Kit drew apart from the turmoil, and searched for the kerchief Joan Grant had dropped in front of his horse, away in Yoredale yonder. It was white no longer, but reddened by a wound that he had taken. And quietly, in the stillness that comes after battle, he knew that he was to follow a long road and a hard road till he was home again. It was better—in his heart he knew it—than dallying at country stiles, sick with calf-love for a maid too high above him.
"You look happy, lad," said the Squire, as he drew rein beside him.
"I'm climbing a tree, sir, a big tree. There's somebody's heart at the top of it."
"Ay, Miss Joan's," growled Squire Metcalf. "Well, go on climbing, lad. You might have chosen worse."
CHAPTER III.
SOME MEN OF FAIRFAX'S.
Joan Grant, when she bade Christopher climb a high tree if he sought her heart, had not told him that she was taking a journey. When afterwards she waved a farewell to him, as he rode out with his kinsfolk, she had given no hint that she, too, was following adventure on the morrow.
The day after the Metcalfs, a hundred-and-twenty strong, journeyed to serve King Charles, she set out on a more peaceful quest. Her aunt, Lady Ingilby of Ripley, had commanded this favourite niece of hers—all in my lady's imperious, high-handed way—to join her in the widowhood that her husband's absence with the Royal army enforced on her. Her own father was somewhere in Oxfordshire with the King, her brothers with Prince Rupert, and in their absence Lady Grant had decided that her daughter must obey the command.
"I was always a little afraid of my sister of Ripley," she explained, in her pretty, inconsequent way. "She would not forgive me if I kept you here; and, after all, the roads may not be as dangerous as one fancies. You must go, child."
Joan took the road with some pomp. All the younger men had gone with the master to the wars; but her chaise was guarded by two old menservants who had pluck and good pistols, if no great strength to fight pitched battles; and she had her maid Pansy with her in the chaise.