"Oh, away with you! There’s all my corn to be gathered in. I’ll come nearer the back end o’ the year, if the King can bide till then. By that token, you’re looking wearied out, you and your horse. Come indoors, man, and we’ll talk the matter over." The messenger was nothing loath. At Skipton they had given an importance to the Metcalf clan that he had not understood till now. This was the end of to-day’s journey, and his sole errand was to bring the six score men and horses into the good capital of Craven. "I ask no better cheer, sir. Can you stable the two of us for the night? My little grey mare is more in need of rest than I am." Christopher, the six-foot baby of the clan, ran forward to the mare’s bridle; and he glanced at his father, because the war in his blood was vehement and lusty, and he feared the old check of discipline. "Is it true, sir?" he asked the messenger. "Does the King need us? I’ve dreamed of it o’ nights, and wakened just to go out and tend the land. I’m sick of tending land. Is it true the King needs us?" The messenger, old to the shams and false punctilios of life, was dismayed for a moment by this clean, sturdy zest. Here, he told himself, was a cavalier in the making—a cavalier of Prince Rupert’s breed, who asked only for the hazard. "It is true that the King needs a thousand such as you," he said drily. "Be good to my little mare; I trust her to you, lad." And in this solicitude for horseflesh, shown twice already, the messenger had won his way already into the favour of all Metcalfs. For they loved horses just a little less than they loved their King. Within doors, as he followed the Squire of Nappa, he found a warm fire of logs, and an evening meal to which the sons of the house trooped in at haphazard intervals. There were only six of them, all told, but they seemed to fill the roomy dining-room as if a crowd intruded. The rafters of the house were low, and each stooped, from long habit, as he came in to meat. Kit, the baby of the flock, was the last to come in; and he had a queer air about him, as if he trod on air. There was only one woman among them, a little, eager body, who welcomed the stranger with pleasant grace. She had borne six sons to the Squire, because he was dominant and thought little of girl-children; she had gone through pain and turmoil for her lord, and at the end of it was thankful for her pride in him, though she would have liked to find one girl among the brood—a girl who knew the way of household worries and the way of women’s tears. The messenger, as he ate and drank with extreme greediness, because need asked, glanced constantly at the hostess who was like a garden flower, growing here under the shade of big-boled trees. It seemed impossible that so small a person was responsible for the six men who made the rafters seem even lower than they were.