like, they’d ta’en all the
hornets’ nests i’ Yorkshire, but some few thrifty wasps were breeding
still."

"Why do you laugh?" said Lady Ingilby, when the Governor came down to
tell her all was well.

"Because luck is as skew-tempered as the jackass braying yonder.  Have
the Metcalfs had such frolic out at Skipton, think ye?  And I was keen
to ride with them—Miss Bingham, I owe you reparation. When I saw you
move up the hill yonder, I cursed you for a woman."

"That was unwise, sir.  As well curse Elizabeth because she is a donkey,
and yearns for absent friends; or the jack-snipe, because his flight is
slanting; or any of us who are made as we are made."

"We thought you light of heart, child, in the old days at Knaresborough.
Yet none of us could have planned a neater ambush."

"It was my old pastime, after all.  How often you’ve chided me for
luring men into folly.  Oh, what wise and solemn discourses you have
given me, sir, on the unwisdom of it!"

"There was wisdom in it this time.  But for the ambush, we could not
have faced the odds."

For the next hour she busied herself with bandaging the men’s hurts;
then, with a restlessness that had been growing on her since the
Metcalfs went, she climbed the hill again.  Only Blake saw her go.
Unrest had been his comrade, too, since he found himself sharing this
odd gipsy life with the woman he asked least to meet on this side or the
other of the grave.

He followed with reluctance and a smile at his own folly.  She was
standing on the hill-crest, one hand shading her eyes, as if she looked
for some one to arrive.

"Does he come, Miss Bingham?" asked Blake.

She turned with a fury that died away and left her helpless.  There was
derision, heart-ache, pity, in Blake’s mobile face.

"Is all forgot, then, Mr. Blake?  There was a time in Knaresborough, at
the ferry-steps, when you thought kindly of me."

"There was.  I ask you for some explanation of the madness.  To my
shame, the memory came and weakened me years after—when I found myself
in Oxford, to be precise, and heard the nightingales. Answer the riddle.
How can a thing so slight and empty hinder a grown man?"

"You are bitter, unforgiving."

"Neither.  I’ve ridden too many evil roads to remember bitterness.  It
is simply that I’m tired and filled with wonder.  Tell me why Oxford and
the nightingales opened an old wound afresh."

"It goes back to Eve’s days, I think," murmured Miss Bingham.

Demureness, coquetry, the hint of tears and laughter in her eyes—all
should have disarmed Blake.

"Ay, find other shoulders for the blame," he said impassively.

"As Adam did."

Again the easy insolence failed her at need. She was aware that no
nimbleness of tongue could help her now.  Blake stood there like some
judge whose bias against the prisoner at the bar was hardening.

"After all, you owe me gratitude," she went on hurriedly.  "If it had
not been that I’m fickle—oh, I admit as much—you would not stand where
you stand now.  I remember you so well—gay, easy-going, with a tongue
that made one half believe your flattery.  And now?  You’re Blake the
rider—little Blake—Blake who never tires.  I see men lift their heads
when your name is mentioned, and hear their praise.  Did I do so ill at
Knaresborough, to set you on the road?"

"You broke my heart.  If that was to do well—why, my thanks, Miss
Bingham."

It was then, for the first time, that knowledge came to her, as if a
veil were lifted.  She saw the years behind.  Vanity, pride of conquest,
zest in the hunting for hunting’s sake—these had been her luxuries.  She
had not guessed that the sport might cripple men for life.

"Why do you tell me this—you who are so proud and reticent?"

"Not for my pleasure," he answered drily. "There’s a lad of the Metcalfs
I have a liking for. I would save him from my sort of fate, if that
could be."

He could not understand the change in her.  She was fierce, vindictive.
Through the velvet dalliance of her life the claws flashed out.  Then,
in a moment, she repented.  Her voice grew smooth and insolent again.

"Oh, Puritan, because you have forgotten how to play, you would put all
light-hearted folk in prison.  Sir, by your leave, I wait here till one
Christopher Metcalf returns from Skipton town. I wish him very well."

