Gridley assented with a corresponding smack of sullenness in his tone, and taking the hint, bore off the boy to bed. Soon the few lights, which still shone in the great house that had so quietly changed masters, died out one by one; until all lay black and silent, except one small room, low-ceiled, musty, and dark-panelled, which lay to the right of the hall, but a step or two below its level. This room was the butler's pantry and sleeping-chamber. The plate which had once glittered on its shelves, the silver flagons and Sheffield cups, the spice bowls and sugar-basins, were gone, devoted these five years past to the melting-pot and the Royal cause. The club and blunderbuss which should have guarded them remained, however, in their slings beside the bed; along with some show of dingy pewter and dingier blackjacks, and as many empty bottles as served at once to litter the gloomy little dungeon and prove that the old squire's cellar was not yet empty.

In the midst of this disorder, and in no way incommoded by the close atmosphere of the room, which reeked of beer and stale liquors, the butler sat thinking far into the night. On the table beside him, which had been cleared to make room for it, lay an open Bible; but as he never consulted its pages or even looked towards it, we may assume that it lay there rather for show than use, and possibly had been arranged for the express purpose of catching the eye of Master Hoby should he push his inquiries as far as this apartment.

Heedless or forgetful of it, Gridley now sat staring into vacancy, with a dark expression on his face. Now and again he bit his finger-nails as if some problem of more than ordinary importance occupied his thoughts. His aspect too was changed in sympathy with the dark hours of the night. Tear and anticipation, greed and cunning, peered from behind the mask of sly composure which he had worn in the parlor. He had now the air of a man who would and dare not, and then again who would not shrink at risks. At last he rose with his mind made up, and creeping to the door secured it. With a stealthy glance round, he next extinguished the light, plunging the room into darkness. After that he was still to be heard shuffling about for some time, but of his actions or the business on which he was bent nothing could be known for certain. Only once a rich ringing sound as of metal on metal surprised the silence, and hanging on the air-for an eternity as it seemed to his alarmed ear-died reluctantly in the hollows of the pewter flagons on the shelf. It was nothing, it was the merest tinkle, it could scarcely have awakened the suspicions of the most critical listener. But the man who made the sound and heard the sound was a coward with an evil conscience; and for a full minute after the last echo had whispered itself away, he crouched on the floor, with the cold dew on his brow and his hand shaking. After that, silence.

Little Jack Patten, awaking suddenly as the first glimmer of dawn entered his room, found the butler standing by his side. The boy would have cried out, not knowing him in the half light, but Gridley muttered his name, and enjoining silence with a finger on his lip, sat down on the pallet by the lad's side.

"What is it?" Jack said, sitting up. The man's cautious and apprehensive air, no less than the gloom which still filled the room and rendered objects indistinct, scared him.

"Hush!" the butler answered in a low voice, "and listen to me, Jack. I have been thinking about you. You know this house is not yours any longer. It will be shut up, and there will be none but Roundheaded soldiers here, and the man below will be master. You don't want to stay here and eat his bread?"

The boy shook his head. But, even as he shook it, the tears rose to his eyes. For where was he to go? Yesterday's events, his friendlessness and helplessness, recurred to his mind in a rush of bitter memories.

"Would you like to come away with me?" Gridley muttered, keenly watching the effect of his words.

Jack peered at him doubtfully. The butler had not been so kind to him of late as to give this proposal an air of complete naturalness. The manner and the tone of it were strange even in the child's judgment. "Where are you going?" he asked cautiously.

"To my home," said the butler, licking his lips, as if they were dry.

"It is on the moors, is it not?"

The butler nodded. "Above Pateley?"

"It is many a mile above Pateley-up, up, up; ay, miles above it."

The child's eyes glistened at that. The moors were his fairyland. He had passed many and many a happy hour in dreaming of the marvellous things which lay beyond the purple hills to westward; the rugged broken line behind which the sun went down each day in a glory of crimson or orange. That line, he knew, was the beginning of the moors. The blue distance beyond it he had peopled with his own visions of giants and dwarfs, and witches and warlocks, and added besides all the tales which passed current in Pattenhall and the low country of doings in t' moors. He knew the moor people kept to themselves and were wild and savage, inhabiting hills a mile high and valleys miles in depth; and he longed to visit them and see these things for himself. His eyes dried quickly as he listened to Gridley, and eagerly asked, "Above Pateley?" which was the boundary of his known world, "miles and miles above Pateley, Gridley?"

