Mrs. Kendrick came to the door with a troubled face.
“Good morning, mistress,” she said, curtseying. “You find a sad house here. I have two of my poor lads sorely wounded upstairs, and the master be only now getting back his wits. He was that cruelly beaten about the head!”
“Why, when was that?” said Hilary. “Had they joined the Clubmen?”
“Ay, to be sure. They went to Ledbury, and near by Prince Rupert, as you know, made short work of them.”
This was the sorry side of war, and Hilary, as she entered the great kitchen and saw the white face and bandaged head of Farmer Kendrick, and the dazed look of suffering in his eyes, felt sad at heart. She crossed the room to the chimney-corner and spoke to him, but he took no heed.
“’Tis no use,” said the poor wife. “He’s been deaf as a post ever since, and dithered besides. He’ll never be fit for work any more, and what’s to become of us, God only knows, for the soldiers from Canon Frome have taken all our hay and corn, and every beast on the farm save the old lame horse. We’ve naught left but the geese and fowls.”
“I will tell the Vicar of your trouble,” said Hilary. “Why did you not send to him?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Kendrick, “we thought it best to hide the men-folk till the country is quieter. And they told me the Governor of Canon Frome was much at the Vicarage. It seems hard when the place has been ours for generations to have strangers making free with all our goods. I do hear folk say that ere long there’ll be a battle in these parts, and that Governor Massey be coming from Gloucester again.” Hilary went away with a grave face, not thinking so much of the future battle as of the unpleasant fact that Norton’s visits to the Vicarage were beginning to be commented on. She was grieved, too, that the poor wounded men had not had the comfort of a visit from her uncle.
Norton at once noticed the change in her expression when she rejoined him.
“You are troubled,” he said, gently, taking the basket from her.