I awoke between darkness and daylight. Mistress Waynflete still slept peacefully and there was as yet no need to rouse her. I had slept in my shoes, but now, I drew them off, lifted the bar of the door, and stole out to look around. Not a soul was stirring about the farm, and the only living creature in sight was a sleepy cock, which scuttled off noisily at my approach. I entered a cowshed, where a fine, patient cow turned a reproachful eye on me, as if rebuking me for my too early visit. I cheerily clucked and slapped her on to her hoofs, and then, failing to find any sort of cup or can, punched my hat inside out and filled it with warm foaming milk. With this spoil I hurried back to our quarters.
I had to leave the door open, and this gave me light enough to look more closely at my companion. She was still sleeping, her face calmly content, and so had she slept through the night, for the coverlet of hay was rising and falling undisturbed on her breast. It was now time to wake her, and, having no free hand, I knelt down to nudge her with my elbow. As I did so, her face changed. A look of concern came over it, then one of hesitation, then a sweet smile, chasing each other as gleam chases gloom across the meadows on an April day. She was dreaming, dreaming pleasantly, and it was to a hard world that I awakened her.
At my second nudge she half-opened her eyes and murmured, "It's very wide." Then my greeting aroused her fully, and she blushed wondrous red and beautiful.
"Good morrow, Mistress Waynflete," said I. "I grieve to disturb you, and, pray you, do not move too abruptly or over goes the breakfast."
"Good morrow, Master Oliver," she replied. "I have slept well. I feel as if I've quite enjoyed it. We do enjoy sleep, I think, sometimes."
"Or the dreams it brings, madam."
She glanced quickly at me, as if afraid that I had the power of reading dream-thoughts, and gaily said, "And breakfast ready! This is even better than the Paris fashion. What is it? More of dear Kate's cordial?"
I did not know what the Paris fashion of breakfast was, and she did not enlighten me. Anyhow, I, the yokel, had improved on it, and that was something.
"A far better brewage, madam," I said, "but you must pardon the Staffordshire fashion of serving it."
She sat up, took the cap, and drank heartily, the dawn still in her eyes and cheeks, and masses of yellow hair tumbling down from under her hood on throat and bosom. When she handed back the cap, I could not forbear from saying, "You look charming after your night's rest, and I profess that tear of milk on the tip of your nose becomes you admirably." With the rim of my cap at my lips, I added with mock concern, "Have a care, Mistress Waynflete, or you'll rub off tip as well as tear."
"I suppose you thought 'As a jewel of gold' and the rest of it," she said, squinting comically down to examine her nose.
"Really, no, madam; I thought of nothing so scandalous, from the Bible though it be. I thought of--of...."
"I'm all ears," she said archly.
"I'm a poor hand at turning compliments to ladies," said I.
"On the contrary, you turn them admirably. See!" She held up my sopping cap, and laughed merrily.
"It's ruined for best," said I, "but it will do for market days. And now, madam, it's cold enough to freeze askers, as Joe Braggs says, and for toilet you must e'en be content with first a shiver and then a shake. I will await you at the yard gate, and pray close the door behind you. The quicker the better."
She rejoined me in two or three minutes. I closed the gate cautiously behind me, and we started our journey. From the farm we got away quite unobserved, but I looked behind me at every other step to make surer, till we turned the top of the knoll, and it was with great relief that I saw the chimney-pots sink out of sight.
For a time we walked along briskly and in silence. So far I had carried everything with a high hand and successfully, but the cold grey of the morning began to creep into my thoughts as I looked ahead over miles and miles of dreariness and danger. Houses were few and far between; every village was a source of danger; the high roads were closed to us by our fear of the troops. Further, the object we had in view was vague and unformed, if not impossible of achievement, for even if we arrived at the very place where Colonel Waynflete was held prisoner, what could we do to help him? We should be safe from immediate need and danger if we could reach the Prince's army, but where that was, and which way it was travelling, were unknown to us. Certain it was that between us and any real help ranged some thirty miles of cold, bleak country packed with enemies for miles ahead. And here we were, on foot, penniless and hungry. I had longed for a man's work; this was a regiment's.
A sidelong look at my companion drove all the mist and frost out of my heart. Something about her made me feel a sneak and a traitor even for harbouring such thoughts. From the first she had asked for no help of mine. I had forced it on her, or circumstances had forced me to help her in helping myself, as when I cut our way from Marry-me-quick's cottage. The more I was with her, the better I began to understand Brocton's madness. It was the madness of the mere brute in him to be sure, and a man should kick the brute in him into its kennel, though he cannot at times help hearing it whine. Her majestic beauty had dazzled him as a flame dazzles a moth, but at this stage, at any rate, it was not her beauty that made me her thrall. That I could have withstood. Because she was so beautiful, so stately, so compelling, she made no appeal to me. What I mean is, that I did not fall in love with her at first sight, simply because the mere stupidity of such a thing kept me from doing it. Glow-worms do not fall in love with stars or thistles with sycamores. She was something to be worshipped, served at any cost, saved at any sacrifice, but not loved. No, that was for some lucky one of her own class and state, not for a simple squireling like me. Her comradeship, her graciousness, her sweet equalizing of our positions, were, I felt, just the simple, natural adornments of the commanding modesty which was her spiritual garment.
Manlike, however, I had an evil streak in me, and thence, later, came madness. In any company I must be top dog. I had been head of the school, not because of any special cleverness, but because I would burst rather than be second to anybody in anything. I had fought and fought, at all hazards, until not a boy in school or town dare come near me. So now, since my Lord Brocton--and many a lord beside, I doubted not--had failed, I must needs step in and say, "I will please her, whether she like it or not." And so, plain countryman as I was, I had done my work ungrudgingly but not, I feared, too modestly, and since I could not speak court-like, I had been over-masterful, and given her mood for mood, and turned no cheek for her sweet smiting. And as I had of old time licked every lad in Stafford, so now neither Staffordshire nor all the King's men in it should turn me back. Through she should go, and in safety and comfort, so that when the time came for me to hand over my precious charge to a worthier, she should say that the yokel had done a man's work and done it gentlemanly. Therefore, when Mistress Waynflete looked up to me from the bleak uplands with serious, questioning eyes, I said, as calmly as if we were pacing the garden at the Hanyards, with Kate and Jane active in the kitchen behind us, "Ham and eggs for breakfast!"
"I don't see any," she said, in answering mood, scanning the fields around us. "Not that that matters. I didn't see the steps, but they were there. You make me think, Master Wheatman, of a Turk I saw in a booth at Vienna, who drew rabbits and rose-bushes out of an empty hat. Staffordshire is your conjurer's hat. And I do like ham and eggs."
