“Ay, it’s just me, just Peg MacIlrea.” She smiled up at him as she spoke.
“But, Peg, how could you do it? Peg, if I’d only known. Why did you come?”
“It wasna right. It wasna maidenly. If that’s what you want to be saying to me, Neal Ward. The other lassie wouldna have done it. Maybe not. But a’ the lads I knew well were turning out and going to the fight, and what was to hinder a poor, wild lassie, that nobody cared about, from going, too? Ay, and being there at the break, the sore, sore break, in Antrim town?”
Neal heard the tramp of the yeomen’s horses on the road. He heard their voices, their laughter, their oaths.
“Neal,” said Peg, “you’re a brave lad and a kind. I aye said it of ye from thon night when you throttled the dragoon. Do you mind it? D’you mind how I bit him?”
The yeomen were almost opposite their hiding-place now.
“Neal,” whispered Peg, “will ye no gie me a kiss? The other lassie wouldna begrudge it to me now, I’m thinking.”
He bent over her, put his arms round her neck, raised her head, and kissed her lips.
“Hush, Peg, hush,” he whispered.
“There’s a musket on the road in front of you, sergeant.” Neal recognised Captain Twinely’s voice. “There might be some damned croppy lurking in the meadow there. Dismount and beat him up. Hey! but we’ll have some sport hunting him across country if he runs. The earths are all stopped. We’ll have a fine burst, and kill the vermin in the end.”