Allan was now married to Jemima, who had once been cook at the house of Windy Standard. Hugh John went over to their cottage often to eat her delicious cakes; and when Allan came in from the woods, his wife ordered him to take off his dirty boots before he entered her clean kitchen. Then Allan Chestney would re-enter and play submissively and furtively with Patty Pans, their two-year-old child, shifting his chair obediently whenever Cook Jemima told him. But all the same, Hugh John felt dimly that these things would not have happened, save for the look on his father's face when Allan Chestney went in to see him that day in the grim pine-boarded workroom.

So, much lightened in his mind by his discovery, Hugh John took his way down the avenue. At the foot of it, and before he came to the locked white gate and the cottage of Betty, he turned aside through a copse, over a little green patch of sward on which his feet slid smooth as velvet. A hare sat on the edge of this, with her fore-feet in the air. She was for the moment so astonished at Hugh John's appearance that it was an appreciable period of time before she turned, and with a quick, sidelong rush disappeared into the wood. He could hear the soughing rush of the river below him, which took different keys according to the thickness of the tree copses which were folded about it; now singing gaily through the thin birches and rowans; anon humming more hoa.r.s.ely through the alders; again rustling and whispering mysteriously through the grey shivery poplars; and, last of all, coming up, dull and sullen, through the heavy oak woods, whose broad leaves cover all noises underneath them as a blanket m.u.f.fles speech.

Hugh John skirted the river till he came to the stepping-stones, which he crossed with easy confidence. He knew them--high, low, Jack, and game, like the roofs of his father's outhouses. He could just as easily have gone across blindfold.

Then he made his way over the wide, yellowish-grey s.p.a.ces of the castle island, avoiding the copses of willow and dwarf birch, and the sandy-bottomed "bunkers," which ever and anon gleamed up before him like big tawny eyes out of the dusky grey-green of the short gra.s.s.

After a little the walls of the old castle rose grimly before him, and he could hear the starlings scolding one another sleepily high up in the crevices. A black-cap piped wistfully among the sedges of the watermarsh. Hugh John had often heard that the ruin was haunted, and certainly he always held his breath as he pa.s.sed it. But now he was on duty, and, if need had been, he would that night have descended to the deepest dungeon, and faced a full Banquo-board of blood-boltered ghosts.

CHAPTER XI.

ENEMY'S COUNTRY.

He presently came to the wooden bridge and crossed it. He was now on the outskirts of the town, and in enemy's country. So, more from etiquette than precaution, he took the shelter of a wall, glided through a plantation, among the withy roots of which his foot presently caught in a bra.s.s "grin," or rabbit's snare. Hugh John grubbed it up gratefully and pocketed it. He had no objections whatever to spoiling the Egyptians.

He was now in butcher Donnan's pastures, where many fore-doomed sheep, in all the bliss of ignorance, waited their turns to be made into mutton. Very anxiously Hugh John scrutinised each one. He wandered round and round till he had made certain that Donald was not there.

At the foot of the pasture were certain black-pitched wooden sheds set in a square, with a little yard like a church pew in the midst.

Somewhere here, he knew, slept Donnan's slaughterman, and it was possible that in this place Donald might be held in captivity.

Now it was an accomplishment of our hero's that he could bleat like any kind of sheep--except perhaps an old tup, for which his voice was as yet too shrill. In happy, idle days he had elaborated a code of signals with Donald, and was well accustomed to communicating with him from his bedroom window. So now he crouched in the dusk of the hedge, and said "Maa-aaa!" in a tone of reproach.

Instantly a little answering bleat came from the black sheds, a sound which made Hugh's heart beat faster. Still he could not be quite sure.

He therefore bleated again more pleadingly, and again there came back the answer, choked and feeble indeed, but quite obviously the voice of his own dear Donald. Hugh John cast prudence to the winds. He raced round and climbed the bars into the enclosure, calling loudly, "Donald! Donald!"

But hardly had his feet touched the ground when a couple of dogs flew at him from the corner of the yard, and he had scarcely time to get on the top of a stone wall before they were clamouring and yelping beneath him. Hugh John crouched on his "hunkers" (as he called the posture in which one sits on a wall when hostile dogs are leaping below), and seizing a large coping-stone he dropped it as heavily as he could on the head of the nearer and more dangerous. A howl most lamentable immediately followed. Then a man's voice cried, "Down, Towser! What's the matter, Grip? Sic' them! Good dogs!"

It was the voice of the slaughterman, roused from his slumbers, and in fear of tramps or other midnight marauders upon his master's premises.

Hugh ran on all fours along the wall to the nearest point of the woods, dropped over, and with a leaping, anxious heart sped in the direction of home. He crossed the bridge in safety, but as he ran across the island he could hear the dogs upon the trail and the encouraging shouts of his pursuer. The black looming castle fell swiftly behind him. Now he was at the stepping-stones, over which he seemed to float rather than leap, so completely had fear added to his usual strength wings of swiftness.

But at the farther side the dogs were close upon him. He was obliged to climb a certain low tree, where he had often sat dangling his legs and swinging in the branches while he allowed Prissy to read to him.

The dogs were soon underneath, and he could see them leaping upward with snapping white teeth which gleamed unpleasantly through the darkness. But their furious barking was promptly answered. Hugh John could hear a heavy tread approaching among the dense foliage of the trees. A dark form suddenly appeared in the glade and poised something at its shoulder.--Flash! There came a deafening report, the thresh of leaden drops, a howl of pain from the dogs, and both of them took their way back towards the town with not a few bird shot in their flanks.