My assurance and her comfortable belief in it made us both brighter, and we stepped out merrily. She gave me an entertaining account of Vienna, where she had spent some months, and which was then the great outpost of Christendom against the Turk. When this talk had brought us on to the field of Hopton Heath, I gave her the best account I could of the battle there in the Civil War time, and of the slaying of the Marquis of Northampton. And this led me on to my pride of ancestry, and I told her of Captain Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, a tower of strength to the Parliament in these parts, who fought here and later on Naseby Field itself. Many tales I told of him that had been handed down from one generation of us to another, and how so greatly was he taken with his incomparable lord-general that he had named his first-born son Oliver, and ever since there had been an Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. Then I told how one of these later Olivers, which one a matter of no consequence, had written verses and put them into the mouth of the doughty Smite-and-spare-not, sitting his horse, stark and strong, at the head of his men on Naseby Field, and gazing with grim, grey eyes on the opening movements of the fight. And, nothing loth, I trolled them out roundly across the meadows, till the peewits screamed and a distant dog began to bay:
"Princelet and king, and mitre and ring,Earl and baron and squire,Oliver worries 'em, harries and flurries 'em,With siege and slaughter and fire.With the arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit,Push of pike and the Word,Smiting and praying, and praising and slaying,Oliver fights for the Lord.With the sword He brought the work is wrought,We finish here to-day.When yon rags and remnants of BabylonAre blown and battered away.
Hurrah for the groans of 'em, soon shall the bones of 'em,Steady!Hell-rakers at large,Rot under the sod.Pass the word: 'GodIs our strength?'There goes Oliver.Charge!"
When I had done she applauded so that my face burned until I was discommoded and fell into her trap.
"I wish you'd written them, Master Wheatman."
"Well, I did," said I grumpily, not liking to be bereft of any little glory in her eyes.
"What, you?" Her eyebrows arched and her lips curled. "You, oh, never. 'Smiting and praying'? 'The arm of the Flesh and the sword of the Spirit.'" She mouthed the words deliciously.
"But, doubtless, when you see my Lord Brocton again, you'll put in the Word and the praying." Here her sweet voice trailed off into a dainty snuffle: "'My dear lord, since out of the mouths of babes and sucklings proceedeth wisdom, hearken, I pray you, unto me, Oliver Wheatman, to wit of the Hanyards, and amend ye your ways lest I hit you over your cockscomb again, and very much harder than before. Repent ye, my lord, for the hour is at hand, and if you don't, I'll thump you into one of our Kate's blackberry jellies.' And here endeth the goodly discourse of that saintly rib-roaster, Master Hit-him-first-and-then-pray-for-him Wheatman of the Hanyards."
It was simply glorious to be so tormented by this witch with the dancing blue eyes.
"For this scandalous contempt of the Muses," said I soberly, "I shall punish you by frizzling your share of the ham to a cinder."
During my schoolboy days I had roamed the countryside till I knew it as an open book, and this minute knowledge was our salvation now. The immediate need was food, and food obtained without price and without our being observed by anyone. At seven o'clock on a hard winter morning in open country, this seemed to require a miracle. As a matter of fact, it was as easy as shelling peas.
Since crossing the heath we had been travelling nearer to one of the main roads, that leading out of the east gate to the town, and now we got our first glimpse of it lying like a broad, brown ribbon half-way down the slope of a very steep hill. In the upper half, this hill was pretty well wooded and the road cut clean through the wood, but between us and the wood there lay the level crest of the hill, cut by hedges into several fields, and crossed by a rough cart-track leading past a roomy, one-storied cottage, grey-walled and brown-thatched, and on through the wood into the main road. The cottage, with its outbuildings, made a little farmstead, and here lived Dick Doley and his wife Sal, who did a little farming, but mainly lived by huckstering. Today was market-day at Stafford, and unless they had broken the routine of half a lifetime, they would now be packing their little cart with marketables and soon be off for the town. They had neither chick nor child, lad-servant nor lassie, and they would leave the cottage empty and at our disposal. At this time of the day I could, of course, have trusted both, but they were very human bodies of a sort to rejoice the business side of the heart of Joe Braggs, and it was best not to give them the chance of blabbing later in the day when, for a moral certainty, they would both be market fresh. Besides, it was unfair to thrust myself on the kindness of anyone. I had more than once wondered what had happened to poor little Marry-me-quick.
I scrambled through the hedge and peeped down the road. I was right. Dick and his wife were busy loading up. So we waited behind the hedge till they had cleared off, and indeed did not move till I saw them and their cart pass along the road at the foot of the hill.
Time has not blurred the memory of a single detail of our stay in this welcome house of refuge, but the telling of what was moving and charming to me would, I fear, bore others. There was a ham, two indeed, and flitches beside, in the rack hanging from the ceiling, and there were eggs--three, to be precise--in the larder, to which, by equal good luck considering the time of the year, I added two more by a raid into the hen-house. It was all natural and simple enough, but Mistress Waynflete hailed their production almost as amazedly as if I had indeed drawn them out of my hat. But how I fetched and carried, chopped wood and drew water, swept the floor and laid the table, fried ham and boiled eggs, doing all these things with music in my heart and a noisy song on my lips--is everything to me and nothing to my tale.
Mistress Waynflete had disappeared into one of the three or four rooms of which the house consisted, to make herself presentable, as she absurdly put it. When the table was laid and the ham cooked, I halloed the news to her, and rushed off to the shed to attend to my outward appearance. I did want it, being indeed not far short of filthy.
Perhaps I hurried unexpectedly. At any rate, on returning I found Mistress Waynflete bending over something on the hearth. Straightening herself hastily, and with a pretty confusion, at my approach, she cried, "Oh, Master Oliver, the ham was burning, and you threatened my share of it, you know!"
I could not reply. Down to her hips her rich amber hair flowed like a bridal veil, and from amid a wealth of snowy lace, fluttering on the orbed glory of perfect womanhood, her neck rose smooth and stately as a shaft of alabaster. Her cheeks crimsoned with maiden shamefastness, but the blue eyes met mine without a hint of maiden fear, and for that thanks as well as reverence filled my heart as I bowed to her. Maidenlike, she drew her golden veil more closely over her bosom, and tripped back to finish her toilet, leaving me amated and abashed by the vision I had beheld. I think it was from that moment that my joy in my work began to be mingled with the despair of my love. Certainly it was a chastened Oliver Wheatman who placed a chair for her when she came in again for breakfast, and helped her to the good things a kindly fortune had provided.
It is my belief that each of us was secretly amused at the steady zeal with which the other attacked the meal. We wrangled over the odd egg, each insisting on the other having it, she because I was strong, and needed it, I because I was strong and could do without it, and finally adopted the usual compromise. We had more than gone round the clock with barely a mouthful, and we ate as those who know not where the next meal's meat is to come from. Frankly, I, at any rate, gave myself a fair margin before the pinch should come again, and Mistress Waynflete averred that she had never in her life before eaten so much or so toothsomely.
Our meal over, I stacked the fire with fresh logs, asked and obtained permission to smoke a pipe, and made my sweet mistress cosy in the chimney-corner. Then we began to take stock of our position.
"There's no good to come of hurrying," said I. "Here we are both snug and safe, and your night's rest was but short. Let us see where we stand."
I did not really believe that any amount of talking would help much, but repose would do her good, and I had a big idea running in and out of my mind. Our first difficulty, food and rest, had been overcome, and I was bent on mastering the next. No amount of discussion gave us any key to the one great mystery. When Brocton had captured Colonel Waynflete at Milford, the obvious thing to do with him was to send him prisoner to the Duke at Lichfield. Though the Colonel carried no papers which made his purpose clear, Brocton knew well what the object of his journey was, and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act put the Colonel in his power. Or, he might have carried him before a justice of the peace, his friend Master Dobson for choice, and had him committed to the town jail. The course actually taken, that of sending him ahead, under guard, in the very van of the royal army, was to us utterly inexplicable. His mad lust for Mistress Margaret explained the separation of father and daughter. The thought did occur to me, though I took great care not to hint at it, that he intended to make away with the Colonel, and looked to finding tools among his blackguardly dragoons and an opportunity when in actual conflict with the Highlanders. I hesitated, however, to believe that Brocton was such a villain as to commit an unnecessary murder. The plan he had adopted had, anyhow, this advantage to us that, when we did come into touch with the prisoner, our chances of assisting him were far greater than if he were in jail in Stafford or Lichfield.
