The Yeoman Adventurer | Page 7

by his stained and
frayed but once gaudy jacket. He carried a tuck of unusual length,
stretching along his left side from heel to armpit, and a couple of pistols
were stuck in his belt.
He put down the horn, smacked his lips, and began:
"Master Wheatman, I am searching for a Jacobite spy--a woman. We
took her father up at the 'Barley Mow,' and I learned from a man of
yours that the daughter was at his mother's ale-house down the road.
She is not there, and left to walk to meet her father, she said. She has
certainly not done that, and I have called to see if she is hiding here or
hereabouts."
"By gad, we'll nab her if she is," said I heartily. "She's not been through
that gate in the last half-hour, for it takes me that to drink yon jug dry,
and I started with it full. But I'll ask the maids. Mother and our Kate are
at the parson's yonder, gaping at you chaps. I dare say you saw them."
"No," said he doubtingly.
One of the men stepped out of the porch, saluted, and, being bidden to
speak, informed his officer that he had seen Lord Brocton and Mr.
Cornet Dobson talking to two ladies.
"That'd be they," I said, and going with unsteady steps to the door, I
vigorously shouted, "Jin, Moll, Jin, Moll, come here! They're in the
dairy," I added by way of explanation.
The crucial moment came. Jane and 'Moll' scurried across the yard like
rabbits, but stopped at the porch door with well-simulated surprise at
the sight of the dragoons.
"Gom, I thawt 'e'd set the house a-fire," said Jane thankfully, addressing
the company at large, and she bravely bustled through and shrilled at
me, "At it again, when your mother's out; y'd better get off to bed afore

she comes in. She'll drunk yer."
Jane's acting was so much better than mine that I nearly lost my head at
being thus crudely accused before 'Moll,' but she went on remorselessly,
addressing the dragoon, "Dunna upset him for God's sake, Master
Squaddy. 'E'm a hell-hound when 'e'm gotten a sup of beer in'im."
"Don't trouble, my good girl. I'm used to his sort. Leave him to me and
answer my questions. The truth or the jail, my girl."
"Yow," sniffed Jane, "he'd snap yow in two like a carrot. Bed's best
place for 'im. He's as wet as thatch with his silly jacking."
"Jane," said I, "never mind me. I'm neither dry enough nor drunk
enough to go to bed yet. Captain here wants to ask you and Moll some
questions. Stop clacking at me like a hen at a weasel and listen to him."
Jane went through the ordeal easily, appealing to 'Moll' for verification
at every turn, and so cleverly that the latter appeared to be as much
under examination as herself. Moreover, Jane stood square in the
firelight, but so as to keep 'Moll' shouldered behind the chimney in
comparative gloom. They'd been churning all afternoon, the butter was
there to be seen, stacks of it; nobody had been in or near the yard; the
gate had never clicked once, and nobody could open it without being
heard in the dairy. She overwhelmed the dragoon with her
demonstrations of the impossibility of anybody coming up the yard
without her or 'Moll' knowing it.
"That's all right, Jane," said I, at length. "But she could easily have got
into the house or into the stables without you or Moll seeing her. Let's
all have a look for her. Unless she's small enough to creep into a
rat-hole, we'll soon find her."
Sergeant Radford--to give him his name and rank, which I learned later
from Jack Dobson--agreed to this, and in my joy at knowing that the
ordeal was over, I was on the point of forgetting that I was drunk till I
caught the clear eyes of madam fixed in warning on me. Jane acted as
leader to the two dragoons in overhauling the barns and stabling, while

'Moll,' the sergeant, and I searched the house as closely as if we were
looking for a lost guinea. Of course our efforts were futile, slow as we
were so as not to outpace my drunken footsteps, and careful as we were
so as to satisfy the keen eyes of the sergeant, who was very evidently
on no new job so far as he was concerned. 'Moll' too seemed jealous of
Jane's laurels, and went thoroughly into the business. She and the
serjeant peeped together under beds and into closets, and she laughed
brazenly at certain not very obscure hints of his as to the great services
I should render to the search-party if I kept my eye on