Once over, with the intention of taking their final stand at the extreme right of the line of waiting horsemen, they pressed northward across the uneven plain. They were sliding down the bank to a shallow hollow, when the thud, thud of hoofs warned them to look to the westward and there, over a slight rise in the ground, a belated troop came at a smart trot. Pressing back against the bank Hugh watched the crowded columns approach, the bespattered breasts of the horses, their tossing heads, and above the waving manes the white faces of the riders. As the head of the column came close upon him his eyes rested on its leader, and he saw he was a man of middle height with reddish hair, who rode in his shirt with neither cuirass nor helmet. Then the troop was sweeping past, black, red, and gray horses straining at a trot, and men with steady faces and silent lips, among whom, looking closer, Hugh recognized some he knew. But he only gazed without speaking till the last horse had swung down the hollow, and Frank, who had been cheering mightily, settled his hat on his head again, with an excited, “A brave troop, was it not, Hugh?” “It was my troop,” Hugh answered. “Did you not note? ’Twas my father led them.” “Oh, ay, to be sure,” replied Frank, making for the opposite side of the hollow. “I scarce remembered him, and, to my thinking, he has used you so knavishly that he does not merit to dwell in any gentleman’s remembrance, and—Hark, there!” Both halted a moment as from far off on the left came the dull boom, boom of cannon. From far to the front an answering crash sounded. “They’re falling to it,” Frank cried. “Briskly, Hugh!” One last spurt that sent the blood beating to the temples and turned the breath hot in the throat, and they were stumbling up the little hillock for which they had headed. Still, before and on the left, the cannon were pounding, and there came, too, in long, undistinguishable shouts, the noise of men cheering. The withered grass of the hillside wavered before Hugh’s eyes with the very weariness of running, yet he found strength in him to pull off his hat and breath to pant out: “For a king!” Then, coming over the brow of the hill, he had sight of the rough plain stretching off to the gray west, and across it saw the long ranks of horsemen sweeping forward. A gleam of cuirasses and helmets, a glimpse of plunging horses and waving swords, a flutter of banners; they had charged onward, and only the echo of their shouts still lingered and was lost in the throb of cannon. Now first Hugh realized his throat was near cracked with cheering and his arm ached with waving his hat; so he paused breathless, with his eyes still fastened on the brown dust-cloud toward the west. There came a touch on his arm, and putting out his hand he grasped Frank’s wrist. Young Pleydall was gasping for breath with a choke like a half sob. “If we had only been with them!” he broke out.