"What you’d have learned, if you had not been up the hill to see if you could catch a glimpse of Ripley Castle," said Michael, roughened by a sharp gust of jealousy. "Ah, the guess goes home, does it? How does it fare with Mistress Joan?" "Oh, very well, the last I heard." "And it fares very well with me. I go to bring Rupert from the West—to bring Rupert. Ah, your face reddens at the thought of it!" Kit was lost in one of his high day-dreams. All that he had heard of Rupert—the tales hard-fighting men, simple and gentle, told of him—had been woven into a mantle of romance that separated the Prince Palatine from those of common clay. And Michael had the venture. The elder brother fought a private battle of his own. Then something in Kit’s eager, wistful face—some recollection, maybe, of old days in Yoredale—conquered his jealousy. "I should ride the better for Kit’s company," he said, turning to the Squire. "Give him to me for the journey." "As you will," growled Richard. "He’ll be out of the worst o’ harm, at any rate. Ladies’ eyes are pretty enough in times of peace, but they don’t match with war." Every Metcalf of them all, save Kit himself, laughed slily. They had forgotten sundry backslidings of their own, in Ripley here and on the many journeys they had taken. And then Michael and his brother rode out, not knowing which way led to Rupert, but following the setting sun because it led them westward. "Nobody seems to know, even in Ripley, that catches most news, where the Prince is. We’d best make for Lancashire." Kit was already at his dreams again. "I care not," he said cheerily, "so long as we find him in the end." "D’ye think he wears a halo, lad?" snapped Michael. "Not for you to see, perhaps." "Ah, a neat counter! Not for my blurred eyes, eh? Kit, you’ve been reading fairy-lore with Mistress Joan." So they went forward into the red of the gloaming, and each was busy with the self-same dream—to find Rupert, and to remember Joan Grant. *CHAPTER VII.* *A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH.* Nothing happened along the road as Michael and his brother rode forward on their haphazard errand. All was made up of an English April—primroses in the hedgerows, bleating of lambs and fussy ewes, wayfaring farmer-folk about their lands. They had decided to seek Rupert in Lancashire, and their best road westward lay through Knaresborough, and so forward by way of Skipton and the good town of Colne. "The game grows dull," grumbled Michael. "We had primroses and lambs in Yoredale till I wearied of them. I thought Blake promised war and blows when we rode out to Nappa." "The swim into York and the return—they were not enough for you?" "I yawned so much in Yoredale," said the other, with his careless laugh. "There’s much leeway to make up, babe Christopher."