Chapter V: Part 5

"That is a wiser-like way o' speakin'. If ye compel me I maun e'en submit, for ye're a gentleman wi' a sword and I'm a landward body wi' nocht but a hazel wand. It's no that I mistrust your honour, but we maun a' preserve the decencies."

He unbuttoned his coat, foraged in the recesses of his person, and from some innermost receptacle extracted a packet tied with a dozen folds of cobbler's twine. There was no seal to break, and Alastair slit the knots with his sword. Within was a bunch of papers of the same type as those he had received from Brother Gilly, and burned in the fire of the Dog and Gun. These he put in his pocket for further study. "I must read them carefully, for they contain that which must go straight to the Prince's ear," he told the perplexed messenger.

But there was a further missive, which seemed to be a short personal note from Mr Kyd to the recipient of the papers.

"_Dear Achilles_," it ran. "_Affairs march smoothly and the tide SETS well to bring you to Troy town, where presently I design to crack a bottle and exchange tales. The Lady Briseis purposes to join you and will not be dissuaded by her kinsman. A friendly word:_ _mix caution with your ardour her-ward, for she has got a political enthusiasm and is devilish strong-headed. The news of the Marches and the West will travel to you with all expedition, but I must linger behind to encourage my correspondents. Menelaus greets you--a Menelaus that never owned a Helen._"

The full sense of the document did not at first reach Alastair's brain. But he caught the word "_Achilles_," and remembered a girl's whispered confidence the night before. A second phrase arrested him--"Briseis"--he remembered enough of Father Dominic's teaching to identify the reference. This Norreys, this husband of the russet lady, was far deeper in the secrets of the Cause than he had dreamed, if he were thus made the channel of vital intelligence. He was bidden act cautiously towards his new wife, and Mr Kyd, who had heard Johnson's accusations at Cornbury and said nothing, had all the time been in league with him. A sudden sense of a vast insecurity overcame the young man. The ground he trod on seemed shifting sand, and nowhere was there a firm and abiding landmark. And the girl too was walking in dark ways, and when she thought that she tripped over marble and cedar was in truth skimming the crust of quicksands. He grew hot with anger.

"Do you know the man to whom these are addressed?" he asked with stern brows.

Edom grinned.

"I ken how to find him. I'm to speir in certain quarters for ane Achilles, and I mind eneuch o' what the Lauder dominie lickit intil me to ken that Achilles was a braw sodger."

"You do not know his name? You never saw him?"

The man shook his head. "I wad like the letters back, sir," he volunteered warily, for he was intimidated by Alastair's dark forehead.

The latter handed back the _Achilles_ letter, and began to read more carefully the other papers. Suddenly he raised his head and listened. The forest hitherto had been still with the strange dead quiet of a November noon. But now the noise of hounds was heard again, not half a mile off, as if they were hunting a line in the brushwood. He awoke with a start to the fact of his danger. What better sport for the patrons of the Flambury Hunt than to ride down a Jacobite horse-thief? A vague fury possessed him against that foolish squire with the cherubic face and the vacant blue eye.

"The hunt is cried after me," he told Edom, "and I take it you too have no desire to advertise your whereabouts. For God's sake let's get out of this place. Where does this road lead?"

Edom's answer was drowned in a hubbub of hounds which seemed to be approaching down the ride from the east. Alastair led the way from the hut up a steepish hill, sparsely wooded with scrub oak, in the hope of finding a view-point. Unfortunately at the top the thicket was densest, so the young man swung himself into a tree and as quickly as riding-boots would permit sought a coign of vantage in its upper branches. There he had the prospect he wanted--a great circle of rolling country, most of it woodland, but patched with large heaths where gorse-fires were smouldering. The piece of forest in which he sat stretched far to east and west, but to the north was replaced in less than a mile by pasture and small enclosures. As he looked he saw various things to disquiet him. The grassy road they had left was visible for half a mile, and down it came horsemen, while at the other end there seemed to be a picket placed. Worse still, to the north, which was the way of escape he had thought of, there were mounted men at intervals along the fringe of the trees. The hounds could be heard drawing near in the scrub east of the hut, and men's voices accompanied them. He remembered that they would find the hut door open, see the crumbs of Edom's bread and cheese, and no doubt discover the track which led up the hill.

He scrambled to the ground, his heart filled with forebodings and a deep disgust. He, who should long ago have been in the battle-field among the leaders, was befogged in this remote country-side, pursued by yokels, clogged and hampered at every step, and yet with the most desperate urgency of haste to goad him forward. His pride was outraged by such squalid ill-fortune. He must get his head from the net which was entangling and choking him. But for the moment there was nothing for it but to cower like a hare, and somewhere in the deep scrub find a hiding-place. Happily a fox-hound was not a bloodhound.

Down the other side of the hill they went, Edom panting heavily and slipping every second yard. At the bottom they came on another road running parallel with the first, and were about to cross it when a sound from in front gave them pause. There were men there, keepers perhaps, beating the undergrowth and whistling. The two turned to the west and ran down the track, keeping as far as possible in the shadow of the adjacent coppice. A fine rain was beginning, which brought with it a mist that lowered the range of vision to a few hundred yards. In that lay Alastair's one hope. Let the weather thicken and he would undertake to elude all the foresters and fox-hunters in England. He cursed the unfamiliar land, which had no hills where fleetness of foot availed or crags where a bold man could laugh at pursuit.

