“Girl, Sir Daniel?” cried the landlord.
“Nay, sir, I saw no girl.”
“Boy, then, dotard!” cried the knight.
“Could ye not see it was a wench? She
in the murrey-coloured mantle—she that broke
her fast with water, rogue—where is she?”
“Nay, the saints bless us! Master John,
ye called him,” said the host. “Well,
I thought none evil. He is gone. I saw
him—her—I saw her in the stable
a good hour agone; ’a was saddling a grey horse.”
“Now, by the rood!” cried Sir Daniel,
“the wench was worth five hundred pound to me
and more.”
“Sir knight,” observed the messenger,
with bitterness, “while that ye are here, roaring
for five hundred pounds, the realm of England is elsewhere
being lost and won.”
“It is well said,” replied Sir Daniel.
“Selden, fall me out with six cross-bowmen;
hunt me her down. I care not what it cost; but,
at my returning, let me find her at the Moat House.
Be it upon your head. And now, sir messenger,
we march.”
And the troop broke into a good trot, and Selden and
his six men were left behind upon the street of Kettley,
with the staring villagers.
It was near six in the May morning when Dick began
to ride down into the fen upon his homeward way.
The sky was all blue; the jolly wind blew loud and
steady; the windmill-sails were spinning; and the
willows over all the fen rippling and whitening like
a field of corn. He had been all night in the
saddle, but his heart was good and his body sound,
and he rode right merrily.
The path went down and down into the marsh, till he
lost sight of all the neighbouring landmarks but Kettley
windmill on the knoll behind him, and the extreme
top of Tunstall Forest far before. On either
hand there were great fields of blowing reeds and willows,
pools of water shaking in the wind, and treacherous
bogs, as green as emerald, to tempt and to betray
the traveller. The path lay almost straight
through the morass. It was already very ancient;
its foundation had been laid by Roman soldiery; in
the lapse of ages much of it had sunk, and every here
and there, for a few hundred yards, it lay submerged
below the stagnant waters of the fen.
About a mile from Kettley, Dick came to one such break
in the plain line of causeway, where the reeds and
willows grew dispersedly like little islands and confused
the eye. The gap, besides, was more than usually
long; it was a place where any stranger might come
readily to mischief; and Dick bethought him, with something
like a pang, of the lad whom he had so imperfectly
directed. As for himself, one look backward
to where the windmill sails were turning black against
the blue of heaven—one look forward to the
high ground of Tunstall Forest, and he was sufficiently
directed and held straight on, the water washing to
his horse’s knees, as safe as on a highway.
