To a wiser head than mine I must leave to be decided the point in casuistry, whether it was to the honor or rather to the shame of our village folk that among them could not be found two to give a similar account of Ned's appearance, nor one that knew his name or had ever set eyes upon him before; and this in spite of their oaths and their long and kindly knowledge of him. It may be they did all grievously sin in thus shielding him; for me, I can only say that, having myself done much the same the night before, in intent at least, I am glad they did what they did; and that I have always held those three men and two women in a most tender regard who did esteem the danger to his dear body of more account than the risk to their own souls. While this inquest was holding, and before its verdict of manslaughter by a person unknown had been delivered, there rode into the village with a small body of dragoons no less a person than Colonel Kirke himself, to whom our sergeant had sent a messenger immediately upon the death of his officer. He came roaring and ruffling into the room at the little inn where the coroner sat, and 't is a hard thing to say what might not have happened to many innocent persons had he not there met with my father. Sir Michael's knowledge of men, and, perhaps, some secret information of Kirke's character, taught him the true manner in which this hero, more deadly with the rope than with the sword, must be handled. I need here say no more of the matter, but that Colonel Kirke did that afternoon march to Taunton, with all his Lambs and dragoons, the body of the dead ensign, and a sum of two hundred pounds of my dear father's savings as ransom for the village.
Of Colonel Percy Kirke it was truly said that only one thing did he love better than blood.
CHAPTER VI
A little sidelong eddy, it seemed, from the great tide of public events had washed up into our quiet backwater or creek of country life, setting us all agog with the tragic issues of death and dishonor. But the flutter and swirl of it had now drifted back into the main stream, leaving us, not indeed the same as we had been, but by contrast quieter than before. During some three years, for us at Drayton it might be said, with a measure of truth, that nothing happened. Yet of those things which I have recounted there were several consequences, so notable in effect upon our hearts and minds, that it were perhaps more true to say, in that same metaphor, that, after the first commotion, the tide maintained a steady though hourly imperceptible rise.
When I knew that Kirke and all his men were safely on their way for Taunton, I lost no time in riding across country in a bee-line to Royston Chase, which I found shut up in charge of three old servants. From these I learned that Ned's gray had that morning been discovered cropping a breakfast from the grass about his own stable door, and, while assuring them of their young master's safety, beyond, perhaps, what I truly felt myself, I bade them keep quiet tongues both about the horse and his master, who lay for safety, I said, in these perilous times, at the city of Oxford. Nor did I in truth lie to these good people, who from my manner of speaking did well perceive this was but the tale they must tell, I knowing what it were best they should not. Of the chief among them I had the promise that on the expected arrival of the Lady Mary my father should at once be advertised of it. And thence home, a little lighter in spirit to know that his horse was safe, and found my father musing heavily in his great chair in the hall, where the night before he had so feasted our enemies. At first it was a hard matter to bring him to talk, but at last, under stress of coaxing and such tricks of blandishment as I have practised from a child to win him from this heaviness of spirit, he broke silence.
"The times are hard when a Drayton must in his old age take to lying, little daughter Phil," he said.
"And his daughter in the days of her youth," I answered merrily. "But in truth 't is little I trouble myself for the falsehood. Whose, sir, upon the Day of Judgment, will be the blame of those untruths that were told to save from a death both cruel and contrary to law so kind and Christian a gentleman as my Ned?"
Sir Michael smiled and rallied me on that word of possession.
"Ho, ho!" said he; "'my Ned,' indeed! He is by this in Holland, little lass, and already, it is like enough, hath seen much that may put an unbroke filly out of his mind." Then, growing grave, "'There is something rotten,'" he said, quoting from Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of Hamlet (for this play, and others of that writer, were his chief reading), "'There is something rotten in the state of Denmark,' when honest youths must needs kill soldiers of their sovereign, and old men and young maids must trump up a pack of lying tales to save a good lad from rope without jury. I would I had died when the late King did come again to his own."