Time glided away as fast in the days of James the First as it does in
the reign of our gentle Queen; and a year had gone by in the quiet
peaceful vale, where, to a man, all who had been in the great trouble
had more or less quickly recovered from their wounds.
The prisoners were the worst sufferers, and in the great friendly peace
brought about between the old lords of the land, partly by their own
manly feeling and the love that had somehow sprung up among their
children, the greatest of all the Christian virtues took deep root, and
flourished in a way that would have put the proverbial green bay tree to
shame.
Hence it was that, as very slowly one by one the miserable crippled
prisoners, so many wrecks, diseased by their own reckless life and
crippled by their wounds, struggled back slowly to a condition in which
perhaps a few years were left them for a better life, they were left
entirely in Master Rayburn's hands; and first one and then another was
sent off with a little money and a haversack of food to seek his friends
and trouble the peaceful valley no more.
It took nearly the year before the last of the wretched crew bade
farewell to the place, grateful or ungrateful, according to his nature,
after going through a long course of physical suffering; and by that
time Cliff Castle was pretty well restored, and the two lads, after a
long absence, were back home again to the land of mighty cliff, green
forest, and purling stream.
It was on one of those glorious early summer mornings when the air seems
full of joy, and it is a delight even to exist, that, as the sycamores
and beeches in their early green were alive with song, there came a
rattle of tiny bits of spar against Mark Eden's casement window, and he
sprang out of bed to throw it open and look down upon Ralph Darley,
armed with lissom rod over his shoulder and creel on back.
"Oh, I say," he cried, "asleep, and on a morning like this!"
"Yes, but you're too soon."
"Soon? Why, I'm a quarter of an hour late. Be quick, the May-fly are
up, and the trout feeding like mad, and as for the grayling, I saw the
biggest--oh! do make haste."
"Shan't be long."
"And Mark, tell Mary that father is going to bring Min up about twelve,
and they are to meet us with the dinner-basket up by the alder weir.
Well, why don't you make haste and dress?"
"I was thinking," said Mark, with a broad smile.
"What about?"
"Oh, here's Dummy with the net," cried Mark. "Hi! you sir! why didn't
you come and call me at the proper time?"
"Morn', Master Ralph," said the lad, with a friendly grin. Then with an
ill-used look up at the window:
"'Tis proper time. You said six, and it aren't that yet."
"There," cried Mark; "you are too soon."
"Very well. It was so fine; but I say, what were you thinking about?"
Mark grinned again.
"Is it so very comic?" said Ralph impatiently.
"That depends on what you say."
"Well, let's hear."
"I was thinking that you and I have never finished that fight."
"No; you haven't been down to steal our ravens. I say, Mark, what do
you say? Shall we? They're building there again."
"Let 'em," said Mark, "in peace."