"Neither, lad." Rupert came and touched him on the arm. "Oh, I know, I know! The pity of one’s dead—and yet their glory—it is all a muddle, this affair of war." It was on the second morning afterwards, while Rupert was getting his army in readiness for the march on York, that Lady Derby saw Christopher standing apart, the new sadness in his face. "You are thinking of your dead?" she said, in her brisk, imperative way. "Laddie, do you not guess that the dead are thinking, too, of you?" "They rest where they lie," he said, stubborn in his grief. "Oh, go to kirk more often, and learn that they know more than we do. These twenty Yoredale men, they are not dead—they watch you from the Heights." "My lady," said Christopher, with a smile made up of weariness, "I am a plain man of my hands, like all my folk. I have no gift for dreams." "Nor I," she agreed. "When wounds conquer all your pride of strength—when you are laid by, and weak as a little child—ask yourself if I spoke dreams or living truth." He glanced once at her. There was an odd look about her, a light in her eyes that he could not understand. He forgot it all when he joined his folk to ride behind Rupert for the relief of York. The high adventure was in front, like a good fox, and his thoughts were all of hazard and keen blows. They crossed the Lancashire border; and, when Kit learned that the route lay through Skipton-in-Craven, his heart warmed to the skirmish that his fancy painted. He was looking backward to that crashing fight—the first of his life—when the White Horsemen drove through the Roundhead gun-convoy and swirled down to battle in the High Street. He was looking forward, as a boy does, to a resurrection of that fight, under the like conditions. Instead, he found the business of market-day in full swing. The Castle was silent. Lambert’s guns, away on Cock Hill, were dumb. Farmers were selling ewes and cattle, were standing at inn doors, wind and wine of the country in their honest faces. "What is all this?" asked Rupert of a jolly countryman. "Skipton Fair—naught more or less. There’s a two days’ truce, or some such moonshine, while either side go burying their dead. For my part, I’ve sold three heifers, and sold ’em well. I’m content." Rupert had had in mind to go into the Castle, and snatch a meal and an hour of leisure there while he talked with the Governor. He could not do it now. Punctilio—the word spelt honesty to him—forbade it. He glanced about and saw Kit close beside him. "Knock at the gate, Mr. Metcalf, and bid Sir John Mallory come out and talk with me." The drawbridge was down in accordance with the truce, and Kit clattered over it on his white horse. He knocked at the gate, and sent Prince Rupert’s message forward. In a little while Mallory came out, a pleasant gentleman, built for hard riding and all field sports, whom Providence had entrusted with this do-nothing, lazy business of sitting behind walls besieged.