“Zounds! girl, why did you not proclaim your sex, and not leave me to find it out by a long wisp of woman’s hair between my fingers? Lights! Lights! I say! and we’ll get the fellow yet! He must be in the house, for no one’s left it.”
Sir Percy has been for the moment meshed in his Lady’s long tresses, which, in the skirmish, have broke leash of the bundle and dangle out yard’s length.
For an instant she stands on the landing at bay. To unbolt the big door and make an open dash for freedom would mean certain death; to turn up therefrom and regain her chamber was her sole chance, and this must be done before a light could be struck.
She wheeled around and rushed up the hall, up the stairs among the clustering folk, nudging she knew not whom, skipped along the narrow rear passage, and into her room before candle flames revealed to the amazed company that neither bolt, bar, or latch had been disturbed, nor anything in the house taken!
Even while they rummaged in the bar-room till, counted the forks and spoons—pewter though they were, Her Ladyship, tying the luckless bundle about her waist with a hastily cut bed-cord, cautiously opened the casement, crawled out on the trellis, which unsteadied a bit beneath her weight but did not break; clambered in and out the vines to the edge, and then, lightly, thanks to her twin’s training, swung herself to the ground clear, crept across the yard, leaped the stone wall, with a bound and over; flew the width of the meadow; struck the lane, up to the high road; by the moon, took a southerly course which she knew made for Kennaston, and paused not much for breath until she had left a matter of five miles betwixt her and the Queen and Artichoke.
It was coming three o’clock by this, and, all the little night winds hushed, all the earth and trees and grasses, flowers, shrubs and weeds expectant, vibrant of the nearing dawn, whose pink and beauteous herald now looked over the hill-tops at the east, and put the lingering stars to shame, and woke the little birds, and bade every drop of dew flash on cup and blade; and all the things that breathe to grow and pulsate; to thrill through all their veins with joy that still another day was born.
Her Ladyship too was glad, for, brave as she had been through all the brief ordeal of her manhood, this last adventure had broken her spirit a bit, and hunger and fatigue had sadly weakened her flesh. As the lark mounted, singing to the now risen sun, she struck in a bit from the road and began an endeavor to calculate how far she might be from Kennaston village, or from any place familiar to her. But it was vain to speculate. Peggy, in all her cross-country rides, could not place the spot in which she now found herself.
Food was what she needed most and she came out into the open, shading her eyes with her hand and looking everywhere about for a curl of smoke that might guide her to a cottage. But no friendly film greeted her, and her hand fell listless at her side.
Hark! The tinkle of a bell, the soft lowing of a cow; not far off either. She ran a piece up the road and presently descried the herd huddling at the pasture bars waiting for their milking, yet no maid nor man in sight, no milking-stool nor pail nor cup, only the soft inviting lowing of the kine. Her bundle still tied about her waist, Her Ladyship let down the top bars, edged through, off with her once splendid but now much tarnished hat, set it under the nearest cow, knelt, and presently had the cock full of as fine foaming milk as one might wish to see. She rose and drank thankfully, rubbing the cow’s nose in gratitude; then; amid the concerted cries of the herd, she made off, a little refreshed, still keeping her southerly course; still haphazarding her way, for no house came in sight.
After a matter of a dozen miles, and now reaching the edge of a woods, with the tower of a Castle just sticking up out of the horizon for her only beacon, Peggy halted and, the refreshment of the milk having been by this exhausted, the tears forced their way to her eyes and even ploughed two small furrows the length of her cheeks, cupping in the dimple of her chin, and splashing at last, on her much rumpled Mechlin lace cravat.