A day or two after the rencontre, three strangers arrived at Shoulthwaite, who, without much ceremony, entered the house, and took seats on the long settle in the kitchen.

Rotha and Willy were there at the moment, the one baking oaten cake, and the other tying a piece of cord about a whip which was falling to pieces.  The men wore plain attire, but a glance was enough to satisfy Willy that one of them was the taller of the two constables who had tried to capture Ralph on Stye Head.

“What do you want?” he asked abruptly.

“A little courtesy,” answered the stalwart constable, who apparently constituted himself spokesman to his party.

“From whom do you come?”

“From whom and for whom!—­you shall know both, young man.  We come from the High Sheriff of Carlisle, and we come for—­so please you—­Ralph Ray.”

“He’s not here.”

“So we thought.”  The constables exchanged glances and broad smiles.

“He’s not here, I tell you,” said Willy, obviously losing his self-command as he became excited.

“Then go and fetch him.”

“I would not if I could; I could not if I would.  So be off.”

“We might ask you for the welcome that is due to the commissioners of a sheriff.”

“You take it.  But you’ll be better welcome to take yourselves after it.”

“Listen, young master, and let it be to your profit.  We want Ralph Ray, sometime captain in the rebel army of the late usurper in possession.  We hold a warrant for his arrest.  Here it is.”  And the man tapped with his fingers a paper which he drew from his belt.

“I tell you once more he is not here,” said Willy.

“And we tell you again, Go and fetch him, and God send you may find him!  It will be better for all of you,” added the constable, glancing about the room.

Willy was now almost beyond speech with excitement.  He walked nervously across the kitchen, while the constable, with the utmost calmness of voice and manner, opened his warrant and read:—­

“These are to will and require you forthwith to receive into your charge the body of Ralph Ray, and him detain under secure imprisonment—­”

“You’ve had the warrant a long while to no purpose, I believe,” Willy broke in.  “You may keep it still longer.”

The constable took no further note of the interruption than to pause in his reading, and begin again in the same measured tones:—­

“We do therefore command, publish, and declare that the said Ralph Ray, having hitherto withheld himself from judgment, shall within fourteen days next after personally deliver himself to the High Sheriff of Carlisle, under pain of being excepted from any pardon or indemnity both for his life and estate.”

Then the constable calmly folded up his paper, and returned it to its place in his belt.  Willy now stood as one transfixed.

“So you see, young man, it will be best for you all to go and fetch him.”