through the quiet lanes blake, the messenger, rode out to banbury. nightingales were singing through the dusk; stars were blinking at him from a sky of blue and purple; a moth blundered now and then against his face. he understood the beauty of the gloaming, though he seemed to have no time to spare for it. prince rupert had sent him spurring with a message to the big rider of a white horse, who was to be found somewhere on the road leading from the north to banbury; and the password was "a mecca for the king." that was his business on the road. but, as he journeyed, a strange pain of heart went with him. the nightingales were singing, and god knew that he had forgotten love-songs long ago, or had tried to.

spring, and the rising sap, and the soft, cool scents of eventide are magical to those climbing up the hill of dreams; to those who have ceased to climb, they are echoes of a fairyland once lived in, but now seen from afar. it had all been so long ago. skirmish and wounds, and lonely rides in many weathers, should have dug a grave deep enough for memories to lie in; but old ghosts rose to-night, unbidden. if it had been his sinning, he could have borne the hardship better; he had the old knightly faith—touched with extravagance, but haloed by the further light—that all women are sacrosanct. if he had failed—well, men were rough and headstrong; but it was she who had stooped to meaner issues. and it was all so long ago that it seemed absurd the nightingales should make his heart ache like a child's.

fame was his. the metcalfs, big on big horses, had captured the fancy of all england by their exploits in the open. yet blake, the messenger—riding alone for the most part, through perils that had no music of the battle-charge about them—had his own place, his claim to quick, affectionate regard wherever cavaliers were met together. they laughed at his high, punctilious view of life, but they warmed to the knowledge that he had gone single-handed along tracks that asked for comrades on his right hand and his left. but this was unknown to blake, who did not ask what men thought of him. it was enough for him to go doing his journeys, carrying a heartache till the end came and he was free to understand the why and wherefore of it all.

it was a relief to see the moonlight blinking on the roofs of banbury as he rode into the town. there were no nightingales here; instead, there was the hum and clamour of a roundhead populace, infuriated by the news that two cavaliers had broken prison in the early morning and had locked the gaoler in.

blake found his bridle seized roughly, and it was doubtful for a moment whether he or his high-spirited mare, or the two of them, would come to grief.

"well, friend?" he asked of the burly puritan who held the bridle.

"your business here?"

"to sell cloth. i come from oxford, and have done much business there with the court."

"then why come selling wares in banbury? court fashions find no favour here."

"cloth is cloth," said blake impassively, "and i've some remnants going cheap."

a woman in the crowd pressed forward. "how much the yard?" she asked.

with his tired knowledge of the world, he named a price that made the woman ask eagerly for a sample. "i have no samples. the cloth itself will come in by carrier to-morrow. i'm tired and hungry," he said, smiling at the man who held his rein. "perhaps you will direct me to a lodging for the night?"

"was there great stir among the sons of belial in oxford?" asked his captor, with a shrewd sideways glance.

"they were like bees in a busy hive," assented blake cheerily.

"you learned something, maybe, of their plans?"

"i did, friend."

"that might be worth free lodging to you for the night, and a supper of the best. what did you learn?"

"why, that they planned to buy a good deal of my cloth. that's how i measure a man—with the eye of a merchant who has cloth to sell. you, sir—your clothes are of the shabbiest, if you'll pardon my frankness. will you not come to the tavern to-morrow, after the carrier has brought my bales, and let me show you some good broadcloth—cloth of a sober colour, suited to the pious habits you profess? to-day i clothe a cavalier, to-morrow a gentleman who fights on the parliament side—a merchant knows no niceties of party."

blake had thrust home. this man, named gentle for the first time in his busy life as tradesman, traducer of the king's good fame, and the prime stirabout of anarchy in banbury, was filled with a heady, spurious pride. this merchant had sold cloth to the dandies of the court, perhaps to the king himself, and now it was his turn. there were men of this odd, cringing habit among the sterner roundhead stuff, and blake knew them as a harpist knows the strings he plays on.

the end of it was that he was directed to a comfortable tavern, was given, though he scarcely seemed to ask for it, the password that ensured him the freedom of the streets, and parted from his captor with an easy-going reminder that the cloth should reach banbury about nine of the next morning.

the password was useful to him more than once. it saved much trouble with soldiery who held him up at every turn. it saved appeal to the pistol he carried in his holster; and that would have meant the rousing of the town, and odds against him that would put his whole errand into jeopardy.

he halted once only, at the front of the tavern which had been recommended to him. an ostler was standing at the door, chewing a straw and waiting for some fresh excitement to stir these strenuous days. blake slipped a coin into his hand, and explained that, about nine of the next morning, a townsman would come asking for a merchant who had cloth to sell.

