"Ay," said the latter.
He turned in the saddle to listen. All the while the spatter of the hailstones sounded through the night.
"The fat's i' the fire now," said the trooper. "'Tis yonder at Loxford village, and a pestilence place for an ambuscado!"
The corporal who was left in charge of the squadron came riding then along their line, with sharp orders. Promptly the men fell silent. They closed their ranks, and with little rustlings and clickings looked to their primings and loosened their swords in their scabbards.
Still the hailstones spattered in their rear. Merrylips knew now that she was listening to the crack of carabines. Through all her body she began to tremble.
The rest of that strange night she remembered dimly. They rode on and on, in a tense silence. They flogged forward the wain-horses and the cattle, and some of them they had to leave behind. They met a great body of horsemen who were friends, sent out to help them. They came to a vast pile of buildings, set apart in a field, where there was a sheet of water that gleamed dully in the moonlight. They rode through an arched gateway, past sentries, into a big courtyard, where torches were flaring. Merrylips knew then that at last they had come in safety to Monksfield.
She felt herself lifted from the saddle, and stood upon a bench against a stable wall.
"Stay ye there, master," she heard Claus say. "Cornet Venner will speedily be here."
For a weary while Merrylips stood there, and watched the crowd. The courtyard was choked with frightened cattle and horses, and men that tried to clear the press, and officers that shouted orders. But she seemed to be unnoticed by them all.
She was very tired with riding all day long. She was frightened, too, at the strangeness of the place in which she stood, and troubled at Munn's not coming. If she had not promised her brother to be brave, she felt that she should have cried.