The place seemed terribly full of folk, as if whole parishes had emptied their population to beat the covers. Now he realised that the mist had its drawbacks as well as its merits, for he might stumble suddenly into a posse of searchers, and, though he himself might escape, the clumsier Edom would be taken. He bade the latter choose a line of his own and save himself, as he was not the object of the hunt, and owed his chief danger to his company, but this the man steadfastly refused to do. He ploughed stubbornly along in Alastair's wake, wheezing like a bellows.

Then the noises seemed to die down, and the two continued in a dripping quiet. It was idle to think of leaving the forest, and the best that could be done was to find a hiding-place when they were certain that the pursuit was outdistanced. But this meant delay, and these slow rustics might keep up their watch for a week. . . .

Presently they came to a cross-roads, where a broader path cut their ride, and in the centre stood an old rotting stake, where long ago some outlaw may have swung. They halted, for Edom had his breath to get. He flung himself on the ground, and at that moment Alastair caught sight of something tied to the post. Going nearer, he saw that it was a bunch of broom.

Had his wits not been sharpened by danger and disgust it might have had no meaning for him. But, as it was, Midwinter's parting words on Otmoor came back to him, and with it the catch which he had almost forgotten. As Edom lay panting, he shaped his lips to whistle the air. In the quiet the tune rang out clear and shrill, and as he finished there was silence again. Then the bushes parted, and a man came out.

He was a charcoal-burner, with a face like an Ethiopian, and red sore eyes curiously ringed about with clean white skin.

"Ye have the tune, master," he said. "What be your commands for the Spoonbills? Folks be huntin' these woods, and maybe it's you as they're seekin'."

"The place is surrounded," said Alastair, "and they are beating the covers between the rides. Get us out, or show us how we can be hid."

The man did not hesitate. "Escape's better'n hidin'," he said. "Follow me, sirs, and I'll do my best for ye."

He led them at a great pace some two hundred yards into a tiny dell. There a glaze hung in the dull air from a charcoal-oven, which glowed under a mound of sods. Neat piles of oak and birch billets stood around, and the shafts of a cart stuck up out of the long bracken. On one side an outcrop of rock made a fine wind-shelter, and, pushing aside the creepers which veiled it, the charcoal-burner revealed a small cave.

"Off with your clothes, sirs," he said. "They'll be safe enough in that hidy-hole till I gets a chance to return 'em. Them rags is my mates', and in this pickle are better'n fine silks."

Two filthy old smocks were unearthed, and two pairs of wooden-soled clogs which replaced their boots. The change was effected swiftly under the constant urging of the charcoal-burner, who kept his ears cocked and his head extended like a dog. In five minutes Alastair was outwardly a figure differing only in complexion from the master of the dingle. Then the latter set to work, and with a handful of hot charcoal smeared hands and faces, rubbing the dirt into the eye-sockets so that the eyes smarted and watered. Hats and cravats were left in the cave, and Alastair's trim hair was roughly clubbed, and dusted with soot for powder. There was no looking-glass to show him the result, but the charcoal-burner seemed satisfied. The transformation was simpler for Edom, who soon to Alastair's eyes looked as if he had done nothing all his days but tend a smoky furnace.

"I'll do the talking if we happen to meet inquiring folk," the charcoal-burner admonished them. "Look sullen and keep your eyes on the ground, and spit--above all, spit. Ours is a dry trade."

He led them back to the main ride, and then boldly along the road which pointed north. The forest had woke up, and there were sounds of life on every side. The hounds had come out of covert and were being coaxed in again by a vociferous huntsman. Echoes of "Sweetlip," "Rover," "Trueman," mingled with sundry oaths, came gustily down the wind. Someone far off blew a horn incessantly, and in a near thicket there was a clamour of voices like those of beaters after roebuck. The three men tramped stolidly along, the two novices imitating as best they could the angular gait, as of one who rarely stretched his legs, and the blindish carriage of the charcoal-burner.

A knot of riders swept down on them. Alastair ventured to lift his eyes for one second, and saw the scarlet and plum colour of Squire Thicknesse and noted the grey's hocks. The legs finicking and waltzing near them he thought belonged to Moonbeam, and was glad that the horse had been duly caught and restored. The Squire asked a question of the charcoal-burner and was answered in a dialect of gutturals. Off surged the riders, and presently the three were at the edge of the trees where a forester's cottage smoked in the rain. Beyond, wrapped in a white mist, stretched ploughland and pasture.

Alastair saw that his tree-top survey had been right. This edge of the wood was all picketed, and as the three emerged a keeper in buckskin breeches came towards them, and a man on horseback turned at his cry and cantered back.

The keeper did not waste time on them, once he had a near view.

"Yah!" he said, "it's them salvages o' coalies. They ain't got eyes to obsarve nothin', pore souls! 'Ere, Billy," he cried, "seen any strange gen'elmen a-wanderin' the woods this morning?"

The charcoal-burner stopped, and the two others formed up sullenly behind him.