"Then heaven help him, madam," said Blake, and went down the hill in
search of better cheer.

The Metcalfs long ago had come to Embsay, and up the further hill that
gave them a clear view of Skipton.  The long, grey church, the Castle’s
sturdy front, the beautiful, wide street, rich in the summer’s greenery
that bordered it, lay spread before them in the golden sunlight.  The
market-square was packed with men, and the hubbub of the crowd came up
the rise.

The Squire of Nappa had called a halt because their horses needed a
breathing-space before they put their project into action.  More than
once, during the ride out, they had laughed at the humour of their plan,
though most men would have been thinking of the extreme hazard.  They
proposed, in fact, to get behind the Roundheads’ position on Cock Hill,
to charge them unexpectedly from the rear, and to capture their cannonry
by sheer speed of onset.

"It will be a tale to set the whole North in a roar," said the Squire.
"And the Royalists up hereabout, God knows, have need of laughter these
days."

"Ay, but look yonder, sir," put in Christopher gravely.

The Squire followed the direction of his hand. In the sunlit
market-square they saw Mallory, the Governor, ride over the lowered
drawbridge.  After him came the gentry and the ladies of the garrison,
then soldiery on foot; and, last of all, the stable-boys and cooks and
scullions, who had ministered for two long years to the needs of those
besieged.

Mallory was erect and buoyant.  Standards waved in the merry breeze,
their colours glowing in the sunlight.

"What does it mean?" asked Christopher. "It is no sortie; yet they ride
with heads up, as if life went very well with them."

The old Squire passed a hand across his eyes. Feeling ran deep with him
at all times; and now it was as if he looked years ahead and saw the
King himself go out in just this fashion, proud, resolute, content with
the day’s necessary work.

"It means, my lad," he said roughly, "that Skipton-in-Craven has yielded
at long last.  But she goes out with the full honours of war, and she
can boast till the Trump o’ Doom that she was the last in Yorkshire to
stand for the King’s Majesty."

They rode a little nearer to the town.  And now they could see that the
crowd thronging the High Street was made up of Parliament men, who moved
to one side and the other, clearing a route for the outgoing garrison.
They saw Lambert ride forward, salute Sir John Mallory with grave
punctilio—heard Mallory’s voice come lightly on the wind, as if he
exchanged a jest—and then the long procession passed, with banners
flying, and the tale of Skipton’s siege was ended.

"Best turn about, Metcalfs," growled the Squire. "We can do nothing
here.  There’ll be the women wanting us out Beamsley way, and Michael
has his donkey to attend to."

"True," assented Michael.  "All’s gone—Marston, York, Skipton—but
Elizabeth is with us still. There’s many a kick left in li’le
Elizabeth."

So—with laughter, lest they cried—the Metcalf men took route again for
Beamsley.  And the Squire rode far ahead, with a stormy grief and a
sense of utter desolation for companions.

Kit, seeing his father’s trouble, was minded to spur forward and help
him in his need; but Michael checked him.

"He has the black dog on his shoulders.  Best leave him to it."

"Why, yes.  That is the Metcalf way, I had forgotten, Michael."

When they neared the hill that was the last of their climb, up and over
into Beamsley, they saw the slim figure of a woman, tall against the
sky; and, as they came nearer still, Michael—whose sight was like a
hawk’s—told them that Miss Bingham was waiting there to bring them back.

"Kind and sonsy, she," laughed one of the late garrison at
Knaresborough.

"You will unsay that, sir," said Christopher.

"There’s nothing to unsay.  Kind and sonsy—daft hot-head, you might say
that of your own mother."

"In a different tone.  You will unsay it."

"And why?  We Knaresborough men seldom unsay anything, until our
windpipes are cut clean in two."

"There’s for a good Irishman!" said Michael, putting his bulk between
the combatants.  "He’ll talk, says he, when his windpipe is in two.
They could not better that in Donegal."

