By next day every one had forgotten that Hardwyn had flogged him, and life went on in its old course. Only Hugh took it now as an accepted thing; there was no escape, so he would make the best of it, do as he was bidden, dodge what blows he could, and, what he could not dodge, bear without flinching. He even contrived, so long as he could busy himself about the horses, to find a sort of negative pleasure in the life. To groom and feed and water the great, friendly animals did not seem menial, but this made only a part of the day’s routine, and Hugh’s pride could not yet stoop willingly to cleaning boots and fetching beer. The last was the most humiliating employment of all; though he might reconcile himself to slipping into an obscure corner and cleaning the boots of a man who was older than he and a better soldier, he felt that to tramp a quarter-mile on the highway with a brace of jugs and fetch bad beer from an alehouse for a crew of peasant troopers could never befit a gentleman. Late of an October afternoon he was trudging back to the stable from such an errand, when he met a gay company of horsemen and, to save being trampled on, halted at one side of the road till they should pass. By chance he glanced up and among the riders saw one very young gentleman with yellow curls, who wore a fine blue velvet suit and a big hat, and bestrode a dainty roan mare. Hugh caught his breath and looked again, then dodged headlong back from the road, in behind a cottage out of sight. Halting there a moment he instinctively looked himself over,—ragged shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, ragged breeches stained with mud, half-worn boothose, and shoes that were falling to pieces. He wondered if Frank Pleydall, in his fine clothes, on his good horse, had recognized him, and he thought it unlikely. With a foolish dread of a second encounter he made his way back to the stable through the fields; the going was rough, and he now perceived much of the beer had slopped out of the jugs. “I shall be flogged for that,” he told himself, and, with something that was not jealousy but hurt him keenly, he wondered if Frank Pleydall knew what a happy lad he was. But, much as he expected it, Hugh did not get a flogging; for when he came into the stable yard he found strange horses standing there, and two or three troopers he did not know, and his own acquaintances looked energetic and on good behavior, so much perturbed they did not even rate him about the beer. “The colonel is back from the eastward,” Unger explained, “and Corporal Ridydale is on our shoulders again.” “He’ll send you packing,” Cowper spoke cheerfully to Hugh.