"There wor a fallow-buck a routin' round my foorness," he grumbled in a voice as thick as clay. "Happen it come to some 'urt, don't blame me, gossip. Likewise there's a badger as is makin' an earth where my birch-faggots should lie. That's all the strange gen'elmen I seen this marnin', barrin' a pack o' red-coats a-gallopin' 'orses and blowin' 'orns."

The rider had now arrived and was looking curiously at the three. The keeper in corduroy breeches turned laughing to him. "Them coalies is pure salvages, Mr Gervase, sir. Brocks and bucks, indeed, when I'm inquirin' for gen'elmen. Gawd A'mighty made their 'eads as weak as their eyes."

What answer the rider gave is not known, for the charcoal-burners had already moved forward. They crossed a piece of plough and reached a shallow vale seamed by a narrow stagnant brook. Here they were in shelter, and to Alastair's surprise their leader began to run. He took them at a good pace up the water till it was crossed by a high-road, then along a by-path, past a farm-steading, to a strip of woodland, which presently opened out into a wide heath. Here in deference to Edom's heaving chest he slackened pace. The rain was changing from a drizzle to a heavy downpour and the faces of the two amateurs were becoming a ghastly piebald with the lashing of the weather.

The charcoal-burner turned suddenly to Alastair and spoke in a voice which had no trace of dialect.

"You have escaped one danger, sir. I do not know who you may be or what your desires are, but I am bound to serve you as far as it may lie in my power. Do you wish me to take you to my master?"

"I could answer that better, if I knew who he was."

"We do not speak his name at large, but in a month's time the festival of his name-day will return."

Alastair nodded. The thought of Midwinter came suddenly to him with an immense comfort. He, if anyone could, would help him out of this miasmic jungle in which his feet were entangled and set him again upon the highway. His head was still confused with the puzzle of Kyd's behaviour.--Edom's errand, the exact part played by Sir John Norreys, above all the presence of a subtle treason. He remembered the deep eyes and the wise brow of the fiddler of Otmoor, and had he not that very day seen a proof of his power?

The heath billowed and sank into ridges and troughs, waterless and furze-clad, and in one of the latter they came suddenly upon a house. It was a small place, built with its back to a steep ridge all overgrown with blackberries and heather--two stories high, and flanked by low thatched outbuildings, and a pretence at a walled garden. On the turf before the door, beside an ancient well, a sign on a pole proclaimed it the inn of The Merry Woman, but suns and frosts had long since obliterated all trace of the rejoicing lady, though below it and more freshly painted was something which might have resembled a human eye.

The three men lounged into the kitchen, which was an appanage to the main building, and called for ale. It was brought by a little old woman in a mutch, who to Alastair's surprise curtseyed to the grimy figure of the charcoal-burner.

"He's alone, sir," she said, "and your own room's waiting if you're ready for it."

"Will you go up to him?" the charcoal-burner asked, and Alastair followed the old woman. She led the way up a narrow staircase with a neat sheep-skin rug on each tread, to a tiny corridor from which two rooms opened. The one on the left they entered and found an empty bedroom, cleanly and plainly furnished. A door in the wall at the other end, concealed by a hanging cupboard, gave access to a pitch-dark passage. The woman took Alastair's hand and led him a yard or two till she found a door-handle. It opened and showed a large chamber with daylight coming through windows apparently half cloaked with creepers. Alastair realised that the room had been hollowed out of the steep behind the house, and that the windows opened in the briars and heath of the face.

A fire was burning and a man sat beside it reading in a book. He was the fiddler of Otmoor, and in the same garb, save that he had discarded his coat and wore instead a long _robe de chambre_. A keen eye scanned the visitor, and then followed a smile and an outstretched hand.

"Welcome, Alastair Maclean," he said. "I heard of you in these parts and hoped for a meeting."

"From whom?"

"One whom you call the Spainneach. He left me this morning to go into Derbyshire."

The name stirred a question.

"Had he news?" Alastair asked. "When I last saw you you prophesied failure. Are you still of that mind?"

"I do not prophesy, but this I say--that since I saw you your chances and your perils have grown alike. Your Cause is on the razor-edge and you yourself may have the deciding."

_IX_ _Old England_

"Yesterday morning your Prince was encamped outside Carlisle. By now the place may have fallen."

"Who told you?" Alastair asked.

"I have my own messengers who journey in Old England," said Midwinter. "Consider, Captain Maclean. As a bird flies, the place is not a hundred and fifty miles distant, and no mile is without its people. A word cried to a traveller is taken up by another and another till the man who rubs down a horse at night in a Chester inn-yard will have news of what befell at dawn on the Scotch Border. My way is quicker than post-horses. . . . But the name of inn reminds me. You have the look of a fasting man."

Food was brought, and the November brume having fallen thick in the hollow, the windows were curtained, a lamp lit, and fresh fuel laid on the fire. Alastair kicked the boots from his weary legs, and as soon as his hunger was stayed fell to questioning his host; for he felt that till he could point a finger to the spy who had dogged him he had failed in his duty to the Cause. He poured out his tale without reserve.

Midwinter bent his brows and stared into the fire.

"You are satisfied that this servant Edom is honest?" he asked.