Whatever my lord's motives were, it was clear that he was not acting in the plain, straight-dealing manner to be expected of one in his position. There were other signs of crookedness, slight but not without weight. I could understand his joy on finding me at Marry-me-quick's. It meant that I was a rebel, and as a loyal man, who had gone to expenses to prove his loyalty, he might easily get the Hanyards as a reward, and thus round off the family property in our neighbourhood. His reference to a "solatium" puzzled me, but it did not seem anything of consequence. What had I but the Hanyards to solace him with? A more important puzzle had been his behaviour at Master Dobson's. To find me on the royal side, as he then supposed, and to hear my reason for it, had clean dazed him. Then there was the look, a signal-look beyond a doubt, which I had surprised him giving his bully, Major Pimple-face, and which was followed by the latter's attempt to embroil the stranger from London in a row.
"It is useless, Master Wheatman, to speculate further on what Lord Brocton is doing," said my mistress at last. "He has his ends. I am one of them. Another is, no doubt, to fill his pockets, somehow or other. It was common talk in town that he was head over ears in debt."
While we had talked and had rested, I had not been idle. Dick Doley's roomy kitchen had two windows, one overlooking the cart-track, and another the slope of the hill. The hill was so made and the house so placed that from this second window we could see the strip of road at the bottom of the hill where it curved on to the level again. I had kept a sharp look out on that bit, but had seen no one pass along it either way as yet.
In one corner of the room Dick kept an ancient fowling-piece, more of a tool of husbandry than a weapon, since his only use for it was to scare birds. It was a heavy, unhandy thing, with a brass barrel down which I could have dropped a sizable duck egg, and round its thick-rimmed nozzle some one had rudely graven, "Happy is he that escapeth me." I fetched it out of its corner, and cleaned and oiled it. I now loaded it, for powder-horn and shot-bag hung near it on the wall, putting in a handful of the biggest sort of shot, swan-shot as I should call them. During this task, Mistress Waynflete watched me narrowly, but made no reference to it.
"Now," said I, "our main requisite is the stuff, the ready, the rhino, the swag--call it what you will. How do you fancy me as a knight of the road? The first copper-faced farmer I come across shall surely stand and deliver. Here's an argument he cannot resist."
At last my scrutiny of the road was rewarded. A solitary horseman came in sight from the direction of the town.
"Mistress Waynflete," said I, picking up the fowling-piece, "there's a traveller yonder coming from Stafford. It will be well if I go and ask him a few questions."
She almost leaped at me, red anger flashing in her eyes but her face white as milk. "Sir," she said, "you shall not turn thief for me. I will not have it."
"Pray, madam," replied I huffily, "expound the moral difference between stealing ham and stealing guineas. I'm all for morality."
"I cannot, Master Wheatman, but you must not, shall not go." She caught hold of my sleeve. "Say you won't! If you are found out it means--"
"I shall not be found out. You may take that for sure. Think you that I cannot pluck yon chough without being pinched? It's no more robbery than our eating Dick's ham and eggs. We are soldiers in enemy's country, and we plunder by right of the known rules of war. As a concession to your prejudices in favour of the jog-trot morality of peace, I will e'en ask him whether he be for James or George, and borrow or command his guineas in accordance with his reply. Loose my sleeve, madam!"
I loosened the grip of her fingers, and led her back to her chair. "You overrate my danger, sweet mistress, and under rate our need. Without money, we might as well lie under the nearest hedge and leave Jack Frost to settle matters his way, and a cold, nasty way it would be. Your guinea is a good fighter, and we need his help. It must be done, and, never fear, I'll carry it through safely."
So I left her, white hands grappling the arms of her chair, and white face turned away from me.
I left the cottage from the rear and struck slantwise across the fields to reach the shelter of the trees and undergrowth that covered the slope down to the road. I ran hard so as to shake irresolution out of my mind, for I found myself half wishing that Mistress Waynflete had pleaded with me at first instead of trying to thrust me out of my plan. After all the highwayman's was hardly my calling in life. So I ran hard, saying to myself that it must be done, and the sooner it was over the better. Then I laughed. With my rusty old birding-piece I was as ill-equipped for highwaymanship as I was for farming with my Georgics. "Stand and deliver," quoth I to myself, "or I'll double your weight with swan-shot." Were the unknown horseman a resolute man armed with a hair-trigger, I was as good as done for.
Arrived in the shelter of the wood, I began picking my way through the thick undergrowth towards the road. Fallen branchlets snapped beneath my heedless feet and the sounds rang in my ears like pistol-shots. A saucy robin cocked his care-free eye on me from the top of a crab-tree, and I could have envied him as I stumbled by. It was perhaps fourscore yards through, and half-way I stopped to listen. Yes, there came to my ear the slow trot-ot-ot of hoofs on the hard road. I went on again until, through the leafless tangle, I began to get glimpses of the highway. My fate was dragging me on. In a month's time my shrivelling carcase might be swinging in chains on the top of Wes'on Bank, an ensample to evil-doers. The thought made me shiver, and I jerked out a broken prayer that my intended victim might turn out some fat, unarmed farmer, as easy a prey as an over-fed gander. Then I cursed myself for a fool. No man can mortgage past piety for present sin. Who was I that I should be allowed to steal on good security?
Trot-ot-ot. Trot-ot-ot. He was within easy shot now, and I stopped to make sure of my rickety old weapon. A dragoon's musket would not have needed such constant care. "Life turns on trifles," said Mistress Waynflete.
In lifting my eyes from the priming to move on again, something in the line of vision made me start. On my left, less than a dozen paces from me, there lay on the ground, on a clean patch beneath a conspicuously-forked hawthorn, a man's jacket and plumed hat.
A lion playing with a lamb would not have given me pause more abruptly. I stole silently up to them. They were fine but somewhat faded garments, modish and even foppish, and, so far as I could distinguish any peculiarity, military in appearance, and evidently belonged to a person of some quality. Nor had they been flung there in haste, for the coat was neatly folded and the hat disposed carefully on top of it. How long had they been there? I picked up the hat, and there was still the gloss of recent sweat on its inside brim.
This, however, was no time for idle problems, a very urgent one being on hand. Forward I crept to the side of the road, and, lying flat down on the ground, pushed the stock of my gun on to the short grass, and peeped cautiously to my right down the hill. I was about thirty or forty yards from a bend in the road, and had intended to be much less, but my discovery and my confused, half-conscious thinking about it, had deflected me a little from my course.
Trot-ot-ot. He would be in sight in a few seconds. Trot-ot-ot, plainer than ever, and there he was. The moment that he was in full view I made an astonishing discovery, and saw an astonishing sight.
The discovery was that the solitary horseman, walking his powerful grey with a slack rein, and lost in thought, was Master Freake.
