A half-hour later they kicked the fresh sentries out of sleep. Then Blake and they went up the pasture-lands on foot. It was a good night for foraging; every pitfall of the ground, every farmstead sleeping in the bosom of its guardian trees, showed clear in the dawn-light. And none of the three men had qualms about the business, for the Banbury country, through and through, was traitorous to the King.
They returned two hours later in high spirits. The Metcalfs asked for a good deal of feeding, after a night in the open had set a razor-edge to appetite; and the scouting-party had commandeered a farmer's horse and gig to bring their booty into camp.
"Who goes there?" snapped the sentries, running to meet this intrusion on the night's quiet.
"A Mecca, lad," laughed the driver, "bringing fowls and cheese, and good home-cured bacon—ay, and a little barrel of rum that nearly bounced out o' the gig when I came to a rutty place in the road."
"'Twould have been a pity to have lost the rum. Where are Blake and your cousin Nicholas?"
"Oh, following! The gig would not hold us all. As for Blake, he has few cares in life. Not one to have his heart touched by a woman—he. He laughs by habit, till you're forced to laugh with him."
CHAPTER XI.
BANBURY CAKES.
At Oxford, there was expectation threading the routine of Court life. The fine light of devotion to lost causes—causes lost because they were ever too high for mean folks' understanding—had cradled this good city. Chivalry, the clean heart and the ruddy, fervid hope, had built her wonderland of colleges and groves and pleasant streets. Men of learning, of passionate fervour for the things beyond, had lived and died here; and such men leave about the place of their bodily sojourn a living presence that no clash of arms, no mire of human jealousies, can overcome.
For this reason, all Oxford awaited the coming of the Metcalfs. They in the north—men well content, not long ago, to follow field-sports and the plough—were different in breed and habits from these folk in the comely city. But, in the matters that touch dull workaday into a living flame, they were of the same company—men who hoped, this side or the other of the veil, to see the Standard floating high above life's pettiness. And, for this reason, Oxford waited the Metcalfs' coming with an expectancy that was oddly vivid. The gamesters of the Court wagered heavily as to the hour of their arrival. Grave dons, who happened to be interested in the mathematics more in favour at the sister University, drew maps of the route from Banbury to York, calculated the speed of messengers spurring at the gallop north, and the return pace of riders coming south on horses none too fresh. These had recourse to algebra, which seemed only to entangle the argument the more.