"I have observed him for half a day and the man is as much in the dark as myself. If he is a rogue he is a master in dissimulation. But I do not think so."

"_Imprimis_, you are insulted in the Flambury inn by those who would fasten a quarrel on you. _Item_, you are arrested and carried before this man Thicknesse, and one dressed like a mummer presses the accusation. _Item_, in a warrant you and your purposes are described with ominous accuracy. You are likewise this very day tricked by your gypsy guide, but that concerns rather my lady Norreys. These misfortunes came upon you after you had supped with Kyd, and therefore you suspected his servant, for these two alone in this country-side knew who you were. A fairly argued case, I concede, and to buttress it Kyd appears to have been near Flambury last night, when he professed to be on the road for Wiltshire. But you have ceased to suspect the servant. What of the master?"

Alastair started. "No, no. That is madness. The man is in the very heart of the Prince's counsels. He is honest, I swear--he is too deep committed."

Midwinter nodded. "If he were false, it would indeed go ill with you; for on him, I take it, depends the rising of Wales and the Marches. He holds your Prince in the hollow of his hand. And if all tales be true the omens there are happy."

Alastair told of the message from Brother Gilly, and, suddenly remembering Edom's papers, drew them from his pocket, and read them again by the firelight. Here at last was news from Badminton and from Monmouth and Hereford: and at the foot, in the cypher which was that most commonly used among the Jacobites, was a further note dealing with Sir Watkin Wynn. The writer had concerted with him a plan, by which the Welsh levies should march straight through Gloucester and Oxfordshire to cut in between Cumberland and the capital. To Alastair, the thing was proved authentic beyond doubt, for it bore the pass-word which had been agreed between himself and Sir Watkin a week before at Wynnstay.

He fell into a muse from which he was roused by Midwinter's voice.

"Kyd receives messages and forwards them northward, while he himself remains in the South. By what channel?"

"It would appear by Sir John Norreys, who is now, or soon will be, at Brightwell under the Peak."

As he spoke the words his suspicions took a new course. Johnson had thought the man a time-server, though he had yesterday recanted that view. Sir Christopher Lacy at Cornbury had been positive that he was a rogue. The only evidence to the contrary was that his wife believed in him, and that he had declared his colours by forsaking his bride for the Prince's camp. But he had not gone to the army, and it would seem that he had no immediate intention of going there, for according to Edom he would be at Brightwell during the month; and as for his wife's testimony, she was only a romantic child. Yet this man was the repository of Kyd's secret information, the use of which meant for the Prince a kingdom or a beggar's exile. If Kyd were mistaken in him, then the Cause was sold in very truth. But how came Kyd to be linked with him? How came a young Oxfordshire baronet, of no great family, and no record of service, to be _Achilles_ of the innermost circle?

He told his companion of his doubts, unravelling each coil carefully, while the other marked his points with jerks of his pipe-bowl. When he had finished Midwinter kept silent for a little. Then "You swear by Kyd's fidelity?" he asked.

"God in Heaven, but I must," cried Alastair. "If he is false, I may return overseas to-morrow."

"It is well to test all links in a chain," was the dry answer. "But for the sake of argument we will assume him honest. Sir John Norreys is the next link to be tried. If he is rotten, then the Prince had better bide north of Ribble, for the Western auxiliaries will never move. But even if the whole hive be false, there is still hope if you act at once. This is my counsel to you, Captain Maclean. Write straightway to the Army--choose the man about the Prince who loves you most--and tell him of the great things to be hoped for from the West. Name no names, but promise before a certain date to arrive with full proof, and bid them hasten south without delay. An invasion needs heartening, and if the worst should be true no word from Kyd is likely to reach the Prince. Hearten him, therefore, so that he marches to meet you. That is the first thing. The second is that you go yourself into Derbyshire to see this Sir John Norreys. If he be true man you will find a friend; if not you may be in time to undo his treason."

The advice was what had dimly been shaping itself in Alastair's own mind. His ardour to be back with the Army, which for days had been a fever in his bones, had now changed to an equal ardour to solve the riddle which oppressed him. Midwinter was right; the Cause was on a razor edge and with him might lie the deciding. . . . There was black treachery somewhere, and far more vital for the Prince than any victory in Scotland was the keeping the road open for West England to join him. Shadows of many reasons flitted across his mind and gave strength to his resolve. He would see this man Norreys who had won so adorable a lady. He would see the lady again, and at the thought something rose in his heart which surprised him, for it was almost joy.

"Have you paper and ink?" he asked, and from a cupboard Midwinter produced them and set them before him.

He wrote to Lochiel, who was his kinsman, for though he knew Lord George Murray there was a certain jealousy between them. Very roughly he gave the figures which he had gleaned from Brother Gilly's letter and that taken from Edom. He begged him to move the Prince to march without hesitation for the capital, and promised to reach his camp with full information before the month ended. "And the camp will, I trust, be by that time no further from St James's than----" He asked Midwinter for a suitable place, and was told "Derby." He subscribed himself with the affection of a kinsman and old playmate of Morvern and Lochaber.