"Ay, up Skipton way."

"Is that in the heart of the moors, Gridley?"

"There is no other heart," the butler answered gruffly, "unless, maybe, it is Settle. And it is Settle side of Skipton."

"Are you going now?" the lad said impulsively, standing up straight in his bed, with his brown eyes staring and his fair cheeks glowing with anticipation and excitement.

"This very minute."

"I'll come with you! You will let me dress, Gridley?"

"Ay, dress quickly. We must be away before any one is awake."

"I'll be quick!" Jack answered.

He was too young to see anything strange in the hurry and secrecy of such a departure. The troubles of the times had made him familiar with abrupt comings and goings. He trembled, it is true, as he stole down the dark staircase on tiptoe and clinging to the butler's hand; but it was with excitement, not fear. He felt no surprise at finding one of the great plough-horses standing saddled in its stall; nor did the size of the wallets which he saw behind the saddle arouse any doubt or suspicion in his mind. Gridley's haste to be gone, the trembling which seized the butler as they crossed the farmyard, the frequent glances he cast behind him until the road was fairly gained, seemed to the boy natural enough. All Jack knew was that he was leaving his enemies behind him. They had killed his father and exiled his brother. Naturally he feared and hated them. He was too young to understand that he stood in no peril himself, but that on the contrary his proper disposal had caused Master Hoby the loss of at least an hour's sleep.

Before it was fairly light the fugitives were already a mile away. The boy rode behind Gridley, clinging to a strap passed round the latter's waist; and the two jogged along comfortably enough as far as the body was concerned, though it was evident that Gridley's anxiety was little if at all allayed. They shunned the highway, and went by hedge paths and bridle-roads, which avoided houses and villages. When the sun rose the two were already five or six miles from Pattenhall, in a country new to the lad, though sufficiently like his own to whet his curiosity instead of satisfying it.

"How far are we from the moors, Gridley?" he asked as often as he dared, for the butler's temper seemed uncertain. "Shall we be there to breakfast?"

"Ay, we'll be there to breakfast," was the usual answer.

And presently, to the boy's delight, the country began to trend upwards, the path grew steeper. The coppices and hedgerows, the clumps of elms and oaks and beeches, which had hidden the higher prospects from his eyes, and almost persuaded him that he was making no progress, began to grow more sparse; until at last they failed altogether, and he saw before him a rising slope of marsh and moorland, swelling here and there into rocky ridges, between which the sycamores and ashes grew in stunted bunches. Above he raised his eyes to a heaven wider and more open than that to which he was accustomed; while lark beyond lark, soaring each higher than the other, seemed striving which should celebrate most fitly the balmy air and warm sunshine which flooded all.

"Are these the moors, Gridley?" the boy asked with delight.

"These, the moors?" the man answered, with the first smile he had allowed himself that morning. "You wait a bit, and you'll see!"

His tone was not encouraging, but as he hastened to give the lad his breakfast and a drink of beer, Jack passed over the change of manner, and rocking himself from side to side, as far as the strap would let him, went merrily upwards, munching as he rode. Over Pateley Bridge and Pateley moors they went, and upwards still to Bewerley Fell, whence they saw the Riding stretched like a picture behind them. Jack fancied, but that was, impossible, that he could see the chimneys and the great oak at Pattenhall. Leaving Bewerley they skirted Hebdon Moor on the north side, rising here so high that Jack could see nothing on either hand but horrid crags, and ridges of grey limestone and vast slopes of grey rock. Here, too, there was little turf and no heather, but only stone-crop and saxifrages, with cruel quagmires and bogs in the hollows. The very sky seemed changed. It grew dark and overcast, and clouds and mist gathered round the travellers, hiding the path, yet disclosing from time to time the huge brow of Ingleborough or the flat head of Penighent. The wind moaned across the grey steeps, and a small rain began to fall and quickly wet them to the skin.

The boy shuddered. "Are these the moors?" he asked.

"Ay, these are the moors!" his companion answered grimly. "And moorland weather. Yon's the High Moors and Malham Tarn. Your eyes are young. Do you see a grey spot in the nook to the right, yonder, two miles away! That is Little Howe, and we are bound for it."

"Who lives there?" Jack answered, as he looked drearily over the desolate upland.

"My brother," the butler answered, with a touch of ferocity in his tone. "Simon Gridley, he is called, and you will know him soon enough."