Kit’s eagerness, blunted a little by good fare and ease after months of hardship, was awake again. "Blake?" he asked. "Is he a little man, made up of nerves and whipcord?" "That, and a pluck that would serve three usual men." "I’m glad he has the ride to Banbury. It was he who first brought us out of Yoredale into this big fight for the King. When last I saw him, he was limping in the middle of Skipton High Street, with blood running down his coat—I thought he had done his last errand." "Blake does not die, somehow. Sometimes, looking at him, I think he longs to die and cannot. At any rate, he rode south last autumn with a letter for me, and I kept him for my own private errands. One does not let rare birds escape." The next moment Rupert, the gay, impulsive Cavalier, as his enemies accounted him, the man with grace and foolhardiness, they said, but little wit, thrust the _débris_ of their supper aside and spread out a map upon the table. It was a good map, drawn in detail by himself, and it covered the whole country from London to the Scottish border. "I am impatient for the coming of your clan, gentlemen," he said. "Let us get to figures. Mr. Blake is at Banbury already, we’ll say, and has found your first outpost. _He_ covers two miles at the gallop, and the next man covers two, and so to Knaresborough. How soon can they win into Oxford?" "In five days," said Michael, with his rose-coloured view of detail. Prince Rupert challenged his reckoning, and the puzzle of the calculation grew more bewildering as the four men argued about it. They had another bottle to help them, but the only result was that each clung more tenaciously to his opinion. Maurice said the journey, allowing for mischances and the scarcity of horses, would take eight days at least; Kit Metcalf hazarded a guess that seven was nearer the mark; and at last they agreed to wager each a guinea on the matter, and parted with a pleasant sense of expectation, as if a horse race were in the running. Soldiers must take their recreations this way; for they travel on a road that is set thick with hazard, and a gamble round about the winning chance is part of the day’s work. "I give you welcome here to Oxford," said Rupert, as he bade them good-night. "Since the tale of your exploits blew about our sleepy climate, I knew that in the north I had a company of friends. When the Squire of Nappa rides in, I shall tell him that he and I, alone in England, know what light cavalry can do against these men of Cromwell’s."