Hugh John's heart stood still as the dark figure advanced. He feared it might prove to be his father. Instead it was Tom Cannon, and the brave scout on the tree heaved a sigh of relief.

"Who's up there?" cried the under-keeper gruffly; "come down this moment and show yourself, you dirty poacher, or by Heaven I'll shoot you sitting!"

"All right, Tom, I'm coming as fast as I can," said Hugh John, beginning to clamber down.

"Heavens and earth, Master Hugh--what be you doing here? Whatever will master say?"

"He won't say anything, for he won't know, Tom Cannon." said Hugh John confidently.

"Oh yes, he will," said the keeper. "I won't have you bringing a pack of dogs into my covers at twelve of the clock--blow me if I will!"

"Well, you won't tell my father, anyway!" said Hugh John calmly, dusting himself as well as he could.

"And why not?" asked the keeper indignantly.

"'Cause if you do, I'll tell where I saw you kissing Jane Housemaid an hour ago!"

Now this was at once a guess and an exaggeration. Hugh John had not seen all this, but he felt rather than knew that the permitted arm about Jane Housemaid's waist could have no other culmination. Also he had a vague sense that this was the most irritating thing he could say in the circ.u.mstances.

At any rate Tom Cannon fairly gasped with astonishment. A double-jointed word slipped between his teeth, which sounded like "Hang that boy!" At last his seething thoughts found utterance.

"You young imp of Satan--it ain't true, anyway."

"All right, you can tell my father that!" said Hugh John coolly, feeling the strength of his position.

Tom Cannon was not much frightened for himself, but he did not wish to get Jane Housemaid into any trouble, for, as he well knew, that young woman had omitted to ask for leave of absence. So he only said, "All right, it's none of my business if you wander over every acre, and break your neck off every tree on the blame estate. But you'd better be getting home before master comes out and catches you himself! Then you'd eat strap, my lad!"

So having remade the peace, Tom escorted Hugh John back to the dog kennel with great good nature, and even gave him a leg up to the roof above the palace of Caesar.

Hugh John paused as he put one foot into the bedroom, heavy and yet homelike with the night smell of a sleeping house. Toady Lion had fallen out of bed and lay, still with his blanket wrapped round him like a martial cloak, half under his cot and half on the floor. But this he did every other night. Prissy was breathing quietly in the next room. All was safe.

Hugh John called softly down, "Tom, Tom!"

"What now?" returned the keeper, who had been spying along the top windows to distinguish a certain one dear to his heart.

"I say, Tom--I'll tell Jane Housemaid to-morrow that you're a proper brick."

"Thank'ee, sir!" said Tom, saluting gravely and turning off across the lawn towards the "bothy," where among the pine woods he kept his owl-haunted bachelor quarters.

CHAPTER XII.

MOBILISATION.

Generally speaking, Hugh John despised Sammy Carter--first, because he could lick him with one hand, and, secondly, because Sammy Carter was a clever boy and could discover ways of getting even without licking him. Clever boys are all cheeky and need hammering. Besides, Sammy Carter was in love with Prissy, and every one knew what that meant.

But then Sammy Carter had a sister, Cissy by name, and she was quite a different row of beans.

Furthermore, Sammy Carter read books--a degrading pursuit, unless they had to do with soldiering, and especially with the wars of Napoleon, Hugh John's great ancestor. In addition, Sammy knew every date that was, and would put you right in a minute if you said that Bannockburn happened after Waterloo, or any little thing like that. A disposition so perverse as this could only be cured with a wicket or with Hugh John's foot, and our hero frequently applied both corrections.

But Cissy Carter--ah! now there was a girl if you like. She never troubled about such things. She could not run so fast as Prissy, but then she had a perfect colt's mane of hair, black and glossy, which flew out behind her when she did. Moreover, she habitually did what Hugh John told her, and burned much incense at his shrine, so that modest youth approved of her. It was of her he first thought when he set about organising his army for the a.s.sault upon the Black Sheds, where, like Hofer at Mantua, the gallant Donald lay in chains.

But it was written in the chronicles of Oaklands that Cissy Carter could not be allowed over the river without Sammy, so Sammy would have to be permitted to join too. Hugh John resolved that he would keep his eye very sharply upon Prissy and Sammy Carter, for the abandoned pair had been known to compose poetry in the heat of an engagement, and even to read their compositions to one another on the sly. For this misdemeanour Prissy would certainly have been court-martialled, only that her superior officer could not catch her at the time. But the wicked did not wholly escape, for Hugh John tugged her hair afterwards till she cried; whereat Janet Sheepshanks, coming suddenly upon him and cornering him, spanked him till _he_ cried. He cried solely as a measure of military necessity, because it was the readiest way of getting Janet to stop, and also because that day Janet wore a new pair of slippers, with heels upon which Hugh John had not been counting. So he cried till he got out of Janet's reach, when he put out his tongue at her and said, "Hum-m! Thought you hurt, didn't you? Well, it just didn't a bit!"

And Sir Toady Lion, who was feeding his second-best wooden horses with wild sand-oats gathered green, remarked, "When I have childwens I sail beat them wif a big boot and tackets in the heel."

Which voiced with great precision Janet Sheepshanks' mood at that moment.