While the silence that prevailed in the room, following on this startling announcement, still remained, I could hear the thud of horse's hoofs as Ralph Slingsby resumed his momentous journey towards Petersfield.
When, a quarter of an hour or so later, we left the "Flying Bull", the moon had risen, throwing the long shadows of the dark pines athwart the road. Our humble abode lay about a mile on the by-road from Rake to Midhurst, and homewards we stepped, our thick-soled shoes ringing on the frosty road. When but half the distance was covered, I heard the sound of the crackling of the dry brushwood in a coppice on our left, followed by the cry of a bird and the fluttering of its wings as it flew over our heads.
Instinctively I edged closer to my father and grasped his left hand.
"Lad, art afraid of a fox running through the covert?" he exclaimed. "And wouldst be a sailor, too!"
In spite of my boast in the well-lit room of the "Flying Bull", my heart throbbed painfully, and my reply seemed like to stick in my throat. We continued in silence, and presently came to a spot where a large reed-fringed lake lay on the right-hand side of the road, while on the other a dense clump of gaunt firs threw a dismal gloom over our path.
As we neared the clump a voice, authoritative, harsh, and yet familiar, shouted:
"Stand!"
And into the moonlight stepped a short, thick-set man, whom I recognized as the soldier who caused the turmoil at the inn, Increase Joyce.
For the second time that night my father unsheathed his hanger, and, pushing me behind him, advanced towards the man.
"Stand!" he repeated. "See here; a word in thine ear, Master Wentworth. Less than an hour agone I said: 'I fight not with old men'. I recall those words. With me it is a case of doing in Rome as do the Romans. The Commonwealth is at an end, therefore I am a Parliamentarian no longer. Instead, I journey to the Rhine to join the German freebooters, or else to the Spanish Main to throw in my lot with the buccaneers of the Indies--it matters not which; but ere I go I have an account to settle with the Lord of Holwick. Little did I think to find him hiding in an obscure Sussex village. Dost remember twenty years aback--the trysting place under the Holmwood Oak?--Ah! ... Nay! Stand, at thy peril!"