class="pnext">When the meal was ended, Squire Metcalf put his guest into the great hooded chair beside the fire of peat and wood.

"Now, sir, we'll talk of the King, by your leave, and these lusty rogues of mine shall stand about and listen. What is it His Majesty asks of us?"

The messenger, now food and liquor had given him strength again, felt at home in this house of Nappa as he had never done among the intrigues of Court life. He had honest zeal, and he was among honest men, and his tongue was fiery and persuasive.

"The King needs good horsemen and free riders to sweep the land clear of Roundheads. He needs gentlemen with the strong arm and the simple heart to fight his battles. The King—God bless him!—needs six-score Metcalfs, on horses as mettled as their riders, to help put out this cursed fire of insurrection."

"Well, as for that," said the Squire, lighting his pipe with a live peat from the hearth, "I reckon we're here for that purpose. I bred my sons for the King, when he was pleased to need them. But I'd rather he could bide—say, for a month—till we get our corn in. Take our six-score men from the land just now, and there'll be no bread for the house next year, let alone straw for the beasts."

The messenger grew more and more aware that he had been entrusted with a fine mission. This plain, unvarnished honesty of the Squire's was worth fifty protestations of hot loyalty. The dogged love he had of his lands and crops—the forethought of them in the midst of civil war—would make him a staunch, cool-headed soldier.

"The King says you are to ride out to-morrow, Squire. What use to pray for him on Sabbaths if you fail him at the pinch?"

Metcalf was roused at last, but he glanced at the little wife who sat quietly in her corner, saying little and feeling much. "I've more than harvesting to leave. She's small, that wife of mine, but God knows the big love I have for her."

The little woman got up suddenly and stepped forward through the press of big sons she had reared. Her man said openly that he loved her better than his lands, and she had doubted it till now. She came and stood before the messenger and dropped him a curtsey.

"You are very welcome, sir, to take all my men on the King's service. What else? I, too, have prayed on Sabbaths."

The messenger rose, a great pity and chivalry stirring through his hard-ridden, tired body. "And you, madam?" he asked gently.

"Oh, I shall play the woman's part, I hope—to wait, and be silent, and shed tears when there are no onlookers."

"By God's grace," said Blake, the messenger, a mist about his eyes, "I have come to a brave house!"

The next morning, an hour after daybreak, Blake awoke, stirred drowsily, then sprang out of bed. Sleep was a luxury to him these days, and he blamed himself for indolence.

Downstairs he found only a serving-maid, who was spreading the breakfast table with cold meats enough to feed twenty men of usual size and appetite. The mistress was in the herb-garden, she said, and the men folk all abroad.

For a moment the messenger doubted his welcome last night. Had he dreamed of six score men ready for the King's service, or was the Squire's honesty, his frank promise to ride out, a pledge repented of already?

He found the Squire's wife walking in the herb-garden, and the face she lifted was tear-stained. "I give you good day," she said, "though you've not dealt very well with me and mine."

"Is there a finer errand than the King's?" he asked brusquely.

"My heart, sir, is not concerned with glory and fine errands. It is very near to breaking. Without discourtesy, I ask you to leave me here in peace—for a little while—until my wounds are healing."

The Squire and his sons had been abroad before daybreak, riding out across the wide lands of Nappa. Of the hundred odd grown men on their acres, there was not one—yeoman, or small farmer, or hind—but was a Metcalf by name and tradition. They were a clan of the old, tough Border sort, welded together by a loyalty inbred through many generations; and the law that each man's horse must be of the true Metcalf white was not of yesterday.

Christopher's ride to call his kinsfolk in had taken him wide to the boundary of Sir Timothy Grant's lands; and, as he trotted at the head of his growing company, he was bewildered to see Joan step from a little coppice on the right of the track. She had been thinking of him, as it happened, till sleep would not come; and, like himself, she needed to get out into the open. Very fresh she looked, as she stepped into the misty sunlight—alert, free-moving, bred by wind and rain and sun. To Kit she seemed something not of this world; and it is as well, maybe, that a boy's love takes this shape, because in saner manhood the glamour of the old day-dreams returns, to keep life wholesome.

Kit halted his company, heedless of their smiles and muttered jests, as he rode to her side.

"You look very big, Christopher! You Nappa men—and your horses—are you riding to some hunt?" She was cold, provocative, dismaying.

"Yes, to hunt the Roundheads over Skipton way. The King has sent for us."

"But—the call is so sudden, and—I should not like to hear that you were dead, Kit."

Her eyes were tender with him, and then again were mocking. He could make nothing her, as how should he, when older men than he had failed to understand the world's prime mystery.

"Joan, what did you mean by 'until,' last night at the stile? You said none should master you until——"

"Why, yes, until—— Go out and find the answer to that riddle."

"Give me your kerchief," he said sharply—"for remembrance, Joan."

Again she resented his young, hot mastery, peeping out through the bondage she had woven round him. "To wear at your heart? But, Kit, you have not proved your right to wear it. Come back from slaying Roundheads, and ask for it again."

Blake, the messenger, meanwhile, had been fidgeting about the Nappa garden, wondering what was meant by the absence of all men from house and fields. His appetite, too, was sharpened by a sound night's sleep. Remembering the well-filled table indoors, he turned about, then checked himself with a laugh. Even rough-riding gentry could not break fast until the host arrived.

Presently, far down the road, he heard the lilt of horse-hoofs moving swiftly and in tune. The uproar grew, till round the bend of the way he saw what the meaning of it was.

Big men on big white horses came following the Squire of Nappa up the rise. All who could gather in the courtyard reined up; the rest of the hundred and twenty halted in the lane. They had rallied to the muster with surprising speed, these men of Yoredale.

All that the messenger had suffered already for the cause, all that he was willing to suffer later on, were forgotten. Here were volunteers for the King—and, faith, what cavaliers they were! And the big men, striding their white horses, liked him the better because his heart showed plainly in his