Even as he reeled back with his face tingling, Hugh found room in his heart to be thankful that he had told no one his name. These knaves must never know it was their commander’s son whom they had the right to knock about. Perhaps the dignity of his family required that he should leave the place at once, he reflected dolefully, as he groomed Cowper’s horse; but, after all, it was better to drudge for his father’s troopers than to beg in Shrewsbury streets. So Hugh stayed on at the troop stables, where he groomed horses, and cleaned stalls, and fetched and carried with all the strength and readiness necessary to please a score of rough masters. From day’s end to day’s end it was hard, hateful labor with no sign of release. Once, to be sure, at the news that the king had returned from Chester, something that was half hope and half dread awoke in him, for there was a chance that at any hour Colonel Gwyeth might come to the stables. But soon he learned that his father had gone foraying to the eastward, so even that small hope vanished, and life meant only to work with all his strength, sleep on the hay, share the troopers’ rations, and through all endure such abuse and brutality as they might choose to inflict upon him. It was not long before Hugh dropped his old methods of classification and grouped men in two great divisions: those who struck at you for the fun of seeing you dodge, and those who struck to hurt you. Of the former class was Bob Saxon, who had a certain good nature about him, though his horseplay was apt to be rough. He had been to the wars in Germany, Hugh gathered from the big stories the fellow told, and for that reason Hugh felt drawn toward him; at least, Saxon knew the land where he had been born, and he knew Colonel Gwyeth. “There’s a man would take a trot through hell, if he had the word,” he once said admiringly of the colonel, whereat Hugh felt a feeble thrill of pride, and held his chin higher, till Cowper happened along and set him to cleaning his boots. Hugh considered there was nothing good to be said for Nick Cowper; he had an unconscious knack of setting tasks that peculiarly unbefitted a gentleman, while at all times he was brutal with the fierce roughness of a seasoned campaigner, who struck to hurt. To be sure, no malice seemed behind his brutality; it was merely his way of reducing command to terms of the senses, but that gave small remedy to Hugh’s skin or to his wounded dignity, when Cowper sent him stumbling about his work with his lip cut or his nose bleeding.