"Find Lady Ingilby," he said gruffly, "and beware of Roundheads guarding the approaches to the house. Give her the message."
"And then, sir?"
"It is this way, Kit," said the Squire, after a restless pacing up and down the moor. "Take counsel with Lady Ingilby and any Cavaliers you find at Ripley. Tell them the Metcalfs have picketed their horses here on the moor, and wait for orders. If she needs us, we are ready. And so good-bye, my lad."
The Metcalfs, by habit, were considerate toward the hale, big bodies that asked good feeding. On the way they had contrived to victual themselves with some thoroughness, and now they unstrapped each his own meal from the saddle. When they had eaten, and crowned the meal with a draught of water from the stream, Michael laughed that easy, thoughtless laugh of his.
"When the King comes to his own, I'll petition him to make the moors run ripe October ale. I never thrive on water, I."
"It's not in you to thrive, lad," snapped the Squire. "You've no gift that way, come ale or water."
They had not been idle, any of them, since yesterday's riding out from Nappa; and now they were glad to lie in the heather and doze, and dream of the cornfields ripe for harvest and the ingle-nook at home. The Squire, for his part, had no wish for sleep. To and fro he paced in the warm, ruddy gloaming, and his dreams were of the future, not the past. Ambition, that had taken his forbears to high places, was changing all his old, quiet outlook. The King had summoned him. About his King there was a halo of romance and great deserving. It was good to be asked to fight for such a cause.
Metcalf did not know it, but his soul was ripening, like his own harvest fields, under this fierce sun of battle and peril and hard riding. Instead of a pipe by the hearth o' nights, he was asked to bivouac on the moor, to throttle sleep until Kit rode back or sent a messenger. He was content. Better a week of riding for the King than years of safety in home-fields.
He had not cared specially for thinking, save of crops and horses and the way of rearing prime cattle for market; but to-night his mind was clear, marching out toward big issues. Little by little it grew plain to him that he had been given a leadership of no usual sort. There were a hundred-and-twenty of them, keen to charge with the whole weight of men and horses; but each of the six-score could ride alone on errands needing secrecy, and summon his kinsmen when any hazard pressed too closely. The clan was one man or six-score, just as need asked, and the Squire was quick to realise the service they could render. It might well be that, long afterwards, men would tell their bairns, close huddled round the hearth on winter nights, what share the Riding Metcalfs had in crushing the rebellious Parliament.
As he thought about it all, his heart beating like a lad's, his imagination all afire, a step sounded close behind him. He turned to find Michael at his elbow.