At heart Merrylips was glad that Rupert was to stay in the room. She was almost afraid to be left alone with the stern captain. But when he spoke again, she went to him obediently, and halted at his side. He turned and laid his hand on her shoulder, just as he had done on the day when she first had entered the mess-room. And suddenly, as she met the look in his tired eyes, she no longer feared him.
But when Captain Norris spoke, it was to Rupert, not to Merrylips, that he said the words.
"Young Hinkel," he began, "I've marked you for long as a brisk lad, of riper wit than many of like years. So to-night, when I cannot spare one man from the garrison, I shall trust you, a lad, with a man's work."
Rupert's eyes shone. He drew himself up as tall as he could, and stood at salute, while he listened to the captain.
"This child," said Captain Norris, and drew Merrylips to stand against his knee, "must leave Monksfield to-night. But to send him as a non-combatant, under a white flag, to Colonel Hatcher, would mean to return him to the Roundhead kinsfolk from whom his brother snatched him."
"Prithee, not that!" begged Merrylips.
She would have said more, if she had not found comfort in the captain's next words.
"So the only course left," he went on, "is to set him outside our lines, and let him make his own way unto the nearest of our garrisons. You, Rupert Hinkel, shall go with him. Take him unto his kindred, and they will requite you well. Fail the lad, or play him false, and I shall seek you out and hang you."
This last the captain said as quietly as if he promised Rupert a box on the ear, or a ha'penny, or some such trifle. Yet quiet as his voice was, there was in it something that made Merrylips shrink and Rupert stiffen.
"I will not fail him, sir, on the faith of a gentleman," Rupert promised, in a voice almost as quiet as the captain's own.