



Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: "Old Squire Metcalf, as he went out to meet him, broke
into a roar of laughter."  (Page 84.)]




                               THE WHITE
                                 HORSES


                                   BY

                          HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE

           _Author of "Ricroft of Withers," "The Open Road,"
          "A Chateau in Picardy," "The Strength of the Hills,"
                                 etc._



                       WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
                     LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
                                  1916




                         To my Sister's Memory




                              *CONTENTS.*


CHAPTER

I.--WHO RIDES FOR THE KING?
II.--SKIPTON-IN-CRAVEN
III.--SOME MEN OF FAIRFAX'S
IV.--THE LAST LAUGH
V.--THE LADY OF RIPLEY
VI.--HOW MICHAEL CAME TO YORK
VII.--A HALT AT KNARESBOROUGH
VIII.--HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT
IX.--THE LOYAL CITY
X.--THE RIDING IN
XI.--BANBURY CAKES
XII.--PAGEANTRY
XIII.--THE LADY OF LATHOM
XIV.--A STANLEY FOR THE KING
XV.--TWO JOLLY PURITANS
XVI.--THE SCOTS AT MICKLEGATE
XVII.--PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM
XVIII.--MARSTON MOOR
XIX.--WILSTROP WOOD
XX.--THE HOMELESS DAYS
XXI.--SIR REGINALD'S WIDOW
XXII.--MISS BINGHAM
XXIII.--YOREDALE




                            *Illustrations*


"Old Squire Metcalf, as he went out to meet him, broke into a roar of
laughter."...... _Frontispiece_ (Page 84.)

"'You're the Squire of Nappa, sir?' he said."

"'Yes, you can be of service,' he whispered."

"'Say, do you stand for the King?'"

"Without a word of any kind, a third prisoner was thrown against them."

"They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight."

"'Well, sir?' she asked sharply.  'You rob me of sleep for some good
reason doubtless?'"

"They turned sharply as the door opened, and reached out for their
weapons."

"'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert."

"'Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or is dead for the
King.'"

"'If the end of the world came--here and now--you would make a jest of
it.'"

"Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained
the rest."




                          *THE WHITE HORSES.*



                              *CHAPTER I.*

                       *WHO RIDES FOR THE KING?*


Up through the rich valley known now as Wensleydale, but in those days
marked by the lustier name of Yoredale, news had crept that there was
civil war in England, that sundry skirmishes had been fought already,
and that His Majesty was needing all leal men to rally to his standard.

It was an early harvest that year, as it happened, and John Metcalf, of
Nappa Hall, stood at his garden-gate, watching the sunset glow across
his ripening wheat.  There were many acres of it, gold between green
splashes of grass-land; and he told himself that they would put the
sickle into the good crop before a fortnight's end.  There was something
about Squire Metcalf--six feet four to his height, and broad in the
beam--that seemed part of the wide, lush country round him.  Weather and
land, between them, had bred him; and the night's peace, the smell of
sweet-briar in the evening dew, were pleasant foils to his strength.

He looked beyond the cornfields presently.  Far down the road he saw a
horseman--horse and rider small in the middle of the landscape--and
wondered what their errand was.  When he had done with surmises, his
glance roved again, in the countryman's slow way, and rested on the
pastures above the house.  In the clear light he could see two figures
standing there; one was his son Christopher, the other a trim-waisted
maid.  Squire Metcalf frowned suddenly.  He was so proud of his name, of
his simple squiredom, that he could not bear to see his eldest-born
courting defeat of this kind.  This little lady was niece to his
neighbour, Sir Timothy Grant, a good neighbour and a friend, but one who
was richer than himself in lands and rank, one who went often to the
Court in London, and was in great favour with the King.  Squire Metcalf
had seen these two together in his own house, and guessed Christopher's
secret without need of much sagacity; and he was sorely troubled on the
lad's account.

Christopher himself, away at the stile yonder, was not troubled at all
except by a pleasant heartache. He had youth, and Joan Grant beside him,
and a heart on fire for her.

"You are pleased to love me?" she was saying, facing him with maddening
grace.  "What is your title to love me, sir?"

"Any man has the right to love," Kit protested sturdily.  "He cannot
help it sometimes."

"Oh, granted; but not to tell it openly."

"What else should a man do?  I was never one for secrets."

Joan laughed pleasantly, as if a thrush were singing.  "You speak truth.
I would not trust you with a secret as far as from here to Nappa. If a
child met you on the road, she would read it in your face."

