Moreover, he much doubted whether the serjeant was alive. He had been among those on whom the sharpest attack had fallen, and not many of them had got off alive.
"What like was he?" said Steadfast. "We looked at a many of the poor corpses that lay there. They'll never be out of my eyes again at night!"
"A battlefield or two would cure that," grimly smiled Hodge. "Gaythorn—he was a man to know again—had big black moustaches, and had lost an eye, had a scar like a weal from a whip all down here from a sword-cut at Long Marston."
"Then I saw him," said Stead, in a low voice. "Did he wear a green scarf?"
"Aye, aye. Belonged to the Rangers, but they are pretty nigh all gone now."
"Under the rail of the miller's croft," added Stead.
"Just so. That was where I saw them make a stand and go down like skittles."
"Poor little maid. What shall I tell her?"
"Well, you can never be sure," said Hodge. "There was a man now I thought as dead as a door nail at Newbury that charged by my side only yesterday. You'd best tell the maid that if I find her father I'll send him after her; and if not, when the place is quiet, you might look at the mill and see if he is lying wounded there."
Steadfast thought the advice good, and it saved him from what he had no heart to do, though he could scarcely doubt that one of those ghastly faces had been the serjeant's.