"you will explain, ostler, that i am called away on business—business connected with the two cavaliers who broke gaol last night. explain, too, that i hope to return to your town in a few days' time. the townsman's name was ebenezer fear-the-snare—i remember it because of its consuming drollery."

with a cheery nod and a laugh that might mean anything, blake left the other wondering "what devilment this mad fellow was bent on," and rode out into the beauty of the summer's night that lay beyond the outskirts of banbury. here, again, the nightingales assailed him. they could not rest for the love-songs in their throats; and ancient pain, deep where the soul beats at the prison-house of flesh, guided his left hand on the reins until, not knowing it, he was riding at a furious gallop. then he checked to a sober trot.

the land was fragrant with the warmth of wet soil, the scent of flowers and rain-washed herbage. the moon shone blue above the keen white light of gloaming, and the road ahead stretched silver, miraculous, like some highway of the old romance that was waiting for the tread of kings and knights, of ladies fair as their own fame.

old dreams clambered up to blake's saddle and rode with him—wild heartaches of the long ago—the whetstone of first love, sharpening the power to feel, to dare all things—the unalterable need of youth to build a shrine about some woman made of the same clay as himself. they were good dreams, tasted again in this mellow dusk; but he put them by at last reluctantly. he had a live ambition before him—to bring a company of riders, bred in his own stiff yorkshire county, for the cavaliers of oxford to appraise.

he slackened pace with some misgiving. the two metcalfs, when he bade farewell to them in oxford, had been so sure that one of their kinsmen would have reached the outskirts of banbury, would be waiting for him. the horseman, they had explained, would not approach the town too closely, knowing its fame as a place of parliament men who watched narrowly all oxford's incoming and outgoing travellers; but blake had travelled three miles or so already, and he grew impatient for a sight of his man.

through the still air and the complaint of nightingales he heard the whinny of a horse. his own replied. the road made a wide swerve here through the middle of a beech wood. as he rounded it and came into the open country, he saw a broken wayside cross, and near it a horseman mounted on a white horse as big and raking in the build as its rider.

"a mecca?" asked blake, with the indifference of one traveller who passes the time of day with another.

"nay, that will not serve," laughed the other. "half a sixpence is as good as nothing at all."

"a mecca for the king, then, and i was bred in yorkshire, too."

the freemasonry of loyalty to one king, to the county that had reared a man, is a power that makes all roads friendly, that kills suspicion and the wary reaching down of the right hand toward a pistol-holster.

"how does yoredale look," went on blake, with a little, eager catch in his voice, "and the slope of whernside as you see it riding over the tops from kettlewell?"

"bonnie, though i've not seen either since last year's harvest. this king's affair of ride and skirmish is well enough; but there's no time to slip away to yoredale for a day and smell the wind up yonder. are kit and michael safe?"

"they are in oxford, accepting flattery with astounding modesty."

"they've found prince rupert? the metcalfs—oh, i touch wood!—keep a bee-line when they know where home lies."

"that is no boast, so why go touching wood? i tell you the king knows what your folk have done and hope to do. the prince is raising cavalry for the relief of york, and will not rest until you metcalfs join him. how soon can your company get south?"

the horseman thought the matter over. "it will take five days and a half," he said at last.

"good for you!" snapped blake. "even your brother christopher, with the starry look o' dreams about his face, was sure that it would take seven days. i wager a guinea to a pinch o' snuff that you're not in oxford in five days and a half."

"that is a wager?"

"i said as much, sir."

"then lend me the pinch of snuff. i emptied my box in waiting for you, and was feeling lonely."

blake laughed as he passed his box over. there was an arresting humour about the man, a streak of the mother-wit that made the metcalf clan at home in camp or city. "i'll see you to the next stage," he said, reining his horse about—"that is, if you care for an idle man's company. i've nothing in the world to do just now."

the other only nodded, touched his horse sharply with the spur, and blake found himself galloping with a fury that, even to his experience of night adventures, seemed breakneck and disastrous. at the end of a mile their horses were in a lather; at the end of two they had to check a little up the rise of a hill. on the top of the hill, clear against the sky, they saw a horseman sitting quiet in saddle. they saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight.

"a mecca!" panted blake's companion.

"cousin does not slay cousin," said the man on the hill-top, rattling his sword into the sheath again. "have they found rupert?" the second rider was given his errand briefly and without waste of breath. then he flicked his horse, and blake was tempted to follow him, too. there was something uncanny, some hint of mystery and deep, resistless strength about this picketing of the road north. blake had a quick imagination; he saw this chain of riders, linking york with oxfordshire, spurring through a country fast asleep—only they and the moon and the nightingales awake—until, kinsman passing the message on to kinsman at each two-miles stage, the last rider came in with his tale of "boot and saddle."

indeed, blake urged his mare to follow the second horseman; but she was reluctant, and was sobbing under him after the headlong gallop.

"i had forgotten. she has carried me from oxford already," he said, turning to his companion.

"she's a good little mare," said metcalf, with instinctive judgment of all horseflesh. "she will have time to rest if you're minded to share the waiting time with me."

"your five days and a half?" laughed the other, as they returned at a quiet pace to their first meeting-place. "yes, i shall stay, if only to claim my wager. it is not in human power for your company to muster in the time."

"it is a game we have played often during these last months. lord fairfax, in the north, swears there's witchcraft in it, because we have carried news from york to skipton, from skipton into lancashire, while single messengers were spurring half-way on the road."

"i am a messenger of the lonely sort," put in blake—with a touch of spleen, for he was tired. "well, i propose to see what comes of your new way of galloping."