"I was bred that way, by your leave.  We Metcalfs do not fear the
light."

"But, sir, you have every right to--to think me better than I am, but
none at all to speak of--of love. I had an old Scots nurse to teach me
wisdom, and she taught me--what, think you?"

"To thieve and raid down Yoredale," said Kit unexpectedly.  "The Scots
had only that one trade, so my father tells me, till the Stuarts came to
reign over both countries."

"To thieve and raid?  And I--I, too, have come to raid, you say--to
steal your heart?"

"You are very welcome to it."

"But do I want it?"  She put aside her badinage, drew away from him with
a fine strength and defiance.  "Listen, sir.  My Scots nurse taught me
that a woman has only one heart to give in her lifetime; that, for her
peace, she must hide it in the branches of a tree so high that only a
strong man can climb it."

"I'm good at tree-climbing," said Christopher, with blunt acceptance of
the challenge.

"Then prove it."

"Now?" he asked, glancing at a tall fir behind them.

"Oh, sir, you are blunt and forthright, you men of Nappa!  You do not
understand the heart of a woman."

Kit Metcalf stood to his brawny six-foot height. "I'm needing you, and
cannot wait," he said, fiery and masterful.  "That's the way of a man's
heart."

"Then, by your leave, I shall bid you good e'en. No man will ever master
me until----"

"Until?" asked Kit, submissive now that he saw her retreating up the
pasture.

She dropped him another curtsey before going up the steep face of the
hills.  "That is the woman's secret, sir.  It lives at the top of a high
tree, that 'until.'  Go climbing, Master Christopher!"

Kit went back to Nappa, in frank revolt against destiny and the blue
face of heaven.  There was nothing in the world worth capturing except
this maid who eluded him at every turn, like a butterfly swift of wing.
He was prepared to be sorry for himself until he came face to face with
his father at the garden gate.

"I saw two young fools at the stile," said Squire Metcalf.  "I've
watched you for half an hour. Best wed in your own station, Kit--no
more, no less. No Metcalf ever went dandying after great ladies yet.
We've our own proper pride."

Christopher, in spite of his six feet, looked a small man as he stood
beside his father; but his spirit was equal to its stubborn strength.
"I love her. There's no other for me," he said sharply.

The Squire glanced shrewdly at him.  "Ah, well," he said at last, "if it
goes as deep as that, lad, you'll just have to go on crying out for the
moon.  Sir Timothy has been away in London all the summer--trouble with
the Parliament, and the King needing him, they say.  He'd have taken
Miss Joan with him if he'd guessed that a lad from Nappa thought he
could ever wed into the family."

"We've lands and gear enough," protested Kit.

"We have, but not as they count such matters. They've got one foot in
Yoredale, and t'other in London; and we seem very simple to them, Kit."

Shrewd common sense is abhorrent to all lovers, and Kit fell into a
stormy silence.  He knew it true, that he felt rough, uncouth, in
presence of his mistress; but he knew also that at the heart of him
there was a love that was not uncouth at all.

The Squire left Kit to fight out his own trouble, and fell to watching
the horseman who was more than a speck now on the landscape.  The rider
showed as a little man striding a little mare; both were weary, by the
look of them, and both were heading straight for Nappa Hall.  They had a
mile to cover.

"Father, I need to get away from Nappa," said Kit, breaking the silence.

"Ay," said the Squire, with a tolerant laugh, "love takes all men that
way in the first flush of it. I was young myself once.  You want to ride
out, lad, and kill a few score men, just to show little Miss Joan what a
likely man o' your hands you are. Later on, you'll be glad to be
shepherding the ewes, to pay for her new gowns and what not.  Love's not
all mist and moonshine, Kit; the sturdier part comes later on."

Up the lane sounded the lolopping pit-a-pat of a horse that was tired
out and near to drop; and the rider looked in no better case as he drew
rein at the gate.

"You're the Squire of Nappa, sir?" he said, with a weary smile.  "No
weary to ask the question. I was told to find a man as tall as an
oak-tree and as sturdy."

[Illustration: "'You're the Squire of Nappa, sir?' he said."]

"Yet it would have been like seeking a needle in a bundle of hay, if you
hadn't chanced to find me at the gate," the other answered.  "There are
six score Metcalfs in this corner of Yoredale, and nobody takes notice
of my height."

"The jest is pretty enough, sir, but you'll not persuade me that there's
a regiment of giants in the dale."

