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O God! Brocton! My father is taken! And by Brocton!" She spoke aloud in her agitation, and I saw that she was cut to the quick. And I rejoiced, so strange is the human heart, that it was Lord Brocton's name that came in anguish off her tongue. Oh for one blow at the man whose father had harried mine into an untimely grave! In sharp, frosty air sound travels far across the meadows of the Hanyards.
Something about her made me feel a sneak and a traitor even for harbouring such thoughts. From the first she had asked for no help of mine. I had forced it on her, or circumstances had forced me to help her in helping myself, as when I cut our way from Marry-me-quick's cottage. The more I was with her, the better I began to understand Brocton's madness.
"No pliant damsel to rush into his longing arms! He is to be embraced though, my masters, if need be." What this obscure threat might portend, I could not see, but it chimed in with the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the future mattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton's position must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion.
Mistress Waynflete had turned a richer colour at the mention of Brocton's name, but at Kate's words she became scarlet, and for that I vowed I would knock him on the head as ruthlessly as if he were a buck rabbit as soon as I got the chance. She recovered and continued her story, but as it only concerned my share in the day's doings, it is unnecessary to repeat it here.
And because his thin, shadowy, grasping father was a man of much outward substance and burgess for the ancient borough, Jack was cornet in my Lord Brocton's newly raised regiment of dragoons, this day marching with other of the Duke of Cumberland's troops from Lichfield to Stafford.
"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.
There's a bit of fat in this, lads!" A minute later, I was hauled on to my feet. A seared face, with a dab-of-putty nose on it, leered delightedly into mine. "Got you, by G !" he said. I had been captured by Brocton's dragoons. Now we should come to points.
However, though I would have robbed Master Freake willingly enough, my blood being up and he a manifest Hanoverian, I was not going to see Brocton's ruffians rob him, much less kill him. The purse must wait, and when I took it for take it I must God would perchance balance one thing against the other.
I could think of none, nor, on reflection, was one wanted, since both Master Freake and Jack had last night witnessed to the worn-out state of Brocton's horses. Consequently his dragoons would have been sent after the Colonel earlier had they been fit. Their coming, when fit, proved their anxiety to retake him.
The only good thing is we've got a first-rate drill sergeant. He's Brocton's toady, and for that I don't like him, but he does know his business, I must say that for him." "Big-headed man, with a mouth slit up to his left ear?" said I, seizing the welcome opportunity. "How the deuce do you know?" asked Jack, astonished. "He came searching the Hanyards this afternoon for a Jacobite spy, a woman.
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