What this obscure threat might portend, I could not see, but it chimed in with the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the future mattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton's position must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion. He had "rescued" me with his own men, and, lord or no lord, he would hang for it were it once known to a lover of the gibbet like the Duke's Grace of Cumberland. What on earth was the letter about? Master Freake had definitely said lands, and therefore lands it must be, though nothing less than the whole Ridgeley estates could be in question. The thousand and more acres of the Upper Hanyards, sweet meadows stretching a mile along the river and a snatch of the chase at its wildest and loveliest, the prize that had fallen to the rascal earl in the great lawsuit, had been promised me as readily as a pinch of snuff. I gloated over the revenge I was winning for my race, a race rooted in those darling Hanyards a century before the Ridgeleys were heard of, for the first earl, the grandfather of the old rogue, started as an obscure pimp to Charles the Second, and was enriched and ennobled for his assiduity.
But no familiary pride could cheer me for long. The dead landscape around chilled me. The chiefest misery was to remember the hope with which I had started that morning. Margaret was the fancied end of my journey, and the real end was this! I had to bite my lips till I felt the trickle of blood in the stubble on my chin to keep back unmanly revilings.
At last we came out on what was by comparison a made road, and now his lordship grew plainly anxious and haggard. We rode madly along it, so that, riding shackled and woman-fashion, I had hard work to keep my seat. Brocton's head was incessantly on the turn to see if we were observed, but his luck was absolute. We saw no one on the road, and, after a hard stretch, we turned up a gully to our left and were once more buried among the hills.
After much turning and twisting we came in sight of a small house of grey stone which, from its appearance and situation, I judged to be some gentleman's shooting lodge. We cut across the valley, on one slope of which it stood, and I caught a glimpse of cottage roofs beyond it. We worked round to the rear of the house, and, in a favouring clump of trees, his lordship called a halt. The horses were tethered, and I was lifted down, and the rings round my ankles were unlocked. The men took one each, and carried their carbines in their free hands. Brocton drew his rapier, and said, "Forward! Make a sound, show the slightest sign of resistance, and I run you through."
There was no sense in disobeying, and I accommodated myself to his design, which was clearly to get into the house unobserved from without. In this he was successful, or at any rate I saw no one during our crawl from one point of vantage to another up to the back entrance. Now his lordship skipped gaily from behind me and opened the door. He stepped softly in, and I was pushed after him by his dragoons.
"'Friends will rescue you and bring you to me,'" he quoted, jeering me. "There's no Margaret for you, Farmer Wheatman. I shall have her yet!" Then, beast as he was, while the men kept me back, nearly tearing my arms out of their sockets, he stuck the point of his rapier over my heart and babbled half-delirious beastliness.
We were in a big, bare kitchen, the other door of which was closed. There was no sign of anyone about, and Brocton, still with his sword ready for me, bawled out, "Where are you, you old hag?"
The door opened at once. Brocton dropped his sword in his fright and I clapped my foot on it. The two men fled like rabbits. Familiar as the picture is to my mind, it is hard to find words to fit this crowning moment of my adventures.
Margaret walked into the room.
For a second she was minded to rush at me, but thought better of it, and walked up to his lordship. She towered over his limp, cringing figure, and said coldly, "You are too poor a cur to be struck by a woman or I would strike you."