Now he was grown up. School and college had passed him by, and much to his own astonishment had left him in many ways as much a boy as ever. He had not been allowed to enter either of the fighting services, so he took what of adventure the country afforded--the rustic merry-making of the "Kirn" in the days of harvest home, the coastwise adventure of ships, and the midnight raid of the Free Traders with their clanking keg-irons and long defiles of pack horses crowning the fells and bending away towards the North star and safety.
Now Miss Aline greeted him cheerfully as he came in through the great doors of the courtyard which had been shut that morning for the first time since her father's funeral.
"Ah, Louis," she cried at sight of him, "it is easy to guess what brings you to my door so early in the morning. It is long since the days of the brass preserving-pan. Laddie, I'm feared that 'tis quite another berrying of sweets which brings you so fast and so far!"
"Miss Aline," said the lad, with a frankness which made the good chatelaine like him the better, "I rode over to see Patsy Ferris. I must hear what all this is about the Duke of Lyonesse."
"Nothing, so far as I can hear, Louis," said Miss Aline; "but our maid is afraid, and her father's house and her uncle's are both as full of soldiers and ribaldry as ever in the times of the Covenant. So where should she come if not to me? It was more wisely done than I could have expected from that 'fechtin' fule' of a Stair Garland."
Louis Raincy saw Patsy. She was sitting in Miss Aline's own room among the simple daintiness of many white linen "spreads" with raised broidery, the work of Miss Aline's own hands. Here she told him her determination to keep out of the way till the Prince and his train had left the country. The reasons for her instinctive dislike of her uncle's guest were not clear to any except herself, but on these Louis did not insist. It was enough that Patsy was so minded. In any case he wished her to know that he would follow the movements of the enemy with care, and warn her of their intentions. Captain Laurence, especially, was a free talker, and might let slip useful information. He, Louis, would ride over to headquarters that very afternoon, and, if Laurence was still absent, he would get an orderly to find him.