Michael, by some odd twist of memory, recalled Banbury and the name of a townsman who had given him much trouble there. "Ebenezer Drinkwater, at your service." "And, gad, you look it! Your face is its own credential. Well, Mr. Drinkwater, you have my thanks. Go seek what food you can find in camp—there may be devilled rat, or stewed dog, or some such dainty left." Kit, who did not share his brother’s zest in this play of intrigue, had a quick impulse to knock down the general in command, without thought of the consequences. The insolence of these folk was fretting his temper into ribbons. "Come, brother," said Michael, after a glance at the other’s face. "We can only do our work, not needing praise nor asking it. Virtue, we are told, is in itself reward." A gruff oath from Leslie told him that he was acting passably well; and they went out, Kit and he, with freedom to roam unmolested up and down the lines. "What is your plan?" asked Kit impatiently. "We must bide till sundown, and that’s an hour away. Meanwhile, lad, we shall keep open ears and quiet tongues." They went about the camp, and everywhere met ridicule and a hostility scarcely veiled; but there was a strife of tongues abroad, and from many scattered drifts of talk they learned the meaning of the odd welcome they had found. The Scots, it seemed, had found the rift grow wider between themselves and the English who were besieging York’s two other gates. The rift had been slight enough when the first joy of siege, the hope of reducing the good city, had fired their hearts. Week by week had gone by, month after month; hunger and a fierce drought had eaten bare the countryside, and hardships are apt to eat through the light upper-crust of character. The Metcalfs learned that the dour Scots and the dour Puritans were at enmity in the matter of religion; and this astonished them, for they did not know how deep was the Scottish instinct for discipline and order in their Church affairs. They learned, too—and this was voiced more frequently—that they resented the whole affair of making war upon a Stuart king. They had been dragged into the business, somehow; but ever at their hearts—hearts laid bare by privation and ill-health—there was the song of the Stuarts, bred by Scotland to sit on the English throne and to grace it with great comeliness. It was astounding to the Metcalfs, this heart of a whole army bared to the daylight. There had been skirmishes, they heard, between Lord Fairfax’s men and the Scots. The quarrel was based ostensibly on some matter of foraging in each other’s country; but it was plain that the Scots were glad of any excuse which offered—plain that they were more hostile to their allies than to the common enemy. Then, too, there was mutiny breeding among the soldiery, because their scanty pay was useless for the purchase of food at famine prices.