“But Saxon’s horse,”—Hugh’s long drill in stable duty made him protest. “Hang the horse and Bob Saxon, too!” growled Ridydale, with an expletive or so. “A pretty trade for your father’s son to turn a hand to!” Still muttering, he strode back to the stable, while Hugh obediently made his way, by the hedge-gap and the well-trodden path, to the farthest of the cluster of cottages that quartered the troop. By virtue of his coming from Corporal Ridydale he was suffered to enter the low-studded living room and sit down on a stool in the chimney corner. It was a poor smoky room, but with the fire and candle it was warmer and brighter than the stable, and there was a home-likeness about the children sprawling on the hearth, the woman cooking pottage at the fire, even about her stolid peasant husband, that made Hugh content to sit in a kind of open-eyed drowse and watch them. In these hours of negative comfort the whole burden of responsibility seemed slipped from him, and he neither thought nor vexed himself with anticipation, only waited for Ridydale. All save the cottager’s wife had packed to bed in the loft before the corporal returned. Hugh heard him outside, rating some unknown trooper with bullying volubility, and then he came in, grumbling about the mismanagement of Hardwyn, who in his absence had got the men out of all conceit of obedience. By the time they sat down to supper he had almost calmed himself, however, and was kindly spoken to the woman who attended them and brusquely civil to Hugh, who after his vagabond period felt ill at ease, even at so poor a board. Ridydale noted all that, and apparently he had made inquiries too, for when they were left alone at table he spoke out, half angrily and half sorrowfully, “So you’ve been drudging in the stables ever since that night, sir?” “There was nothing else to do,” Hugh answered, and took another piece of bread, with a comfortable sense that he could have all he wanted. “’Twas hard to think at first it could be the colonel’s son,” Ridydale went on, “though I was on the watch for you. I heard of that blockhead Rodes,—he who bore the colonel’s torch that night—how you came unto him. Rodes told it for a jest the colonel’s comrades would put upon him, but I that had been with him nigh twenty years, I had a shrewd doubt there might be some truth lay at the bottom of it. So I took it on myself to make search, so soon as we returned to Shrewsbury. Lord save me, sir, when I used to see you, there where we were in Lower Saxony, such a well-favored little rascal, I never thought to come upon you currying horses for your father’s men.” “You were in Germany?” Hugh asked. “Where the colonel has been I have been, these twenty years. I went as his man when he first crossed to the Low Countries—a proper young soldier he was! Then I was back with him in Warwickshire, seventeen years agone; it seems longer.” “Then—you knew my mother?” Hugh asked, pushing aside his trencher.