Chapter Thirty Five.
Samson Visits his Brother.
No orders were given for attack that night, and Fred went to the rough shelter that served him for tent, to lie down, but not to sleep, for his thoughts were either at the Manor, which was to him as if it were a hundred miles away; at the Hall, where he knew that the little Royalist party were doing everything to resist the impending attack; or in the gloomy old patch of ancient forest they called the wilderness, where poor Nat lay helpless, and very little removed from death.
“I can’t sleep,” said Fred, at last, as he rose from his bed, which consisted of a pile of heather, over which his horseman’s cloak was thrown, and impetuously hurrying out, he stood gazing up at the bright stars, with the cool moist wind from the north-west bearing to his hot cheeks the freshness of the sea.
“Perhaps dying,” he said to himself at last. “I can’t lie there thinking about it. I will go, at all costs, and he shall go with me.”
He stepped back into his rough tent, buckled on his sword, threw the strap of a wallet over his head, and then took the remainder of his evening meal and a small flask, which he placed in the wallet. This done, he paused for a few moments, and then sought a scarf and a couple of handkerchiefs, which he also thrust into the wallet.
The next minute he was groping his way toward the place in a thick grove where the horses were picketed; and he had not far to look, on reaching his own, before finding Samson curled up in a half-sitting, half-lying position between the mossy buttresses formed by the roots of a huge beech.
Stooping down, he seized his henchman’s shoulder, and shook him, but only elicited a grunt.
He shook him again, but though his act was more vigorous, it only elicited a fresh series of grunts.