“I cannot answer your intemperate words, Sir Godfrey,” he said; “and I will not presume to utter so vain a command to you. This is free England, sir, where every man who dares to think, thinks according to his belief. We have been old friends; our boys have grown up together as brothers, but the exigencies of our political faith sunder us widely apart. Ride you your way, sir, and I pray you let me go mine; and may our ways be farther and farther separated, so that we may never meet again till it is in peace.”
As he spoke, he turned his horse, and rode slowly away down the western road, leaving Sir Godfrey chafing angrily, and fidgeting with the hilt of his sword, as he sat gazing after his old friend calmly ignoring his presence, and followed by his son and his serving-man.
“I ought to arrest him—a man openly in arms against the law; an enemy to his majesty, who may work him terrible ill. But I cannot do it; I cannot do it. Old friends—brothers; our wives who have been as sisters.”
He paused for a few moments, gazing after the retiring figures, and then jerked his horse round so sharply that the poor beast reared.
“Left! Forward!” cried Sir Godfrey then, and he rode on to the east, followed at a short distance by Nat and his son.
Before they had gone a dozen yards, Nat, who was fidgeting about in his saddle, evidently in a state of considerable mental perturbation, wrenched himself round and looked after the Manor people, to see that Samson was waiting for him to do so; and as soon as he did look, it was to see a derisive threatening gesture, Samson, by pantomime, suggesting that if he only had his brother’s head under his arm, he would punch his nose till he made it bleed.
“Ur–r–r–r!” snarled Nat, with a growl like that of an irritated dog.
“What’s the matter, Nat?”
“Matter, sir? See that Samson—ah, he’s a rank bad ’un—shaking his fist at me, and pretending to punch me? Here, I must go and give it him now.”
“No, no,” cried Scar, catching at Black Adder’s rein. “Your orders are to follow your colonel.”