“Ay, Mistress Ruth Oldesworth, and a gallant-spirited young gentlewoman she was. To leave her knave kinsfolk so, for love o’ the colonel! And she was that kind spoken to all of us that followed him. Faith, a man could nigh forgive her, even for deserting the colonel so.” Hugh broke out. Hugh rumpled the hair back from his forehead, while he strove to grasp the significance of this new information. He realized that these last weeks there had been in his heart an unphrased feeling that his father was cruel, and his mother must have suffered much, just as he was suffering. Once he had held both parents something nobler than human creatures; and latterly his mother had seemed more than ever a saint, and his father an utter wretch; but now, what was he to think? Ridydale spoke presently. Hugh replied, and snuffed the candle with his fingers a moment, then broke out: Ridydale thoughtfully eyed the fire smouldering on the hearth, and tousled his beard with one hand.he began at length. “They were both very young and high-tempered, and he would have his pleasure. He was stubborn, though I grudge to say it of him, and she was not over-patient. There was words betwixt them, and that same day our troop was sent foraying southward and he did not even take leave of her. But he faced the troop about ere the sennight were over and brought us home at a gallop. And when he came to quarters she had taken you and gone for England. He never said word of it, even to me, save, ‘She might ha’ left me the lad; he was as much mine as hers.’” “Then—he did have some care for me once?” Hugh asked; he was keeping his face turned toward the fire, away from his companion. Hugh smiled at the fire, rather tremulously; it was dawning upon him that Ridydale, for all his formal respect and kindness, was disappointed that he did not bear out the promises of his babyhood, and he had a doleful feeling that in the same way Colonel Gwyeth, too, would always be disappointed in him. Ridydale began again, “and joined ourselves unto King Gustavus. For the colonel would not make a start to follow his lady; perhaps ’twas stubbornness, but he had no word of her since she quitted Germany, and he was too proud to go a-begging to her, so we just stayed on in the Swedish army. Once—’twas the year we fought at Wolfenbüttel—there came a gentleman volunteer from England with tidings out of Warwickshire, and so we learned that she was dead.”