"I will see that it reaches its destination," said Midwinter. "And now for the second task. The man Edom is not suspect and can travel by the high road. I will send him with one who will direct him to my lady Norreys' party, which this day, as you tell me, sets out for Derbyshire. For yourself I counsel a discreeter part. Mark you, sir, you are sought by sundry gentlemen in Flambury as a Jacobite, and by Squire Thicknesse and his Hunt as a horsethief. In this land suspicion is slow to waken, but in the end it runs fast and dies hard. Rumour of your figure, face, clothes, manner and bloodthirsty spirit will have already flown fifty miles. If you would be safe you must sink into Old England."

"I will sink into Acheron if it will better my purpose."

Midwinter regarded him critically. "Your modish clothes are in Kit's locker, and will duly be sent after you. Now you are the born charcoal-burner, save that your eyes are too clear and your finger nails unscorched. The disguise has served your purpose to-day, but it is too kenspeckle except in great woodlands. Mother Jonnet will find you a better. For the rest I will guide you, for I have the key."

"Where is this magic country?"

"All around you--behind the brake, across the hedgerow, under the branches. Some can stretch a hand and touch it--to others it is a million miles away."

"As a child I knew it," said Alastair, laughing. "I called it Fairyland."

Midwinter nodded. "Children are free of it, but their elders must earn admission. It is a safe land--at any rate it is secure from common perils."

"But it has its own dangers?"

"It makes a man look into his heart, and he may find that in it which destroys him. Also it is ambition's mortal foe. But if you walk in it you will come to Brightwell without obstruction, for the King's writ does not run in the greenwood."

"Whose is the law, then?" Alastair asked.

For answer Midwinter went to the window and flung it open. "My fiddle cannot speak except with free air about it," he said. "If any drunken rustic is on the heath he will think the pixies are abroad."

He picked up the violin which had been lying on the table behind him, and drew forth a slow broken music, which presently changed into a rhythmical air. At first it was like the twanging of fine wires in a wind, mingled with an echo of organ music heard over a valley full of tree-tops. It was tame and homely, yet with a childish inconsequence in it. Then it grew wilder, and though the organ notes remained it was an organ that had never sounded within church walls. The tune went with a steady rhythm, the rhythm of growing things in spring, of seasonal changes; but always ran the undercurrent of a leaping bacchanal madness, of long wild dances in bare places. The fiddle ceased on a soft note, and the fiddler fell to singing in a voice so low that the words and air only just rose above the pitch of silence. "Diana and her darling crew," he sang.

"Diana and her darling crew
Will pluck your fingers fine,
And lead you forth right pleasantly
To drink the honey wine,--
To drink the honey wine, my dear,
And sup celestial air,
And dance as the young angels dance,
Ah, God, that I were there!"

"Hers is the law," he said. "Diana, or as some say, Proserpina. Old folk call her the Queen of Elfhame. But over you and me, as baptized souls, she has no spell but persuasion. You can hear her weeping at midnight because her power is gone."

Then his mood changed. He laid down the fiddle and shouted on Mother Jonnet to bring supper. Edom, too, was sent for, and during the meal was closely catechised. He bore it well, professing no undue honesty beyond a good servant's, but stiff on his few modest scruples. When he heard Midwinter's plans for him, he welcomed them, and begged that in the choice of a horse his precarious balance and round thighs might be charitably considered. Alastair returned him the letter and watched him fold it up with the others and shove it inside his waistcoat. A prolonged study of that mild, concerned, faintly humorous face convinced him that Edom Lowrie was neither fox nor goose. He retired to bed to dream of Mr Kyd's jolly countenance, which had mysteriously acquired a very sharp nose.

Edom went off in the early morning in company with the man called Kit and mounted on an ambling forest cob whose paces he whole-heartedly approved. Alastair washed himself like a Brahmin in a tub of hot water in the back-kitchen, and dressed himself in the garments provided by Mother Jonnet--frieze and leather and coarse woollen stockings and square-toed country shoes. The haze of yesterday had gone, and the sky was a frosty blue, with a sharp wind out of the north-east. He breakfasted with Midwinter off cold beef and beer and a dish of grilled ham, and then stood before the door breathing deep of the fresh chilly morning. The change of garb or the prospect before him had rid him of all the languor of the past week. He felt extraordinarily lithe and supple of limb, as in the old days when he had driven deer on the hills before the autumn dawn. Had he but had the free swing of a kilt at his thighs and the screes of Ben Aripol before him he would have recaptured his boyhood.

Midwinter looked at him with approval.

"You are clad as a man should be for Old England, and you have the legs for the road we travel. We do not ride, for we go where no horse can go. Put not your trust in horses, saith the Scriptures, which I take to mean that a man in the last resort should depend on his own shanks. Boot and spur must stick to the paths, and the paths are but a tiny bit of England. How sits the wind? North by east? There is snow coming, but not in the next thirty hours, and if it comes, it will not stay us. _En avant, mon capitaine._"

At a pace which was marvellous for one of his figure, Midwinter led the way over the heath, and then plunged into a tangled wood of oaks. He walked like a mountaineer, swinging from the hips, the body a little bent forward, and his long even strides devoured the ground. Even so, Alastair reminded himself, had the hunters at Glentarnit breasted the hill, while his boyish steps had toiled in their rear. Sometimes on level ground he would break into a run, as if his body's vigour needed an occasional burst of speed to chasten it. The young man exulted in the crisp air and the swift motion. The stiffness of body and mind which had beset him ever since he left Scotland vanished under this cordial, he lost his doubts and misgivings, and felt again that lifting ardour of the heart which is the glory of youth. His feet were tireless, his limbs were as elastic as a sword-blade, his breath as deep as a greyhound's. Two days before, jogging in miry lanes, he had seemed caught and stifled in a net; now he was on a hill-top, and free as the wind that plucked at his hair.

