“No hurt at all, his usual fortune,” Sir William replied, before he turned away to one of those beside him.
Hugh had to check his questions on his tongue’s end, and wait and look about in the hope each instant that Dick might come tramping to the fire. But the minutes ran on, Frank had settled himself by the blaze, and Sir William had no time to heed a boy’s concerns, so Hugh must finally take courage and, going to Bludsworth, ask of Dick’s whereabouts. “Young Strangwayes?” replied the major. “Why, he has gone back to the house we quartered at; some one had to convey Cornet Griffith thither.”
“Well, he’s left the road behind him,” Hugh answered stoutly, and, turning from the fire, faced into the black of the night.
At first, what with the foot and horse soldiers and camp followers to be met, the gleam of the bivouac fires on either hand, and the tumult of the army all about him, it was brisk enough journeying. But, as he passed out from the circle of the encampment and the bustle around him subsided, he found his riding-boots felt heavy and the going was far slower than it had been that morning. It was dark overhead, so he stumbled, and once his new sword tripped him. He put his hand to the hilt so as to strike up the blade, and then as he trudged he fell to wondering what manner of man the sword had belonged to, and he thought on the trooper with the wound in his throat, and the many faces of dead men. When a branch snapped in a copse to his left he halted short with his heart thumping, then told himself he was a fool and tried to whistle as he walked. But there came on him a desire to look back over his shoulder, and the echo of his whistle made his blood thrill unpleasantly. There was a thicket he must pass through, he remembered, before he reached the manor house; he dreaded it long, and, when he came to it, clinched his hands tight and walked slowly, while the gray face of the trooper he had himself slain dazzled up and down before his eyes. Half through the thicket he broke into a run, and, with not even will enough left in his tired body to restrain himself, plunged heavily across the open to the door of the hall, where there was light. He stumbled against the door, which resisted, and, in a panic he could not comprehend, he shook it.
“Gently, gently,” came a voice that calmed him. The door swung open, and in the candlelight that shone within he saw Dick Strangwayes, with his cuirass and helmet off, his coat hanging unfastened, and the same old half-laughing look in his eyes, while his lips kept sober.
Hugh pitched in headlong and blindly griped his friend in his arms. “Dick, Dick,” he burst out, “I have found you. And, Dick, I—I killed a man to-day.”
“Is that all?” Strangwayes drawled with one arm about him. “Why, I killed three.”
CHAPTER XI
COMRADES IN ARMS
There were no dreams for Hugh after he had stretched himself out on a bench in the hall as Strangwayes bade him. He was too exhausted in body and spirit to question or speak; he only knew he was glad he had found his friend once more, and the cushion beneath his head felt soft, so he went dead asleep, and lost at last the remembrance of the sights of the day’s carnage. He had no dreams and he was loath even to have a waking; some one shook him again and yet again, but he only murmured drowsily, with a voice that seemed far off to him, till he was pulled up sitting. He screwed his knuckles into his eyes, turning his face from the candlelight, and he heard Strangwayes laugh: “Look you here, Captain Turner. This gentleman must have a clear conscience by the way he sleeps.”
The thought that Turner’s sharp eyes were on him made Hugh face about and sit blinking at the candles. The hall where they had that morning eaten was quite bare now and dark, except for the two flickering candles and the uncertain firelight. In front of the chimney-piece Turner, all equipped to ride forth, was making a lunch of a biscuit and a glass of wine he held in his hands, and the only other occupant of the apartment was Dick Strangwayes, who, wrapped to the chin in his cloak, stood by the bench. “Awake, eh?” he smiled down at Hugh. “Good morrow, then.”