The moon’s light was clear now, and into the mellow gold of it the horseman rode.
"Who goes there?" roared the Squire, lifting his pike.
It was a quavering voice that answered. "Be ye going to fight Ben Waddilove? I’m old and home-weary, and we were lads together."
The Squire’s laugh should have roused his company. "Why, Ben, I came near to braining you! What brings you here so far from Nappa?"
"Oh, Miss Joan! She’s full of delicate, queer whimsies. Told me, she did, I had to ride up the moor, as if my knees were not raw already! Said li’le Christopher, your son, was sitting on a bench in Ripley, tied hand and foot by Roundhead folk. So he is. I saw him there myself."
Without pause or hesitation, the Squire turned to his sleeping kinsfolk. Some he shook out of slumber, and kicked others to attention. "We’re for Ripley, lads!" was all his explanation.
With astonishing speed they unpicketed their horses and got to saddle. The discipline of farm and field, out yonder at Nappa, had not gone for naught. They knew this rough-tongued Squire who meant to be obeyed.
Ben Waddilove tried to keep pace with them as they skeltered down the moor, but gave it up at last. "Nay," he muttered, "I’m not so young as I was. I’ll just be in at the death, a bit later on."
Drinkwater and his lambs were tiring of their prisoner, who would not speak, would not budge or accept a price for liberty, when a trumpet call rang down the village street.
"A Mecca for the King!" roared the Squire, his voice like a mountain burn in spate.
When all was done, and Kit’s hands loosened, the lad knew his weakness and the galling pains about his limbs. He lifted his head with the last rally of his strength.
"Sir, where is Drinkwater?" he asked his father.
"That’s a pity. I wanted you to—to tell him, sir, that I had the last laugh, after all."
They carried Christopher into the tavern, and the Squire thrust the gaping onlookers from the room and shut the door. He thought the lad was dying.
Kit lay on the lang-settle. The dancing firelight showed the pallor of his face, the loose, helpless surrender of limbs and body.
"I cared for the lad too much, maybe," growled the Squire. "He was littlish, as we Metcalfs go, and a man’s heart yearns, somehow, about the baby of a flock."