It is probable that Midwinter had for one of his purposes the creation of this happy mood, for he kept up the pace till after midday, when they came to a high deer-fence, beyond which stretched a ferny park. Here they slackened speed, their faces glowing like coals, and, skirting the park, reached a thatched hut which smoked in a dell. A woman stood at the door, who at the sight of the two would have retired inside, had not Midwinter whistled sharply on his fingers. She blinked and shaded her eyes with her hand against the frosty sunshine; then to Alastair's amazement she curtseyed deep.

Midwinter did not halt, but asked if Jeremy were at the stone pit.

"He be, Master," was her answer. "Will ye stop to break bread?"

"Nay, Jeremy shall feed us," he cried, and led the way up the dingle where a brook flowed in reedy pools. Presently there was a sound of axe-blows, and, rounding a corner, they came on a man cutting poles from a thicket of saplings. Again Midwinter whistled, and the woodcutter dropped his tool and turned with a grinning face, pulling at his forelock.

Midwinter sat down on a tree-trunk.

"Jeremy, lad, you behold two hungry men waiting to sample the art of the best cook in the Borton Hundreds. Have you the wherewithal, or must we go back to your wife?"

"I has, I surely has," was the answer. "Be pleased to be seated, kind sirs, and Jerry Tusser will have your meat ready before ye have rightly eased your legs. This way, Master, this way."

He led them to a pit where a fire burned between three stones and a kettle bubbled. Plates of coarse earthenware were brought from some hiding-place, and in five minutes Alastair was supping with an iron spoon as savoury a stew as he had ever eaten. The fruits of Jeremy's snares were in it, and the fruits of Jeremy's old fowling piece, and it was flavoured with herbs whose merits the world has forgotten. The hot meal quickened his vigour, and he was on his feet before Midwinter had done, like a dog eager to be on the road again.

He heard the man speak low to Midwinter. "Dook o' Kingston's horse," he heard and a hand was jerked northward.

In the afternoon the way lay across more open country, which Midwinter seemed to know like the palm of his hand, for he made points for some ridge or tree-top, and yet was never held up by brook or fence or dwelling. The air had grown sharper, clouds were banking in the east, and a wind was moaning in the tops of the high trees. Alastair seemed to have been restored to the clean world of his youth, after long absence among courts and cities. He noted the woodcock flitting between the bracken and the leafless boughs, and the mallards silently flighting from mere to stubble. A wedge of geese moving south made him turn his face skyward, and a little later he heard a wild whistle, and saw far up in the heavens a line of swans. His bodily strength was great as ever, but he had ceased to exult in it, and was ready to observe and meditate.

A highway cut the forest, and the two behind a bush of box watched a company of riders jingle down it. They were rustic fellows, poor horsemen most of them, mounted on every variety of beast, and at the head rode a smarter youth, with brand-new holsters out of which peeped the butts of ancient pistols.

"Recruits for the Duke of Kingston," Midwinter whispered. "They rendezvous at Nottingham, I hear. Think you they will make a good match of it with your Highland claymores?"

Night fell when they were still in the open, and Midwinter, after halting for a second to take his bearings, led the way to a wood which seemed to flow in and out of a shallow vale.

"The night will be cold, Captain Maclean, and a wise man takes comfort when he can find it. I could find you twenty lodgings, but we will take the warmest."

The woodland path ended in a road which seemed to be the avenue to a great house. It was soon very dark, and Alastair heard the rustling of animals which revived some ancestral knowledge, for he could distinguish the different noises which were rabbit, badger, stoat and deer. Down the avenue Midwinter led unconcernedly, and then turned off to a group of buildings which might have been stables. He bade Alastair wait while he went forward, and after some delay returned with a man who carried a lantern. The fellow, seen in the dim light, was from his dress an upper servant, and his bearing was in the extreme respectful. He bowed to Alastair, and led them through a gate into a garden, where their feet rang on flagged stones and rustled against box borders. A mass loomed up on the left which proved to be a great mansion.

The servant admitted them by a side door, and led them to a room, where he lit a dozen candles from his lantern, and revealed a panelled octagonal chamber hung with full-length portraits of forbidding gentlemen. There he left them, and when he returned it was with an elderly butler in undress, who bowed with the same deferent decorum.

"His lordship has gone since yesterday into Yorkshire, sir," he informed Midwinter. "I will have the usual rooms made ready for you at once, and you can sup in my lord's cabinet which is adjacent."

