When they returned, Lady Derby asked where Kit Metcalf was, and they told her. "Gentlemen," she said, with that odd, infectious laugh of hers, "I have no favourites, but, if I had, it is Kit Metcalf I would choose to bring Prince Rupert here. There's the light of youth about him."
"There is," said Chisenhall. "I lost it years ago, and nothing else in life makes up for it—except a sortie."
CHAPTER XIV.
A STANLEY FOR THE KING.
Christopher Metcalf had learned the way of hazard, the need to say little and hear all. As he rode from Lathom House through the summer's dawn, the land was full of blandishment. Last night's heavy rain had brought keen scents to birth—of primrose and leafage in the lanes, of wallflowers in the homestead gardens that he passed. Scents tempt a man to retrospect, and he wondered how it was faring with Joan—remembered the nearness of her and the fragrance, as they roamed the Yoredale hills together in other springs.
He put blandishment aside. There was no before or after for him—simply the plain road ahead. Wherever he found a countryman to greet, he drew rein and passed the time of day, and got into talk with him. Before he had covered six miles, he learned that Rigby, with the three thousand men withdrawn from the siege of Lathom, had in fact retreated behind the walls of Bolton, and that the town was strongly fortified. A mile further on his horse cast a shoe, and, while he waited at the door of a wayside smithy, he joined a company of gossips seated on the bench outside.
"Thanks be, the Lady o' Lathom is safe," said a grey old shepherd.
"A rare game-bird, she," assented the jolly yeoman on his left.
"Ay. She's plucked a few fine feathers from Rigby. Rigby? I mind the time when he was skulking in and out—trying to find wastrel men who'd pay him to prove black was white in court. And now he calls himself a Captain."
"Well, he's as he was made, and of small account at that," said the yeoman. "The man I blame is Colonel Shuttleworth. One o' the gentry, he, and likeable. There's no good comes, say I, when the gentry forget their duty to their King. They go to kirk each Sabbath, and pray for the King's health—well, they mean it, or they don't mean it, and there's no middle way."