The sight was the rush of three men from their lurking-places in the brushwood. Two of them were soldiers, and Brocton's dragoons at that, a sample of the town-sweepings Jack had complained of. One seized the reins, the other held a carbine point-blank at the horseman's head.
These were plainly deserters or freebooters, acting after their kind, and they had picked up a strange partner during their foray. He wore a yokel's smock much too big for him, and yet not big enough to hide his bespurred riding-boots. On his head he had a dirty tapster's bonnet, and his face was completely hidden by a rudely-cut crape vizard. This singular person was evidently the leader of the gang. He threatened Master Freake with a glittering, long-barrelled pistol, and in gruff, curt tones ordered him to dismount on pain of instant death.
Here was a strange overturn to be sure. Here again fate had rudely upset my plans, and no fat purse would there be for me in this coil. However, though I would have robbed Master Freake willingly enough, my blood being up and he a manifest Hanoverian, I was not going to see Brocton's ruffians rob him, much less kill him. The purse must wait, and when I took it--for take it I must--God would perchance balance one thing against the other.
All that I had seen and thought took place in a mere fraction of time, and even before Master Freake had pulled up, I was creeping like a ferret from bush to bush to get nearer. Then, just as in his quiet, measured tones he was asking what they wanted, I burst out into the wood, shouting, "Forward, my men, here the villains are!" With the words, I fired my handful of swan-shot clean into the group, and then charged at them yelling, in boyish imitation of a knight of old, "Happy is he that escapeth me."
The two dragoons instantly fled with yelps of pain and terror, and the horse, squealing with fright, began to rear and plunge madly about the road. Black Vizard turned on me, his pistol rang out, and the bullet hissed by my ear. I sprang at him with clubbed gun, and struck hard for his head, but caught him on the neck as he too turned to flee. He went down, spinning and sprawling, in the road, right under the plunging horse. With a squeal that curdled my blood, she rose in the air, kicking viciously. Her hoofs came down with sickening thuds on the squirming man's skull, cracking it like an egg-shell. His body twitched once or twice, and then settled into the stillness of death.
I seized the horse's rein and soothed her. She let me pat her neck and rub her nose, and soon stood quiet, her neck flecked with foam, her flanks reeking with sweat. Master Freake, who had not spoken a word, dismounted, and I led the mare into the wood and hitched her reins over a bough. Then I returned to the man I had saved, and found him looking calmly down on the man I had killed. The black vizard was now soaking in a horrid pool of blood and brains. I stooped, and with trembling fingers moved it aside and revealed the features of the dead man. It was the pimple-faced Major.
I turned to my intended victim, and found him looking calmly and impassively at me.
"Master Wheatman of the Hanyards, unless I am mistaken," he said.
"Your servant, sir," said I, rather sourly. But for that dead rascal at our feet I could beyond a doubt have plucked him like a chough, and here I was, still penniless.
"Master Wheatman, I am not a man of many words, but what I say I stand by. I am your very grateful debtor for a very fine and courageous action. Three to one is long odds, but you won with your brains, sir, as much as by your bravery. Your shout was an excellent device, happily thought on."
He held out his hand. I shook it heartily and then burst out laughing, and laughed on till tears stood in my eyes. And this was the end of my highwaymanship!
"Since the danger is, thanks to you, over, Master Wheatman," he said, "I would e'en like to share your mirth--if I may."
"Sir," I replied, "I am laughing because I have saved you from robbers."
"But why laugh?"
"Because I set out ten minutes ago to rob you myself."
Master Freake gazed casually up and down the hill, and then, fixing his quiet grey eyes on me, said whimsically, "I am a man of peace, and unarmed; the road is of a truth very lonely, and I have considerable sums of money on me."
"Yes, I'm quite vexed. This fire-faced scoundrel has upset my plans finely. I may not get as good a chance for hours."
Now it was his turn to laugh. "Master Wheatman," he said, "you are not the stuff highwaymen are made of. As you are in need of money, you need it for some good purpose, and I shall--"
He stopped short. As we stood, he was facing the wood from which the robbers had burst on him, while I had my back on it. As he stopped, his strong, calm face changed, and his eyes were fixed on something in the wood. Wonder, amazement, delight, awe--not one, but all of these emotions were visible in his face. He looked as one who sees a blessed spirit. I turned. It was Margaret, leaning, pale and spent and breathless, against the trunk of a tree, looking and shuddering at the dread object in the road.
I bounded up to her and touched her on the arm. "All's well, Mistress Waynflete," said I. "I am as yet no gallows-bird."
"But--" Her eyes were still staring wide on the road, and she trembled violently, so I stepped between her and the ghastly sight, and said, "Courage, dear lady. The dead man is your father's worst enemy, Major Tixall, and yon horse killed him, not I."
By this, Master Freake had come nearer to us, and I turned to greet him.
"Madam," said I, "this is my friend, Master Freake, whom I set out to rob." To him I added, "This is Mistress Waynflete, whom I have the honour to serve."
He bared his head and bowed. "And whom I hope to have the honour of serving too."
I looked at him curiously. All other emotions had faded from his face now, but it was clear that her peerless and now so helpless beauty had appealed home to him.
"Sir," she said, recovering herself with a great effort, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. And now,"--speaking to me,--"since you have given me a great fright and made me behave like a milkmaid rather than a soldier's daughter, perhaps you will tell me what has happened, and how it"--she looked over my shoulder--"comes to be lying there. I heard shots and shrieks that turned me to stone. What has happened?"
"Master Wheatman," said our new acquaintance, taking my words out of my mouth, "is hardly likely to give you a reasonably correct account. Allow me to be the historian of his fine conduct." He told the story with overmuch kindness to me, and as he told it the colour came back to her face, and she was herself again. While he was telling it, I noticed for the first time, or rather for the first time gathered its meaning, that she had run out after me without the domino, and in the biting air she might easily catch a chill. So while Master Freake was making a fine sprose about me, much more applicable to Achilles or the Chevalier Bayard, I slipped off and fetched the hat and coat. He was just concluding his story on my return, and without interrupting him, I clumsily thrust the hat on her head and flung the coat over her shoulders.
"Master Freake," she said, in her sweetest bantering tones, "my servant, as he absurdly calls himself, is really an artist in helping people. I told him this morning that his native shire was his conjurer's hat, when he fetched ham and eggs out of it for poor hungry me. Now he observes that I am coatless and a-cold, and lo, a hat is on my head and a coat on my shoulders. It is marvellous and nothing short of it. Nay, I shall shun him as one in league with the powers of darkness if there's much more of it. If I be saved, you remember Master Slender,"--this in a sly aside to me,--"I'll be saved by them that have the fear of God."
"Ingrate!" I cried, half angry and yet wholly delighted; "what of marvel or devilment is there in picking up a hat and coat one has found lying under a tree?"
"Major Tixall's," said Master Freake.
"Ass that I am, of course they are. Steady, Mistress Margaret, while I go through the pockets. The odds are we shall find something useful in checkmating my Lord Brocton."
In this I was wrong, for there was not a single scrap of writing in any of them. I did, however, fish out two small but heavy packets, wrapped in paper. They were easily examined, and each contained a roll of ten guineas.
"The hire of the two rascals," explained Master Freake.
"Really, Mistress Margaret," said I, "there's something in what you said just now. I do have his nether highness's own luck. I came out for guineas, prepared to rob for them, and here's twenty of the darlings lying ready for me to pick up. Now we can go ahead in comfort."
