Ralph Metcalf turned the rabbits with nice regard for the meal overdue. Then he glanced up. "If there was a gap of four miles, instead of two, the rider would gallop four. If he found another dead man at the next stage, he would gallop six." So then Blake laughed. "We are well met, I think. I was jealous of your clan, to be candid, when I was told their speed put us poor night-riders to shame. Yet, friends, I think we carry the same loyalty." Their meal was scarcely ready when again there came the fret of distant hoof-beats. Another giant joined their company. In face and sturdiness he was like the rest; but he happened to be six-foot-four, while his kinsmen here were shorter by two inches. He, too, was hungry. "That’s good hearing," said Ralph. "I was puzzling how to carve two rabbits into three, but it’s easy to split them into twice two." "Half a coney to feed my sort of appetite?" "Be content. If it had not been for Will here we’d have had no food at all." The newcomer drew a bottle from the pocket of his riding-coat. "I forget whether I stole it or paid honest money. It’s a small bottle, but it will give us the bite of the northern winds again." When they had ended this queer supper, and had borrowed from the store of tobacco that to Blake was better than a meal, they fell into silence. The languorous beauty of the night wove its spell about them; and the fourth Metcalf, when he rode in presently, jarred them roughly out of dreams. The newcomer, as it happened, had contrived to snatch supper while he waited, six miles further north, to take on the message. He did not ask for food; after picketing his horse, he just wrapped himself in the blanket hastily unstrapped from saddle, turned over once or twice in a luxury of weariness, and snored a litany to the overarching heavens. Through that night Blake did not sleep or ask for slumber. The nightingales were tireless, as if their throats would break unless they eased them. The Metcalf riders were tireless, too. At longer and at longer intervals they came in from the north, their horses showing signs of stress. Two miles from outpost to outpost was a trifling distance; but, before the last of that night’s company joined the muster here at Banbury, he had travelled forty miles. Blake lay, his face to the moonlight, and could not stifle memory. The sleepy fragrance, the scent of moist earth and flowering stuff, took him, as by sorcery, to a walled garden in Knaresborough and a summer that had been, and the end of blandishment. There had been no nightingales—it lay too far north, that garden, to tempt them—but a stronger song had stirred him. And there had been the same lush smell of summer, the same hovering of bats across the moon’s face.