They found him a suit, and the Irishman, in a storm of liking for this man, buckled his own sword on the messenger. "That's the sword you'd have sworn by, sir, if you hadn't left it behind," he explained, with entire gravity.
Michael lifted his glass to the King's health, and drained it at a gulp. Responsibility always made him thirsty. He drained a second measure; but, when the Irishman was filling a third for him, he checked his hand.
"My thanks, but I must get out of York at once, I shall need a clear head for the venture."
"Friend, you've done enough for one day," urged Newcastle. "Sleep here to-night."
"My folk are waiting for me," said Michael, with grim persistence.
When they asked how he proposed to make his way out of a city surrounded on all sides, he said that he would return as he came—by water. He added, with a return of his old gaiety, that he preferred this time to ride river Ouse like a horse, instead of swimming in deep waters.
"There are boats in York?" he said. "I know the way of oars, and there's a moon to light me."
"You're the man to send in search of Rupert," laughed Newcastle. "Undoubtedly we must find a boat for you."
A half-hour later Michael was rowing swiftly up the Ouse. Twice he was challenged from the banks; once a pistol-ball went singing over his head. He reached the bridge, was nearly wrecked against a pier—the eddies of the current were troublesome—and came through that peril into the moonlit beauty of the open country. He was challenged now by Roundhead sentries, and a shot or two went playing dick-duck-drake across the water. He rowed on, and suddenly, across the stillness, a donkey brayed.
Michael, left alone with Nature, was yielding to the call of superstition in his blood. He remembered that luck had come with buying of a sutler's donkey, and would not leave the brute to the tender mercies of the soldiery. He turned his boat for the right bank, grounded her in the sloping bed of sand, and pushed her out again into the stream—lest the Roundheads found a use for her—and went cheerfully in the direction of the braying. The whole procedure was like the man. He was right, perhaps, to trust luck always, for he had known no other guidance from the cradle.