Through all this talk I was turning over in my mind what account, if any, we were to give Master Freake of our being here. If I had had only myself to consider I should have trusted him without hesitation. He was the sort of man that inspires confidence, his grave, serene, intelligent face having strength and steadfastness written in every line of it. But I had Mistress Waynflete to consider, and if any appeal was to be made for his assistance, she must make it. I'm afraid that I hoped she wouldn't, since I was jealous of any interference in my temporary responsibility for her welfare.
"Master Freake," I said, "some account will, I suppose, have to be given of yon ruffian's death. The two runaways are scarcely likely to appear as witnesses, so, for Mistress Waynflete's sake, I must ask you, should an explanation become necessary, to conceal my share in the matter."
"The manner of his death is fortunately quite obvious, and if it were not, any account I choose to give of it will pass unquestioned."
"Then it will be easy for you, I hope, to forget me when giving it. And now, madam, I think we must be moving."
"Before you go," said Master Freake, "let me say again that if I can help you, you have only to ask. You, Master Wheatman, because your twofold signal service is something it would shame me for ever not to be allowed to return, and you, madam, because," he paused, and the curious rapt expression came over his face again, "because you are very beautiful and need help. Your father's politics will make no difficulty, so far as I am concerned."
"You know my father?" she asked, surprised.
"Know of him. My Lord Brocton was boasting last night of his capture--and of other things," he lamely concluded.
"Is he boasting this morning?" I asked.
"I have not seen him," he said, "but Mistress Dobson told me she thought he'd been rooks'-nesting and had fallen off the poplar."
"I met him again," said I, "and did not like his conversation."
"Master Wheatman means," explained Mistress Waynflete, "that he saved me from my Lord Brocton's clutches at the imminent risk of his own life." She stretched out her hands and touched the holes in my coat with her white, slender fingers. "My lord's rapier made these," she said.
"An inch to the left, my friend," quoth Master Freake, "and you'd have been as dead as mutton. His lordship, it seems, is busily piling up a big account with both of us. Well, in my own way, I'll make the rascal pay as dearly as you have in yours. If you will be pleased to accept my help, madam, I will do all I can for you. There are, fortunately, other means than carnal weapons of influencing such persons as Lord Brocton."
"Like Master Wheatman, sir, you are too good to a poor girl." She said it gratefully and humbly, and indeed so she felt, but no man could listen to her meek words without pride.
"I'm glad I turned footpad, in spite of you," said I to my dear mistress.
"I can never thank you enough," was the simple reply. "It was wicked in me to accept the sacrifice, but in God's good providence it was not made in vain."
"Then I come into the firm," said Master Freake smilingly, and when, catching the meaning of his metaphor, she smiled brightly back at him, and held out her hand, he bowed over it formally, but very kindly, and kissed it. She blushed prettily, and then, after a moment's hesitation, stretching it out to me, said, "But I must not forget the original partner." I took the splendid prize in my rough, red, farmer's hand, and kissed it reverently. The touch of my lips on her sweet, smooth flesh made me tremble, and I knew the madness was creeping over me, but I gritted my teeth, and our eyes met again. The blush had gone, but not the smile. It was not now, however, the smile of a frank maiden but of an inscrutable and dominating woman. I knew the difference, for instinct is more than experience, and I chilled into the yokel again and wondered.
"In one sense, at any rate," said Master Freake, "I am the senior partner, and as such may, without presumption, speak first. I must go on to Stone, but that will, I think, be best for our purpose. As I view the situation, two things are requisite, first that you, Master Wheatman, should get Mistress Waynflete in advance of all the royal troops, and so out of danger, and secondly that we should learn precisely what has become of Colonel Waynflete."
"Exactly," I agreed. "The action of Lord Brocton in sending the Colonel north instead of south, or at least of lodging him in jail at Stafford, is inexplicable. True, his plan separates father and daughter, which is what he wants, but either of the other methods would have served equally well for that."
Of course I said nothing of the other idea that was haunting my thoughts, the idea that Brocton was scheming to get rid of the Colonel altogether. In his lust and anger he might not stick at that, and any kind of encounter with the enemy would serve his turn. The rascals under him were worthy of their commander, a fact of which we had already ample proof.
"It looks crooked, I confess," was his reply, "but there is this to be said for it, that the Duke is following north along with the bulk of his army, and, I hear, intends to make Stone his head-quarters."
"That seems absurd," said I, "but of course he knows best."
"The movements of the Prince's army are uncertain. The plan of their leaders is never to say where the next halt will be. They will be to-day, I know, in or near Macclesfield, and I learn that it is possible they may turn off for Wales, where they believe they will find many recruits. The farther north the Duke can safely go, the better placed he will be for checking them if they do that, and his advance guard is posted at Newcastle. The question is, how are you to get there first and without being taken?"
"By travelling the by-roads," said I. "We'll go through Eccleshall."
"How long will it take you to get there?" he asked.
"About three hours," said I, "if Mistress Waynflete can stand the pace."
"Very good," he replied. "I will join you there, and do my best to get horses for you in the meantime, and bring them along with me."
"That's splendid," said I, "but I'd rather we met outside the village. Not more than a mile and a half beyond it on the Newcastle road there's a little wayside ale-house called the 'Ring of Bells,' at the foot of a steep hill, with a large pool ringed with pines, known as Cop Mere, in front of it. It's a lonely place and will serve better. Small place as Eccleshall is, I shall skirt round it, and so get to the 'Ring of Bells.' You cannot miss it if you ride through the village on the Newcastle road. Whoever's there first will await the other."
"Then in about three hours we'll meet at the 'Ring of Bells,' and I hope I shall bring good news of the Colonel. Believe me, dear lady, short of foul play on Brocton's part, and we have no reason to suspect that, your father will be all right. Plain John Freake is not without influence. As for the ruffian lying dead in the road, think no more of him."
So saying he unhitched his horse, led her into the road, and mounted. He bowed and smiled, said cheerily, "A pleasant walk to the 'Ring of Bells,'" and cantered off.
I stepped between madam and the dead man. "We've found a good friend there, Mistress Waynflete. Now we'll put the hat and coat as we found them, save for the guineas, and go back to the cottage for your domino."
She gave them to me, and stepped out briskly towards the cottage. I folded up the coat, put the hat on it, looked again at the still, stiff horror in the road, soaking in its own blood, and silently followed her.
The lie of the land was as follows: To get to the "Ring of Bells," Master Freake would have to ride over the hill to the main road at Weston, thence some six miles north-west to Stone, thence another six or seven miles south-west to the inn. Mistress Waynflete and I had a stiff walk of about nine miles in front of us. For the first three miles our way ran east by north, and then bent almost due east to the ale-house. Our difficulty would come at the bending point, for there we should have to cross the main road from Stafford along which the troops would be filtering north to get into touch with the Prince and his Highlanders. If the Duke had heard of the supposed intention of the Jacobites to turn off for Wales, he would, I imagined, send a scouting party through Eccleshall to look out for them, and we should, for the second time in our journey, be on dangerous ground in the neighbourhood of that village. The "Ring of Bells," however, lay north of that village, off his obvious line of march in that direction, so that we stood a good chance of passing unchecked to our goal, provided that we got across the main road north in safety. Fortunately, at the place where I intended to cross, it climbed over a fairly steep hill, and we could, if need were, lie and watch the road till it was safe to venture out.
