Stories by English Authors: England | Page 7

require corn for our horses, food for
ourselves. There is no occasion for alarm; my friends are noisy, but
harmless, I assure you, and the favour of admittance and entertainment
here will be duly appreciated. To refuse your hospitality--the
hospitality of a Pemberthy--is only to expose yourselves to
considerable inconvenience, I fear."
"Spoken like a book, Captain."

"And, as we intend to come in at all risks," added a deeper voice, "it
will be better for you not to try and keep us out, d' ye hear? D'
ye--Captain, if you shake me by the collar again I'll put a bullet through
you. I--"
"Silence! Let the worthy folks inside consider the position for five
minutes."
Not a minute longer, if they don't want the place burned about their ears,
mind you," cried a voice that had not spoken yet.
"Who are you?" asked Sophie, still inclined to parley.
"Travellers, I have told you."
"Thieves, cutthroats, and murderers--eight of us--knights of the road,
gentlemen of the highway, and not to be trifled with when half starved
and hard driven," cried the hoarse man. "There, will that satisfy you,
wench? Will you let us in or not? It's easy enough for us to smash in the
windows and get in that way, isn't it?"
Yes, it was very easy.
"Wait five minutes, please," said Sophie.
She went back to the parlour and to the two shivering women and the
crowd of maids, who had crept from the dairy to the farm parlour,
having greater faith in numbers now.
"They had better come in, aunt, especially as we are quite helpless to
keep them out. I could fire that gun," Sophie said, pointing to an
unwieldy old blunderbuss slung by straps to the ceiling, " and I know
it's loaded. But I'm afraid it wouldn't be of much use."
"It might make them angry," said Mrs. Pemberthy.
"It would only kill one at the best," remarked Mrs. Tarne, with a heavy
sigh.

"And the rest of the men would kill us, the brutes," said Mrs.
Pemberthy. "Yes, they'd better come in."
"Lord have mercy upon us," said Mrs. Tarne.
"There's no help for it," said Mrs. Pemberthy. "Even Reuben would not
have dared to keep them out. I mind now their coming like this twenty
years agone. It was--"
"I will see to them," said Sophie, who had become in her young, brave
strength quite the mistress of the ceremonies. "Leave the rest to me."
"And if you can persuade them to go away--" began Mrs. Tarne; but
her daughter had already disappeared, and was parleying through the
keyhole with the strangers without.
"Such hospitality as we can offer, gentlemen, shall be at your service,
providing always that you treat us with the respect due to gentlewomen
and your hosts."
"Trust to that," was the reply. "I will answer for myself and my
companions, Mistress Pemberthy."
"You give me your word of honour?"
"My word of honour," he repeated; "our words of honour, and speaking
for all my good friends present; is it not so, men?"
"Ay, ay--that 's right," chorused the good friends; and then Sophie
Tarne, not without an extra plunging of the heart beneath her white
crossover, unlocked the stout oaken door and let in her unwelcome
visitors.
Seven out of the eight seemed to tumble in all at once, pushing against
one another in their eagerness to enter, laughing, shouting, and
stamping with the heels of their jack-boots on the bright red pantiles of
the hall. The eighth intruder followed --a tall, thin man, pale-faced and
stern and young, with a heavy horseman's cloak falling from his

shoulders, the front of which was gathered up across his arms. A
handsome and yet worn face --the face of one who had seen better days
and known brighter times--a picturesque kind of vagabond, take him in
the candle-light. He raised his hat and bowed low to Sophie Tarne, not
offering to shake hands as the rest of them had done who where
crowding around her; then he seemed to stand suddenly between them
and their salutations, and to brush them unceremoniously aside.
"You see to those horses, Stango and Grapp," he said, singling out the
most obtrusive and the most black-muzzled of his gang. "Mistress
Pemberthy will perhaps kindly trust us for a while with the keys of the
stables and corn-bins."
"They are here," said Sophie, detaching them from a bunch of keys
which, in true housewifely fashion, hung from her girdle. "The farm
servants are away in the village, or they should help you, sir."
"We are in the habit of helping ourselves-very much," said one of the
highwaymen, drily. "Pray don't apologise on that score, mistress."
Two of the men departed; five of them stalked into the farm parlour,
flourishing