"Lord bless you! my lady," he said, in answer to some observation of Hortensia, "there will be no battle. The duke can't afford to fight such men as he's got before him--that's to say, the duke or King Monmouth, as they call him; and I can't tell, of course, which is right. But he's strengthening himself in Bridgewater, they say; and I know he sent for a great number of our lads round about, to help to cut rines and throw up dikes. He'll soon be obliged to give them all up, I've a notion; but nobody can tell, after all. War and love are the two most uncertain things that are, and I do not know which is the worst, for my part."
"Love," said Hortensia, smiling; "for, besides being bad in itself, as you say, it often leads to war, which is another evil."
"Lord bless you! my lady, love's a very good thing in its way, when it's young and fresh," said the farmer's wife, with a merry laugh. "It's not like beer, the better for being kept, that is true; but all those sweet liquors grow sour when they get stale; and so love's no worse than the rest of them. Isn't it so, father?"
The jolly farmer shook his sides with a hearty laugh, but replied, with a better compliment than courts could afford, "Such as thou never gets stale, my dear old girl; for there's a sweet spirit in the heart of thee that won't let a drop in thy veins grow sour, and the longer thou art kept the better."
The conversation served somewhat to cheer; but still both Ralph and Hortensia were anxious for the return of Gaunt Stilling; and Lady Danvers would not consent to retire to rest before information was received of what was the course to be pursued in the morning. After the supper was over, they went up again together to the room above, and seated themselves by the window, while the good farmer's wife followed them with a single lamp, and sat making stockings, and every now and then saying a word or two, calculated, as she thought, to keep their spirits up.
Ralph and Hortensia said little, but gazed on the scene before them, with the stars twinkling faintly above, and the wide expanse of Sedgemoor nearly vailed in mist, looking like a dim, uncertain sea.
"Ay, we none of us can rest to-night," said the old woman; and then, after a pause and two or three more stitches, she continued. "That's because we all feel as if something were going to happen; and something must happen, too, very soon--I'm sure of that. They've got too near to part without tearing each other."
"It is sad to think of," said Hortensia; "perhaps to-morrow may bring fate to many hundreds of honest men who ought to be friends and brethren."
"Likely, my lady," replied the farmer's wife; and there the conversation dropped.
"Farmer Bacon thinks they are going to have a siege," said the good dame, after about half an hour's silence; "but I don't think they'll wait for that slow work."