It was ticklish work at the best and any break in our run of luck might ruin us. How ticklish was vividly brought home to me within a few minutes of our getting safe under cover in the cottage. I had, of course, brought back the birding-piece and, after once more helping in the blissful task of getting Mistress Waynflete into the domino, bungling as usual over arranging the hood because my fingers lost control of themselves at the touch of her hair, I sat down to reload it, intending to carry it with me. I had settled matters with the absent gaffer, Doley, by putting one of my guineas conspicuously on the table, and was just finishing my task when Mistress Waynflete, who had stepped to the rear window and was looking back on the scene of my recent exploit, suddenly called out, "Oliver! Come here!"
My heart leaped within me at that 'Oliver.' True, it was the familiarity of one born to command, one who had last night icily desired my services in the morning, and, womanlike, knew that she could queen it over me as she listed, but still, and this was the main thing, it was familiar and friendly, and seemed to lift me a shade nearer to her.
"What is it, madam?" I asked respectfully, and ran toward her, but not so swiftly that I had not time to see the blue eyes fixed hard on mine. For answer, she turned and pointed down the hill, and there I saw the patch of brown road covered with wagons and soldiers. In five minutes they would come across the dead body of the Major.
"Good," said I indifferently, "they save me a guinea," and I put the coin back in my pocket. The soldiers didn't matter, but that look in her eyes did.
"Isn't that rather mean?" For some reason she spoke quite snappily. The soldiers clearly didn't matter to her, and something else did.
"Which of the soldiers provided our breakfast, madam? We might as well leave a note asking them to pick us up at the 'Ring of Bells.' And, madam, you can trust me to make Dick Doley content enough some day."
She smiled, with her characteristic touch of chagrin. I liked her best so, for she never looked daintier. "With a bit of luck, Master Wheatman," she said whimsically, "there will surely come a time when you'll be wrong and I right. Then, sir, look out for crowing. I've never been so unlucky with a man in my life. But you'll slip some day!"
"Surely, madam," I said, and smiled, "and then I'll abide your gloating. Now, pray you, let us be off. We've hardly a minute to spare."
Without losing another second we started on our long walk. It was now about ten of the clock. The sun was shining cheerily, with power enough to melt the white rime off every blackened twig it lit upon, and it was still so cold that sharp walking was a keen delight.
"Eight miles and more of it, Mistress Waynflete. I hope you can stand the pace and the distance."
"I'm a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," she replied curtly.
The vicar was right. "Oliver," he said to me one day, "what is the difference between the Hebrew Bible and a woman?"
"Sir," said I, gaping with astonishment, "I know not, but of a truth it seems considerable."
"It is, Oliver," replied the sweet old scholar. "Man can understand the one in a dozen years, if he try, but the other not in a lifetime, strive he as earnestly as he may."
This fragment of my dear friend's talk came back to me now as we walked in silence side by side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her sweet face set in earnest thinking, her rich lips compressed, her speaking eyes fixed resolutely ahead. Not having to trouble about finding the road, and there being no sign of anyone, either enemy or neutral, stirring on the countryside, I let her go on thinking, and set myself the pleasant but impossible task of accounting to myself for her mood. I went over all we had said and done together that day, and at last, after perhaps half an hour of unbroken silence, fell back on what seemed the only possible explanation. She was thinking of her father. But why that suspicion of asperity on her face? Was this explanation correct?
The vicar was right. She suddenly slipped her hand round my arm, looking at me with laughing lips and dancing eyes, and said, "Isn't it splendid to be alive on a day like this?"
"Yes, indeed it is," I replied, "but from your looks and your long silence, I should hardly have judged that you were thinking so."
"You have been taking stock of me, sir!"
"Certainly I have been wondering why you were so silent, and looked so ... grave."
"Be honest and fear not, Master Wheatman. You were not going to say 'grave.'"
"At the expense of many whippings from old Bloggs, I learned to be precise in the use of words."
"I know, hence you were not going to say 'grave.'"
"You will allow me to choose my own words, madam."
"Certainly, so long as you choose the right ones."
She unhooked her hand, and we walked a minute or two without another word, she frowning, and I fuming. Then she said wistfully, "Why did you think I was cross?"
"I feared I had offended you," said I hastily and innocently.
She laughed long and merrily. "Old Bloggs taught you the silly rigmarole you men call logic, but he didn't teach you woman's logic, that's plain. Don't you see what I've made you do, Master Wheatman?"
"Not yet, Mistress Waynflete."
"Poof, slow-coach! I've made you admit that you were going to say 'cross' but altered it, too late, to 'grave.'"
"You outrun me with your nimble and practised wit," said I, smiling.
"And when did you offend me, think you?"
"I answered you rather roughly when you took me up about the guinea."
"Oh, then? Not at all. You snibbed me, but I richly deserved it."
Another silence.
"Well?" she said. "Go on! I say I richly deserved it. Go on!"
"Go on where?" I asked testily. "You're not expecting me to say you didn't, are you?"
"No, I'm not," she said, "but it was good practice trying to make you." So saying, she slipped her hand under my arm again, and we stepped it out together.
The current of her thoughts now ran and glittered in the opposite direction. She made me for the moment her intimate, lifting up the veil over her past life, and giving me peeps and vistas of her wanderings and experiences. She jested and gibed. She sang little snatches of song in some foreign tongue. "You're sure you don't understand Italian?" she demanded, stopping short half-way through a bar, and quizzing me with her eyes, now blue as sapphires in the bright sunshine.
"Not a word of it," said I.
"A grave disadvantage," she said airily. "It's the only language one can love in." And off she struck again.
Now she sang something soothing and sad, with a wistful lilt in it that died into a low wail. It needed no Italian to be understood, for it was written in the language of human experience. A woman's heart throbbed in the lilt and broke in the wail.
This sweet interval of intimacy verging on friendship was ended by our close approach to the main road. We had been travelling, heedless of roads and tracks, across a champaign country, and the slope up to the top of Yarlet Bank now lay before us. I led the way, skulking behind such poor cover as the gaunt hedgerows provided, and, when only a hundred paces from the top, I asked her to crouch down, awaiting my signal to advance, while I crept forward on my hands and knees to the edge of the road which here climbed the brow of the hill through a deep cutting, along either margin of which ran a straggling hedge.
To my relief, the road down the hill, both to right and left, was completely deserted. I joyfully waved my arm to Mistress Waynflete, who was soon by my side, looking down the road. To the right we could see for nearly a mile. On the left our view was cut short by a bend, and I walked a score of yards in that direction and shinned up a stout sapling. Our luck was absolute. Not a soldier, not a living soul, was in sight.
"We might have had to skulk here for hours, waiting for an opportunity to cross unseen," said I, on rejoining her, "but our gods above are victorious, and we share their victory. So now for the 'Ring of Bells.' There's a gate at the bottom of the hill. Come along, Mistress Waynflete!"
She followed me down the hedge-side. I turned once or twice to look at her, carefully pretending that it was only to see how she was getting on. The last time I thus stole another memory of her splendid presence we were only a few paces from the gate, and when my reluctant eyes turned again to their rightful work, they looked straight into a pair of fishy eyes set in a face as blank and ugly as a bladder of lard.
