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66
Joan, The Curate.

for the apprehension of the one man whom he had tracked down.

"What's his name, say you?" asked the squire, who had conducted his companions into the study, through the walls of which they could hear the stertorous snoring of the other guests, who had fallen asleep, whether upon or under the table Tregenna could only guess.

"I know only that he is called Tom," replied Tregenna, who remembered that the parson had uttered that name.

"Ah, then 'twill be 'Gardener Tom,' as they call him, as fine a lad as ever you clapped eyes on," almost sighed the squire, as he began to make out the warrant, not without erasures, in a decidedly 'after-dinner' handwriting. "Poor Tom, poor Tom! You will not have him moved to-night, general, and jolt a man in a fever across the marshes to Rye?"

"Egad, squire, since he will certainly be hanged, what signifies a jog more or less to his rascally bonesh?" retorted the brigadier ferociously.

The warrant made out, and the soldiers summoned from the servants' hall, where they had been regaled by the squire's command, the