‘Are you ready?’ she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.

‘At your service, madam.’

Without another word or look she started at a brisk trot, which I forced my horse to copy, though it gave me the most discomfort of any she could have chosen; and at my heels rode three of her servants on great clattering cart-horses.  The highway beyond the bridge rose with a gentle slope, much obscured by trees.  Between them, a short distance up the hill, I caught sight of a lodge-gate, with a park and a fair avenue beyond it; but of these I had no more than a glimpse, for almost at once my lady led us off to the right and along a rutted cart-track, black with the mould of rotted leaves, that wound up the valley bottom and close alongside of the river.  The sun was high enough by this to pierce through the foliage of elms and alders overhanging the stream and dapple the scarlet habit ahead of me with pretty spots and patterns of shadow; but not yet high enough to reach the low-lying summer-leases (as they would be called in my county) by which the river curved.  And here were cattle, yet half-awake, heaving themselves out of their lairs to stretch themselves and begin to browse.  The war had not touched this part of the valley; and but for a shot or two fired now and again on the distant hidden hills, we might have deemed it a hundred miles removed.  Nay, we had ridden scarcely six furlongs before we came to an old man angling.  His back was towards us, and he did not turn to spare us so much as a look.

The cart-track, though here and there it descended close to the brink and crossed a plashet left by the late floods, held the most of its course partly level, and some twenty feet above the river.  So we rode for a mile, and came in sight of a second bridge, newer and more massive than the first, for it carried one of the main highways of the county.  Here also at the confluence of two streams the valley widened, and as we emerged on the highway out of the gloom my eyes rested on a broad grassy park sloping up from the bridge, and crowned with terraces and a noble house.

The entrance to this park lay but a gunshot up the road on our left; and, coming to it, my lady drew rein.

‘Your name?’ she asked.

‘Medhope.’

‘It is singular that I should have found a gentleman,’ said she, in a musing, half-doubtful voice, as I leaned from my saddle, stifling the pain, and unhasped the gate for her.

Said I dryly, ’The Parliament army, madam, includes a few of us.  I know not why you should press this point:  and ’faith you took me without waiting for credentials; but if it please you I am even a poor knight of the shire.’

‘My husband is fortunate,’ said she; and put her horse to the trot again.