They could make nothing of her. Gay, alert, she went about the board, the wine-jug in her hands. The message from her lord that Blake had whispered seemed to have taken a score years from her life, as strong sun eats up a rimy frost. When she bade them good-night and passed out, it was as if a spirit of great charm and well-being had gone and left them dull. On the morrow there was work enough to keep them busy. The fall of York had sent Cromwell’s men like a swarm of bees about the land. Dour and unimaginative in battle, they ran wild when victory was theirs. Men who had been plough-boys and farm-hinds a year since were filled with heady glee that they had helped to bring the great ones low. Some of their officers could not believe—honestly, each man to his conscience—that there was any good or usefulness in gentlemen of the King’s who wore love-locks because it was the habit of their class, and who chanced to carry a fine courage under frivolous wearing-gear. The Squire of Nappa was roused, somewhere about five of the clock, by a din and shouting from the courtyard underneath his bed-chamber. At first he fancied he was back on Marston Field again, and raised a sleepy challenge. Then, as the uproar increased, he got out of bed, stretched himself with one big, satisfying yawn, and threw the casement open. The summer’s dawn was moist and fragrant. His eyes, by instinct, sought the sky-line where, in Yoredale, hills would be. Here he saw only rolling country that billowed into misty spaces, with a blurred and ruddy sun above it all. The fragrance of wet earth and field flowers came in with the warm morning breeze. He was a countryman again, glad to be alive on a June day. Then he returned to soldiery, looked down on the press of men below, and his face hardened. "Give you good-morrow, Cropheads," he said gently. "And who may you be?" asked the leader of the troop. "A Mecca for the King. Ah, you’ve heard that rally-call before, I fancy. Your own name, sir?" "Elihu Give-the-Praise." "Be pleased to be serious. That is a nickname, surely." A storm of protest came from the soldiery, and Elihu took heart of grace again. "Idolaters and wine-bibbers, all of you," he said, vindictiveness and martyrdom struggling for the mastery. "Since I forswore brown ale and kept the narrow track, men know me as Elihu Give-the-Praise." "Then, as one who relishes brown ale, I ask you what your business is, disturbing a Riding Metcalf when he needs his sleep?" "Our business is short and sharp—to bid you surrender, or we sack the Castle." "Your business is like to be long and tedious," laughed the Squire, and shut the casement.