"The thunder-rain was red in the ditches. It was a good fight, and it's ended. So, baby Kit, we're first to the tryst, we two. I've been wondering, all from Marston hitherto, whether you were dead or living."
Christopher found one heartache stanched. The sense that Michael was here, instead of on the wet ground of the Moor out yonder, was vivid happiness. "Elizabeth will be glad," he said indifferently. "She was crying for you not long ago."
Then he was urgent that Michael should be left here on guard, and he had his way. He borrowed the other's horse; and, after all, Lady Ingilby was glad to have an escort through the roads.
"You have news of my husband?" she asked Michael, without hope of any answer that sufficed.
"None," said Michael, "save that we were in the thick of it—Kit, and he, and I—and I heard a man near me say that Ingilby was fighting as if three men's strength were in his body."
"That is no news," said the other drily. "He was ever that sort of man."
When they had ridden out, she and Kit, and had come to the hollow where dog-roses and honeysuckle were blooming spendthrift to the warmer air of dawn; she turned in saddle. "Your brother spoke of coming to a tryst. What tryst?"
"It was this way. Before the relief of York, it was agreed among the Riding Metcalfs that, if the battle sped, Ripley could look to its own needs. If the fight was lost, we were to come soon or syne—those left of us—to guard you."
Lady Ingilby reined in—an easy matter with the pensioner that carried her. "In these evil modern times, are there still so many of the elder breed? One here and there I could understand, but not six-score of you."
"There are fewer now. We lost a few at Bolton, and Marston Moor was worse. Those who are left will come in. Their word is pledged."