Face and eyes belonged to a big, sleek, sly man, perched on the top bar of the gate. He had a notebook in his hand in which he had been entering some jottings. He suspended his writing to examine us, picking his nasty, yellow teeth meanwhile with the point of his pencil. His horse was hitched to the post on the Stoneward side of the gate, where the stile was. He was well enough dressed, and, as far as I could see, unarmed.
It was a most exasperating thing to have pitched into him, whoever and whatever he was, and indeed I much disliked the look of him, and would gladly have knocked him on the head. True, travellers were not rare on this road, since it was part of the great highway from London to Chester, and the little thoroughfare town of Stone, some three miles ahead, had a noted posthouse. However, I kept, or tried to keep, my feelings out of my face and voice, and accosted him cheerily.
"Good day, friend! What may be the price of fat beeves in Stafford market to-day?"
"Dearer than men's heads will be at the town gates after the next assizes," he replied, stroking his notebook and grinning evilly.
"You'll never light on a Scotsman, dead or alive, that's worth as much as a Staffordshire heifer," said I, leading the way past him to the stile, over which I handed Mistress Margaret into the road.
"They won't all be Scotsmen, my friend," he replied, still stroking his notebook.
"No?" said I, eager at heart to knock him off his perch.
"Nor men," he added, leering at Margaret.
"Come along, Sal," said I to her laughingly, "before the good gentleman jots you down a Jacobite."
So we left him, and when, fifty paces down the road, I looked back at him, he was jotting in his notebook again.
"I think he knows something about us," said I.
"Very likely," she replied calmly. "I've seen him once before in London, talking to Major Tixall. Who could forget a face like that?"
"He's uglier than the big-mouthed dragoon."
"The dragoon was at any rate a soldier."
"And the worst of soldiers has, no doubt, some savour of grace in him."
"Quite so," she retorted. "His calling makes it necessary."
"And, so reasoning, you would say, I suppose, that the best of farmers was to seek in the higher reaches of manliness."
"Have I not told you, Master Oliver, that between man's logic and woman's logic there's a great gulf fixed?"
"Minds are minds," said I.
"And hearts are hearts," replied she, and so shut me up to my thinking again.
We turned into a cart-track on our left leading in the direction of Eccleshall. As we turned I saw that Bladder-face had mounted his horse and was coming on toward Stone. There was no doubt that we should be pursued from that quarter before long, and I grew heavy with anxiety as I saw how hardly we were being pressed. The encounter had not, however, disturbed Mistress Waynflete. On the contrary, she became gayer than ever, so gay that, fool-like, I got quite vexed at it, for it was clear that something had relieved her anxiety, and I knew it was nothing that I had done. I worried over it, and at last hit on the explanation. She was rejoicing in the help of the new partner.
"What do you make of Master Freake?" said I boorishly, cutting short a lightsome trill, more Italian maybe.
"Make of what?" said she lightly.
"Master Freake."
"Forgive me, Master Wheatman," she replied, "but I didn't take you as quickly as I ought to have done. I like the look of him. How pretty, pluck them for me."
I stopped to gather the spray of brilliant vermilion berries she fancied, saying meanwhile, "I wonder what he is? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, or what?"
She seemed much more concerned with her berries, which she praised rapturously, and placed carefully in the bosom of her riding-dress before replying.
"He's no doubt a grave and prosperous citizen of London. I've seen many such, and he looks sworn brother to worthy Alderman Heathcoat. Moreover, he talks merchantlike."
It seemed pretty certain that she had hit the right nail on the head. Her explanation fitted his account of the large sums he was carrying and his stay with and hold over Jack's father. True, Staffordshire seemed the wrong place for such a man. Both he and his money would have been far safer in Change Alley. If her explanation was acute and probable, her manner of making it had convinced me that my explanation of her gaiety was wrong. Of him she certainly had not been thinking. Then there was only one thing left to account for it. What makes a maid as merry as a grig? Didn't our Kate sing all morning when Jack was coming in the afternoon?
It was no concern of mine, and as a man sometimes makes his right hand play his left hand at chess, so I now made stern Oliver lecture paltering Wheatman, but without doing him much good. Naturally all this made me a poor companion on the road, and for a long time Mistress Waynflete bore with me patiently. Then she turned from her tra-la-la-ing to waken me up, roundly declaring that I was bored with her company; and I had no defence, ridiculous as the charge was.
"I've sung every song I know, and sung them my best, too, and you've never once praised me. You'll have to learn, you know, Master Oliver, to smile at a lady even when you really want to smack her. What do you do? You just write on your face as plainly as this"--and here her dainty finger toured her face, ending up where the tear of milk had trembled--"S-M-A-C-K." I roared aloud, she did it so frankly and mirthfully. What a treasury of moods she was! She had stepped across our house-place like a queen, she had fronted that devil, Brocton, like a goddess, and now she was larking like a schoolmaid.
Long as the way was, we seemed to me to be getting over the ground too rapidly. Mistress Waynflete did not tire, and did full credit to her father's soldiership. We circled round the red-tiled roofs of Eccleshall, and at length took shelter in the pines that ringed the great pool. Across the mere lay the road, and on the far side of the road from us was the "Ring of Bells," standing well back, with a little green in front, in the centre of which a huge post carried a board bearing the rudely painted sign of the ale-house.
I scouted ahead, dodging from tree to tree along the edge of the mere, in order to keep out of view of anyone moving on the road. Over against the ale-house I crept still more warily through the wood to the edge of the road. There was no one moving in or about the ramshackle little place, but there was one unexpected thing in sight which gave me pause. Hitched by the reins to a staple in the signpost was the finest horse I had ever set eyes on, a slender, sinewy stallion, champing on his bit and pawing nervously on the stone-hard ground.
Here was the shadow of a new trouble, though, indeed, there was nothing to be surprised at, seeing that the countryside far and near was buzzing with enemy activities. A rat in a barn might as justly complain of being tickled by straws as I of jostling into difficulties. The horse without betokened a rider within, and probably some one in the Duke's horse. I beckoned Mistress Waynflete, and by signs indicated that extreme caution was necessary. During the moments I was awaiting her I examined the birding-piece to make sure it was in order. Caution, however, she flung to the winds, for the moment she set eyes on the horse she joyously shouted 'Sultan' and made a wild, happy dash to cross the road.
I stopped her sternly, and in a brief whisper asked, "Who's Sultan?"
"Father's horse."
"We do not know for sure that your father is in the inn because his horse is outside, and by your leave, madam, we'll make sure first. Keep right behind yon thick tree, and await my return."
She looked calmly at me, but even before she could glide off, there came from the ale-house an appalling volley of oaths and curses. It was a man's voice, yelling in agonized blasphemy, and a woman's shrill treble floated on the surface of the stream of virulence.
I caught Mistress Waynflete's wrist and steadied her. "Not your father, apparently?" I said in a cool voice, though my head was whirling a bit under the strain. "Here," I went on, fetching a fistful out of my pocket, "are some guineas. Follow me, unhitch the horse, and if I shout to you to be off, mount him from yon horse-trough, and away like lightning. That's the road to Eccleshall, along which Master Freake is bound to come."