So the quarrel was blown abroad by the laughter of their fellows; but
Michael, as they jogged up the hill, grew dour and silent.  Kit’s sudden
heat astonished him.  He had not guessed that the lad’s regard for Miss
Bingham went deeper than the splash of a pebble in a summer’s pool.

When they reached the hill-top, a fresh surprise awaited him.  Miss
Bingham was standing there, with pale, drawn face; and her eyes searched
eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest.

[Illustration: "Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company,
and disdained the rest."]

Michael could not believe it.  Her easy handling of the world she knew
by heart—the levity that cloaked all feeling—were gone.  She put a hand
on Kit’s bridle-arm as he rode up, and forgot, it seemed, that many folk
were looking on.

"You are wounded.  No?  Then how fares it out at Skipton?"

The old Squire had seen the drift of things with an eye as keen as
Michael’s; and in his present mood he was intolerant of women and all
gentler matters.  "It has sped bonnily," he snapped. "Skipton has gone
down-stream with the flood, Miss Bingham, and there’s no more to do,
save tend women’s vapours and feed Michael’s jackass."

She smiled pleasantly at this man in evil mood. "Sir, that is not like
you.  If your courtesy towards women has gone, too, then chivalry is
ended for all time."

The Metcalfs waited for the Squire’s rejoinder. None guessed how the
rebuke would take him; but all knew how deep he was wading in the chill
bog of adversity.  They saw him lift his head in fury, saw him relent
with hardship.

"Miss Bingham," he said, "there was a sorrow and a madness at my heart.
You are right.  If I forget courtesy toward women, I forget the wife who
bred tall sons for me in Yoredale."

He went apart that night and took counsel of his God, on the high lands
where the birds seemed to rise for matins almost as soon as evensong was
ended. He came down again for early breakfast in the woodland camp, with
all the grace of youth about him, in high spirits, ready for the day’s
surprises.




                            *CHAPTER XXIII.*

                              *YOREDALE.*


From that day forward, the first strangeness of their gipsy life grew to
be familiar, usual. Little by little the Parliament soldiery went south
or westward, to share in the attack on Royalist garrisons still
unaffected by the disastrous news from Yorkshire; but the country was
infested by roving bands of cut-purses and murderers—men who had hung on
the skirts of civil war, ready to be King’s men or Levellers, when they
knew which side claimed the victory.

It was the exploits of these prowling rascals that set many a story
going of the outrages committed by true Roundheads, who had no share in
them; but the Squire of Nappa was not concerned with public rumour or
the judgment of generations to come after.  His whole heart—all the
untiring watchfulness that had made him a leader of picked cavalry—were
centred in this new, appalling peril. Day by day the raff and jetsom of
the country moved abroad in numbers that steadily increased.  They were
not dangerous in the open against the disciplined men of Knaresborough
and Nappa; but they asked for constant vigilance, as if the wolf-packs
of old days had returned to haunt these moorland solitudes.

They were heading by short stages to Nappa; for, as the Squire
explained, there was room enough in house and outbuildings to house them
all, and they might well hold it for the King, if the chance of war
brought the tumult North again.

"A hard-bitten bull-dog, you," said the Governor of Knaresborough.

"Ay, maybe.  I guard my own, and there’s a sort of bite about a Mecca
when he’s roused."

"There is, sir—a Yorkshire bite, they say."

Their route was hindered, not only by prowling vagabonds, but by the men
who fell sick by the wayside, now that the stress of the big fight was
ended, and they had leisure to take count of wounds. Miss Bingham went
among the fallen, bandaging a wound here, giving a cup of water there,
bringing constantly the gift she had of soothing sick men’s fancies.

Once—it was when they camped on Outlaw Moss, and the gloaming found her
nursing little Blake—the Governor and Squire Metcalf halted as they made
their round of the camp.

"So Blake has given in at last," said the Squire. "Pity he didn’t learn
that lesson years ago."

