Ridydale stamped his foot down on the floor. “Harm, quotha! Why, you might be a brat out of the kennel for all the shame you take from it. Tell me, what can befall a man of gentle birth that’s worse harm than to be banged by a pack of knaves?” Hugh busied himself in pulling on his shirt, and made no reply. “Well, ’tis time the colonel took you in hand,” Ridydale blustered. “You need to be taught what befits a gentleman.” Then he went noisily out of the room, and Hugh heard him clatter down the ladder from the loft. Looking out at the little window he saw Ridydale head for the stables, and he hoped the man might not make inquiries there or bring any one into disgrace for what had befallen. Then, as he turned back to finish dressing, a new alarm seized Hugh: what if the corporal, in his irritation, should refrain from speaking for him to Colonel Gwyeth? But next moment he had quite accepted the thought; indeed, he seemed all along to have half suspected some miscarriage would destroy his faint hope of the last few hours. It would only be of a piece with all that happened to him since he set out from Everscombe. So, on the whole, he was surprised when about an hour later the cottager’s wife knocked at his door with the news that a trooper was below, come to take him before the colonel. No, he was not excited, Hugh told himself, for he cared not what the issue might be; he had twice gone so eagerly to meet his father, and each time been so bitterly disappointed, that now, whatever good fortune might be before him, it could awake in him no fresh anticipation. Yet, for all that, he came down the ladder rather briskly, and, when he found himself actually setting forth to Colonel Gwyeth’s quarters, felt a thrill of something like apprehension.