Next day, when his Majesty and his men rode south for Oxford, Captain Turner, Lieutenant Strangwayes, and Volunteer Gwyeth, with some forty troopers, got to saddle and went cantering eastward, to their own pleasure and the discomfort of more than one Puritan of Northamptonshire. It was partisan warfare, but Turner waged it honorably; and Hugh, after he once got used to riding with his hand on his hilt through villages of hostile, scowling people, had no quarrel with the life. They made their first dash for a country-house where arms and powder were stored; there was slight resistance, a shot or two without damage, a door battered in, and then Hugh was detailed with five men to ransack a wing of the house where were the kitchen and offices. As they found nothing they only wearied themselves with the thorough search Hugh insisted on, and got laughed at for their pains by a fat kitchen wench. But Strangwayes and his squad captured six muskets and a keg of powder, though he came away grumbling. “No more work of that sort for me,” he confided to Hugh. “You, you rogue, were safe in the buttery, while I was rummaging the parlor, and the gentlewomen stood off with their skirts gathered round them and glowered on me as if I were a cutpurse. I’m thinking the time will never come that women understand the laws of war.” Afterward they struck into a small town where more powder was said to be hid. Across the narrow part of the main street the people had built a barricade of carts and household stuff, so Turner, after reconnoitring, determined on a charge. “You had best bear the colors, Gwyeth,” he said, as the troop fell into order outside the village. “Strangwayes must ride at the rear, and, in any case, his two arms are of more profit to us than yours.” Hugh forgave the sneer as the cornet of the troop was put into his hands. Like all Sir William’s cornets, it was a red flag with a golden ball upon it, the prettiest colors in the world, Hugh considered, except the black flag with the cross of gold that Colonel Gwyeth’s troop marched under. Settling the staff firmly against his thigh, he glanced up to see the folds of the flag droop in the still air, then took his place by Turner at the front of the troop, and, a moment later, charged in behind him. The stones clicked beneath the horses’ feet, the cottages sped by, the barricade, whence came the hateful spitting of muskets, was right before them. Hugh swerved for the left end, where the structure was lowest, and Bayard, gathering himself up, cleared it at a leap. Behind the barricade were men of all coats, some loading and steadily firing, but more already scrambling down to flee. One, crying out at sight of Hugh, broke away the faster; another levelled a pistol at him, but before he could fire Bayard’s hoofs had struck him into the kennel. Then the whole barricade seemed to go down as the Cavaliers, some still in the saddle, others dismounted to scramble the better, came pouring over.