Of the score of Cavaliers so challenged, not one had the heart to say nay. They had left their courage below with their spilled wine cups, and now cried "Quarter!" in very chorus, delivering up their arms without striking blow, or firing shot. "Where's Harry Lingen?" cried Kyrle, spurring into their midst with drawn sword. "I don't see his face among you." Adding, with a sneer, "Such a valiant leader should be at the head of his men!" Then fixing on one he knew to be a cornet of Lingen's Light Horse, he vociferated,-- "Say where your colonel is, sirrah! or I'll run you through the ribs." "Down the hill--behind somewhere," stammered out the threatened subaltern. "He was with us when we commenced the pursuit." Riding clear of the crowd Kyrle glanced interrogatively down the road. To see the tails of horses disappearing round a corner; some of the pursuers, who, catching sight of what was above, had made about face, and were galloping back. "Let us after them, Walwyn! What say you?" hurriedly proposed Kyrle. "Just what I was thinking of. Trevor tells me most of their prisoners are my own men, those taken at Hollymead. They shall be rescued, whatever the risk." "Not much risk now, I fancy. Lingen's lot are so demoralised they won't stand a charge. We needn't fear following them up to the gates of Goodrich Castle. And we can get back to Monmouth that way, well as the other." "That way we go," then said the knight determinedly; and down the pitch started the two colonels with their respective followers, a detail having been hastily told off to guard the prisoners just taken. Meanwhile the Sheriff had been balancing between advance and return. Vexed with the cause which retarded him, he was vowing he would never again bestride the showy brute, when he saw several of his men coming back down the pitch at breakneck speed, as they approached calling out, "Treason! A surprise!" "Treason! What mean you?" he demanded, drawing his sword, and stopping them in their headlong flight. "Are you mad, fellows?" "No, Colonel; not mad. Some one has betrayed us into an ambuscade. The Roundheads are up the hill; hundreds--thousands of them?" "Who says so?" "We saw them, Sir Henry." "You couldn't have seen Roundheads. There are none on these roads. It must be some of Scudamore's men from Hereford. Fools! you've been frightened at your own shadows." "But, Colonel, they've taken a party of ours prisoners; all that were ahead of us. We heard the `Surrender!' and saw them surrounded." "I shall see it myself before I believe it. About, and on with me!"