As well walk eastward as another way, though, but he ached from head to foot and his back throbbed painfully; so at last, on a bleak hilltop, he sat down to rest, and watched the twilight close in. A little below him he could see the dim roofs of Shrewsbury and the purpling sky above. The western star came out first, and, as the night darkened, many more showed till he lost count of them and turned his eyes to the lights of the town. As he gazed thither he caught, clear and vibrant on the still air, the note of a bell. On the instant the foolish old tale of Dick Whittington came back to him: “Turn again, turn again.” Then he remembered how Lois and he had spoke together the day before he set out from Everscombe; and, when he had hoped for Whittington’s fortune, she had answered that his father would be glad to see him.
Of a sudden Hugh found himself lying face down in the wet grass of the hillside with his fingers digging into the turf. If he were only dead, now while he still possessed some shred of self-respect! He could not go on living, a mere horse-boy, everybody’s drudge, with his highest hope to be some day a swaggering private trooper, and then to be knocked on the head in a petty skirmish. It was so piteously different from the soldierly life he had planned, but he did not ask for that now, only not to be bullied and flogged any more.
Then that mood passed, and he knew only that he was cold in his torn shirt and his back was sore so he was loath to move. But the cold at last forced him to his feet and set him pacing up and down the wet grass; he still loved life enough to exert himself to keep it. Then he began to realize that, after all, he had acted like a child. Was this life so much less endurable than that at Everscombe? Was it worse to earn his living of a gang of brutal troopers than be dependent on grudging relatives? If he did get more blows, a man must not whimper for that, and he was now a man. Neither must a man go crying to his friends; rather the thing that best befitted a gentleman was to accept the life he had taken up and go on bravely.
So, in the early hours of the morning, Hugh Gwyeth faced westward and tramped back to the stables. Reaching there about dawn, he walked in as usual, and taking up a bucket, went to draw water. He had a curious sense of not feeling ashamed nor abashed, as he thought to feel when facing the men once more, but rather proud of himself and of more dignity than ever. He had no hope, however, of being a hero in the sight of the troopers. Some of them chaffed him over his beating and his slinking back again. “You wanted more of the same, did you?” Hardwyn asked dryly, whereat the others laughed. Saxon chaffed him too; but later, when Hugh came to the cottage for breakfast, he asked him roughly if the whip had drawn blood, and then he helped the boy to wash off his hurt back.