Lord Armitage pulled a ring from his finger. "It is better so. That to him, I beg; that, with my last adieux and my love. Say to him that it must remind him of the hour when we met, of that hour when we shall meet again. Heaven bless your boy! I hold him very dear."
Boyd took the ring. Lord Geoffry vanished after Chisholm in the cold and darkness.
[*]See Jesse's Lives of the Pretenders, vol. ii., pp. 136-142. [Back]
CHAPTER IX.
COLONEL DANFORTH.
Streaked east became flaring light. Deep silence brooded yet over Windlestrae Farm, broken by no more unaccustomed sound than the notes of wakened birds, a cock's crow, or the low of kine.
But when the eastern side of the Manor House was showing a yellowish tint, with the faint rays of the sun through the morning mist, a hand was laid upon Roxley's shoulder and that heavy-lidded dragoon unwillingly opened his eyes, to find Captain Jermain shaking him gently.
"Come, Roxley, up with you! We must be on the road without asking for breakfast. I woke, myself, just now, by good-luck. Hasten!"
Roxley rubbed his organs of vision. Jermain stumbled, in the dark room, toward a window, administering a jolting to Dawkin on the way. He pushed open the thick shutters, so that a gray light filled the East Room; then he turned abruptly toward the corner, on the farther side of the bed, saying to what he thought was sentry but was only shadow:
"Halloa, there, my man! Go downstairs and see if you can fetch some water. For the——" Jermain's sentence broke in a profane ejaculation. "Boyd's knave has bolted! A fine sense of responsibility, truly; and I dare swear, Roxley, that you cannot tell me when."