Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier

by Beulah Marie Dix

CONTENTS

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	Tidings out of the North	[1]
II.	How One set out to seek his Fortune	[16]
III.	The Road to Nottingham	[34]
IV.	To Horse and Away	[49]
V.	In and Out of the “Golden Ram”	[66]
VI.	The End of the Journey	[81]
VII.	How the World dealt by a Gentleman	[95]
VIII.	The Interposition of John Ridydale	[113]
IX.	The Way to War	[132]
X.	In the Trail of the Battle	[152]
XI.	Comrades in Arms	[171]
XII.	For the Honor of the Gwyeths	[190]
XIII.	In the Fields toward Osney Abbey	[208]
XIV.	Under the King’s Displeasure	[224]
XV.	The Life of Edmund Burley	[242]
XVI.	Roundheads and Cavaliers	[258]
XVII.	The Stranger by the Way	[274]
XVIII.	The Call out of Kingsford	[290]
XIX.	The Riding of Arrow Water	[307]
XX.	Beneath the Roof of Everscombe	[324]
XXI.	The Fatherhood of Alan Gwyeth	[340]
XXII.	After the Victory	[358]

HUGH GWYETH

A Roundhead Cavalier

CHAPTER I
TIDINGS OUT OF THE NORTH

Up in the tops of the tall elms that overshadowed the east wing of Everscombe manor house the ancient rooks were gravely wrangling. A faint morning breeze swept the green branches and, as the leaves stirred, the warm September sunlight smiting through fell in flakes of yellow on the dark flagstones of the terrace below. For a moment Hugh Gwyeth ceased to toss up and catch the ball in his hand, while he stood to count the yellow spots that shifted on the walk. Eight, nine,—but other thoughts so filled his head that there he lost count and once more took up his listless tramp.

Off to his left, where beyond the elms the lawn sloped down to the park, he could hear the calls of the boys at play,—his Oldesworth cousins and Aunt Rachel Millington’s sons. The Millingtons had come to Everscombe a week before out of Worcestershire, where the king’s men were up in arms and had plundered their house. Yet the young Millingtons were playing at ball with the Oldesworth lads as if it were only a holiday. “Children!” Hugh muttered contemptuously and, conscious of his own newly completed sixteen years, threw an increased dignity into his step. He was a wiry lad, of a slender, youthful figure, but for all that he carried himself well and with little awkwardness. Neither was he ill-looking; though there was a reddish tinge to his close-cut hair it changed to gold when he came into the sunlight, and at all times there was in his blue eyes a steady, frank look that made those who liked him forget the freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheek bones, and the almost aggressive squareness of his chin.

Mouth and chin were even sullen now, as Hugh lingered a moment to glance up at the small diamond panes of the window of the east parlor. Within, Hugh’s grandfather, Gilbert Oldesworth, the master of Everscombe, his sons, Nathaniel and Thomas, his daughter’s husband, David Millington, and Roger Ingram, the lieutenant in Thomas Oldesworth’s troop of horse, were conferring with men from Warwick on the raising of forces, the getting of arms, and all the means for defending that part of the county; and Peregrine, the eldest of the Oldesworth lads, was allowed to be of their counsels. Hugh turned away sharply and resumed his dreary tramp up and down the flagged terrace. “If I had been Uncle Nathaniel’s son, they would have suffered me to be present as well as Peregrine,” he muttered, pausing to dig the toe of his shoe into a crack between the flagstones. “’Tis not just. I am near a man, and they might treat me—” He gave the ball an extra high toss and paced on slowly.

But, call as he would upon his injured dignity, he could not refrain from facing about at the end of the walk and retracing his steps till he was loitering once more beneath the window of the east parlor. He was not listening, he told himself, nor was he spying; there was no harm in walking on the east terrace of a morning, nor in lingering there to play at ball. So he stood slipping the ball from hand to hand, but his eyes were fixed on the little panes of the window above and his thoughts were busy on what was happening within. Would the people of the hamlets round about Everscombe, the farmers and ploughboys, who of a Sunday sat stolidly in the pews of the village church at Kingsford, would they truly resist their sovereign? The Oldesworths would head them, without doubt, but how many others scattered through the county and all through wide England were of the like mind? And what would come of it? Would there be war in the land, such wars as Hugh had read the Greeks and Romans had waged, such as the great German wars in which his own father had borne a part? And if there was a war and brave deeds to do and fame to win, would his grandfather and his uncles let him come and fight too, or would they still shut him out with the little boys, as they had shut him out to-day?

So he was thinking, when of a sudden the window at which he had been staring swung open, and Nathaniel Oldesworth, a mild-featured man of middle age, looked out upon him. Hugh flushed suddenly and kept his eyes on the ball he was still shifting from hand to hand. “You here, Hugh?” his uncle’s voice reached him. “Take yourself off to your play.”