sternly chased that he could not crawl another mile. This was true enough, as their quarry took occasion to whisper as they said so. It was considered inadvisable to challenge the house just then; the majority of its inmates being abed, the night not yet lifted, and therefore favouring concealment, and, above all, they were full of weariness themselves, and their horses beaten. Accordingly they determined to put them up, and also to allow their own weariness a few hours of much needed ease.
"Even us, the mob, the scum, can't go on for ever; what do you say, John Pensioner?" the Corporal remarked.
"Truest word you've spoke this moon, Joe," John Pensioner asserted, with a yawn for testimony.
"Where'll we sleep, though, Corp'ral?" inquires my friend, Mr. George.
"There's a hayloft top o' this," the Corporal replied; "pretty snug wi' straw and fodder. Roomy, too; bed six like blazes. And warm, warm as that 'ere hussy of a ladyship will be in the other life, when the devil gives her pep'mint but no canary wine."
"The very spot!" by general acclamation.
I could have cried out in my rage. This meant simply that we must be taken like a brace of pheasants in a snare. With the soldiers already established underneath there did not appear the remotest possibility of escape.
"The game's up, madam," the poor prisoner whispered to me, while I whispered curtly back