"the first that comes"—metcalf yawned and stretched himself with an air of complete strength and bodily content—"will be my cousin ralph, who took the message on just now. when he has passed it on, he rides hitherto. we may expect him in a half-hour or so."

blake, himself something of a mystic, who rode fine errands by help of no careful planning, but by intuition, was interested in this man, who stood for the metcalf thoroughness, in detail and in hot battle, that had made their name alive through england. he learned, here in the moonlight, with the jug-jug of nightingales from the thickets on their right, and the stir of moths about their faces, how carefully the old squire had planned this venture. the clan was a line of single links from oxford to the north, so long as the message needed to be carried swiftly; but afterwards each messenger was to ride back along the route to banbury, until the company mustered on its outskirts grew big enough to hold attack from the town in check.

as they talked, and while metcalf was pushing tobacco—borrowed, like the snuff, from blake—into the bowl of a clay pipe, there came a little sound from up the road. it was a rhythmical, recurrent sound.

"that is my cousin ralph," said metcalf unconcernedly.

the music grew louder by degrees, till the din of nightingales was lost in the rat-a-tat of hoofs.

"the first to the tryst," laughed blake, as the new-comer dismounted and picketed his horse close to their own. "we have a wager that your folk will not be in oxford within five days and a half."

"for my part," said ralph, "i have a hunger that eats inwards. have you found nothing for the larder, cousin, all this time of waiting?"

will metcalf had, as it happened. near sundown he had set two traps—simple contrivances of looped wire—in a neighbouring rabbit burrow; and, a little while before blake rode out from banbury, he had dismounted to find a coney in each snare.

"we shall do well enough," said will.

again blake was astonished by the downrightness of these people. ralph, who had not tasted food since noon, was sure that his cousin would have made due provision. methodically they sought for a likely hollow, screened from the rising wind, gathered brushwood and fallen branches, and made a fire. while it was burning up, they skinned and cleaned the rabbits.

"gentlemen," said blake, while their meal was in the cooking, "do you give no homage to the god known as chance? all is planned out, from here to york; but i've travelled the night-roads—have them by heart, as a man knows the whimsies of his wife. suppose some of your men were thrown badly, or killed by roundheads, how would it fare with the message up to york?"

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.

it was as if she sat beside him again—they two listening to the ripple of nidd river far below—and her voice was low and tender as she chided him for love-making. there had been other meetings—stolen ones and brief—and all the world a-maying to blake's view of it.

he would not let the dream go—played with it, pretended he had not learned long since what it meant to love a light-of-heart. her face, of the kind that painters dote on when they picture maiden innocence, the shifting play of light and colour in her eyes, the trick she had of making all men long to be better than they were—surely he could rest this once from many journeyings, and snatch another stolen meeting, there in knaresborough, with all the roses blowing kisses to them.

as he lay there, the two metcalfs who were sentrying their little camp grew tired of pacing to and fro, each on his own short beat, and halted for a gossip. blake did not heed them until they began to talk of knaresborough, of michael's dash into the castle, of a mistress bingham he had met there.

"michael met his match for once," laughed one sentry. "you know his gift of finding the finest eyes in england housed under every other woman's brows? well, mistress demaine plays a good game at hearts, too, they say. michael was touched in earnest this time. oh, the jest of it!"

"it would be a better if they began by playing, and ended with the silken noose. can you picture michael wedded—michael, with cut wings and drooping comb, seeking no more for fairest eyes?"

blake left his dreams as if they scorched him. so mistress bingham had been two years ago; so she would be, doubtless, when the king had come to his own again, and had reigned long, and passed on the crown. there is a stability about inconstancy, blake realised.

he got to his feet, crossed to where the sentries stood, and yawned. "gentlemen," he said, "i cannot sleep for hunger; and there will be others in my case before the night ends. can i borrow two of your company to make up a forage-party?"

one of the sentries pointed to a distant belt of wood, high up against the sky. "when dawn rides over the trees yonder, our watch is ended. we'll join you, mr. blake, if only because you have the most diverting laugh i ever heard, except michael's when he's seen a pair of pretty eyes."

a half-hour later they kicked the fresh sentries out of sleep. then blake and they went up the pasture-lands on foot. it was a good night for foraging; every pitfall of the ground, every farmstead sleeping in the bosom of its guardian trees, showed clear in the dawn-light. and none of the three men had qualms about the business, for the banbury country, through and through, was traitorous to the king.

they returned two hours later in high spirits. the metcalfs asked for a good deal of feeding, after a night in the open had set a razor-edge to appetite; and the scouting-party had commandeered a farmer's horse and gig to bring their booty into camp.

"who goes there?" snapped the sentries, running to meet this intrusion on the night's quiet.

"a mecca, lad," laughed the driver, "bringing fowls and cheese, and good home-cured bacon—ay, and a little barrel of rum that nearly bounced out o' the gig when i came to a rutty place in the road."

"'twould have been a pity to have lost the rum. where are blake and your cousin nicholas?"

"oh, following! the gig would not hold us all. as for blake, he has few cares in life. not one to have his heart touched by a woman—he. he laughs by habit, till you're forced to laugh with him."