"That's the road to Newcastle," said I, pointing along the edge of the mere, "and it's fairly straight and good. Follow me there as quickly as you can, and inquire for me at the 'Rising Sun.' I'll have news of the Colonel, if not the Colonel himself, when we meet again."

I bowed to Margaret, dug my heels into Sultan, and was off like a flash.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH I SLIP

Sultan was a horse for a man, long and regular in his stride, perfect in action, quick to obey, cat-like at need. I might have ridden him from the day on which the blacksmith drank his colt-ale, for we understood each other exactly, and I was as comfortable on his back as in my bed at the Hanyards. In the open road at the mere-end, he settled down into a steady, loping trot, and I was free to think matters out to the music of his hoof-beats on the road.

It was only eight or nine miles into Newcastle, and as the dragoons would travel slowly and warily there was just a chance that I should be there first. Further, it was wholly unlikely that I should be interfered with, since the only two enemies who knew I was aiding Mistress Margaret were helpless in my rear--Brocton at Stafford, and the sergeant in the "Ring of Bells." I was unknown in the town, not having been there since my schooldays, and then only on rare occasions, as a visit to the town meant a thirty-mile walk in one day.

Plan-making was futile. Everything would depend upon chance, but if chance threw me into touch with the Colonel, it should go hard if I did not free him somehow or other. The most splendid thing would be if I could free him before Margaret overtook me at the "Rising Sun." True, I had only an hour or so to spare, but now strange things happened in an hour of my life, and this great luck might be mine. Then would come my rich and rare reward--the light in her deep, blue eyes and the tremulous thanks on her ripe, red lips.

And then a thought smote me like a blow between the eyes, so that I dizzied a moment, and the day grew grey and the outlook blank. The finding of the Colonel meant the losing of Margaret. Father and daughter reunited, my work would be done; the day of the hireling would be accomplished. Need for me there would be none. The old life would again claim me, justly claim me too, for was I not, though all unworthily and unprofitably, the only son of my sweet mother, and she a widow. I could see her in the house-place at the Hanyards, her calm eyes fixed in sorrow on my empty chair. _A man shall leave father and mother_, yes, for one particular cause, but the only son of a widowed mother for no cause whatsoever.

Christ, I said to myself, would not have raised the young man of Nain merely to get married.

Still there was the work, and I spurned my gloomy thoughts and turned to think of it. And first I took stock of my means of offence. There were loaded pistols in the holsters, fine long weapons with polished walnut stocks inlaid with silver lacery and the initials 'C.W.', the Colonel's without a doubt. At the saddle-bow there hung a sizeable leathern pouch, and this I found to contain a good supply of charges. I was a sure shot, and I tried my skill on a gate as Sultan flew by, splintering the latch at which I aimed to a nicety, the well-trained horse taking no more notice of the shot than of a wink at a pa.s.sing market-wench. So far so good. Then there was the sergeant's tuck, and I shouted with a schoolboy's glee at having for the first time in my life a sword at my side. Of how to use it I knew nothing, unless many bouts at single-stick with Jack should be some sort of apprenticeship in swordcraft. I practised pulling it out, and then, imitating Brocton, made the forty-inch blade twist and tang in the air, which pleased me greatly. I felt quite a Cavalier now, and said within myself that old Smite-and-spare-not's bones should soon be rustling in their grave with envy.

And so into Meece, wondering if the fat host of the "Black Bull" would recognize in the splendidly mounted horseman the dusty schoolboy of ten years ago. There he was in the porch, grown intolerably fatter, talking to my ancient gossip, Rupert Toms, the s.e.xton, now heavily laden with years and infirmities. I p.r.i.c.ked on, having no time to spare for either prayer or provender, since every moment was precious, though a tankard of double October, mulled with spice and laced with brandy, would have been precious too, for the matter of that.

At the tail of the village, where the curve of the road runs into the straight again to climb the long hill, I came for a moment into touch with my affair. A horseman was in sight, rattling down the slope, and I saw that he was an officer, a keen-featured, middle-aged man, with the set face of one who rides on urgent business. Yet he checked his horse when near me, and cried curtly, "What news from Stafford?"

A word with him might be worth while, so I too pulled up and answered very politely, "It's market-day."

"d.a.m.n the market! What news of the troops, sir? Is my Lord Brocton still there?"

"I believe he is."

"Then d.a.m.n my Lord Brocton! Did you chance to see him?"

"I had that honour late last night."

"Anything the matter with him?"

"He'd had enough," said I simply.

"That's what comes of shoving sprigs of your bottle-sucking n.o.bility into the service. d.a.m.n his n.o.bility! There's another of them back yonder, as much use as an old tup."

"If I detain you much longer," said I, with exaggerated sweetness, "you'll be d.a.m.ning me."

