From the extreme left of the camp, just as the Royalists were settling down for a brief night’s slumber, there came a running yelp, a baying, and a splutter of wild feet. Lord Newcastle had left the window of his coach open when he had smoked his third pipe and found the sleep he needed; and Boye, his patience ended, had leaped out into the freedom that spelt Rupert to him. When he found him, he got to his hind legs, all but knocked down his master in his tender fury, and licked his face with a red and frothy tongue. "Boye!" said Rupert. "Oh, down, Boye—you smother me. I was to have a lonely supper, I fancied, and you come. There’s all in the world I care for, come to sup with me." From over the hill, where the Parliament men had scarcely finished their devotions, there came a clap of thunder and a light spit of rain. "We shall be wet to the skin to-night, Boye, you and I," laughed Rupert. "We’ve proved my tent, and it is not weather-sound." He had scarcely finished some beef collops, ready for him in his tent, and was cajoling Boye to perform a newly-taught trick of begging for a morsel, when the flap was pulled aside. Michael Metcalf, framed by the red light out of doors, showed bigger even than his wont. "They are coming down from the rye-fields," he said, with a reckless laugh. "Let it go how it will, sir, so long as we drive Cromwell out of bounds." "I have promised him as much," said Rupert gravely. *CHAPTER XVIII.* *MARSTON MOOR.* Rupert got to horse, and rode through the press and uproar of the camp. Confusion was abroad. To the Cavaliers, though some of them might regard evensong lightly, it meant at least a truce until the next day’s dawn; and now they were attacked by an enemy who did not scruple to combine prayer with craftiness. Down from the rye-fields they saw the horsemen and the footmen come, and only Rupert could have steadied them in this black hour. "We meet Cromwell’s horse," he cried, getting his own men into line this side the little ditch, "and, gentlemen, we owe Cromwell many debts." Stiff and stour it was, that fight at the ditch. The old, stark battles were recalled—Crecy, and Agincourt, and Flodden—for it was all at pitiless close quarters. First they exchanged pistol-shots; then, throwing their pistols in each other’s faces with a fury already at white heat, they fell to with sword and pike. Overhead the storm broke in earnest. The intermittent crackle of gunshots, from the sharpshooters lining the hedges, mingled with the bellow of the thunder and that clamour of hard-fighting men which has the wild beast note.