At one end of the bench outside the garden door of Ashcroft, Widow Flemyng’s great black cat lay sunning himself; at the other end Hugh Gwyeth sat hugging one knee, while he wondered drowsily which were the lazier, he or the cat. In the alert blue spring weather the tips of green things were bursting through the soft mould of the garden; the birds were making a great ado in the trees; and in the field beyond the hedge the widow’s man, Ralph, was ploughing, and whistling as he ploughed. Only Master Hugh Gwyeth lingered idly on the garden bench and meditatively handled the flabby muscles of his arm till he grew impatient with himself. Three weeks and more he had been at Ashcroft, yet this was all the strength he had gained or was likely to gain with sitting still. He dragged the cat, heavy and reluctant, up from its nap, and was trying to coax the creature to jump over his hands, which at least required a little exertion, when Nancy, the serving-maid, came out to potter about the garden. Spying him, she called: “Don’t ’ee vex poor Gib, now. Better get thee into the kitchen; the mistress is at her baking.”

Hugh laughed, and, rising leisurely, made his way down the garden to the rear door. Women were droll creatures, he reflected; his mother, of course, had always treated him with tenderness, but why these strangers should pamper him like a child, and concern themselves about his every movement, was more than he could puzzle out. From the first Nancy had made no end of commiserating him for the scar on his face, and even the widow herself, for all her sharp ways, had been melted to pity, when she came to examine his wardrobe. “Well, well, well! when did a woman put hand to these shirts?” she had cried, whereat Hugh informed her blushingly that ’twas his custom to have his shirts washed till they grew too tattered to serve even under a buff jacket, and then he threw them away. “You poor thriftless child!” sighed the widow, “sure, you’re not fit to be sent to the wars.” So she mended his shirts and stockings, and, when that way of showing her motherly care failed, brewed him ill-tasting concoctions of herbs, which Hugh swallowed courteously, though with inward protests against this expression of good-will. He was far more grateful when her kindness finally took the form of cooking him such food as he liked, and pressing him to eat at all times, for his illness had left him with an alarming appetite, which without such connivance could never have been decently satisfied.

He halted now, as he had often done, with his elbows on the sill of the opened window in the long kitchen, and took a sweeping survey of the dressers and the fireplace and the brick oven. Just by the window stood a table at which the Widow Flemyng, with her sleeves tucked up and her broad face flushed, was rolling out pastry. “I marvel you’ve not been here before,” she said gruffly, as she caught sight of him; “where have you been all this morning now?”

“Teasing the cat,” Hugh answered. “Before that I was down through the meadow—”

The widow paused with her rolling-pin suspended. “That meadow again? And no doubt you wet your feet!”

“On my word, good widow,” Hugh laughed, “my kinsfolk have trusted me abroad without a nurse for several years now.”

“The more fools they!” she replied, smacking the pastry smartly once more.

Profiting by the pause, Hugh reached one arm in at the window and helped himself to a strip of pie-crust, all hot and newly baked, that lay there; he might repress his early fondness for honey and jam, but crisp pastry was still too great a temptation for him to resist.

“That’s a right Roundhead trick to come thieving at a poor woman’s window!” said the widow.

“Was there never such a thing as a Cavalier thief?” Hugh suggested.

“I never speak treason, sir. There do be some that say there is a garrison yonder at Woodstead Manor that never was known to pay for what it lives by, but I speak no ill of the king’s men, you’ll note.”

Hugh had cause enough to note and remember the conversation a few days later. Of a dull gray afternoon he had taken himself to his chamber, dutifully to practise thrusts with his sword at a round mark on the wainscot, an exercise which proved tedious, so he was glad enough when a noise of horses stamping and men calling in the yard below gave him an excuse for running to the window. At the front of the cottage nothing was to be seen, so, flinging on his coat, he ran downstairs into the kitchen, whence came the sound of high talk. Bursting into the room, he found Nancy crouched by the fireplace, and Ralph skulking by her, while at the door stood Widow Flemyng, arms akimbo, in hot discourse with a cross-eyed trooper, who wore the king’s colors.

