He rode straight to the right across the path by which he judged the riders to be advancing. As they came upon him, he slackened his pace and stood, as though irresolute which way to take. The new-comers pulled up and hailed him. “Hoy! sir!” shouted the foremost of the two.
He turned and saw a man, some years younger than himself, followed by another, whom at a rapid glance he took to be his servant. The master seemed little more than a boy; he had a young, fresh face, and curly hair flattened in rings upon his forehead by the moisture of the air. He might have stood for an equestrian statue of frank and not too intellectual youth. The servant carried a valise, and was mounted on an elderly-looking flea-bitten grey.
“I have lost myself in this infernal mist,” observed the young fellow, coming towards him, as he had hoped, and leaving the quarry on his left.
“Indeed, sir! So have I,” replied Rhys.
“Plague on it for that,” he went on, “for now you can’t tell me which way to go.”
Walters smiled a little. “I don’t know where you are bound for,” he remarked.
The other laughed out.
“Lord! I had forgotten that. Well then, my name is Harry Fenton, and I am going down to my father’s at Waterchurch.” He said this all in a breath, as though anxious to get it out and go on to more, if need be.
“Then you are Squire Fenton’s son, of Waterchurch Court,” said Rhys, who had suspected his identity ever since he came in sight.
“Yes, that’s who I am. And who are you?”