"A face to lead a man anywhere," he finished, "Hair like wind in the rusty brackens."
Kit touched the favour in his hat. "It is she I fight for, Michael—for the King and Joan."
"Are you always to have luck, just for the asking?" growled Michael.
"This time, yes, unless brother fights with brother."
For a moment they were ready to withdraw from their kinsfolk and settle the issue in some convenient glade. Then Michael yielded to the queer, jealous love he had learned, long since in Yoredale, for this lad.
"Oh, we’ll not quarrel, Kit. There’ll be another face for me at the next town we ride through. There are more swans than one, and all turn geese in later life."
Squire Mecca, hearing high words from the rear, rode back to learn what the uproar was about. "So you’re at your brawling again, Michael?" he roared.
"No, sir. I was wishing Kit good luck for the lady’s favour he is wearing in his hat."
"You’re a smooth-tongued rascal! As for you, Kit, lady’s favours can bide till we’re through with this rough work. Moonshine is pretty enough when the day’s over, but the day is just beginning."
They rode by way of Tockwith village, long and straggling, and forward over a heath studded thick with gorse and brambles, and set about with black, sullen wastes of bog.
Squire Metcalf, for all his hardihood, was full of superstition, as most folk are who have good wits and healthy souls. A little wind—of the sort named "thin" in Yoredale—blew over Marston Moor, chilling the warm sunlight.
"There’s a crying in the wind," he said, turning to Kit, who was riding at his bridle-hand. "I trust it’s sobbing for the end of all foul traitors to the King."
They crossed the moor, and so, through Long Marston, made forward on the York road till they reached a hamlet three miles from the city. Here they captured a shepherd, known to the country speech as "an old, ancient man," who was driving a flock of ewes from a neighbouring pasture. They asked him if he knew anything of the to-and-froing of the Parliament troops.
"I’ve seen a moil o’ horsemen scummering out to York for three days past. But they asked me no questions, and so I asked them none. Reckoned they were riding to a hunt. Gentlefolk must fill up their time, one way or another."