"What, not a scratch on you?" he asked in wonder.
Griff bared his left arm with ill-concealed pride and showed a deepish cut. "'Tis no more than a scratch, Ned. I took it from Red Ratcliffe," he laughed.
And then his brothers, not to be outdone, showed many a trivial scar, which they had gleaned amid the give-and-take of blows.
"Thank God, it is no worse," said Wayne huskily. "I should never have found heart, lads, to go back to Nell if one among you had been lost.—There! Wash them in the stream, and dust them well with peat—and, faith, I'll join you, for my own hurts begin to prick."
The streamway all about the pools was fouled by the trampling of dogs and sheep, of farm-men and rough-ridden horses, and the brothers moved further up the stream to find clean water for their wounds. As they passed the far side of the pinfold, their eyes fell upon the fallen Ratcliffes, unheeded until now in the turmoil. One was dead, his skull splintered by a hoof-stroke; the other three lay with their faces to the pitiless sun, and groaned.
Wayne was harder than of yore; yet he could not let them lie there in their agony until the sun, festering their wounds, had made them ready for the corbie-crows already circling overhead. He stood awhile, looking down on them; and one, less crippled than his fellows, rose on his elbow and spat on him.
"Let me kill him, Ned—let me kill him!" cried Griff, in a voice that was like a man's for depth.
Ned glanced at this youngster's face, and he remembered what his own blood-lust had been when he fought his first great battle in Marshcotes kirkyard, and bade them roof three fallen Ratcliffes over with the vault-stone. For it was as Red Ratcliffe had said; the fight was hot still in this lad, and he shrank from naught.
Wayne set a hand on Griff's shoulder and forced him toward the stream. "Ay, lad, I know," he said quietly; "but thou'lt think better of it in awhile.—Set these rogues under shade of yonder bank," he broke off, turning to the shepherds; "take their daggers from them first, for they have a shrewd way of repaying kindness; and then look ye to their hurts."
"We've hed a fullish day, Maister, I reckon," said Hiram Hey, going up the stream beside them and standing with his arms behind his back while he watched the brothers bind each other's wounds.