Page:Mistress Madcap (1937).pdf/218

 the kitchen soon departed. Plainly, making war upon women was not to their liking. Mehitable saw them mount and ride away. Finally only Squire Briggs was left in the kitchen.

Mistress Condit now rose quietly, and taking a basket from the dresser she placed some food in it. Then she crossed to the outside door.

"I be going to your poor wife, Squire Briggs," she whispered. From beneath the shadows of her hood she cast an oblique glance at him. Mehitable, watching silently, saw a shamed patch of red leap to the little man's face.

"Nay, Mistress Condit, I" he stammered awkwardly. But Mistress Condit had already slipped out of the door and was gone.

Mehitable, at the window, then saw a strange sight. She saw her mother at the gate select an unguarded horse—for now the men were all in the house, the others having ridden away—and then Mehitable gasped. Her mother, for whom a chair had to be fetched every time she mounted painfully to a pillion on a horse's back leaped into the empty saddle and galloped away!

Squire Briggs was brooding by the fire when Hawtree and his followers came down the stairs.

"You were dreaming when you said the man we seek was here!" snapped Hawtree ill-naturedlyill-naturedly. [sic]

"The maid spoke the truth!" growled one of the men stamping out the door. The rest followed him in angry silence.