"That is true, sir," said Miss Bingham gravely. "With a broken heart,
there’s no shame in lying down by the wayside.  He should have done it
long since."

The Governor laughed, as if a child’s fancy had intruded into the
workaday routine.  "The jest will serve, Miss Bingham.  We know Blake,
and, believe me, he never had a heart to be broken. Whipcord and
sinew—he rides till he drops, with no woman’s mawkishness to hinder
him."

"No mawkishness," she agreed.  "I give you good-night, gentlemen.  He
needs me, if he is not to die before the dawn."

"Oh, again your pardon," said the Governor roughly.  "You played in
Knaresborough—you were always playing—and we thought you light."

"So I am, believe me, when men are able to take care of themselves.  It
is when they’re weak that I grow foolish and a nurse."

Metcalf and the Governor were silent as they went their round, until the
Squire turned abruptly.

"My wife is like that," he said, as if he had captured some new truth,
unguessed by the rest of a dull world.  "Ay, and my mother, God rest
her. Memories of cradle-days return, when we are weak; they show their
angel side."

"There’s only one thing ails Miss Bingham—she’s a woman to the core of
her.  Eh, Metcalf, it must be troublesome to be a woman.  I’d liefer
take all my sins pick-a-back, and grumble forward under the weight, and
be free of whimsies."

Through the short summer’s night, Miss Bingham tended Blake.  She heard
him talk of Knaresborough and the ferry-steps—always the ferry-steps.
She learned all that she had seemed to him, and wondered how any man
could view any woman through such a pleasant mist of worship.  Then she
listened to the tale of his rude awakening, and winced as he spoke in
delirium words that could never be forgotten.  And then again they were
watching Nidd River swirl beneath them, and he was busy with a lover’s
promises.  When he slept at last, wearied by the speed of his own
fancies, she sat watching him. A round, white moon had climbed over the
edge of Outlaw Moss.  She saw the lines of hardship in his face—lines
bitten in by harsh weather of the world and of the soul.

"Poor Blake," she thought, "ah, poor li’le Blake!"

From the foolery that had been her life till now there came a gust of
sickliness.  Blake could not live till dawn.  She would go afield while
they were hiding him under the earth, would bring wild flowers and strew
them broadcast over his resting-place. She would pray tenderly at his
graveside.

Already she half believed these pious exercises would recompense Blake
for the loss of all he had cared for in this life.  He would know that
she was there, and look down on the fret and burden of his heartbreak as
a thing well worth the while.  She would smother his dead grief with
flowers and penitence.

It was Blake himself who disordered the well-planned poetry.  He did not
die at dawn.  They waited three days on Outlaw Moss till they knew that
he would live, and four days afterwards until his old laugh returned,
and he could get his knees about a saddle.  Then they went forward
another stage on the slow journey out to Nappa.

Miss Bingham stood between the old world and the new; and that
experience, for any man or woman’s soul, is hazardous.  She saw herself
in true outline.  As others gambled with gold and silver pieces, she had
played with hearts.  She had not known the value of the stakes; but now
she understood.  One by one, in memory’s cold procession, she saw them
pass—Blake, his young soul on fire with worship; Anstruther, who had
persisted in throning her among the stars, and who was now, they said,
no company for any gentry save those of wayside taverns.  She hid her
eyes.  Spoiled, wayward, she resented the discipline of penance. Day by
day she thought more of Christopher, and welcomed his sturdy
self-reliance as a shield against her past.

Day by day, too, Joan Grant grew more silent, more aloof from the
haphazard routine of their life among the hills.  And the whole camp
looked on, afraid for their idol, Christopher, afraid for Joan, great
loathing for Miss Bingham growing in their midst.