“I tell you, it shall not be put up!” the man was blustering. “We’d scarce set foot in your stable when your rascal would be breaking a stave across Garrett’s head.”

“And I tell you, you shall put up with it!” retorted the widow. “Do you think to come plundering decent loyal bodies, you minching thieves? Not a step do you stir into this house. Reach me hither the kettle, you white-livered Ralph.”

Hugh prudently got the kettle into his own hands, then presented himself at the door with the query, “What’s amiss?”

“Here are three rogues from Woodstead who seek to plunder the very horses from my plough,” replied the widow, clapping hands on the kettle. “Now come in if you dare, the pack of you!”

But Hugh stayed her arm, while he looked out and got the situation. In the open space between the rear door and the stable three horses drooped their heads, and by them lingered two dragoons, one heavy and surly, the other a thin-faced fellow, who, looking sharply at Hugh, nudged his comrade. It seemed just an ordinary small foraging band, who were going beyond their authority, so Hugh stepped out and confronted the cross-eyed man with a stern, “What’s your warrant for this?”

“King’s service, sir,” the other replied, gazing at him a little doubtfully.

“’Tis service that will profit you little if it come to your captain’s ears,” Hugh answered. “There are none here but loyal people and friends to the king. Best take advice and go back empty-handed. ’Twill be for your good in the end.”

Just there a hand was clapped heavily upon his collar; instinctively Hugh was ducking to wrest himself clear, when the cross-eyed man, too, caught him by the throat of his jacket, and, realizing the uselessness of a struggle, the boy held himself quiet. “We’ll go back to Woodstead right enough, sir,” spoke the thin-faced trooper, who had first seized him. “But you’ll go with us, Master Gwyeth.”

“My name is Edmund Burley,” Hugh replied stoutly, though the heart seemed all at once to have gone out of his body.

“Well, you’ve enough the look of the other gentleman for Lord Bellasis to pay ten pound for the sight of your face. You can explain to him who you are, sir,” scoffed the thin-faced man. “Fetch a horse from the stable for him, Garrett.”

After that, as in an ugly dream, matters went without Hugh’s agency. He felt his arm ache in the hard grip of the cross-eyed man, which he had no hope to shake off; he heard the widow in heated expostulation with the thin-faced trooper, assuring him the gentleman had dwelt with her near six months, and could not have had a hand in the mischief they charged him with; he saw Nancy come out, all blubbering, to bring him his hat, and he said, “Why, don’t cry over it, wench,” and wondered at the dull tone of his voice. It seemed an interminable time, but at length one of the plough horses was led out, all saddled, and, mounting as they bade him, he rode away with them in the gray of the afternoon. As they passed out from the yard he heard the door of Ashcroft slam, and by that he knew the widow was much moved.

Then, turning eastward, they trotted slowly across gray fields, a trooper on either side Hugh’s horse, and he went as they guided. For he took no heed to them, as he told himself that Dick Strangwayes was far away in the North, Sir William busied at Tamworth, and in Oxford there was not a friend to aid him. Already he seemed to feel the chill of the cells in the old Castle at Oxford, and to see a room full of stern men who bullied and frightened him; after that he thought to hear the cart jolting beneath him across the stony streets, while the people ran and pointed at him; and then he felt a rope about his throat. He tried helplessly to battle off such thoughts, but they still pressed upon him till his head was stupid with turning them over, and, listening uncomprehendingly to the talk of those about him, he rode in a sort of daze.

The afternoon grew grayer and grayer, and was merging into twilight when they rode through a poor village, beyond which, upon a barren swell of highland, they came to a stockade flung around a small manor house. They crossed a rough bridge over a moat, and so, keeping to the left of the house, drew rein at length before a great stable. “Yon’s the captain, now,” spoke the cross-eyed man, peering into the dark of the building.

