"There's a game-pup from over the Yorkshire border among us," laughed Chisenhall. "Let him sleep. Let me get up to bed, too, and sleep. Of all the toasts I ever drank—save that of the King's Majesty—I like this last bumper best. Here's to the kind maid, slumber, and good night to you, my friends."
The next morning, soon after dawn, Kit stirred in sleep. Through the narrow mullions great, crimson shafts of light were stealing. A thrush outside was recalling bygone litanies of mating-time. Sparrows were busy in the ivy. It was so like Yoredale and old days that he roused himself, got to his feet, and remembered what had chanced last night. He had slept hard and truly, and had profited thereby. His bones were aching, and there was a nagging cut across his face; for the rest, he was ready for the day's adventure.
Last night, when he returned from battle, the moonlight had shown him only a littered courtyard, full of men and captured cannonry. He could not guess where the most valiant of cock-throstles found anchor for his feet; and, to settle the question, he went out. The song greeted him with fine rapture as he set foot across the doorway; and in the middle of the yard he saw the trunk of a big, upstanding walnut-tree. Three-quarters of the branches had been shot away, but one big limb remained. At the top of the highest branch a slim, full-throated gentleman was singing to his mate.
"Good Royalist!" said Kit. "Go singing while your branch is left you."
His mood was so tense and alert, his sympathy with the throstle so eager, that he started when a laugh sounded at his elbow. "I knew last night a soldier came to Lathom. He is a poet, too, it seems."
The wild, red dawn—sign of the rainiest summer known in England for fifty years—showed him Lady Derby. The lines were gone from her face, her eyes were soft and trustful, as a maid's eyes are; it did not seem possible that she had withstood a year of siege.
"I was just thanking God," she explained, "that picked men come my way so often. There are so many Rigbys in this world, and minorities need all their strength."
She was so soft of voice, so full of the fragrance which a woman here and there gives out to hearten roughened men, that Kit began to walk in fairyland. So had Captain Chisenhall walked long since, Rawstorn and the other officers, the private soldiery, because the Lady of Lathom was strong, courageous, and secure.
"How have you kept heart so long?" asked Kit, his boy's heedless pity roused afresh.
"And you, sir—how have you kept heart so long?" she laughed.