Under the Storm

"Have ye more wounded, Sam? There's no room for a dog in here. They lie as thick as herrings in a barrel."

"Nay, 'tis a poor country woman come to look for her son. What's his name? Is there a malignant here of the name of Harry Lakin?"

The question was repeated, and a cry of gladness, "Mother! mother!" ended in a shriek of pain in the distance within.

"Aye, get you in, mother, get you in. A woman here will be all the better, be she who she may."

The permission was not listened to. Nanny had already sprung into the midst of the mass of suffering towards the bloody straw where her son was lying.

Steadfast, who had of course looked most anxiously at each of the still forms on the way, now ventured to say:—

"So please you, sir, would you ask after one Jephthah Kenton? On your own side, sir, in Captain Venn's troop? I am his brother."

"Oh, ho! you are of the right sort, eh?" said the soldier. "Jephthah Kenton. D'ye know aught of him, Joe?"

"I heard him answer to the roll call before Venn's troop went off to quarters," replied the other man. "He is safe and sound, my lad, and Venn's own orderly."

Steadfast's heart bounded up. He longed still to know whether poor Harry Lakin was in very bad case, but it was impossible to get in to discover, and he was pushed out of the way by a party carrying in another wounded man, whose moans and cries were fearful to listen to. He thought it would be wisest to make the best of his way home to Patience, and set her likewise at rest, for who could tell what she might not have heard.

The moon was shining brightly enough to make his way plain, but the scene around was all the sadder and more ghastly in that pallid light, which showed out the dark forms of man and horse, and what was worse the white faces turned up, and those dark pools in which once or twice he had slipped as he saw or fancied he saw movements that made him shudder, while a poor dog on the other side of the stream howled piteously from time to time.

Presently, as he came near a hawthorn bush which cast a strangely shaped shadow, he heard a sobbing—not like the panting moan of a wounded man, but the worn out crying of a tired child. He thought some village little one must have wandered there, and been hemmed in by the fight, and he called out—

"Is anyone there?"

The sobbing ceased for a moment and he called again, "Who is it? I won't hurt you," for something white seemed to be squeezing closer into the bush.

"Who are you for?" piped out a weak little voice.

"I'm no soldier," said Steadfast. "Come out, I'll take you home by-and-by."

"I have no home!" was the answer. "I want father."

Steadfast was now under the tree, and could see that it was a little girl who was sheltering there of about the same size as Rusha. He tried to take her hand, but she backed against the tree, and he repeated "Come along, I wouldn't hurt you for the world. Who is your father? Where shall we find him?"

"My father is Serjeant Gaythorn of Sir Harry Blythedale's troopers," said the child, somewhat proudly, then starting again, "You are not a rebel, are you?"

"No, I am a country lad," said Steadfast; "I want to help you. Come, you can't stay here."

For the little hand she had yielded to him was cold and damp with the September dews. His touch seemed to give her confidence, and when he asked, "Can't I take you to your mother?" she answered—

"Mother's dead! The rascal Roundheads shot her over at Naseby."

"Poor child! poor child!" said Steadfast. "And you came on with your father."

"Yes, he took me on his horse over the water, and told me to wait by the bush till he came or sent for me, but he has not come, and the firing is over and it is dark, and I'm so hungry."

Steadfast thought the child had better come home with him, but she declared that father would come back for her. He felt convinced that her father, if alive, must be in Bristol, and that he could hardly come through the enemy's outposts, and he explained to her this view. To his surprise she understood in a moment, having evidently much more experience of military matters than he had, and when he further told her that Hodge was at Elmwood, and would no doubt rejoin his regiment at Bristol the next day, she seemed satisfied, and with the prospect of supper before her, trotted along, holding Steadfast's hand and munching a crust which he had found in his pouch, the remains of the interrupted meal, but though at first it seemed to revive her a good deal, the poor little thing was evidently tired out, and she soon began to drag, and fret, and moan. The three miles was a long way for her, and tired as he was, Steadfast had to take her on his back, and when at last he reached home, and would have set her down before his astonished sisters, she was fast asleep with her head on his shoulder.

