“Well, ask them.”
“It would be of no use.”
“My good lad, I am tired out. I want to snatch a few hours’ sleep. What is it you want?”
“I want to take half a dozen men to ride over and fetch my mother here. They were once dear friends, and if my mother came, she could persuade Lady Markham, for her child’s sake, to go back with her.”
The general sat frowning for a few minutes, during which he poured out a little wine in a long Venice glass, filled up with water, and drank.
“Yes,” he said in a quiet, decided voice, as he set down his glass, “take a sergeant and half a dozen—no, a dozen men, ride over and do the business as quickly as you can, so that the men and their horses may get back and rest. It means a double journey, you see. No; no thanks. Despatch!”
Fred looked his thanks, and retired with the promptness loved by his leader; and a very short time later, just as the turret clock was striking ten, he rode out with his little detachment, being challenged again and again by the mounted sentries placed along the road which skirted the west end of the lake.
“Only think of it, Master Fred,” whispered Sergeant Samson Dee, as they rode slowly along beneath the light of the stars—“going home in this way. What will the mistress say?”
They were not long in hearing.
As they rode over the familiar ground, Samson was very silent, for he was thinking of the old garden, while Fred felt a swelling sensation at his breast as every object so well-known peered cut of the surrounding darkness. There was the pond in which Dodder took refuge one day after he had broken out of the field to escape capture, and there stuck so tightly in the mud that cart ropes had to be thrown over him, and he was dragged out looking the most drenched and deplorable object possible.