"They're not all of my height--granted.  Some are more, and a few less.
This is my eldest-born," he said, touching Christopher on the shoulder.
"We call him Baby Kit, because he's the smallest of us all."

The horseman saw a lad six foot high, who certainly looked dwarfed as he
stood beside his father. "Gad, the King has need of you!  Undoubtedly he
needs all Metcalfs, if this is your baby-boy."

"As for the King, the whole six score of us have prayed for his welfare,
Sabbath in and Sabbath out, since we were breeked.  It's good hearing
that he needs us."

"I ride on His Majesty's errand.  He bids the Squire of Nappa get his
men and his white horses together."

"So the King has heard of our white horses? Well, we're proud o' them, I
own."

The messenger, used to the stifled atmosphere of Courts until this
trouble with the Parliament arrived, was amazed by the downright,
free-wind air the Squire of Nappa carried.  It tickled his humour, tired
as he was, that Metcalf should think the King himself knew every detail
of his country, and every corner of it that bred white horses, or roan,
or chestnut.  At Skipton-in-Craven, of course, they knew the dales from
end to end; and he was here because Sir John Mallory, governor of the
castle there, had told him the Metcalfs of Nappa were slow to leave the
beaten tracks, but that, once roused, they would not budge, or falter,
or retreat.

"The King needs every Metcalf and his white horse.  He sent me with that
message to you, Squire."

"About when does he need us?" asked Metcalf guardedly.

"To-morrow, to be precise."

"Oh, away with you!  There's all my corn to be gathered in.  I'll come
nearer the back end o' the year, if the King can bide till then.  By
that token, you're looking wearied out, you and your horse. Come
indoors, man, and we'll talk the matter over."

The messenger was nothing loath.  At Skipton they had given an
importance to the Metcalf clan that he had not understood till now.
This was the end of to-day's journey, and his sole errand was to bring
the six score men and horses into the good capital of Craven.

"I ask no better cheer, sir.  Can you stable the two of us for the
night?  My little grey mare is more in need of rest than I am."

Christopher, the six-foot baby of the clan, ran forward to the mare's
bridle; and he glanced at his father, because the war in his blood was
vehement and lusty, and he feared the old check of discipline.

"Is it true, sir?" he asked the messenger.  "Does the King need us?
I've dreamed of it o' nights, and wakened just to go out and tend the
land.  I'm sick of tending land.  Is it true the King needs us?"

The messenger, old to the shams and false punctilios of life, was
dismayed for a moment by this clean, sturdy zest.  Here, he told
himself, was a cavalier in the making--a cavalier of Prince Rupert's
breed, who asked only for the hazard.

"It is true that the King needs a thousand such as you," he said drily.
"Be good to my little mare; I trust her to you, lad."

And in this solicitude for horseflesh, shown twice already, the
messenger had won his way already into the favour of all Metcalfs.  For
they loved horses just a little less than they loved their King.

Within doors, as he followed the Squire of Nappa, he found a warm fire
of logs, and an evening meal to which the sons of the house trooped in
at haphazard intervals.  There were only six of them, all told, but they
seemed to fill the roomy dining-room as if a crowd intruded.  The
rafters of the house were low, and each stooped, from long habit, as he
came in to meat.  Kit, the baby of the flock, was the last to come in;
and he had a queer air about him, as if he trod on air.

There was only one woman among them, a little, eager body, who welcomed
the stranger with pleasant grace.  She had borne six sons to the Squire,
because he was dominant and thought little of girl-children; she had
gone through pain and turmoil for her lord, and at the end of it was
thankful for her pride in him, though she would have liked to find one
girl among the brood--a girl who knew the way of household worries and
the way of women's tears.

The messenger, as he ate and drank with extreme greediness, because need
asked, glanced constantly at the hostess who was like a garden flower,
growing here under the shade of big-boled trees.  It seemed impossible
that so small a person was responsible for the six men who made the
rafters seem even lower than they were.

When the meal was ended, Squire Metcalf put his guest into the great
hooded chair beside the fire of peat and wood.

"Now, sir, we'll talk of the King, by your leave, and these lusty rogues
of mine shall stand about and listen.  What is it His Majesty asks of
us?"

The messenger, now food and liquor had given him strength again, felt at
home in this house of Nappa as he had never done among the intrigues of
Court life.  He had honest zeal, and he was among honest men, and his
tongue was fiery and persuasive.

