Chapter III: Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A damp sort of message," hazarded Newcastle.

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

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

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

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

"Go find Rupert for us," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A jest. No more."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not for you to see, perhaps."

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

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

*CHAPTER VII.*

*A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To find Rupert for them."

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

"That is our errand, sir."

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

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

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

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

"So they said in York, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is not true," said Kit passionately.

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

"All that you left unsaid."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ah!" said Phil Amory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So we have, lad."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER VIII.*

*HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is this true, Christopher?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Just that, sir."

"What route do you take?"

"Michael's--to follow the sun and our luck."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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