As Maud went on to the cottage she wondered when the marriage was to take place between Mary and Captain Stanhope. It could not be for some time, she thought--not until this dreadful war was over, and then she sighed as she thought of the misery this was causing. When she reached the cottage she found the old woman looking very weak and ill, and so feeble she could hardly speak. Maud was alarmed. "What is the matter," she said; "are you ill?" The poor old creature shook her head--"Not ill," she gasped, "but, oh, so hungry." Maud ran to the cupboard; there was not a bit of anything in the shape of food, but a little pile of halfpence in one corner. Maud took these into her hand. "Why did you not buy yourself a rye loaf?" she said. Dame Coppins shook her head. "They will not sell anything to me," she said. It was true enough; the villagers had determined to starve out the witch if they could not drown her, and so every one had refused to supply her with food, until the poor creature was brought to the verge of starvation. To remedy this, Maud now had either to bring the old woman's food from the Grange, or make her purchases herself in the village, so that a day seldom passed without her being seen near the blacksmith's shed. One day when she was passing, a stranger rode up whose horse had lost a shoe, and he was obliged to stop to get the damage repaired. The man looked travel-stained and tired, and the blacksmith, with his usual love of gossip, wanted him to drink a horn of ale before he shod the horse. "Nay, that may not be, friend blacksmith, for I bear tidings of weighty import. There has been a great battle in Yorkshire." Maud, pausing to speak to a child close by, heard these words. "A battle, sir traveller: can you tell me aught about it?" she asked. "Marry, and I should be able, seeing I was in it, and fought with Lieutenant Cromwell's Ironsides," said the man. "Is not this Hayslope?" he asked. [Illustration: THE STRANGER AT THE SMITHY.] The blacksmith nodded. "But we be all King Charles's men here," he said. "Marry, that may be, so all who are here," said the traveller. "But one Harry Drury cometh from Hayslope, and he fought right bravely with the Parliament men at Marston Moor, and now lieth sorely wounded and grievously sick." CHAPTER VIII. BESSIE'S DISTRESS. Maud did not wait to hear anything more that the messenger had to tell; whether the Royalists had gained the victory or had to mourn defeat she did not know, and hardly cared. This one fact was enough for her; Harry was wounded--wounded and ill--perhaps dying among strangers. It might be he was prisoner even, and then an ignominious traitor's death awaited him. All the darkest possibilities of his fate rushed to her mind as she walked down the lane to the cottage.