The two travellers soon found themselves warming their feet before a bright fire, while some thousands of volumes in calf and vellum looked down on them from the walls. They supped royally, but Alastair was too drowsy for talk, and his body had scarcely touched the sheets of his bed before he was asleep. He was woke before dawn, shaved and dressed by the butler, and given breakfast--with China tea in place of beer--in the same cabinet. It was still dark when the first servant of the night before conducted them out of the house by the same side door, led them across the shadowy park, and through a gate in the wall ushered them out to a dusky common, where trees in the creeping light stood up like gibbets. Midwinter led off at a trot, and at a trot they crossed the common and put more than one little valley behind them, so that when day dawned fully there was no sign in all the landscape of their night's lodging.

"Whose was the house?" Alastair asked, and was told--"We name no names in Old England."

The second day was to Alastair like the first for joy in the movement of travel, but the weather had grown bitterly cold and unfallen snow was heavy in the leaden sky. The distances were still clear, and though all the morning the road seemed to lie in hollows and dales, yet he had glimpses in the north of high blue ridges. Other signs told him that he was nearing the hills. The streams ceased to be links of sluggish pools, and chattered in rapids. He saw a water ouzel with its white cravat flash from the cover of a stone bridge. A flock of plovers which circled over one heath proved to be not green but golden. He told this to Midwinter, who nodded and pointed to a speck in the sky.

"There is better proof," he said.

The bird dropped closer to earth, and showed itself as neither sparrow-hawk nor kestrel, but merlin.

"We are nearing the hills," he said, "but Brightwell is far up the long valleys. We will not reach it before to-morrow night."

Just at the darkening the first snow fell. They were descending a steep boulder-strewn ridge to a stream of some size, which swirled in icy grey pools. Above them hung a tree-crowned hill now dim with night, and ere they reached the cover on its crest the flakes were thick about them. Midwinter grunted, and broke into a trot along the ridge. "Ill weather," he croaked, "and a harder bed than yestereen. We'll have to make shift with tinkler's fare. They told me at Harrowden that Job Lee's pack were in the Quarters Wood, and Job has some notion of hospitality. Job it must be, for the snow is fairly come."

In a broad coombe on the sheltered side of the ridge they came presently on a roaring fire of roots with three tents beside it, so placed that they were free alike from wind and smoke. The snow was falling hard, and beginning to drift, when Midwinter strode into the glow, and the man he called Job Lee--a long man with untied hair brushing his shoulders and a waistcoat of dyed deerskin--took his right hand between both of his and carried it to his lips. The newcomers shook themselves like dogs and were allotted one of the tents, thereby ousting two sleeping children who staggered to the hospitality of their father's bed. They supped off roast hare and strong ale, and slept till the wintry sun had climbed the Derbyshire hills and lit a world all virgin-white.

"The Almighty has sent a skid for our legs," Midwinter muttered as he watched the wet logs hiss in Job Lee's morning fire. "We can travel slow, for the roads will be heavy for my lady." So they did not start till the forenoon was well advanced, and as soon as possible exchanged the clogged and slippery hillside for a valley road. A wayside inn gave them a scrag of boiled mutton for dinner, and thereafter they took a short cut over a ridge of hill to reach the dale at whose head lay the house of Brightwell. On the summit they halted to reconnoitre, for the highway was visible there for many miles.

Just below them at the road side, where a tributary way branched off, stood an inn of some pretensions, whose sign was deciphered by Alastair's hawk eyes as a couchant stag. Fresh snow was massing on the horizon, but for the moment the air was diamond clear. There had been little traffic on the road since morning and that only foot passengers, with one horse's tracks coming down the valley. These tracks did not pass the door, therefore the horseman must be within. There were no signs of a coach's wheels, so Lady Norreys had not yet arrived. He lifted his eyes and looked down the stream. There, a mile or so distant, moved a dark cluster, a coach apparently and attendant riders.

The snow was on them again and Alastair bowed his head to the blast. "They will lie at that inn," said Midwinter. "Brightwell is half a dozen miles on, and the road is dangerous. You will, of course, join them. I will accompany you to the door and leave you, for I have business in Sherwood that cannot wait."

Again Alastair peered through the snow. He saw a man come out of the inn door as in a great hurry, mount a waiting horse, and clatter off up the vale--a tall man in a horseman's cloak with a high collar. Then a little later came the vanguard of the approaching party to bespeak quarters. The two men watched till the coach came abreast the door, and a slender hooded figure stepped from it. Then they began to make their way down the hillside.

_X_ _Snowbound at the Sleeping Deer_

The whole staff of the Sleeping Deer were around the door when my lady Norreys, making dainty grimaces at the weather, tripped over the yards of snow-powdered cobbles between the step of her coach and the comfortable warmth of the inn. The landlord, ill-favoured and old, was there with his bow, and the landlady, handsome and not yet forty, with her curtsey, and in the gallery which ran round the stone-flagged hall the chambermaid tribe of Dollys and Peggys clustered to regard the newcomer, for pretty young ladies of quality did not lie every night at a moorland hostelry. But the lady would not tarry to warm her toes by the great fire or to taste the landlady's cordials. A fire had been bespoke in her bedchamber and there she retired to drink tea, which her woman, Mrs Peckover, made with the secret airs of a plotter in the sanctum beside the bar. The two servants from Weston attended the coach in the inn-yard. Mr Edom Lowrie comforted himself with a pot of warm ale, while Mr Samuel Johnson, finding a good fire in the parlour, removed his shoes, and toasted at the ribs his great worsted stocking soles.

