"That say I!" loudly responded the earl, striding across the moat-bridge. "Ho, all! Get ready for the way. My lady, I pray thee to go in and lade thy pack beasts. We will even march for Warwick ere the day is an hour older."
Loud and hearty was his cousinly greeting to his young kinsman. Strong was his approval of the force he had enlisted, but he added:
"What shall we do with all these beasts? The king will have his archers on their own feet."
"That is provided for," replied Richard. "I pray thee trust me that the whole drove can go back to Arden, under good driving, as soon as there is no more need for them. I deemed it well to come quickly. Such was the word given me by Sir Walter de Maunay."
"Thou didst well to heed him," said the earl; but then he talked little more with Richard.
He bade the men dismount and get their noonday meal in the village and in the castle; but he had speech with many of them, for he was well pleased that such a company should come to the royal standard from among his own retaining.
Lady Maud had waited, but not all patiently, for her own greeting to her son. It was a joy to both of them that they were to go on to Warwick together, but most of all that a better day seemed to be dawning for them, and that the ruin wrought by the bad Earl Mortimer might be amended.
Not many men had been left behind in the hidden hold amid the forest, and such as had not marched with Richard had long since dispersed. Some had ridden gayly away on their stout ponies; others had gone to the fields. Some were in the smithy, the tannery, and the other workshops, and a few had restlessly snatched bows and arrows to hurry out into the woods as hunters.
No guards were set, except that a pair of bowmen lingered on the farther side of the causeway over the morass. There was little peril of intrusion now that the Lancashire Welsh thieves had been sorely smitten. Whatever might remain of them would not return to be shot down.