face.

The messenger laughed suddenly, standing to the the height of five-foot-six that was all Providence had given him. "Gentlemen," he said, with the music of galloping horses in his voice, "gentlemen, the King!"

The Squire and he, after they had breakfasted, and the mistress had carried the stirrup-cup from one horseman to another, rode forward together on the track that led to Skipton. For a mile they went in silence. The Squire of Nappa was thinking of his wife, and youngsters of the Metcalf clan were thinking of maids who had lately glamoured them in country lanes. Then the lilt of hoof-beats, the call of the open hazard, got into their blood. A lad passed some good jest, till it ran along the company like fire through stubble; and after that each man rode blithely, as if it were his wedding-day.

A mile further on they saw a little lady gathering autumn flowers from the high bank bordering the road. She had spent a restless night on Kit's account, had he known it, and was early abroad struggling with many warring impulses. The Squire, who loved Christopher, knew what the lad most needed now. He drew rein sharply.

"Men of Nappa, salute!" he cried, his voice big and hearty as his body.

Joan Grant, surprised in the middle of a love-dream, saw a hundred and twenty men lifting six-foot pikes to salute her. The stress of it was so quick and overwhelming that it braced her for the moment. She took the salute with grace and a smile that captured these rough-riding gentry. Then, with odd precision, she dropped her kerchief under the nose of Kit's horse.

He stooped sharply and picked it up at the end of his pike. "A good omen, lads!" he cried. "White horses—and the white kerchief for the King!"

Then it was forward again; and Joan, looking after them, was aware that already her knight was in the making. And then she fell into a flood of tears, because women are made up of storm and sun, like the queer northern weather.

CHAPTER II.

SKIPTON-IN-CRAVEN.

"It's a pity about that corn o' mine, all the same," said the Squire, with a last backward thought. "There never was such a harvest year, since back into the 'twenties."

"There'll be such a harvest year, I trust," laughed Blake, "as will bring more like you to the King. I would that every dale of the north gave us a company like yours—men and horses riding as if they'd been reared together from the cradle. I tell you sir, Prince Rupert would enrol you all at sight, if there were not more urgent need for you at Skipton."

"As a plain man to a plain man, what does the King ask of us?" asked the Squire of Nappa. "Mr. Lambert, you say, is laying siege to Skipton. He should know better. I knew him as a lad, when he lived out yonder at Calton-in-Craven, and he had naught in common with these thick-headed rogues who are out against the King. He's of the gentry, and always will be."

"He has lost his way in the dark, then," said the other drily. "He's training his cannon on Skipton Castle as if he liked the enterprise."

"So you want us to ride through Lambert's men and into the castle to help garrison it?" asked Squire Metcalf, with his big simplicity, his assurance that the men he led would charge through any weight of odds.

"Heaven save us, no! The governor has enough men to feed already, men of usual size; your little company would eat up his larder in a week."

"We have fairish appetites," the Squire admitted. "Big sacks need a lot of filling, as the saying goes. Still, you said the King wanted us, and we've left a fine harvest to rot where it stands."

The messenger captured a happiness he had not known for many days. There were no shams about this Squire. In all sincerity he believed that King Charles had personal and urgent need of him; he asked simply what it was the King commanded. It was so remote, this honesty, from the intrigues of those who fought for places in the Court, and named it loyalty, that the messenger was daunted for a moment.

"You are a big company, sir," he said, turning briskly round in saddle; "but you seem oddly undivided in loyalty to the King and one another. Strike one Metcalf, or do him a kindness, and six-score men will repay in kind. You have the gipsy creed, my friends."

"Ay, we're close and trusty. It seems you know the way of us Nappa folk, though I never set eyes on you till yesterday."

"It is my business to know men. The King's riders must make no mistakes these days, Squire." He glanced back along the chattering group of horse, with quick pride in the recruits he had won from Yoredale. "You're all well horsed, well armed."

"Why, yes. We heard trouble was brewing up 'twixt King and Parliament, and we got our arms in order. What else? Folk sharpen sickles when the corn is ripening."

"And you have these lusty rascals at command—sharp to the word?"

Squire Metcalf smiled, a big, capacious smile. "They've felt the weight o' my hand lang syne, and know it. My father before me trained me that way—as you train a dog, no more, no less."

He drew rein and whistled sharply. The horsemen, fifty yards behind, pressed forward, and the heir of Nappa galloped at their head, drew rein, saluted his father with sharp precision, and waited for commands.

"Oh, naught at all, Christopher," said the Squire. "This guest of ours doubted whether I could whistle my lads to heel, and now he knows I can."

The messenger said nothing. The quiet, hard-bitten humour of these northerners appealed to him; and Mallory, the governor of Skipton, had been right when he sent him out to Nappa, sure that the Metcalf clan would be worth many times their actual number to the Royalists in Yorkshire.

They came to the rise of the road where Bishopdale, with its hedges of fast-ripening hazel nuts, strode up into the harsher lands that overlooked Wharfedale. They rode down the crumbly steep of road, past Cray hamlet, set high above its racing stream; and at Buckden, half a league lower down, they encountered a hunting-party come out to slay the deer. They were too busy to join either party, King's or Parliament's, and offered a cheery bidding to the Metcalf men to join them in the chase.

"We're after bigger deer," laughed the Squire of Nappa. "Who rides for the King?"

Hats were lifted, and a great cheer went up. "All of us," said a grey, weather-beaten horseman.

"Ay, it seems like it," growled the Squire. "Much good you're doing Skipton-in-Craven by hunting deer instead of Roundheads."

"Skipton can stand a twelve months' siege. She can whistle when she needs us, like any other likely lass. There's no need to lose a hunting-day till Sir John Mallory needs us."

The Squire found his first disillusionment along this road of glamour. He had thought that a company of picked horsemen, armed for the King and riding with a single purpose, would have swept these huntsmen into line. Some few of them,