"You're a smooth-tongued rascal! As for you, Kit, lady's favours can bide till we're through with this rough work. Moonshine is pretty enough when the day's over, but the day is just beginning."
They rode by way of Tockwith village, long and straggling, and forward over a heath studded thick with gorse and brambles, and set about with black, sullen wastes of bog.
Squire Metcalf, for all his hardihood, was full of superstition, as most folk are who have good wits and healthy souls. A little wind—of the sort named "thin" in Yoredale—blew over Marston Moor, chilling the warm sunlight.
"There's a crying in the wind," he said, turning to Kit, who was riding at his bridle-hand. "I trust it's sobbing for the end of all foul traitors to the King."
CHAPTER VI.
HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK.
They crossed the moor, and so, through Long Marston, made forward on the York road till they reached a hamlet three miles from the city. Here they captured a shepherd, known to the country speech as "an old, ancient man," who was driving a flock of ewes from a neighbouring pasture. They asked him if he knew anything of the to-and-froing of the Parliament troops.
"I've seen a moil o' horsemen scummering out to York for three days past. But they asked me no questions, and so I asked them none. Reckoned they were riding to a hunt. Gentlefolk must fill up their time, one way or another."
"But, man," snapped old Metcalf, "d'ye live so close to York and not know there's war between King and Parliament?"
"Nay. I've been tending sheep. Have they fallen out, like, King and Parliament? Well, let 'em fratch, say I. I'm a simple man myself, with ewes to tend."