“The King!”
“The King, by Ge-ged,” seconded Stubbs.
“The King—the King!” vociferated the half hundred voices of their followers—the bystanders echoing the phrase only in faint murmuring.
“Goblets to the ground!” commanded the captain—at the same time tossing his own into the middle of the road.
The action was imitated by every man in the troop—each throwing away his empty vessel, till the pavement was thickly strewn with pots of shining pewter.
“Foorward—ma-r-ch!” cried Scarthe, giving the spur to his charger; and with a mad captain at their head, and a maudlin cornet in the rear, the cuirassiers filed out from the inn; and took the road in the direction of Red Hill.
Despite the wine within him, the captain of the cuirassiers, was at that moment, in a frame of mind, anything but contented. One of his reasons for having drunk so deeply, was to drown the recollection—yet rankling in his bosom—of the insult he fancied himself to have suffered on the preceding night, and which he further fancied to have lowered him in the estimation of his followers. Indeed, he knew this to be the case; for as he rode onward at the head of his troop, his whole thoughts were given to the black horseman, and the mode by which he might revenge himself on that mysterious individual.
Scarthe was on the way to country quarters—near which he had been told, the black horseman had his home—and he comforted himself with the thought, that should these prove dull, he would find amusement, in the accomplishment of some scheme, by which his vengeance might be satisfied.
Could his eye at that moment have penetrated the screen of foliage rising above the crest of Red Hill, he might have seen behind it, the man he meant to injure—mounted on that sable steed from which he derived his sobriquet. He might have seen him suddenly wheel back from the bushes, and gallop off in the direction in which he and his cuirassiers were marching—towards Bulstrode Park—the residence of Sir Marmaduke Wade.
Though Scarthe saw not this, his midday march was not performed without his meeting with an incident—one worth recording, even for its singularity; though it was otherwise of significant interest to the cuirassier captain.