“Looking to the cocks, I’ll be bound,” muttered he of the sharp face.

“What dog’s mischief have you been loitering about, you knaves?” came from within the stable, and the voice was one Hugh remembered.

“Captain Butler!” he cried, flinging himself from the saddle, and, stumbling through the door, near embraced the big Irishman who came to meet him.

“Good faith, ’tis not—” Butler began.

“I am Edmund Burley,” Hugh interrupted feverishly. “Sure, you remember me, sir?”

Butler pulled him outside, where the light was clearer, and after that instant’s pause turned upon the troopers with a violent demand as to what they meant. One replied, “’Tis he who killed Master Bellasis;” but the captain cut him short with a volley of abuse, that they durst hale thither an innocent man and a friend of his, too, and followed it with threats of a flogging to them all and bluster and oaths, till the three were cowed into a frightened silence.

“Well, I’ll be easy with you this time, you rogues,” Butler resumed after a moment, “for Master Burley is a merciful man, and I’m thinking would be better pleased that you went free. And, faith, he bears so little malice he wishes you all to drink his health.” Thus admonished, Hugh pulled three shillings out of his pocket and tossed them to his late captors before Butler led him away to the house. “Come have a drink with me, Burley,” he said, and added, with a chuckle, “I take it you need it.”

“That was a narrow escape, eh, Gwyeth?” he spoke later, as Hugh was swallowing down a bumper of Spanish wine in the west parlor of the house.

“Narrow as I ever wish,” Hugh replied truthfully.

“I think my fellows will hold their tongues now, betwixt threats and bribes,” Butler went on. “But after this you’d best do as you should have done at the first, shelter yourself among honest soldiers, who’d die ere they’d let a comrade come to harm, just for spitting a paltry civilian.”

In the end Hugh thought it best to take the advice; if he returned to Ashcroft there was no reason that Cavalier marauders should not stray thither again, and a second apprehension might not end so happily. Then, besides, he was glad, after his weeks of illness and dependence, to be once more among men, who accepted him as an equal and did not fret him with constant care. Holding this feeling rather ungrateful, he took pains to write a very civil and thankful letter to the Widow Flemyng, which George Allestree conveyed to her, when he rode to Ashcroft with one of the men to fetch away Hugh’s clothes and accoutrements.

Allestree had welcomed Hugh boisterously, although he had an alarming habit of almost forgetting to call him Burley; the blue-eyed Irish volunteer, Mahone, received him with open arms; and even the lieutenant, Cartwright, unbent a little toward him. Before a fortnight was out Hugh understood, for by then he felt he could have fallen on the neck of the meanest scamp, just for joy at sight of a new face in the garrison. Woodstead lay close upon the borders of Warwickshire, where the rebels were up in strength, so none were allowed to venture forth far from the house. All day long there was nothing to do but to walk up and down the cramped enclosure, to converse with the troopers as to sick dogs and lame horses, or to watch Butler’s cocks mangle each other in fight, till in sheer disgust Hugh turned away. But within the house he found still less amusement; there was not even a Gervase Markham or a Palmerin to read, so he was reduced to persuading Allestree or Mahone into fencing with him, and, that failing, could only play at cards or watch the others at dice, and listen to Cartwright’s same old stories or the everlastingly same chatter of the younger men.

Once, to be sure, there came a day of excitement, when a part of the troop prepared to ride away to forage in the hostile country. They set forth bravely in the mid-afternoon, and till they were lost in dust Hugh, with neither a horse to ride nor sufficient strength for the work, watched them wistfully from the entrance gate. Then he loitered away to his lonely supper with Cartwright, who cursed the luck that left him behind to command the garrison, and drank so deeply Hugh must call a man to help him to bed. Next day Butler and his men came back, noisy and victorious, with cartloads of grain and much miscellaneous plunder that the common soldiery had taken to themselves. They brought also a Roundhead lieutenant, half-stripped, grimy, and sullen, whom Butler clapped into an obscure room on a spare diet till he could find leisure from his more serious affairs to look to him. For the captain had laid hands on a considerable amount of strong waters, so for two days there was high carousing at Woodstead, which shocked Hugh, used though he had become among these comrades to the sight of hard drinking.

