"I am a messenger of the lonely sort," put in Blake—with a touch of spleen, for he was tired. "Well, I propose to see what comes of your new way of galloping."
"The first that comes"—Metcalf yawned and stretched himself with an air of complete strength and bodily content—"will be my Cousin Ralph, who took the message on just now. When he has passed it on, he rides hitherto. We may expect him in a half-hour or so."
Blake, himself something of a mystic, who rode fine errands by help of no careful planning, but by intuition, was interested in this man, who stood for the Metcalf thoroughness, in detail and in hot battle, that had made their name alive through England. He learned, here in the moonlight, with the jug-jug of nightingales from the thickets on their right, and the stir of moths about their faces, how carefully the old Squire had planned this venture. The clan was a line of single links from Oxford to the north, so long as the message needed to be carried swiftly; but afterwards each messenger was to ride back along the route to Banbury, until the company mustered on its outskirts grew big enough to hold attack from the town in check.
As they talked, and while Metcalf was pushing tobacco—borrowed, like the snuff, from Blake—into the bowl of a clay pipe, there came a little sound from up the road. It was a rhythmical, recurrent sound.
"That is my Cousin Ralph," said Metcalf unconcernedly.
The music grew louder by degrees, till the din of nightingales was lost in the rat-a-tat of hoofs.
"The first to the tryst," laughed Blake, as the new-comer dismounted and picketed his horse close to their own. "We have a wager that your folk will not be in Oxford within five days and a half."
"For my part," said Ralph, "I have a hunger that eats inwards. Have you found nothing for the larder, cousin, all this time of waiting?"
Will Metcalf had, as it happened. Near sundown he had set two traps—simple contrivances of looped wire—in a neighbouring rabbit burrow; and, a little while before Blake rode out from Banbury, he had dismounted to find a coney in each snare.
"We shall do well enough," said Will.