Early next morning Donald Ward and Neal set forth on their journey. Rab MacClure’s horses served them well. By breakfast time they reached Ballymoney. They sat in the inn kitchen while the woman of the house broiled salmon for them. She was full of excitement, and very ready to talk. The yeomen had ridden through the town the day before. They had stopped at her house to drink. The officer and some of the men had paid their score and ridden on. Ten of them remained behind, and demanded more drink. Tumblers were brought to them as they sat in their saddles. One of them had proposed a toast—“To hell with all Papists and Presbyterians.”
“And that was no civil talk to use to me, when all the town knows that my man is an elder in the kirk.”
But there was more to follow. The troopers had flung down the tumblers—“the bonny cut glasses that were fetched from Wexford”—and shattered them on the pavement of the courtyard. Then they rode off without paying a penny, and when the mistress cried after them one man came back with his sword drawn in his hand, and she was fain to flee and hide herself. But the story of her own wrongs did not quench the good dame’s curiosity. She recognised Neal as the son of the minister in Dunseveric. It was towards Dunseveric that the yeomen had ridden. What did they do there? Had there been hanging work or burning—the like of what went on in other parts? Had they visited the minister’s house? Did Neal see them?
Donald Ward was a talkative man, and somewhat given to boasting; but, apart from the fact that the business of the night before gave him little excuse for glorying, he had plenty of sound sense—too much sense to gossip with the mistresses of inns about serious business. He signed to Neal to keep silent, and himself parried the shower of questions so adroitly that his hostess got no information from him. She tired at last, and with a show of disappointed temper, put the salmon on the table.
“There’s your fish for you,” she said, “and fadge and oaten farles, and if you want more you’d better show some civility to the woman that does for you.”
She left the room, and stood, her hands on her hips, staring into the street.
“We’re well rid of her tongue,” said Donald.
Before the travellers’ appetites were half satisfied she was with them again. She ran into the kitchen with every sign of terror in her face.
“They’re coming,” she said. “I seen them coming round MacCance’s corner, and they have men with them and led horses. I seen them plain, and one of them is Rab MacClure, of Ballintoy. Away with you, Neal Ward, away with you. I’m thinking that them that has Rab MacClure and his feet tied under the horse’s belly will be no friends of your father’s or yours.”
Donald Ward rose to his feet and stretched himself.