ver 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 littl