Cecil leaned a while silently against one of the great gnarled trunks, and Rake affected to busy himself with the mare; in his heart was a tumult of rage, a volcano of curiosity, a pent-up storm of anxious amaze, but he would have let Mother o’ Pearl brain him with a kick of her iron plates rather than press a single look that should seem like doubt, or seem like insult in adversity to his fallen master.

Cecil’s eyes, drooped and brooding, gazed a long half-hour down in silence into the brook bubbling at his feet; then he lifted his head and spoke—­with a certain formality and command in his voice, as though he gave an order on parade.

“Rake, listen, and do precisely what I bid you; neither more nor less.  The horses cannot accompany me, nor you either; I must go henceforth where they would starve, and you would do worse.  I do not take the King into suffering, nor you into temptation.”

Rake, who at the tone had fallen unconsciously in to the attitude of “attention,” giving the salute with his old military instinct, opened his lips to speak in eager protestation; Cecil put up his hand.

“I have decided; nothing you can say will alter me.  We are near a by-station now; if I find none there to prevent me, I shall get away by the first train; to hide in these woods is out of the question.  You will return by easy stages to Baden, and take the horses at once to Lord Rockingham.  They are his now.  Tell him my last wish was that he should take you into his service; and he will be a better master to you than I have ever been.  As for the King”—­his lips quivered, and his voice shook a little, despite himself—­“he will be safe with him.  I shall go into some foreign service—­Austrian, Russian, Mexican, whichever be open to me.  I would not risk such a horse as mine to be sold, ill-treated, tossed from owner to owner, sent in his old age to a knacker’s yard, or killed in a skirmish by a cannon-shot.  Take both him and the mare back, and go back yourself.  Believe me, I thank you from my heart for your noble offer of fidelity, but accept it I never shall.”

A dead pause came after his words; Rake stood mute; a curious look—­half-dogged, half-wounded, but very resolute—­had come on his face.  Cecil thought him pained, and spoke with an infinite gentleness: 

“My good fellow, do not regret it, or fancy I have no gratitude to you.  I feel your loyalty deeply, and I know all you would willingly suffer for me; but it must not be.  The mere offer of what you would do had been quite testimony enough of your truth and your worth.  It is impossible for me to tell you what has so suddenly changed my fortunes; it is sufficient that for the future I shall be, if I live, what you were—­a private soldier in an army that needs a sword.  But let my fate be what it will, I go to it alone.  Spare me more speech, and simply obey my last command.”

Quiet as the words were, there was a resolve in them not to be disputed; an authority not to be rebelled against.  Rake stared, and looked at him blankly; in this man who spoke to him with so subdued but so irresistible a power of command, he could scarcely recognize the gay, indolent, indulgent, pococurante Guardsman, whose most serious anxiety had been the set of a lace tie, the fashion of his hunting dress, or the choice of the gold arabesques for his smoking-slippers.