While Butler and his officers shouted and smashed glasses below stairs, and the men in their turn let discipline slip, Hugh, in the hope of getting some tidings of his Oldesworth kindred, bribed his way in to speak with the Roundhead prisoner. The man was defiant at first, then more communicative when Hugh smuggled him in some bread and meat, but, being of a Northamptonshire regiment, he could give little of the information Hugh sought, save that he had heard of Captain Thomas Oldesworth and had had speech with Hugh’s other uncle, Lieutenant David Millington, who was in garrison with his company of foot at Newick in Warwickshire. For his Roundhead kinsfolk’s sake Hugh lent the lieutenant a coat, and, when Butler, in a shaky, white state of sobriety, packed him off under guard to prison at Oxford, gave five shillings to the corporal who had charge of the squad, and urged him to use the prisoner as civilly as he could. Considering the temper of the squad, however, and the fact that his old acquaintance, the surly Garrett, was one of them, Hugh decided those five shillings had probably been expended for nothing.

Near a week later the men came back, and, in his joy at any new sight in his monotonous life, Hugh turned out to meet them. He counted them idly, as they came pacing in at the gate, till his eyes fell upon a horse that Garrett led, a bay horse, all saddled, which put up its head and whickered. “Bayard!” Hugh cried, plunging into the press, and, getting the horse clear, fair put his arms about its neck in the face of the whole garrison. “Where did you find him?” he questioned Garrett a moment later, sharply, to preserve his dignity.

The man explained they had come home by a way that took them near Ashcroft, for he held there might be letters Master Burley would gladly pay a price for, and there they had found both a letter and the horse, which had been waiting him some days.

Hugh paid generously, the more so as he saw the letter was directed in Dick’s black hand; that made the sending of Bayard no longer a mystery, for doubtless Dick would have him come northward now and so had sent him the horse. He could hardly wait to see the beast stabled before he ran up to the chamber he shared with Allestree, and tore open the letter that should summon him. Then he read:—

That night Hugh ate no supper. Sitting on the broad window-bench he watched the sunlight wane upon the floor, and the twilight fill in the chamber, and from time to time, till it was quite dark, he re-read the letter. In those hours he came to realize how much he had lived on the expectation that any day Dick might call for him, and he sickened at the thought of the dull, hateful days of inactivity before him, for now he must school himself to endure the long three months of summer with Butler’s crew. Below he could hear the officers singing over their wine, and, fearing lest Allestree might come half-drunk to urge him to the table and jeer at his sorry silence, he slipped out by the back way to the stable, where till bedtime he tried to find some comfort in petting Bayard.

Next day life was running its old round, save that the hope which before had made it tolerable was gone. That week Hugh discontinued fencing; the weather was over-hot, and besides, what use to drill himself for action, when Dick had no need of him, and his present companions were content to idle? Instead of using the rapier, he set himself to watching Allestree and Mahone at dice, and at length came to take a hand himself. It was an ill memory to him afterward, those feverish summer mornings when, sitting in their shirt-sleeves, they threw and threw, sometimes with high words and oaths, sometimes in silence, save for Allestree’s half-laugh when he made a winning cast. Fortune varied, but in time there came a day when Hugh got up from the table, and, thrusting his hands into two empty pockets, slouched off with his head down. He heard Allestree say, “I hate a fellow who loses with ill grace,” and Mahone call, “Hi, Ed! Come back. Don’t give over, man, as long as you’ve a shirt to stake. Put up your horse now.”