CHAPTER XI. THE FORTUNES OF WAR

"Hear and improve, he pertly cries,
I come to make a nation wise."

    GAY
Very early in the morning, before indeed anyone except Patience was stirring, Steadfast set forth in search of Roger Fitter to consult him about the poor child who was fast asleep beside Jerusha; and propose to him to take her into Bristol to find her father.

Hodge, who had celebrated his return by a hearty supper with his friends, was still asleep, and his mother was very unwilling to call him, or to think of his going back to the wars. However, he rolled down the cottage stair at last, and the first thing he did was to observe—

"Well, mother, how be you? I felt like a boy again, waking up in the old chamber. Where's my back and breast-piece? Have you a cup of ale, while I rub it up?"

"Now, Hodge, you be not going to put on that iron thing again, when you be come back safe and sound from those bloody wars?" entreated his mother.

"Ho, ho! mother, would you have me desert? No, no! I must to my colours again, or Sir George and my lady might make it too hot to hold you here. Hollo, young one, Stead Kenton, eh? Didst find thy brother? No, I'll be bound. The Roundhead rascals have all the luck."

"I found something else," said Steadfast, and he proceeded to tell about the child while Dame Fitter stood by with many a pitying "Dear heart!" and "Good lack!"

Hodge knew Serjeant Gaythorn, and knew that the poor man's wife had been shot dead in the flight from Naseby; but he demurred at the notion of encumbering himself with the child when he went into the town. He suspected that he should have much ado to get in himself, and if he could not find her father, what could he do with her?

Moreover, he much doubted whether the serjeant was alive. He had been among those on whom the sharpest attack had fallen, and not many of them had got off alive.

"What like was he?" said Steadfast. "We looked at a many of the poor corpses that lay there. They'll never be out of my eyes again at night!"

"A battlefield or two would cure that," grimly smiled Hodge. "Gaythorn—he was a man to know again—had big black moustaches, and had lost an eye, had a scar like a weal from a whip all down here from a sword-cut at Long Marston."

"Then I saw him," said Stead, in a low voice. "Did he wear a green scarf?"

"Aye, aye. Belonged to the Rangers, but they are pretty nigh all gone now."

"Under the rail of the miller's croft," added Stead.

"Just so. That was where I saw them make a stand and go down like skittles."

"Poor little maid. What shall I tell her?"

"Well, you can never be sure," said Hodge. "There was a man now I thought as dead as a door nail at Newbury that charged by my side only yesterday. You'd best tell the maid that if I find her father I'll send him after her; and if not, when the place is quiet, you might look at the mill and see if he is lying wounded there."

Steadfast thought the advice good, and it saved him from what he had no heart to do, though he could scarcely doubt that one of those ghastly faces had been the serjeant's.

When he approached his home he was surprised to hear, through the copsewood, the sound of chattering, and when he came in sight of the front of the hut, he beheld Patience making butter with the long handled churn, little Ben toddling about on the grass, and two little girls laughing and playing with all the poultry round them.

One, of course, was stout, ruddy, grey-eyed Rusha, in her tight round cap, and stout brown petticoat with the homespun apron over it; the other was like a fairy by her side; slight and tiny, dressed in something of mixed threads of white and crimson that shone in the sun, with a velvet bodice, a green ribbon over it, and a gem over the shoulder that flashed in the sun, a tiny scarlet hood from which such a quantity of dark locks streamed as to give something the effect of a goldfinch's crown, and the face was a brilliant little brown one, with glowing cheeks, pretty little white teeth, and splendid dark eyes.

Patience could have told that this bright array was so soiled, rumpled, ragged, and begrimed, that she hardly liked to touch it, but to Steadfast, who had only seen the child in the moonlight, she was a wonderful vision in the morning sunshine, and his heart was struck with a great pity at her clear, merry tones of laughter.

As he appeared in the open space, Toby running before him, the little girl looked up and rushed to him crying out—

"It's you. Be you the country fellow who took me home? Where's father?"