I thrust the guineas into her hand, gripped my weapon, slipped out of the pines and across the road, circled the horse, and made to peep round the jamb of the open door into the guest-room of the ale-house. As I did so, the man yelled, "God damn, I'm on fire!" and the woman shrieked back, "Burn, you foul devil, burn, and be damned!"
This was enough, and I burst in on a spectacle, strange, serious, on the point of becoming terrible, and yet almost laughable. In the middle of the room, a stout, shock-headed, red-elbowed woman stood, a pikel in her strong outstretched hands. The sergeant of dragoons, with his back to a roaring fire, was pinned against the hearthstead by the pitchfork, the tines of which were stuck in the oak lintel of the chimney-piece, so that a ring of steel encircled his throat like the neckhole of a pillory, and held him there helpless and roasting. When I first caught sight of him he was making a frenzied attempt to wrench the prongs out, but, finding it hopeless, drew his tuck, and lashed out at the woman. She calmly shifted out of reach along the handle of the fork. He then hacked fiercely but without much effect on the wooden handle, and finally, in his despair and agony, poised the tuck and cast it at her javelin-fashion. The woman, cooler than he in both senses of the term, dodged it easily. How she had contrived to pin him in such a helpless manner, I could not imagine. The motive was obvious. A little girl lay writhing and sobbing on the floor amid the fragments of a broken mug and a scattering of copper and silver coins.
"You've got him safe enough, mother," said I, "and it's no good cooking him since you can't eat him."
"Be yow another stinking robber, like this'n?" she demanded. The epithet was as apt as it was vigorous, for the stink of singeing cloth made me sniff. "If y'be," she went on, "I'll shove' im in the fire and set about yow."
"Not a bit of it, mother. I've come to help you, but shift him along a bit out of the heat, and then we'll settle what to do with him." To him I added, "Understand, sergeant, any attempt to fight or fly, and your neck will be wrung like a cockerel's." Then laying down my gun I pulled out the tines and shifted him along the lintel till he was out of danger. The woman, whose fierce determination never faltered, jammed the pikel in again and kept him trapped.
I went to the door and saw Mistress Waynflete standing by Sultan's head, and the proud beauty arching his neck in his joy at finding his mistress near him. I beckoned her.
"An old acquaintance, in a fix. Come in!" said I, and introduced her to the strange scene. "The sergeant, madam," I went on, "and he has been plucked like a brand from the burning." She took in the scene, judged what had happened, and then gathered up the child, who had ceased crying out of curiosity, and mothered the little one so sweetly that the red-elbowed woman cried out hearty thanks.
In brief the story, as collected later from the mother and child, was that the sergeant had ridden up and asked for a meal. After he had had some bread and cheese and ale, he had taken advantage of the alewife's absence to ask the child where mother kept her money, and, receiving no answer, had twisted the poor little one's arm until in her terror and agony she had told him of the secret hole in the chimney where the money was kept in a coarse brown mug. The child's cry had brought the mother running back with the pikel, snatched up on the way, and she, taking him at unawares with the mug in his hand, had darted at him and luckily caught him round the neck, and pinned him against the fireplace as I had found him. Let him go she dared not, for she was alone except for the child, and but for my arrival he would have roasted right enough till he was helpless. As it was the skirts of his coat were smouldering, and he had only just escaped serious injury. In fact, although smarting sore, he was so little damaged that after tearing away the burnt tails, he collected himself and tried to bam me.
"Master Wheatman," he began, "I call upon you in the King's name to aid and assist me. This woman's tale is all a lie. The mug was on the chimney-top for anyone to see, and I only took it down to examine it, being struck with its appearance."
"Also in the King's name, Master Sergeant," was my reply, "I propose to have you handed over to the nearest justice as a rogue and vagabond."
"And you shall explain why you are here with your--" I should have strangled him if his foul tongue had wagged one word of insult, and he saw it in my eyes. He stopped, and his face showed that he had discovered the secret.
"The sergeant recognizes you again, Molly," said I lightly.
"Bammed and beaten by a damned yokel?" he burst out. "Ten thousand devils! Where were my eyes yesterday?" In his anger he began to strain at his steel cravat.
"Virgil for ever! The first town we come to I'll buy me a Latin grammar," said Margaret to me, with a low ripple of laughter.
"How'd on, fool," said the alewife to the sergeant. "Yow wunna be wuth hangin' if y' carry on a this'n."
"If you don't loose me, you old bitch," he shouted, "I'll see you hanged! Loose me, for your neck's sake! These people are Jacobites!"
"Gom, I dunna know what that be, but I wish Stafford-sheer was full on 'em. 'Tinna any good chokin' y'rsen, I shanna let go."
This method of keeping him, however, rendered the alewife useless, so I took her place, and bade her fetch the longest and toughest rope she'd got. She brought me a beauty and with it I trussed the sergeant, tying him securely into a heavy, clumsy chair, and leaving him as helpless as a fowl ready for roasting. Then a thought struck me and I went through his pockets. His very stillness made me careful in my search, but I found only some old bills for fodder and other military papers, and a heavily sealed letter addressed "To HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS." I was not quite Jacobite enough to make me willing to steal a dispatch addressed to the Royal Duke, and I should have thrust it and the oddments of paper back again but for the rattle of hoofs outside. It was probably Master Freake, and I was particularly anxious that the sergeant should not see him, so I rushed out with all the papers in my hand to forestall him.
Hurrying outside I saw Master Freake hitching his horse to the signpost, and Mistress Waynflete already talking to him eagerly. When I got up he delivered his news briefly and to the point, and bad news it was.
He had learned in Stone that the Colonel had again been taken on ahead towards Newcastle in charge of a troop of Brocton's dragoons under the command of Captain Rigby, "last night's table companion of the dead Major," he explained.
"Whatever for?" asked Mistress Waynflete.
Master Freake said nothing, but his eyes were troubled, and I knew there was something he would fain conceal.
"Whatever for?" she repeated. "Could you learn of no reason?"
"I was told," he answered slowly, "that Colonel Waynflete's knowledge and assistance would be invaluable to the royal troops."
"Told that my father had turned traitor! Is that what you mean, sir?" Scorn too great for anger covered her face, veiling its sweetness as with a fiery cloud.
"That is the plain English of what I was told, I must admit." Here was the grave, businesslike nature of the man, plainly posing awkward questions that had to be answered.
"It's a wicked lie!" she burst out. She turned her face proudly to look into mine, and I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
"Naturally, madam," said I.
"My father's honour is mine, Master Wheatman, and I am your debtor for another splendid courtesy."
"I argue from the flower to the tree. Man's logic, and therefore necessarily imperfect, you would say, but for once I stick to it." I spoke lightly and reminiscently, so as to chase the gloom from her mind, and she was immediately herself again.
Master Freake continued his story, which went from bad to worse. As I had expected, Bladderface had ridden into Stone, and the result of his communication to Captain Rigby had been that orders were issued for our pursuit, and Master Freake had left the town not very far in advance of the squad of horse sent on our track. He had thus been unable to procure horses for us, but at Eccleshall he had managed to obtain a pillion for Margaret's use behind him.
This was awkward indeed, for though Master Freake had ridden hard, the pursuit could not be very far behind, and if, as was almost certain, the dragoons turned up at the "Ring of Bells," the sergeant would be set free, and be after us like a mad bull. There was, however, a margin of time available, and therefore I put this problem out of my mind, and attended only to the urgent one of the Colonel's position.