Chapter XIII
THE SHADOW ON THE KINGDOM
The twenty-second of June was Waggon Day and the waggons were timed to start at eight o'clock.
All night Mike and Fred Stephens had kept vigil in the saddle-room at the Wold Farm, polishing brass and leather and fastening rosettes on to the best harness. The crowning triumph of their work, two painted and beribboned paper fans to be attached to the collars of the horses, lay beside the smoking lantern. The saddle-room was littered with green and scarlet papers, brass buckles and bits of harness.
Mike knocked the ashes from his pipe and opened the door. A rush of chill fragrant air shook the flames of two candles stuck on the dusty mantelpiece.
Fred extinguished the lantern and followed him to the doorway. It was a morning of pale mists and dewy freshness.
"I think it bound to tak' up," he remarked cheerfully. "What about it, Mike?"
The two men collected harness and decorations and trudged together towards the stable. From the stackyard a belated cock crew, and in the stable it was still dusk—a warm straw-scented twilight astir with the movements of chewing horses and the whispered scamperings of mice along the rafters.
Dolly and Polly, the grey pair, stood sleekly brushed awaiting the master strokes of their toilet. Soon they would lumber up the Church Hill to take their places in a team of competitors for the prize offered by Sir Charles Seton to the best decorated waggon.
"It'll be a fine day for t' bairns," murmured Fred.