Joan turn’d, and the two women stood looking at each other;—the one with dark wonder, the other with cold disdainfulness—and I between them scarce lifting my eyes. Each was beautiful after her kind, as day and night: and though their looks cross’d for a full minute like drawn blades, neither had the mastery. Joan was the first to speak.
“Jack, is thy mare in the yard?”
I nodded.
“Give me thy pistols and thy cloak.” She stepp’d to the window hole at the end of the kitchen, and look’d out. “Plenty o’ time,” she said; and pointed to the ladder leading to the loft above—“Climb up there, the both, and pull the ladder after. Is’t thou, they want—or she?” pointing to Delia.
“Me chiefly they would catch, no doubt—being a man,” I answer’d.
“Aye—bein’ a man: the world’s full o’ folly. Then Jack do thou look after her, an’ I’ll look after thee. If the rebels leave thee in peace, make for the Jews’ Kitchen and there abide me.”
She flung my cloak about her, took my pistols and went out at the door. As she did so, the sun sank and a dull shadow swept over the moor. “Joan!” I cried, for now I guess’d her purpose and was following to hinder her: but she had caught Molly’s bridle and was already astride of her. “Get back!” she call’d softly; and then, “I make a better lad than wench, Jack,”—leap’d the mare through a gap in the wall, and in a moment was breasting the hill and galloping for the high road.
In less than a minute, as it seem’d, I heard a pounding of hoofs, and had barely time to follow Delia up the ladder and pull it after me, when two of the dragoons rode skurrying by the house, and pass’d on yelling. Their cries were hardly faint in the distance before there came another three.
“’A’s a lost man, now, for sure,” said one: “Be dang’d if ’a’s not took the road back to Lan’son!”
“How ’bout the gal?” ask’d another voice. “Here’s her horse i’ the yard.”