her into Bristol to find her father.
Hodge, who had celebrated his return by a hearty supper with his friends, was still asleep, and his mother was very unwilling to call him, or to think of his going back to the wars. However, he rolled down the cottage stair at last, and the first thing he did was to observe--
'Well, mother, how be you? I felt like a boy again, waking up in the old chamber. Where's my back and breast- piece? Have you a cup of ale, while I rub it up?'
'Now, Hodge, you be not going to put on that iron thing again, when you be come back safe and sound from those bloody wars?' entreated his mother.
'Ho, ho! mother, would you have me desert? No, no! I must to my colours again, or Sir George and my lady might make it too hot to hold you here. Hollo, young one, Stead Kenton, eh? Didst find thy brother? No, I'll be bound. The Roundhead rascals have all the luck.'
'I found something else,' said Steadfast, and he proceeded to tell about the child while Dame Fitter stood by with many a pitying 'Dear heart!' and 'Good lack!'
Hodge knew Serjeant Gaythorn, and knew that the poor man's wife had been shot dead in the flight from Naseby; but he demurred at the notion of encumbering himself with the child when he went into the town. He suspected that he should have much ado to get in himself, and if he could not find her father, what could he do with her?
Moreover, he much doubted whether the serjeant was alive. He had been among those on whom the sharpest attack had fallen, and not many of them had got off alive.
'What like was he?' said Steadfast. 'We looked at a many of the poor corpses that lay there. They'll never be out of my eyes again at night!'
'A battlefield or two would cure that,' grimly smiled Hodge. 'Gaythorn--he was a man to know again--had big black moustaches, and had lost an eye, had a scar like a weal from a whip all down here from a sword-cut at Long Marston.'
'Then I saw him,' said Stead, in a low voice. 'Did he wear a green scarf?'
'Aye, aye. Belonged to the Rangers, but they are pretty nigh all gone now.'
'Under the rail of the miller's croft,' added Stead.
'Just so. That was where I saw them make a stand and go down like skittles.'
'Poor little maid. What shall I tell her?'
'Well, you can never be sure,' said Hodge. 'There was a man now I thought as dead as a door nail at Newbury that charged by my side only yesterday. You'd best tell the maid that if I find her father I'll send him after her; and if not, when the place is quiet, you might look at the mill and see if he is lying wounded there.'
Steadfast thought the advice good, and it saved him from what he had no heart to do, though he could scarcely doubt that one of those ghastly faces had been the serjeant's.
When he approached his home he was surprised to hear, through the copsewood, the sound of chattering, and when he came in sight of the front of the hut, he beheld Patience making butter with the long handled churn, little Ben toddling about on the grass, and two little girls laughing and playing with all the poultry round them.
One, of course, was stout, ruddy, grey-eyed Rusha, in her tight round cap, and stout brown petticoat with the homespun apron over it; the other was like a fairy by her side; slight and tiny, dressed in something of mixed threads of white and crimson that shone in the sun, with a velvet bodice, a green ribbon over it, and a gem over the shoulder that flashed in the sun, a tiny scarlet hood from which such a quantity of dark locks streamed as to give something the effect of a goldfinch's crown, and the face was a brilliant little brown one, with glowing cheeks, pretty little white teeth, and splendid dark eyes.
Patience could have told that this bright array was so soiled, rumpled, ragged, and begrimed, that she hardly liked to touch it, but to Steadfast, who had only seen the child in the moonlight, she was a wonderful vision in the morning sunshine, and his heart was struck with a great pity at her clear, merry tones of laughter.
As he appeared in the open space, Toby running before him, the little girl looked up and rushed to him crying out--
'It's you. Be you the country fellow who took me home? Where's father?'
Stead was so sorry for her that he took her up in his arms and said--
'Hodge Fitter is gone into town to look for him, my pretty. You must wait here till he comes for you,' and he would have kissed her, but she turned her head away, pouted, and said, 'I didn't give you leave to do that, you lubber lad.'
