"Yes, yes," she answered with a start, "I am ready;" and then turning to O'Donnell, added, "I remember it all now. That name, like the sudden drawing of a curtain, has let in the light upon memory, and I see the past."
"God speed you, young lady!" replied O'Donnell; "but now hasten upon your way, and I will take mine; for it will not be long ere your flight is discovered, and before that I hope I shall be in my house, and you many miles hence."
Thus saying he waved his hand, and Barecolt, striking his horse with his heel, led the way along the road at a quick pace. Arrah Neil followed, and was at his side in a moment; but good Diggory Falgate, who seemed less accustomed to equestrian exercise than either of his companions, was not a little inconvenienced by the trotting of his horse. Merciless Captain Barecolt, however, though, to tell the truth, he saw the difficulty with which their companion followed them at a still increasing distance, kept up the same rapid rate of progression for some six or seven miles, speaking now and then a word to his fair companion, but showing, upon the whole, wonderful abstinence from his usual frailty. At length they reached the top of a long sloping hill which commanded a view over a wide extent of country behind them, and along at least one-half of the road they had followed from Hull; and turning his horse for a moment or two, Captain Barecolt paused and examined the track beneath his eyes, to see if he could discover any signs of pursuit. All was clear, however. The sun, now risen a degree or two above the horizon, but still red and large from the horizontal mist through which it shone, cast long shadows from tree, and house, and village spire, over the ground in some places, and in others, bright gleams of rosy light; but almost all the world seemed still slumbering, for no moving object was to be seen on the road, and nothing even in the fields around but where team of horses driven slowly by a whistling ploughman, at about a hundred yards upon the left of the party on the hill, wended slowly onward to commence their labours for the day.
"You may go a little slower now, young lady," said Barecolt, after he had concluded his examination; "we have a good start of them, and I do not think they would venture to send out far in pursuit."
"Thank God!" answered Arrah Neil, not in the common tone of satisfaction with which those words are usually pronounced, but with the voice of heartfelt gratitude to Him from whom all deliverance comes. "But do you think we are really safe?" continued Arrah, after a moment's thought. "Perhaps it would be better to go on quickly for a time; but that good man who came with us seems hardly able to make his horse keep up with us."
"Then we will make him lead as soon as he comes up," answered Barecolt; "we can follow at his pace, for I think we are secure enough just now. The truth is, he is evidently unaccustomed to a horse's back, and sits his beast like a London tapster in a city pageant. 'Tis a lamentable thing, Mistress Arrah, that so few people in this country ever learn to ride. Now, before I was twelve years old, there was not a pas of the manége that I could not make the wildest horse perform; and serviceable indeed have I found it in my day; for I remember well when the small town of Alais was taken, which I had aided to defend, with twenty other gentlemen of different nations, we determined that we would have nothing to do with the capitulation; and on the morning when the king's troops were just about to march into the town, we issued forth to cut our way out, or to find it through them in some manner. We had not gone above three hundred yards from the gate when we found a line of pikemen drawn up across the road and in a meadow. There were no other troops on that side of the town, for the chief attack was at another point; but as soon as they saw us, down went their pikes, when, crying 'Now, gentlemen, follow me!' I dashed up to them as if to charge. I was mounted on a swift and powerful horse--I called him Drake, in memory of the great Sir Francis; but, just as I was at the point of their pikes, I lifted him on his haunches, struck my spurs into his flanks, and with one spring over the line we went."
"And what became of the rest?" asked Arrah Neil.
"You shall hear," replied Barecolt. "The horse as he came over lashed out behind, and striking one of the pikemen on the head, dashed in his steel cap and his skull together, so that down he went, and my friends charging on, cut a way for a part of themselves before the confusion was over. Five got through and joined me; but the rest had to eat cold steel."
"They were killed?" asked Arrah Neil. "Alas! war is a sad thing."
"Very true," replied Barecolt; "but one comes to think of it as nothing. It is the occupation of brave men and gentlemen; and when one makes up one's mind every day to lose one's life if need be, he does not think much of seeing others go a few hours before us. If I could call up again all the men I have seen killed, since I first smelt powder when I was about fifteen, I should have a pretty strong army of ghosts to fight the Roundheads with.----Well, Master Falgate," he continued, as the painter came up, "you seem red in the face and out of breath."