"Nothing likelier. I d.a.m.n everything and everybody that don't suit me.

That's why I'm captain at fifty instead of colonel at thirty. What of it?"

"Lord Brocton's nine miles off, and I'm not."

"Think I care? d.a.m.n you, too, and I'll fight you when we meet again. Like a lark! Wish I'd time now. Good day, sir!"

He dug the rowels into his horse and was off. An earnest, choleric man with his heart in his work, for which I liked him, even to his persistent d.a.m.ning.

I put Sultan to the slope and he kept bravely at it till I eased him off where the rise was steepest. My late encounter clearly meant that affairs were ripening fast farther north, and it might also mean danger behind me sooner than I had looked for. The blood danced in my veins at the prospect of the adventures that awaited me. Ho, for life and work! Would it be long before the blue eyes lanced me through and through again, as when I kissed her hand among the trees by the roadside? I looked at the frosty sun and judged that it was nigh on twenty-four hours since I had stood in the porch and watched mother and Kate across the cobbles into the road--twenty-four hours that had done more for me than the twenty-four years that had gone before them, for they had given me a man's task, a man's thoughts, the stirrings of a man's being, the beginning of a man's agony.

We were at the top now with the open country stretching for miles around us. But the dale beneath, through which the main road ran a mile away to the east, was thick with trees, and I could get no inkling of how things were going. I strained my ears to listen, but no warning sound could I hear. The countryside was still and calm as a frozen sea, and war and its terrors seemed so impossible that for a moment I felt as if it was only a dream-life that I was living and that I must wake soon and hear Joe Braggs trolling out his morning song in honour of Jane. But Sultan craned round his shapely head as if to ask me why I was loitering in the cold, bleak air; so with a cheery slap on his glossy neck, I gave him the reins and away he went, with me spitting ghostly Broctons on the sergeant's tuck.

Through the skirts of the woodland he carried me, and then up again till on the top of Clayton Bank I pulled him up a second time for another survey of the situation.

The little town was now in full view a mile ahead, lying on the slope and top of some rising ground. Across the meadows to my right, and now plainly to be seen less than half a mile away, was the main road from Stone. Again I was disappointed. A long, rude post-wagon, pulled by eight horses and driven by a man on an active little nag, was groaning its way south; a solitary horseman was ambling north--and that was all I could see.

What had happened to the Colonel? Were the dragoons in the town or not? I dug my heels into Sultan's flanks and put him to it at his best, and in a few minutes was on the outskirts of the town.

The town consists in the main of two streets. The High Street is simply the town part of the main road from the south and Stone to Congleton and the north--the line along which the Stuart Prince was marching. It deserves its name, for it lies along the edge of the slope on which the town lies. Parallel to it in the dip lies Lower Street, and the road I was on curls past the end of this street and climbs gently to join the upper road. I could thus get into the heart of the town through the poorer quarter of it, and soon the kidney-stones of Lower Street rang under Sultan's hoofs.

The stir and noise of Stafford was completely absent. The townspeople, mainly hatters by trade, were plying their craft indoors as if no enemy were at their gate. In fact, as I learned afterwards, there was no fuss and much fun and good business when the Highlanders actually came on the scene. The farther a town was from them the more it funked them, which was, as everybody knows now, truest of all of London. As I turned up the lane by St. Giles', the church bells chimed two. Past the church in the corner between the lane and the High Street was the "Rising Sun." Once Sultan was safe in its stables I could set about getting news of the Colonel before Margaret and Master Freake arrived.

It was stiff work up the last thirty yards, and Sultan shook himself together after it when he drew out on the level High Street. Here were throngs of people and some signs of trouble toward. In particular I noticed the town fathers in their black gowns of office, and, most conspicuous of all, the crimson and fur of his worship. I judged they were coming from a council meeting in the town hall, which stood in the middle of the wide High Street. There was much high debate, wagging of fingers and smiting of fist in palm, but no approach to the tumult and terror of yesternight. The Mayor stood for a moment confabbing at the door of a grocery, and then shot into it. I saw him struggling out of his gown as he disappeared, and thence inferred that the chief burgess was a grocer in private life.

So much I saw before pulling Sultan round to pa.s.s under the archway leading into the yard of the "Rising Sun." I dismounted and called for an ostler. No man appearing, I was about to lead Sultan farther down the yard towards the stables when there was a scurry of feet behind me as if the whole ostler-tribe of the "Rising Sun" was hastening to my a.s.sistance. I turned round rattily to find myself looking into the barrel of a pistol, while three or four men pounced on me and pinned me against the wall.