Steadfast was much diverted. He was now a tall sturdy youth of sixteen, in a short smock frock, long leathern gaiters, and a round straw hat of Patience's manufacture, and he felt too clumsy for the dainty little being, whom he hastened to set on her small feet--in once smart but very dilapidated shoes. His sisters were somewhat shocked at her impertinence and Rusha breathed out 'Oh--!'
'I am to wait here for Serjeant Gaythorn,' observed the little damsel somewhat consequentially. 'Well! it is a strange little makeshift of a place, but 'tis the fortune of war, and I have been in worse.'
'It is beautiful!' said Rusha, 'now we have got a glass window--and a real door--and beds--' all which recent stages in improvement she enumerated with a gasp of triumph and admiration between each.
'So you think,' said little Mistress Gaythorn. 'But I have lived in a castle.'
She was quite ready to tell her history. Her name was Emlyn, and the early part of the eight years of her life had been spent at Sir Harry Blythedale's castle, where her father had been butler and her mother my lady's woman. Sir Harry had gone away to the wars, and in his absence my lady had held out the castle (perhaps it was only a fortified house) against General Waller, hoping and hoping in vain for Lord Goring to come to her relief.
'That was worst of all,' said Emlyn, 'we had to hide in the cellars when they fired at us--and broke all the windows, and a shot killed my poor dear little kitten because she wouldn't stay down with me. And we couldn't get any water, except by going out at night; young Master George was wounded at the well. And they only gave us a tiny bit of dry bread and salt meat every day, and it made little Ralph sick and he died. And at last there was only enough for two days more--and a great breach--that's a hole,' she added condescendingly,--'big enough to drive my lady's coach-and-six through in the court wall. So then my lady sent out Master Steward with one of the best napkins on the end of a stick--that was a flag of truce, you know--and all the rascal Roundheads had to come in, and we had to go out, with only just what we could carry. My lady went in her coach with Master George, because he was hurt, and the young ladies, and some of the maids went home; but the most of us kept with my lady, to guard her to go to his Honour and the King at Oxford. Father rode big Severn, and mother was on a pillion behind him, with baby in her arms, and I sat on a cushion in front.'
After that, it seemed that my lady had found a refuge among her kindred, but that the butler had been enrolled in his master's troop of horse, and there being no separate means of support for his wife and children, they had followed the camp, a life that Emlyn had evidently enjoyed, although the baby died of the exposure. She had been a great pet and favourite with everybody, and no doubt well-cared for even after the sad day when her mother had perished in the slaughter at Naseby. Patience wondered what was to become of the poor child, if her father never appeared to claim her; but it was no time to bring this forward, for Steadfast, as soon as he had swallowed his porridge, had to go off to finish his day's labour for the lady of the manor, warning his sisters that they had better keep as close as they could in the wood, and not let the cattle stray out of their valley.
He had not gone far, however, before he met a party of his fellow labourers running home. Their trouble had been saved them. The Roundhead soldiers had taken possession of waggons, horses, corn and all, as the property of a malignant, and were carrying them off to their camp before the town.
Getting up on a hedge, Stead could see these strange harvestmen loading the waggons and driving them off. He also heard that Sir George had come late in the evening, and taken old Lady Elmwood and several of the servants into Bristol for greater safety. Then came the heavy boom of a great gun in the distance.
'The Parliament men are having their turn now--as the King's men had before,' said Gates.
And all who had some leisure--or made it--went off to the church tower to get a better view of the white tents being set up outside the city walls, and the compact bodies of troops moving about as if impelled by machinery, while others more scattered bustled like insects about the camp.
Steadfast, however, went home, very anxious about his own three cows, and seven sheep with their lambs, as well as his small patches of corn, which, when green, had already only escaped being made forage of by the Royalist garrison, because he was a tenant of the loyal Elmwoods. These fields were exposed, though the narrow wooded ravine might protect the small homestead and the cattle.
