The Yeoman Adventurer

by George W. Gough

He dug the rowels into his horse and was off. An earnest, choleric man with his heart in his work, for which I liked him, even to his persistent damning.

I put Sultan to the slope and he kept bravely at it till I eased him off where the rise was steepest. My late encounter clearly meant that affairs were ripening fast farther north, and it might also mean danger behind me sooner than I had looked for. The blood danced in my veins at the prospect of the adventures that awaited me. Ho, for life and work! Would it be long before the blue eyes lanced me through and through again, as when I kissed her hand among the trees by the roadside? I looked at the frosty sun and judged that it was nigh on twenty-four hours since I had stood in the porch and watched mother and Kate across the cobbles into the road--twenty-four hours that had done more for me than the twenty-four years that had gone before them, for they had given me a man's task, a man's thoughts, the stirrings of a man's being, the beginning of a man's agony.

We were at the top now with the open country stretching for miles around us. But the dale beneath, through which the main road ran a mile away to the east, was thick with trees, and I could get no inkling of how things were going. I strained my ears to listen, but no warning sound could I hear. The countryside was still and calm as a frozen sea, and war and its terrors seemed so impossible that for a moment I felt as if it was only a dream-life that I was living and that I must wake soon and hear Joe Braggs trolling out his morning song in honour of Jane. But Sultan craned round his shapely head as if to ask me why I was loitering in the cold, bleak air; so with a cheery slap on his glossy neck, I gave him the reins and away he went, with me spitting ghostly Broctons on the sergeant's tuck. Through the skirts of the woodland he carried me, and then up again till on the top of Clayton Bank I pulled him up a second time for another survey of the situation.

The little town was now in full view a mile ahead, lying on the slope and top of some rising ground. Across the meadows to my right, and now plainly to be seen less than half a mile away, was the main road from Stone. Again I was disappointed. A long, rude post-wagon, pulled by eight horses and driven by a man on an active little nag, was groaning its way south; a solitary horseman was ambling north--and that was all I could see.

What had happened to the Colonel? Were the dragoons in the town or not? I dug my heels into Sultan's flanks and put him to it at his best, and in a few minutes was on the outskirts of the town.

The town consists in the main of two streets. The High Street is simply the town part of the main road from the south and Stone to Congleton and the north--the line along which the Stuart Prince was marching. It deserves its name, for it lies along the edge of the slope on which the town lies. Parallel to it in the dip lies Lower Street, and the road I was on curls past the end of this street and climbs gently to join the upper road. I could thus get into the heart of the town through the poorer quarter of it, and soon the kidney-stones of Lower Street rang under Sultan's hoofs.

The stir and noise of Stafford was completely absent. The townspeople, mainly hatters by trade, were plying their craft indoors as if no enemy were at their gate. In fact, as I learned afterwards, there was no fuss and much fun and good business when the Highlanders actually came on the scene. The farther a town was from them the more it funked them, which was, as everybody knows now, truest of all of London. As I turned up the lane by St. Giles', the church bells chimed two. Past the church in the corner between the lane and the High Street was the "Rising Sun." Once Sultan was safe in its stables I could set about getting news of the Colonel before Margaret and Master Freake arrived.

It was stiff work up the last thirty yards, and Sultan shook himself together after it when he drew out on the level High Street. Here were throngs of people and some signs of trouble toward. In particular I noticed the town fathers in their black gowns of office, and, most conspicuous of all, the crimson and fur of his worship. I judged they were coming from a council meeting in the town hall, which stood in the middle of the wide High Street. There was much high debate, wagging of fingers and smiting of fist in palm, but no approach to the tumult and terror of yesternight. The Mayor stood for a moment confabbing at the door of a grocery, and then shot into it. I saw him struggling out of his gown as he disappeared, and thence inferred that the chief burgess was a grocer in private life.

So much I saw before pulling Sultan round to pass under the archway leading into the yard of the "Rising Sun." I dismounted and called for an ostler. No man appearing, I was about to lead Sultan farther down the yard towards the stables when there was a scurry of feet behind me as if the whole ostler-tribe of the "Rising Sun" was hastening to my assistance. I turned round rattily to find myself looking into the barrel of a pistol, while three or four men pounced on me and pinned me against the wall.

"Damn ye, horse-thief, for the black of a bean I'd blow your brains out," said Colonel Waynflete. "Stick tight, lads; and you, good host, fetch along Master Mayor and the constable, and have me the scoundrel laid by the heels. If this were only my commandery on the Rhine! I'd strappado you and then hang you within the next half-hour. My bonny Sultan! How are you, my precious?"