To this the indignant man made no reply, thus changing his former relations as regarded conversation. He urged on his horse, and she, after pausing awhile and seeing that John would approach no nearer, also went on, and thus the three kept for the day their new relative positions.
When the excitement of this verbal encounter had passed, the gratification at bringing about a rupture between them proved short-lived. Suddenly she was on the verge of tears, but strenuously repressed them, fearing he would look back, which he never did. That mood vanished, and hot anger replaced it, the more intense as she knew herself the aggressor. Nevertheless he had been boorish, she said to herself; almost brutal in his insolence. If he were a tithe of the gentleman he so blatantly proclaimed himself, he would have turned round and apologized for his rudeness, even if his anger at first had been justified. But there he rode in front of her, hand on hip and head held high, as if he were lord of the land. A beggarly Scot, proud and poor, from whose tongue flowed glibly a list of barren acres which civilized men would disdain to live upon, like the stunted lands to the north of her own home. Never turned his back indeed! If her father had been allowed a free hand, he would have chased all such braggarts home to their kennels. Even now, with his pretended independence, this Scot was travelling on his traitorous mission under the safe-conduct of the man he would betray. It was no treachery to outwit a spy, but a patriotic duty, and she would bid adieu to all qualms of conscience. And yet—and yet, he had told her brother he would treat her as his own sister, and it was they who had begged his convoy! Still, he may have eagerly seized the opportunity of the pass to get himself scathless to Oxford and back to Carlisle. Thus varying emotions surged through her heart, to be followed by anxious questionings and at last deep depression, during which her head hung and her dimmed eyes saw nothing of the road. Unheeded, the sun passed the meridian, and at last she was roused to a sense of her surroundings by the stopping of her unguided horse before a roadside inn. Armstrong, his black steed brought to a standstill across the highway, sat rigidly upright, and he said, when she thus unexpectedly looked at him with something of startled appeal in her eyes,—“We stop here for rest and refreshment.”
“I need neither rest nor refreshment,” she answered wearily.
“I was not thinking of you, madam, but of the horses. They have already gone too far without food, but in this benighted land there has been no opportunity of baiting them till now.”
“Yes, you said it was like Scotland,” she answered sharply, whipped to fresh anger again that she should have imagined he thought of her when he did not.
She sprang lightly from her horse to the ground, and, without a look at the faithful animal that had carried her so far, walked very straight to the door of the hostelry and disappeared within it.
When the time of waiting had ticked itself out on the old clock of the inn, Armstrong ordered the horses on the road again, and sent old John to warn his mistress that the way was still long to York. She came out promptly, mounting proudly without a word, and the expedition set forth as before, old John contentedly bringing up the rear. All afternoon they made their progress along the very direct road, no utterance from any one of the three. Frances grew more and more tired of this doleful journey, so woefully begun, placing the blame on her own weary shoulders for the most part, but now and then filled with a growing hatred of the stolid figure in front, who never once turned round; never once slackened the pace; never once made inquiry of any kind. What brutes men were, after all! The horses they bestrode were the better animals!
At last the nearly level rays of the evening sun glorified the towers of the grey minster, transforming them for the moment into piles of rosy marble, and the walled town was spread out before them. They came to Bootham Bar, and here, for the first time, a man-at-arms questioned their right of way. Armstrong silently presented to him the blood-stained pass, bearing the signature of the Man of Iron.
“Is he on the pack-horse of your company?”
“Yes.”