"I find many kinds of admiration for you, sir," drawled Captain Chisenhall, "but especially, I think, for your gift of feeding that fine bulk of yours."
"I'm just like my own homeland in Yoredale," assented Kit; "it needs feeding if strong crops are to follow."
That night they made three sorties on the trenches, five on the next, and for a week they kept the pace. A few of the garrison were killed, more were wounded, but speed and fury made up for loss of numbers, and Colonel Rigby sent a messenger galloping to Manchester for help in need. The besiegers, he explained, were so harassed that they were dropping in the trenches, not from gun-fire, but from lack of sleep.
The sentries on the walls had no chance nowadays to pick off orators who rose from cover of the trenches to shout ill tidings at them. From their vantage-ground on the ramparts they could hear, instead, the oaths and uproar of a disaffected soldiery who voiced their grievances.
On the seventh morning, an hour before noon, a man came into Lathom, wet from the moat, as Kit had been on his arrival here. He told them that Prince Rupert, the Earl of Derby with him, had crossed the Cheshire border, marching to the relief of Lathom.
"So," said Captain Chisenhall, "we'll give them one last sortie before the frolic ends."
Lady Derby smiled pleasantly. "That is your work, gentlemen. Mine is to get to my knees, to thank God that my husband is so near to me."
When they sortied that night, they found empty trenches. The moonlight showed them only the disorder—a disorder unsavoury to the nostrils—that attended a forsaken camp. One man they found with a broken leg, who had been left in the rear of a sharp retreat. He had been bullied by Rigby, it appeared, and the rancour bit deeper than the trouble of his broken limb. He told them that Rigby, and what were left of his three thousand, had pushed down to Bolton, and he expressed a hope—not pious—that all the Cavaliers in England would light a bonfire round him there.
When they gathered for the return to Lathom, the futility about them of hunters who have found no red fox to chase, Kit saluted Captain Chisenhall. "My regards to Lady Derby," he explained; "tell her I'm no longer needed here at Lathom. Tell her that kin calls to kin, and where Rupert is, the Metcalfs are. I go to warn them that Rigby lies in Bolton."
"Good," said Chisenhall. "Rigby has lied in most parts of the country. Go hunt the weasel, you young hot-head."