Miss Bingham, well aware of the hostility, did not know whether her
heart were hardened or softened by it.  It was as if she stood in the
thick of a northern March—sunshine on one side of the hedge, sleet and a
bitter wind on the other.  But there came a day when she carried her
troubles to a little, ferny glen hidden deep among the pastures and the
heather.  Their morning’s route had brought them near to Hawes, the grey
village that gathers the spreading Yorkshire dales into its hand as a
lady holds an open fan.  The camp was busy, dining on odds and
ends—mutton, cabbage, herbs, all stewing fragrantly in a pot reared
gipsy-wise over a fire of wood—and Miss Bingham heard their laughter
come up the breeze.

They had purchased a barrel of home-brewed ale from a neighbouring
tavern, and were toasting Blake at the moment.

"Here’s to li’le Blake, who never tires," said the Squire.

"Why should he?" put in Michael.  "Women have never troubled him, I
wager."

"At your age, youngster, to go flouting the good sex!" growled the
Governor.

"Your pardon, sir.  The sex has flouted me.  I’m envying Blake because
he had mother-wit to steer wide of trouble.  Even Elizabeth, who dotes
on me, is full of the most devilish caprices."

Kit grew impatient of it all.  He was in no mood for the banter and
light jests that eased the journey home to Nappa.  There was a fever in
his blood, a restlessness whose cause was known to every man in camp
except himself.  He sought some hiding-place, with the instinct of all
wounded folk; and his glance fell on a wooded gorge that showed as a
sanctuary set in the middle of a treeless land.

He came down the path between the honeysuckle and the flowering thorns.
There was a splash of water down below, and he had in mind to bathe in
some sequestered pool and wash away the heat and trouble of the times.

He found the pool, green with reflected leafage, deep and murmurous, and
saw Miss Bingham seated at its brink.  She turned with a smile of
welcome.

"I knew that you would come, my Puritan.  There is room beside me here.
Sit and tell me—all that the waterfall is singing—the might-have-beens,
the fret and bubble of this life—the never-ending wonder that men should
die for their King when there are easier roads to follow."

"Ask the stream."  Kit’s laugh was unsteady, and his voice seemed to
come from far-away.  "To die for the King—it may not be ease, but surely
it is happiness."

"Talk to me.  Tell me how he looked—the King—when you saw him there in
Oxford.  And Rupert? His name alone brings back the old Crusading days,
before we grew tired of poetry."

She beguiled him into talk.  She spun a web about him, fine as gossamer
and strong as hempen rope. All the route south to Oxford—the return by
way of Lathom House—the queer way of their entry into York—took on a new
significance and glamour as she prompted him with eager, maidish
questions.

"So you came to York as a Puritan?  There would be no great disguise in
that, as I have told you often.  Ah, no wrath, I pray you!  Women laugh
at—at those they care for, lest they care too much."

Kit seemed to be in some poppyland of dreams. He had travelled that
country once already in Miss Bingham’s company—at the ferry-steps in
Knaresborough.  Then he had been weak of body, recovering slowly from a
sickness she had nursed. Now he was hale and ruddy; but there is a
weakness of great health, and this found him now.  Gallop and trot over
perilous roads, rude bivouacs by night and rough-handed war by day—these
had been his life since, long ago, he had left the ripening Yoredale
corn.  He was weary of the effort, now that it was over; and all the
gardens he had known, all the ease and softness of summer skies, were
gathered round this woman who shared the glen with him.

"And there was Marston," she said, breaking the silence.

"Ay, God knows there was Marston.  Rupert, the Squire, and I—the three
of us lying in a bean-field, listening to the wounded there in Wilstrop
Wood—I can hear the uproar now."

"Ah! forget it.  It is over and done with.  You have earned your ease."

Kit believed it.  The poppy odours were about him, thick as the scent of
flowering beans that had all but sent Rupert and himself to their last
sleep at Marston.  The strong, up-country gospel whispered at his ear
that no man earns his ease this side the grave.  He would not heed the
whisper. It was good to be here with the lapping water, the smell of
woodland growth, the woman who cast pleasant spells about him.