"d.a.m.n ye, horse-thief, for the black of a bean I'd blow your brains out,"

said Colonel Waynflete. "Stick tight, lads; and you, good host, fetch along Master Mayor and the constable, and have me the scoundrel laid by the heels. If this were only my commandery on the Rhine! I'd strappado you and then hang you within the next half-hour. My bonny Sultan! How are you, my precious?"

When a raw youth leaves farming for knight-erranting he must expect sharp turns and rough tumbles, but surely Fate and Fortune were overdoing it now. It was the Colonel beyond doubt, and Margaret had limned him to the life. The hawk-eyes, the hook nose, the leathery skin, the orange-tawny campaign-wig with the grizzled hair peeping under the rim of it, the tall, thin, supple figure, all were there. And if I had been in any doubt of it, Sultan would have settled the matter, for his pleasure at finding his master was delightful to witness.

In hot blood I did not mind a pistol, and in the coldest blood I could easily have kicked loose from the men who had got hold of me. But Margaret kept my limbs idle and my mouth shut. There was no real danger, for that matter, unless Margaret and Master Freake failed to turn up at the "Rising Sun," and there was no reason to suppose they would fail. The Colonel gave me no chance to speak to him privately, and to speak to him publicly might upset his plans. How he had got here a free man, what strange turn things had taken in his favour, I could not imagine. Margaret would be here in an hour and put matters right, so for her sake it would be best and easiest to say nothing. I simply made up my mind that the varlet on my right, whose dirty claws and beery breath were sickening me, should have the direst of drubbings before the day was out.

Mine host bustled off for the Mayor, and, the news having gone around, the yard was filled with people watching the fun and making a mocking-stock of me. The Colonel saw Sultan off to be groomed and baited, and then, without so much as a look at me, went into the inn and sat down to his interrupted meal. I could see him plainly through the window, and hugely admired his coolness. The maids cl.u.s.tered around to have a peep at me. Such as were old and ugly declared off-hand that I was indisputably ripe for the gallows, but a younger one with saucy eyes and cherry-red cheeks blew a kiss, and called out to beery breath to deal gentlier with me. He moved a little in turning to grin at her, and I shot my knee into his wind and doubled him up on the ground. A stouter lad took his place, but his breath was sweet and I gained much in comfort by the change.

The situation had the saving grace of humour. For twenty-four hours I had been on the stretch to save Colonel Waynflete from his enemies. To do it I had left mother and sister, and home and lands. To do it I had come out openly on the side of rebellion and treason. The sword had been at my breast, and the wind of a bullet had stirred the hair of my head. I might have spared my pains. All this pother of mine was over the man sitting yonder, heartily enjoying his dinner. All my heroics had ended in my being arrested as a horse-thief.

I closed my eyes. Picture after picture came before me of Margaret in her changing moods and her unchanging beauty. Gad! How cheaply I had bought this gallery of precious memories!

A throng of lads crowding noisily under the archway heralded the approach of the dignitaries. First came the town beadle, a pompous little fellow who wore a laced brown greatcoat many sizes too large for him, and carried a cudgel of office thick as his own arm, and surmounted by a bra.s.s crown the size of a baby's head. His office enabled him to be brave on the cheap, so by dint of digging his weapon into the ribs of all and sundry, they being, as he expressed it, too thick on the clod, he cleared a path for the grocer-mayor, who had gotten himself again into his scarlet gown.

His worship was gawky, fl.u.s.tered, and uncertain, and listened like a scared rabbit to mine host, a man of much talk, who explained proudly what was to be done.

"This is 'im, y'r worship," he said. "A dirty 'oss-thief as badly wants 'anging. Copped in the act, y'r worship, of riding into this 'ere yard o'

mine, as big as bull-beef, sitting on the very 'oss 'e'd stolen from his lordship 'ere."

His lordship was the Colonel, who had leisurely left his meal again to settle my hash. I can see him now as he stood on the step of the inn-door, carefully flicking a stray crumb or two from his waistcoat, and taking the measure of the man he had to bamboozle, with clear, amused, grey eyes.

"The Mayor of the town, I think," he said softly.

"Yes, your honour," said the good man surrept.i.tiously wiping something, probably sugar, off his hands on the lining of his gown.

"And his beadle, your lordship," added the host, and the under-strapper inside the greatcoat saluted the Colonel with a flourish of his tipstaff.

"I am Colonel Waynflete," he answered in level measured tones, "riding on important business of His Majesty's, and my horse was stolen at an inn, some miles back, beyond Stafford. But for the kindness of my Lord Brocton in providing me with another, His Gracious Majesty's affairs would have been badly disarranged. This fellow came riding in on my horse, Sultan, a few minutes ago and I ordered his arrest. He is now in your worship's hands. I leave him there with confidence, merely remarking, on the warrant of many years' observation in such matters, that he will require a stout rope."

He nodded to his dithering worship, and marched back slowly and calmly to his dinner.