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"Then you think there are no such things as apparitions, Master Bletson?" said Everard. "I used to be sceptical on the subject; but, on my life, to-night has been a strange one." "Dreams, dreams, dreams, my simple Colonel," said Bletson, though, his pale face and shaking limbs belied the assumed courage with which he spoke.
When pushed, indeed, very hard, Bletson was compelled to mutter some inarticulate and unintelligible doctrines concerning an Animus Mundi, or Creative Power in the works of Nature, by which she originally called into existence, and still continues to preserve, her works.
Bold as a grenadier about to mount a breach, yet with the same belief in the existence of a great danger to be encountered, as well as the same reliance in the goodness of his cause, the worthy man stepped before the philosophical Bletson, and taking a light from a sconce in one hand, quietly opened the door with the other, and standing in the threshold, said, "Here is nothing!"
"Master Desborough and you," rejoined the Colonel, "will take care how the matter is reported, I dare say; and I only recommend to both, that, if mentioned at all, it may be told correctly." "Nay, nay, we will not mention it at all," said Bletson, "we will forget it from this moment. Only, never suppose me capable of superstitious weakness.
"What!" said Everard, "are Colonel Desborough and Master Bletson both in the same sleeping apartment?" "Their honours have so chosen it," said the man; "and their honours' secretaries remain upon guard all night." "It is the fashion to double guards all over the house," said Wildrake. "Had I a glimpse of a tolerably good-looking house-maid now, I should know how to fall into the fashion."
"And so mine well may," said Desborough, "ay, and overturned too, since my bed last night was turned upside down, and I was placed for ten minutes heels uppermost, and head downmost, like a bullock going to be shod." "What means this nonsense, Master Bletson? Desborough must have had the nightmare."
The presence of Colonel Everard was as unpleasing to Desborough as to Bletson: but the former having no philosophy in him, nor an idea that it was possible for any man to resist helping himself out of untold money, was chiefly embarrassed by the thought, that the plunder which they might be able to achieve out of their trust, might, by this unwelcome addition to their number, be divided into four parts instead of three; and this reflection added to the natural awkwardness with which he grumbled forth a sort of welcome, addressed to Everard.
And it was hard to say, whether the seat of Learning, Religion, and Loyalty, as it is called by Clarendon, was more vexed by the rapine of Desborough, the cold scepticism of Bletson, or the frantic enthusiasm of the Fifth-Monarchy Champion.
Of the first interruption by the wife of the prisoner the Governor had taken no notice; but on this repetition of the expression of her feelings he briefly summoned, in the absence of the Adjutant, the sergeant-major of the regiment to his side. "Sergeant-major Bletson, I desire that, in future, on all occasions of this kind, the women of the regiment may be kept out of the way. Look to it, sir!"
Bletson a true-blue Commonwealth's man, one of Harrison's Rota Club, with his noddle full of new fangled notions about government, the clearest object of which is to establish the tail upon the head; a fellow who leaves you the statutes and law of old England, to prate of Rome and Greece sees the Areopagus in Westminster-Hall, and takes old Noll for a Roman consul Adad, he is like to prove a dictator amongst them instead.
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