A great pity stirred in her, against her will.  She grew aware of things
beyond the dalliance of each day’s affairs.  Here, weak in her hands,
was a man to be made or marred; and he seemed well on the way to lose
all because she bade him.  Compunction came to her.  She was minded to
laugh out of court this grave affair, and send him out, as she had done
others, with great faith in her own instability.

Yet she was powerless.  The war her men-folk had waged against the
adversary—their simple faith in kingship threading all their days, of
fight and drink and banter, with a golden skein—had touched the heart
that had been cold till now.  By his own strength he must win through
this combat she had forced on him—or by his own weakness he must take
her hand and lead her through the years that must for ever be made up of
broken vows.

Kit got to his feet, paced up and down irresolutely. He was fighting for
the kingship of his soul, and all the glen went dizzying by him.  It was
a simple matter that brought back the memory of ancient loyalty and
faith—just the song of the water as it splashed down its ferny bed.  He
glanced sharply round, saw the fall of the stream, with sunlight and the
glint of shadowed leafage on its ripples.  He remembered just such a
waterfall, just such a sheltered glen, away in Yoredale.

The poppy-sleep was on him still.  Yoredale was far away, and Joan’s
tongue was barbed with nettle-stings these days.  Better to take his
ease, and have done with effort.  He glanced again at the water
splashing down its steep rock-face; and suddenly he stood at attention,
as if the King confronted him. It might be his fancy; it might be some
chance play of light and shade, made up of dancing water and leafage
swaying in the summer’s breeze; but the thing he saw was a sword,
silver-bright—a big, two-handed sword with its hilt clear against the
sky, and its point hidden in the pool below.  He stood for a moment,
bewildered.  Then a great sob broke up the grief and hardship that had
been his since Marston.

She followed the pointing of his finger, but saw nothing save water
slipping down the cool rock-front.

Then she glanced at his face, and saw that the days of her sorcery were
ended.

A forlorn self-pity numbed her.  If he had broken faith with Joan Grant,
she would have recompensed him—have been the tenderest wife in
Christendom, because he had found her womanhood for her—had taught her
heart to beat, instead of fluttering idly to every breeze that roamed.

"Sir, I hate you most devoutly," she said.  "Get up the wood again.  I
used to laugh at all good Puritans, and the memory would hurt me if you
stayed."

Kit was never one to hide his light or darkness from a prying world.
The whole camp had seen his madness, had marvelled at the change in
him—his sudden tempers, his waywardness, his hot impatience for fight of
some kind—with his fellows or with any roaming band of enemies that
chanced to cross, their path.  Now they wondered that he went among them
with a new light about his face, a gaiety that was not so heedless as of
old, but riper and more charitable.

"The Babe grows up," said Michael to the Squire, as they jogged forward
over sultry roads.

"It will be a thrifty growth, lad.  If I could say as much of thee, I’d
be content."

"Oh, I’m past gibes, sir.  Elizabeth, alone of you all—she understands
me.  We have long ears and long wits, she and I.  Believe me, we are
wise."

They came at last to their own country, and the Knaresborough men
wondered why jest and high spirits ceased among the Riding Metcalfs.
They did not guess how rooted in the homeland were the affections of
these men who had gone abroad to play their part in the big issue of
King and Parliament. They could not divine the mist of tenderness and
yearning that veiled their eyes as they saw the slopes of Yoredale run
to meet their eager gallop.  Wounds, havoc of battlefields that had seen
brave hopes lost, all were forgotten.  They were back among the greening
corn again.

The Squire lost courage, for the first time since the riding out, when
he reached the gate of his own homestead and saw his wife run forward in
answer to the rousing challenge of "A Mecca for the King!"

She came to his saddle, lifted up her face, as a bride might do for the
nuptial kiss.  She looked for Kit, the well-beloved, and for Michael.
Then her glance ran to and fro among the company, seeking for remembered
faces; and memory found many gaps.  She faced her husband.  There was
accusation in her voice; for she had sat at home with weariness and fear
and abnegation, and all her strength was gone.

"Where are the rest?" she asked.

