“Upon your name,” answered Catesby. “It is my lord’s chief superstition. Were my name Richard I should be an earl to-morrow.”
“Well, sir, I thank you,” returned Dick; “and, since I am little likely to follow these great fortunes, I will even say farewell. I will not pretend I was displeased to think myself upon the road to fortune; but I will not pretend, neither, that I am over-sorry to be done with it. Command and riches, they are brave things, to be sure; but a word in your ear—yon duke of yours, he is a fearsome lad.”
Catesby laughed.
“Nay,” said he, “of a verity he that rides with Crooked Dick will ride deep. Well, God keep us all from evil! Speed ye well.”
Thereupon Dick put himself at the head of his men, and giving the word of command, rode off.
He made straight across the town, following what he supposed to be the route of Sir Daniel, and spying around for any signs that might decide if he were right.
The streets were strewn with the dead and the wounded, whose fate, in the bitter frost, was far the more pitiable. Gangs of the victors went from house to house, pillaging and stabbing, and sometimes singing together as they went.
From different quarters, as he rode on, the sounds of violence and outrage came to young Shelton’s ears; now the blows of the sledge-hammer on some barricaded door, and now the miserable shrieks of women.
Dick’s heart had just been awakened. He had just seen the cruel consequences of his own behaviour; and the thought of the sum of misery that was now acting in the whole of Shoreby filled him with despair.
At length he reached the outskirts, and there, sure enough, he saw straight before him the same broad, beaten track across the snow that he had marked from the summit of the church. Here, then, he went the faster on; but still, as he rode, he kept a bright eye upon the fallen men and horses that lay beside the track. Many of these, he was relieved to see, wore Sir Daniel’s colours, and the faces of some, who lay upon their back, he even recognised.