He came out at the gate more briskly than he had hoped, and there, by the horses, found Peregrine and Lieutenant Millington in talk. “When you go back to Thomas Oldesworth tell him from me he should have taught you that a white flag protects the bearer,” he heard Millington say, and he noted Peregrine had fixed covetous eyes on Bayard. Indeed, as Hugh swung into the saddle, his cousin broke out, “You’ll pay me for that horse one day, sirrah.”
But Hugh deliberately turned his back upon his bluster, while he bade his uncle a second farewell, then waved his hat to Lois, who still stood among the roses in the garden, and so headed his horse away from Newick.
The shadows of the two horsemen showed long in the late afternoon sun, and lengthened and blended at last into the gray of the twilight. Frogs piped to them in the dusk as they threaded their way through a bit of bog land, and after that they went a long piece in silence under the wakeful stars. Hugh suffered Bayard go slowly, while he felt the pleasant night air upon his face and harked to the hoof-beats, muffled by the yielding road, till at length a light upon a distant hill showed where Woodstead lay. At that the horses freshened their pace, and, with a good flourish, they cantered in at the gate of the manor house and pulled up at the stables.
Bayard once made comfortable, Hugh went slowly back to the house, where he found the officers, with their coats off and the table well stored with glasses, loitering in the west parlor.
“So you’re back, are you, sir?” Butler greeted him. “Well, now you’ve had a safe-conduct and all at your disposal, is there anything else you’d command of me?”
“Nothing, sir,” Hugh replied, as he threw off his buff coat. “I’ll not need your good offices, for—In short, sir, I’m wearied of hiding, and I want back my own name again. So ’tis in my mind to ride for Oxford to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE STRANGER BY THE WAY
“You’ve a gray day for a start and a gallows at the end,” Allestree spoke encouragingly, as he lounged in the doorway of the manor house.
“’Twill be profitable to you, Master Gwyeth, to turn your thoughts as you go to composing your last good-night,” Mahone paused in lighting his pipe to add cheerfully.
Hugh put his attention to drawing on his gauntlets and made no reply; in the last twelve hours there had been threats and expostulations and jeers enough to teach him that his only course was to be silent and keep to his determination.