"Serving the King, wife, wherever they be. I’ll go warrant for a Metcalf
beyond the gates of this world."

With a coldness that dismayed them, she counted her living Metcalfs.  "A
hundred and twenty rode out.  Fifty and two return.  The sunshine hurts
me."

"They did well—no man can do more."

Those looking on saw courage struggle through her weakness, and in their
hearts they knew that warfare had shown nothing finer.  "I—I shall pray
that this bitterness may go from me.  I shall hope to tell them—oh, a
little later on—that it is good to die for the King’s Majesty."

They saw her waver, saw the old, indomitable pride return.

"Metcalfs, well done—oh, well done!  I am proud of my living—and my
dead."

"God rest their souls, wife.  They have harvested their corn."

As the weeks passed on, and grief and wounds alike were healing, a new
disquiet stole in and out among the men quartered in Nappa’s hospitable
house and outbuildings.  They were idling here. If Marston Moor had
killed the cause in the north, there was battle doing further south.

The Squire’s wife watched it brewing, this new menace to all that was
left of her happiness.  She knew, that it was idle to resist or to
persuade.  She had bred men-sons for the King’s service, and must abide
by it.

Joan Grant was younger to experience.  First-love was hindering her
vision of what her man must do before he came to his kingdom; and she
quarrelled openly with Christopher, as they came home together through
the gloaming August fields.

"So you are weary of me in a month?" she said, halting at the stile.
"Ah, the pity of it.  It was here—or have you forgotten?—that I bade you
climb high if you would find my heart.  And you climbed and—and found
it, and now you talk of battle—only of battle and the King."

All his world seemed to fail him—the will to ride out again until there
was no more asked of him but to return and claim her—the certainty that
she would be the first to give God-speed to his errand—all were drowned
in this storm of tears and petulance that broke about him.  Yet he
remembered the sword that had stood, its point in the woodland stream,
its hilt against the clear, blue sky above.  He did not waver this time,
for his love was no beguilement, but a spur that urged him forward.

"I go," he said roughly.

"And if you lose me in the going?"

"Then I lose you—there’s no choice."

She got down from the stile, rebellious, fitful as a gusty spring.  It
was only when they neared the homestead that she turned, her eyes bright
and eager, and touched his hand.  "I am glad—oh, I am glad!" she said.

Late that afternoon Miss Bingham and little Blake had gone for a
moorland ride together.  Blake had made a false recovery from his
weakness, as soon as he learned that there was to be another riding-out,
and had urged that he must get his mare in trim again by daily rides.
And Miss Bingham had insisted that his nurse went with him, lest he fell
by the way.

In all her wide experience of men she had not met one so gay, so
tranquil, so entirely master of what had been, of what was to come, as
this little Irishman whose health had gone down the stream of high
adventure.  With a broken heart and a broken body, he thought only of
the coming rides through lonely night-roads, of Meccas riding again for
the King they served, of the dust and rain of circumstance.  He
remembered droll stories, flavoured by Irish wit and heedlessness.  He
fell, between whiles, into passionate hope of what was to come, when the
King came to his own in the south country, by help of the Riding
Metcalfs, and drove the rebels from the north.  Then, with a gentleness
that laughed at itself, he explained that it was good to have sat on the
ferry-steps at Knaresborough.

"I lost—but the stakes were well worth winning. The Blakes were ever
gamblers."

She had great skill in tending the wounded.  In the man’s face she read
many signs of bodily weakness.  His voice—his detachment from the gross
affairs of life—told their own tale.  But she did not look for it so
soon.

At the gate of the farmstead, just as he dismounted, Blake fell prone in
the roadway, and tried to rise, and could not.

When Joan and Kit Metcalf returned—it might be a half-hour later—they
found Miss Bingham kneeling at the dead man’s side.  And her face, when
she lifted it, was a woman’s face—grave, charitable, tender with some
forward hope.

"Here’s little Blake," she said.  "He rides very well, my friends."




                                THE END.




                   LONDON: WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.






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