“Speak to him? Yes, to fly to the hand of him whom I many a time saved from death. And so you are the son of Morton Darley? And a brave-looking, manly fellow too. Why, I might have known. Eye, nose, curled-up lip. Yes: all there. You are his very reflection, that I ought to have seen in the looking-glass of memory. Excuse this weak moisture of the eyes, boy. The sight of my old friend’s son brings up the happy companionship of the past. Time flies fast, my brave lad. Your father and I were hand and glove then. Never separate. We fought together, bled together, and ah! how fate is partial in the way she spreads her favours! Your father dresses his son in velvet; while I, poor soldier of fortune—I mean misfortune—am growing rusty; sword, morion, breast-plate, body battered, and face scarred by time.”
“Aren’t we going to have something to eat and drink, captain?” growled one of the men, with an ugly scowl.
“Ay, brave boys, and soon,” cried the leader.
“Then, leave off preaching, captain, till we’ve got our legs under a table.”
“Ah, yes. Poor boys, they are footsore and weary with the walk across your hilly moors. Excuse this emotion, young sir, and lead me to my old brother’s side.”
There was something comic in the boy’s look of perplexity and disgust, as, after a few moments’ hesitation, he began to lead the way toward the half castle, half manor-house, which crowned the great limestone cliff.
“Surely,” he thought, “my father cannot wish to see such a ragamuffin as this, with his coarse, bloated features, and disgraceful rags and dirt.”
But the next minute his thoughts took a different turn.
“If what the man says be true, father will be only too glad to help an old brother-officer in misfortune, and be sorry to see him in such a plight.”
With the frank generosity of youth, then, he softened his manner toward his companion, as they slowly climbed upward, the great beeches which grew out of the huge cracks and faults of the cliff shading them from the sun.