"She insists that you return the borrowed kerchief," said the older woman, with a gravity that wished to smile, it seemed. Kit fumbled for a moment, then brought out a battered bit of cambric that had been through much snow and rain and tumult. The girl took it, saw dark spots of crimson in among the weather-stains, and the whole story of the last few months was there for her to read. The tears were so ready to fall that she flouted him again. "It was white when I gave it into your keeping." Kit, not knowing why, thought of St. Robert’s cell, of Knaresborough’s parish priest and the man’s kindly hold on this world and the next. "It is whiter now," he said, with a surety that sat well on him. The truth of things closed round Lady Ingilby. Her big heart, mothering these wounded gentry who came in to Ripley, had been growing week by week in charity and knowledge. It had needed faith and pluck to play man and woman both, in her husband’s absence, and now the full reward had come. Quietly, with a royal sort of dignity, she touched Kit on the shoulder. "The man who can say that deserves to go find Rupert." While Kit wondered just what he had said, as men do when their hearts have spoken, not their lips only, Joan Grant put the kerchief in his hand again. "I should not have asked for it, had I known it was so soiled. And yet, on second thoughts, I want it back again." She touched it with her lips, and gave him one glance that was to go with him like an unanswered riddle for weeks to come. Then she was gone; but he had the kerchief in the palm of his right hand. "Women are queer cattle," said Michael thoughtfully, after they had covered a league of the journey south. "They’ve a trick of asking riddles," asserted Kit. "For our part, we’ve the road in front of us." So then the elder brother knew that this baby of the flock had learned life’s alphabet. The lad no longer carried his heart on his sleeve, but hid it from the beaks of passing daws. They had a journey so free of trouble that Michael began to yawn, missing the excitement that was life to him, and it was only Kit’s steady purpose that held him from seeking some trouble by the way. They skirted towns and even villages, save when their horses and themselves needed rest and shelter for the night. Spring was soft about the land, and their track lay over pasture-land and moor, with the plover flapping overhead, until they came into the lush country nearer south. When they neared Oxford—their journey as good as ended, said Michael, with a heedless yawn—Kit’s horse fell lame. It was within an hour of dark, and ahead of them the lights of a little town began to peep out one by one. "Best lodge yonder for the night," said Michael. They had planned to bivouac in the open, and be up betimes for the forward journey; but even Kit agreed that his horse needed looking to.