.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 43551
   :PG.Title: The White Horses
   :PG.Released: 2013-08-24
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Halliwell Sutcliffe
   :DC.Title: The White Horses
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE WHITE HORSES
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   .. _`"Old Squire Metcalf, as he went out to meet him, broke into a roar of laughter."`:

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

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

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      THE WHITE
      HORSES

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     BY

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      HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE

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

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

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      To my Sister's Memory

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   CONTENTS.

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   CHAPTER

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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`_

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   Illustrations

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

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`"'You're the Squire of Nappa, sir?' he said."`_

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`"'Yes, you can be of service,' he whispered."`_

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`"'Say, do you stand for the King?'"`_

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

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

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

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

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`"'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert."`_

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

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

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

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.. _`WHO RIDES FOR THE KING?`:

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   THE WHITE HORSES.

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   CHAPTER I.

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   WHO RIDES FOR THE KING?

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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."

.. _`"'You're the Squire of Nappa, sir?' he said."`:

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   :alt: "'You're the Squire of Nappa, sir?' he said."

   "'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.





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.. _`SKIPTON-IN-CRAVEN`:

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   CHAPTER II.


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   SKIPTON-IN-CRAVEN.

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"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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SOME MEN OF FAIRFAX'S`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III.


.. class:: center medium bold

   SOME MEN OF FAIRFAX'S.

.. vspace:: 2

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."





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.. _`THE LAST LAUGH`:

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   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAST LAUGH.

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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."

.. _`"'Yes, you can be of service,' he whispered."`:

.. figure:: images/img-053.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Yes, you can be of service,' he whispered."

   "'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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LADY OF RIPLEY`:

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   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LADY OF RIPLEY.

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK`:

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   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK.

.. vspace:: 2

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."

.. _`84`:

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT`:

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   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT.

.. vspace:: 2

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?"

.. _`"'Say, do you stand for the King?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-114.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Say, do you stand for the King?'"

   "'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.

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

.. figure:: images/img-116.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Without a word of any kind, a third prisoner was thrown against them."

   "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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LOYAL CITY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LOYAL CITY.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





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.. _`THE RIDING IN`:

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   CHAPTER X.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE RIDING IN.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

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

.. figure:: images/img-144.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight."

   "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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BANBURY CAKES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   BANBURY CAKES.

.. vspace:: 2

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!"





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.. _`PAGEANTRY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   PAGEANTRY.

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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."





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.. _`THE LADY OF LATHOM`:

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   CHAPTER XIII.


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   THE LADY OF LATHOM.

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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?"

.. _`"'Well, sir?' she asked sharply. 'You rob me of sleep for some good reason doubtless?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-174.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Well, sir?' she asked sharply. 'You rob me of sleep for some good reason doubtless?'"

   "'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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A STANLEY FOR THE KING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A STANLEY FOR THE KING.

.. vspace:: 2

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?"





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.. _`TWO JOLLY PURITANS`:

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   CHAPTER XV.


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   TWO JOLLY PURITANS.

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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.

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

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

   "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.





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.. _`THE SCOTS AT MICKLEGATE`:

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   CHAPTER XVI.


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   THE SCOTS AT MICKLEGATE.

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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."





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.. _`PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM`:

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   CHAPTER XVII.


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   PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM.

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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."

.. _`"'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert."`:

.. figure:: images/img-237.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert."

   "'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.





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.. _`MARSTON MOOR`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   MARSTON MOOR.

.. vspace:: 2

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."





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.. _`WILSTROP WOOD`:

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   CHAPTER XIX.


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   WILSTROP WOOD.

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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."

.. _`"'Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or is dead for the King.'"`:

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

   "'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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HOMELESS DAYS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HOMELESS DAYS.

.. vspace:: 2

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."

.. _`"'If the end of the world came—here and now—you would make a jest of it.'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-282.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'If the end of the world came—here and now—you would make a jest of it.'"

   "'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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SIR REGINALD'S WIDOW`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   SIR REGINALD'S WIDOW.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MISS BINGHAM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   MISS BINGHAM.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

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

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

   "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.





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   CHAPTER XXIII.


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   YOREDALE.

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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."

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   THE END.

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   LONDON: WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.

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