But Hugh shook his head. Though he had diced away every penny he possessed, and with it every hope of setting out by himself to seek other harborage than Woodstead, he would not risk his horse and sword. Not twenty-four hours later he had cause to rejoice at having kept his equipments, for at the mess table Butler announced briskly that next day the troop would ride a-foraying into Northamptonshire, to a little village called Northrope, where corn could be got in plenty. “And wine from a brave tavern there,” Allestree whispered Hugh; “Else the captain would not be so forward in this business.”

But in his joy at having a hand in active service once more, the end of the expedition mattered nothing to Hugh. Before noon next day he had his buff jacket on and his sword slung over his shoulder, then fretted away the long hours of expectation by tramping about the enclosure, settling Bayard’s saddle, and listening to Allestree’s proffered bets on the success of the night’s work. The sun had set behind the low green hills, when at last Butler led half his troop forth from Woodstead, with Allestree to keep the rear and Mahone and Hugh to put themselves wherever they were bid. In spite of the gathering twilight the air was still heavy with the sweltering heat of the day, and the dust that was beaten up by the feet of the horses prickled and stung. Before the first mile was out Hugh had flung open his coat, and was more disturbed at Bayard’s sweating than at the thought of the skirmish that was to come.

The night air was cooler and the stars were out thick, when at length the word ran through the line that Northrope lay over the next swell in the plain. Falling in with the squadron behind Butler, who was to sweep around and attack the village from the east while Allestree rode in at the west side, Hugh drew away noiselessly from the rest of the troop, and at a swift canter passed through a field into a piece of spicy-smelling woodland. Beyond that they rode softly along a stretch of sandy road, and at last halted upon the brow of a hill, beneath which the dark roofs of cottages could be seen. At a whispered command from Butler Hugh ranged himself among the corporal’s guard who were to keep the hill and stop whoever fled that way, while the rest of the dragoons fell into place behind the captain. Then the leader turned to a trooper, who, swinging his dragon to his shoulder, fired into the air. An instant, and far to the west another shot replied, Butler shouted to charge, and with his men at his heels galloped away down the hill.

Below in the village Hugh heard the sound of clattering hoofs, of shouts of attack, and shriller cries. A moment later, and, as he gazed, he saw over to the west a reddish gleam that broadened and brightened. “They’ve fired the village,” muttered one trooper, and the rest grumbled subduedly that all within the scurvy place would be burned ere they came to share the plunder.

The moments ran on, while the fire rose and sunk again, till Hugh judged the night more than half spent. Still none had fled in their direction; the men were restless at their useless stay, and Hugh himself had grown to hate this waiting, for it left him time to reflect, and to compare this raid with the daylight fighting he had had under Turner. For all the ugly sights of plunder to be seen he felt it a relief when the corporal gave the word to descend into the village, and gladly as the rest he trotted forward.

Once in among the houses his comrades scattered to plunder, but Hugh, left alone, rode on down the street, which grew lighter with the flare of the burning houses. He had sight of household stuff that littered the roadway; in the lee of a wall he saw a man sitting with his hand pressed to his breast; and down toward the blaze, where was a great yelling and confusion, he made out against the glare the black shapes of men running to and fro. He saw, too, nearer at hand, a flapping sign-board before what seemed an inn, where a noisy crew had possession, and he halted a moment, while he wondered grimly if Butler were not there and if he should report to him. As he hesitated he heard some one shout from an upper window of the cottage on his right, and he let his eyes travel thither. The place looked dark and blank, but as he gazed the door was kicked open and a man came forth, holding by the arm a girl, who dragged back with all her slender strength. “What devil’s trade are you about?” Hugh called angrily. “Bring the wench hither.”

The man hesitated, then unwillingly slouched nearer. As the firelight flared along the street Hugh saw it was his old enemy, the cross-eyed trooper; then his gaze dropped lower to the pallid face of the girl. At that Hugh sprang from his saddle with a cry, “Lois, Lois!”