"The King needs good horsemen and free riders to sweep the land clear of
Roundheads.  He needs gentlemen with the strong arm and the simple heart
to fight his battles.  The King--God bless him!--needs six-score
Metcalfs, on horses as mettled as their riders, to help put out this
cursed fire of insurrection."

"Well, as for that," said the Squire, lighting his pipe with a live peat
from the hearth, "I reckon we're here for that purpose.  I bred my sons
for the King, when he was pleased to need them.  But I'd rather he could
bide--say, for a month--till we get our corn in.  Take our six-score men
from the land just now, and there'll be no bread for the house next
year, let alone straw for the beasts."

The messenger grew more and more aware that he had been entrusted with a
fine mission.  This plain, unvarnished honesty of the Squire's was worth
fifty protestations of hot loyalty.  The dogged love he had of his lands
and crops--the forethought of them in the midst of civil war--would make
him a staunch, cool-headed soldier.

"The King says you are to ride out to-morrow, Squire.  What use to pray
for him on Sabbaths if you fail him at the pinch?"

Metcalf was roused at last, but he glanced at the little wife who sat
quietly in her corner, saying little and feeling much.  "I've more than
harvesting to leave.  She's small, that wife of mine, but God knows the
big love I have for her."

The little woman got up suddenly and stepped forward through the press
of big sons she had reared. Her man said openly that he loved her better
than his lands, and she had doubted it till now.  She came and stood
before the messenger and dropped him a curtsey.

"You are very welcome, sir, to take all my men on the King's service.
What else?  I, too, have prayed on Sabbaths."

The messenger rose, a great pity and chivalry stirring through his
hard-ridden, tired body.  "And you, madam?" he asked gently.

"Oh, I shall play the woman's part, I hope--to wait, and be silent, and
shed tears when there are no onlookers."

"By God's grace," said Blake, the messenger, a mist about his eyes, "I
have come to a brave house!"

The next morning, an hour after daybreak, Blake awoke, stirred drowsily,
then sprang out of bed. Sleep was a luxury to him these days, and he
blamed himself for indolence.

Downstairs he found only a serving-maid, who was spreading the breakfast
table with cold meats enough to feed twenty men of usual size and
appetite.  The mistress was in the herb-garden, she said, and the men
folk all abroad.

For a moment the messenger doubted his welcome last night.  Had he
dreamed of six score men ready for the King's service, or was the
Squire's honesty, his frank promise to ride out, a pledge repented of
already?

He found the Squire's wife walking in the herb-garden, and the face she
lifted was tear-stained.  "I give you good day," she said, "though
you've not dealt very well with me and mine."

"Is there a finer errand than the King's?" he asked brusquely.

"My heart, sir, is not concerned with glory and fine errands.  It is
very near to breaking. Without discourtesy, I ask you to leave me here
in peace--for a little while--until my wounds are healing."

The Squire and his sons had been abroad before daybreak, riding out
across the wide lands of Nappa.  Of the hundred odd grown men on their
acres, there was not one--yeoman, or small farmer, or hind--but was a
Metcalf by name and tradition. They were a clan of the old, tough Border
sort, welded together by a loyalty inbred through many generations; and
the law that each man's horse must be of the true Metcalf white was not
of yesterday.

Christopher's ride to call his kinsfolk in had taken him wide to the
boundary of Sir Timothy Grant's lands; and, as he trotted at the head of
his growing company, he was bewildered to see Joan step from a little
coppice on the right of the track.  She had been thinking of him, as it
happened, till sleep would not come; and, like himself, she needed to
get out into the open.  Very fresh she looked, as she stepped into the
misty sunlight--alert, free-moving, bred by wind and rain and sun.  To
Kit she seemed something not of this world; and it is as well, maybe,
that a boy's love takes this shape, because in saner manhood the glamour
of the old day-dreams returns, to keep life wholesome.

Kit halted his company, heedless of their smiles and muttered jests, as
he rode to her side.

"You look very big, Christopher!  You Nappa men--and your horses--are
you riding to some hunt?"  She was cold, provocative, dismaying.

"Yes, to hunt the Roundheads over Skipton way.  The King has sent for
us."

"But--the call is so sudden, and--I should not like to hear that you
were dead, Kit."

Her eyes were tender with him, and then again were mocking.  He could
make nothing her, as how should he, when older men than he had failed to
understand the world's prime mystery.

"Joan, what did you mean by 'until,' last night at the stile?  You said
none should master you until----"

"Why, yes, _until_----  Go out