“My father is there,” Hugh said, half aloud. He did not tell Frank what he was thinking: that, after all, he would rather have a father who, even if he did despise and reject his son, was striking good blows over yonder, than an indulgent parent like Master Nathaniel Oldesworth, who could bear to sit idle at home.
“What if your father is there?” Frank panted in retort. “It does not better matters for us. They’re hard at it. Listen to the muskets yonder. Come, let us go thither.”
Hugh gave one glance to the west, where even the dust-cloud had faded in the distance, and to the south, where a slight swelling of the plain hid the sight of conflict; it was from there the tantalizing noise of firing came. “’Tis not in human endurance to stay here and not know how the day is going,” he burst out, and led the way down into the plain. They struck toward the brook they had crossed, and followed its course northwestward, almost in the track the Royalist horse had taken.
“They’ve all passed out of sight,” Frank said as he pressed forward, half on the run. “They must have driven the rebels clean into Kineton.”
“Hark to the southward!” Hugh answered.
“They will only be shooting down stragglers,” Frank replied confidently. “The day’s ours. No living thing could stand up against such a charge. Was it not brave? I tell you, Hugh, war is the grandest—”
There the words died away on Frank’s lips, as a few paces before them near the brookside he caught sight of a dark, motionless thing. “’Tis not—” he faltered, and made a movement as if he had half a mind to fetch a circuit about the place.
“Come along,” Hugh said firmly, though he felt the heart contract within him. “If he be alive, we must help him.” Walking forward deliberately, he halted a step from the object,—a common trooper, he now saw, and by his colors one of the king’s men. He lay on his back with his hands clinched above his head, and the blood bubbling out through a bullet wound in his throat, but he still breathed in short, rattling gasps. Perceiving that, Hugh ran to the margin of the brook, and, dipping his hat full of water, splashed it over the man’s face; he remembered afterward what a dull, dogged face it was under the pain that was distorting the brows and lips. He raised the man’s head up against his arm. “Fetch more water, Frank,” he bade; then, as the boy turned, it seemed something caught and clicked in the trooper’s throat, and his head slipped down from Hugh’s arm. Hugh suffered him to sink to the ground, and was kneeling beside him, half dazed with the awesomeness of what had happened, when Frank came stumbling back. “What!” the younger lad cried; “is he—”
“He is gone,” Hugh answered simply. He got up, and walking to the brook lay down on the brink and drank; the chill of the soggy turf beneath him and the cold water he gulped down seemed to wash away something of the horror he had just seen. He rose fairly steadied. “Shall we go forward, Frank?” he asked. “There’ll be more such to see.”
“Yes, let us,” Frank said, rather subdued, and so, passing the body of the trooper, they went on down the brook.