The horseman gathered confidence a little from the closed gate. "Soft, fool Wayne! We hold your sister safe at Wildwater, and the Lean Man, of his courtesy, bade me ride down and ensure you a fair night’s rest by telling you what we mean to do with her. She will lie soft to-night——" The red-head, even while the taunt was on his lips, pulled sharply at the curb. But Wayne of Cranshaw was overquick for him. With a cry that rang up every hollow of the fields, Rolf set his horse at the gate, and landed at the rider’s side, and dropped him from the saddle before he guessed that there was danger. Rolf steadied his horse, then was silent for awhile as he wiped his blade with unhurried carefulness. "Dost see the plot, Ned?" he asked grimly, with another glance at the fallen horseman. "Nay, I see only that Nell is in peril all this while—and that the Ratcliffes had need to rid them of a fool, since they sent him here to meet so plain a death." "He came, this same fool, to taunt thee into going to Wildwater, if I can read the matter—came to make sure that we should do just what thou wast so hot to do just now.—God, Ned! _She shall lie soft to-night_—how the foul words stick——" "Ned, is there no end to it—no end to it?" broke in Mistress Wayne, clinging tight to his hand and keeping her eyes away from the body lying in the roadway just without. "Get thee within-doors, bairn; ’tis no fit place for thee." "Not unless thou’lt come, too. Ned, I’ll not have thee ride to Wildwater—keep within shelter while thou canst——" But her step-son shook off her hand. "Rolf," he said, coming to the gate and trying to read the other’s face, "wilt come with me now to Wildwater?" Wayne of Cranshaw straightened himself in the saddle and gathered the reins with a firmer grip. "Nay, for we’ll make sure—we’ll go neither by ones nor twos, but take our whole force with us. Hast had supper, Ned? No? Well, thou need’st it if thou’rt to fight a second time to-day; so let the lads go fetch our kin from Hill House. I’ll ride to Cranshaw for my folk, and we’ll all fare up together." "Nay, we’ll not wait—" began Ned. But Rolf was already on his road to Cranshaw, and Shameless Wayne, knowing that any other plan was madness, curbed his hot mood as best he might. He would have ridden to Hill House himself, but the lads pleaded so hard to go, and he had such crying need for food to brace him for the coming struggle, that he agreed at last. "Be off, then, lads," he said. "’Tis a short ride, with no danger by the way, if ye’ll promise not to turn aside for any sort of frolic." They scampered off to the stables to re-saddle their horses; and Wayne, as he watched them go, sighed for the boyish heedlessness which had been his not a twelvemonth ago. Griff’s thoughts were all of danger, the thrill and rush of battle; and his sister’s capture, it was plain, was no more to him than a fresh fight, in which the Ratcliffes would again go down before them.