Chapter II: Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"On which side are you, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And then, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE LAST LAUGH.*

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

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

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

"I have that privilege."

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

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

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

"I am."

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

"Well?" asked the prisoner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're rough and uncivil, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I stay bound," said Kit impassively.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER V.*

*THE LADY OF RIPLEY.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In the open?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I need her. You do not understand."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Six-score to meet three armies?"

"If luck goes that way."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER VI.*

*HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK.*

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

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

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

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