All the more strange this behaviour on the part of the animals, that, since their hostile encounter, for now over two years they had been together in amiable association!
A circumstance so odd, so ludicrous, could not fail to excite the risibility of their riders; and laugh both did, despite their serious mood at the moment. To their following it but caused surprise; two alone comprehending, so far as to see the fun of it. These Hubert, the trumpeter, and the “light varlit” then so near coming to blows with him, who through thick and thin, had ever since stuck to the ex-gentleman-usher, his master.
No doubt the little interlude would have led to some speech about it, between the chief actors in the more serious encounter it recalled, but for something at that moment seen by them, turning their thoughts into a new channel. Away westward, beyond Drybrook, beyond Ruardean Ridge, the sky showed a clearness that had nought to do with the moon’s light; instead was ruddier, and shone brighter, as this became obscured by a thick cloud drifting over her disk. A glowing, gleaming light, unusual in a way; but natural enough regarded as the glare of a conflagration—which in reality it was.
“House on fire over yonder?” cried one of the soldiers.
“May be only a haystack,” suggested a second.
“More like a town, judgin’ by the big blaze,” reasoned a third.
“There’s no town in that direction; only Ruardean, where’s we be goin’.”
“Why maunt it be Ruardean, then?” queried the first speaker; “or the church?”
“An’ a good thing if’t be the church,” put in one of strong Puritan proclivities. “It want burnin’ down, as every other, wi’ their altars an’ images. They be a curse to the country; the parsons too. They’ve taken sides wi’ the stinkin’ Cavaliers, agaynst Parliament and people, all along.”
“That’s true,” endorsed another of like iconoclastic sentiments; “an’ if it a’nt the church as be givin’ up that light, let’s luminate it when we get there. I go for that.”