"Ay, sir," Merrylips answered.
She spoke cheerily. For she was going to leave Monksfield, that in the last hours she had found so hateful. Almost she could have laughed for joy.
"That's a brave lad!" said Captain Norris; yet somehow he seemed a little disappointed that she bore it so bravely.
"Well, God speed thee, Tibbott, and farewell!" he added after a moment, and then suddenly, with his hand upon her shoulder, bent and kissed her.
She felt the roughness of his untrimmed beard against her cheek, and then, in that same minute, he was gone from the mess-room.
The hours that followed seemed to her like a dream. She laid aside her sash, as the captain had bidden, against her journey through the enemy's country. She watched Rupert hide away the coins, one by one, within the lining of his doublet and in his pockets. She sat at the table, because Rupert did so, and she ate some cold beef and bread, though she could scarcely taste the food. She was going to leave Monksfield—that was her one thought. And for all the dangers that she might meet upon the road, and for all that she must travel with Rupert, her little enemy, she was glad to be gone.
Only one thing troubled her. How were she and Rupert to pass through the rebel lines that were drawn so closely now round Monksfield? She wanted to ask Rupert that question, but she was too proud to be the first to break the silence that was between them.
So she sat playing with the wax that guttered from the candle on the table, and blinking at the light. Perhaps for a minute she had nodded, with her head upon her breast, when she felt a blast of cold air from the open door, and found that Captain Brooke was standing at her elbow.
"Briskly, lads!" he bade.
Already Rupert had pocketed the pistol and the flask, and taken up the packet of food. With scarcely a moment lost, they were all three outside the mess-room, in the flagged passage, and just then a shadow fell across their path, and before them stood Miles Digby.