The sheep-stealer would not have it so. He had the dog’s instinct for what went homeward over Logie Brigg, unheard by Hardcastle—tramp of the feet of Flodden Men, returning to the house of Logie now it was in peril. He turned to see them pass; a great company. Then he drew closer still to Hardcastle, and licked his hands, and tried to lick his face.
“You’re a dreamer, lad,” said Hardcastle. “How can all be well—with that behind us? There’s Brant with a gun for you—and for me the Wilderness.”
Storm only came the closer. On the high fells he had learned the tracks of innocence and duty. In the lowlands he had garnered stealthy knowledge of many ways of hide-and-seek. Through clean days and muddy he had kept one gift safe.
They fell silent on the Brigg, these two. Wharfe River lapped against the sturdy arches she had tried, time and again, to batter down at flood-time. They heard rooks calling from peaceful sycamores, the cry of a plover not gone south as yet, the song of a farm-lad up the fields.
All this might be with him to the end of his days, thought Hardcastle. But it was likelier that all would go, before the Wilderness had done with him.
“We’d best be jogging,” he said, turning up hill, Storm close as a thistle-burr beside him.
Hardcastle was aware of the magic of this steep, winding roadway, faring up to his own gate between the woods of Logie. Wise, silent beeches reddened to their fall of leaf. A chestnut flung its crimson challenge to the death-in-winter soon to come. The sycamores were sending little clouds of leaves as playthings for the breeze. Over all, and through all, was the quick reek of autumn and the smell of wood-fires lazing up from Logie’s hearths.
Hardcastle was aware of it all, as of something that had stirred him once, in his wooing days, when a lass had painted all the country-side for him. That was far off, a memory bitten-down and ended. He was here with Storm, with thoughts of what the Lost Folk could do to him and his. The battle up-fell had put its marks on him. He was hungry and needing wine at his elbow.
For all that, when they passed through Logie’s gate and his old retriever growled at Storm—when the two of them were for each other’s throats, mad with sudden jealousy—Hardcastle took them by their collars, and shook them till they whimpered.
“There’s going to be war outside,” he said; “but, by God, I’ll have peace among my own.”