At that Hugh lifted his head from his arms. “Did my father send you to seek me?” he asked, eagerly, as the griping feeling in his throat would let him.
Ridydale hesitated a moment. “I’ll wager he’ll be glad enough that I have found you, sir,” he said at length. “For now, get you over to the cottage where the light shows yonder and bide till I come.”
“But Saxon’s horse,”—Hugh’s long drill in stable duty made him protest.
“Hang the horse and Bob Saxon, too!” growled Ridydale, with an expletive or so. “A pretty trade for your father’s son to turn a hand to!”
Still muttering, he strode back to the stable, while Hugh obediently made his way, by the hedge-gap and the well-trodden path, to the farthest of the cluster of cottages that quartered the troop. By virtue of his coming from Corporal Ridydale he was suffered to enter the low-studded living room and sit down on a stool in the chimney corner. It was a poor smoky room, but with the fire and candle it was warmer and brighter than the stable, and there was a home-likeness about the children sprawling on the hearth, the woman cooking pottage at the fire, even about her stolid peasant husband, that made Hugh content to sit in a kind of open-eyed drowse and watch them. In these hours of negative comfort the whole burden of responsibility seemed slipped from him, and he neither thought nor vexed himself with anticipation, only waited for Ridydale.
All save the cottager’s wife had packed to bed in the loft before the corporal returned. Hugh heard him outside, rating some unknown trooper with bullying volubility, and then he came in, grumbling about the mismanagement of Hardwyn, who in his absence had got the men out of all conceit of obedience. By the time they sat down to supper he had almost calmed himself, however, and was kindly spoken to the woman who attended them and brusquely civil to Hugh, who after his vagabond period felt ill at ease, even at so poor a board. Ridydale noted all that, and apparently he had made inquiries too, for when they were left alone at table he spoke out, half angrily and half sorrowfully, “So you’ve been drudging in the stables ever since that night, sir?”
“There was nothing else to do,” Hugh answered, and took another piece of bread, with a comfortable sense that he could have all he wanted.