“Here, sir.”
“Sound the recall.”
The man placed the bugle to his lips, and the merry notes rang out into the obscurity. All remained silent, then, like an echo from east and west, almost in unison, came a similar call; and faintly in the further distance another. The company seemed to increase mysteriously, as if pikemen were being distilled out of the fog, and after a roll-call, every name being answered, the lieutenant gave the word to march, and horse and foot set out for the west, the two prisoners in the centre of the phalanx. The head of Frances drooped, and Will rode close by her side as cheerful as ever, trying to comfort her.
“Clever man, this Cromwell,” he whispered with admiration in his tones. “You see what he has done? He has run thin lines across the country as fast as horses could gallop, stringing out the local men as they went along. We have probably blundered through one or two of these lines, but were bound to be caught sooner or later, unless we made for the coast on either side, and that would but have delayed things a bit, for there was little chance of us getting ship with all ports in his hands. It serves me right. I should have killed De Courcy and then galloped for it. However, the Lord stands by us, Frances; never forget that.”
“It doesn’t look much like it,” said the girl despondently.
“Oh, well, nothing looks like itself in this accursed fog. Why could n’t we have had this mist on the road from York? Still, I don’t think it would have made any difference, once Cromwell’s riders got to the north of us. Resourceful man, Oliver. I like him.”
“And I don’t. Yet you are supposed to be against him, and I am supposed to be for him. I fear him; I fear him.”
“Oh, there’s no danger; not the slightest for either of us. You have done your task, and have done it well. I am the blunderer. But I stand on my status as a Scot, and I will argue the matter out with him. The man I tumbled into the ditch was the King’s Chamberlain, and not a Parliamentarian, and a foreigner at that. The document I am supposed to carry was not given to me by the King, but taken by force from a minion of the King, and a Frenchman. I have assaulted no Englishman, and Cromwell knew I was travelling on this pass. He cannot deny that he wrote it, and for exactly the purpose it has served. Oh, I shall have a beautiful legal argument with Old Noll, and will upset him with his own law. I’m in no danger; neither are you.”
“I trust it will appear so.”
“It cannot appear otherwise. He was trying to frighten you when he said he would hang me. He is a sly, capable dog, who will be satisfied with having beaten me, and will not court trouble with my countrymen by hanging even a Borderer. It cost one of our Kings his throne to do the like of that.”