Twenty minutes later, when the bustle had subsided, two unassuming travellers appeared below the signboard on which might be seen the fresh-painted gaudy lineaments of a couching fallow deer. The snow was now falling thick, and the wind had risen so that the air was one wild scurry and smother. Midwinter marched straight for the sanctum, and finding it empty but for Mrs Peckover, continued down a narrow passage, smelling of onions, to a little room which he entered unbidden. There sat the landlord with horn spectacles on his nose, making a splice of a trout rod. At the sight of Midwinter he stood to attention, letting all his paraphernalia of twine and wax and tweezers slip to the floor.

"I have brought a friend," said Midwinter. "See that you entreat him well and do his biddings as if they were my own. For myself I want a horse, friend Tappet, for snow or no I must sleep in the next shire."

So as Alastair was changing into his own clothes, which the landlord fetched for him from Edom, he saw from his window in the last faint daylight a square cloakless figure swing from the yard at a canter and turn south with the gale behind it.

The young man had now secured all his belongings, some having come with Edom by grace of the charcoal-burner and the rest from Squire Thicknesse's manor in the lady's charge. As he dressed, his mind was busy on his old problem, and he had sadly to confess that though he had covered much country in recent days he had got little new light. More than once he had tried to set Midwinter's mind to work on it, but, beyond his advice to come to Brightwell, he had shown no interest. Why should he, Alastair reflected, since his creed forswore all common loyalties? But as he had plodded up and down the foothills that day his thoughts had been running chiefly on the lady's husband whom she believed to be now with the Prince, but who most certainly was, or was about to be, in the vicinity of Brightwell. For what purpose? To receive a letter from Edom--a continuing correspondence, sent by Kyd, and charged with the most desperate import to the Prince--a correspondence which should be without delay in the Prince's hands. What did Sir John Norreys in the business? Why did Kyd send the letters by Brightwell, which was not the nearest road to Lancashire?

As he came downstairs he noticed a map hanging on a panel between prints of the new gardens at Chatsworth and the old Marquis of Granby. It was a Dutch thing, drawn by Timothy Hooge a hundred years before, and it showed all the southern part of the Peak country, with fragments of Yorkshire, Notts and Staffordshire adjoining. It was hard to read, for it had been pasted on a wooden board and then highly varnished, but the main roads were strongly marked in a purplish red. He saw the road from the north-west descend the valleys to Derby and so to London, the road from Manchester and Lancashire which the Prince's army would travel. With some trouble he found Brightwell and to his surprise saw the road which passed it marked with equal vigour, as if it vied with the other in importance. A moment's reflection told him the reason. It was the main way from the West. By this road must come the levies from Wales if they were to join the Prince before he reached Derby and the flat country. By this road, too, must all messages come from West England so soon as the army left Manchester. More, the Hanoverian forces were gathering in Nottinghamshire. If they sought to cut in in the Prince's rear they would march this way. . . . Brightwell was suddenly revealed as a point of strategy, a ganglion; if treachery were abroad, here it would roost.

He walked into the kitchen, for he had an odd fancy about the horseman whom he had seen ride away a little before Lady Norreys' arrival--an incredible suspicion which he wished to lay. A kitchen wench was busy at the fire, and on a settle a stableman sat drinking beer while a second stamped the snow from his boots at the back door. The appearance of a dapper gentleman in buckled shoes and a well-powdered wig so startled the beer-drinker that he spilled half his mug on the floor. Alastair ordered fresh supplies for all three and drank his on the seat beside the others. Had they been in the yard all afternoon? They had, and had prophesied snow since before breakfast, though Master wouldn't have it so and had sent the waggons to Marlock, where they would be storm-stayed. . . . Yes. A rider had come down the valley and had put up his horse for the better part of an hour. He had been indoors most of the time--couldn't say why. A tall fellow, Bill said. No, not very powerful--lean shoulders--pale face--big nose. Young, too--Tom reckoned not more than twenty-five. . . . Alastair left them with an easier mind, for the worst of his suspicions had been disproved. The back he had seen from the ridge-top posting up the dale had had a disquieting resemblance to Kyd's.

In the parlour he found Mr Johnson stretching his great bulk before a leaping fire and expanding in the warmth of it. The windows had not been shuttered, so the wild night was in visible contrast to the snug hearth. A small girl of five or six years, the landlady's child, had strayed into the room, and, fascinated by a strange gentleman, had remained to talk. She now sat on one of Johnson's bony knees, while he told her a fairy tale in a portentous hollow voice. He told of a dragon, a virtuous dragon in reality a prince, who lived in a Derbyshire cave, and of how the little girl stumbled on the cave, found the dragon, realised his true character, and lived with him for a year and a day, which was the prescribed magical time if he were to be a prince again. He was just describing the tiny bed she had in the rock opposite the dragon's lair, which lair was like a dry mill-pond, and the child was punctuating the narrative with squeals of excitement, when Alastair entered. Thereupon the narrator became self-conscious, the story hastened to a lame conclusion, and the small girl climbed from his knee and with many backward glances sidled out of the room.