The Yeoman Adventurer | Page 6

to wait. It was now about half-past three, the straw-coloured sun was perching on the hill-tops, and darkness would soon be drawing on apace.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour I sat there, living over again the precious minutes under the bridge, when the clatter of hoofs awakened me to the realities of the situation. Peeping cautiously past the edge of the blind, I saw the dragoons--there were six of them--ride up to the gate. Sharp orders rang out, and three of the men dismounted, including him who had given the orders, and came up the yard. One stayed at the gate to mind the horses, and the other two trotted off on the scout round the fields near the farm.
I slipped back to my chair, and let my chin drop on my chest, as if I were dozing in drink.
Some one said at the porch door, "In the King's name!" I took no notice, and they crowded, jingling and noisy, into the porch. Again sharp commands were given; the two men grounded their arms with a clang on the stone floor of the porch, and waited there. The man in command stepped forward into the firelight and said crisply, "In the King's name!"
It was idle to pretend any longer. I raised my head and blinked drunkenly at him. Then I filled the horn, sang thickly and with beery gusto, "Here's a health unto His Majesty," and said, "Fill up and drink, whoever you are, and shut the door. It's damned cold."
He had little, red, ferrety eyes, and they looked fiercely at me --fiercely but not suspiciously, I thought. He waved my hospitality aside, and said, "You are Oliver Wheatman?"
"Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards, Esquire, at His Majesty's service to command," I replied with great gravity, and filled another horn of ale. I might pretend to be drunk, but I could not, unfortunately, pretend to drink, and it was strongish ale. He made a motion to stop me--welcome proof that he believed me tipsy in fact--and said, "Master Wheatman, the less drunken you are, the better you will answer my questions."
"Sir," said I, draining off the horn, "I can drink and talk with any man living, and, drunk or sober, I only answer the questions of my friends. So get a horn off the dresser--I'm a bit tired--fill up, and tell me what you want. D'you happen to be of my Lord Brocton's regiment?"
"I am."
"Then you'll be as drunk as me before you've finished with the Hanyards. Our ale goes to the head most damnably quick, let me tell you. You tell my dear old butty, the worshipful Master Jack Dobson, that I've caught a jack half as thick and more than half as long as himself. Here it be. Fetch a horn, I tell you, and drink to me and the two jacks--Jack Dobson and this jack beauty here."
He was getting no nearer to the object of his visit, and, perhaps thinking it would be well to humour me, he fetched a horn and tried our Hanyards ale. This gave me a chance of taking stock of him.
He was a thin, wiry man of middle height and middle age. Such a face I had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been extended, as it seemed, to his left ear by a savage sword slash which had healed very badly. He had an air of mean, perky intelligence, as of one of low rank and no breeding who had for many years been accustomed to cringe to the great and domineer over smaller fry than himself. Some sort of military rank he had, judging 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