Her perilous journey was near its end, the toilsome journey nigh over; and she felt happy. For, as through frost some twelve months before, she had approached Bristol with pleasant anticipations, so now was she about to enter Gloucester with the same, and from a similar cause.
Her expectancy was realised sooner than she had hoped for; the result identical to a degree of oddness. For just as upon that night at Bristol, so on this at Gloucester, Rob Wilde chanced to be guard-sergeant of the gate by which she sought admission.
And once again went their great arms around each other; their lips closing in kisses loud and fervent as ever.
“God Almighty, Win!” he exclaimed, still holding her in honest, amorous embrace, “what bet now? Why hast thee comed hither through the flood? Dear girl! ye be’s wet up to the—”
“No matter how high, Rob,” she said, interrupting, “if ’twor up to the neck, there be good reasons for’t.”
“What reasons?”
“News I ha’ brought frae Ruardean; rayther us ought say Hollymead.”
“Bad news be they? I needn’t axe; I see’t in your face.”
“Bad enough; though nothin’ more than might ha’ been expected after the Cavalières bein’ back at Monnerth, an’ master’s theer. Ye ha’ heerd that, I suppose?”
“Oh, certainly! The news got here day afore yesterday, in the night. But fra Hollymead?”