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Updated: June 4, 2025
She set me comfortably before the fire in an elbow-chair, and handed me a new pipe and a fresh paper of tobacco, and insisted on my smoking. Then, sitting almost at my feet in a squat rush-bottomed chair, with quaint bow legs and a back like a yard of ladder, she set to work on the holes Brocton's rapier had made in my coat.
"Remember about Kate," were his last words, whispered eagerly as he loosed my hand and opened me the door. Several rooms opened on the landing, and I noticed that one door was ajar. As I passed the slit of light I caught sight of the sergeant of dragoons, and stopped beyond the door to listen. I heard Brocton's voice, and caught the words, "Egad, I'll e'en try her. Take the best horse available.
"Iphigenia," said I. "Was that the chap?" he said cheerily. "And now I've got you, come along to the house. I've more to tell you than there is in all your silly old Virgil, and it's alive, man, alive, alive. That's why it suits me. Come along, Noll. Lord Brocton's supping and staying with dad, so's Sneyd, and a lot more, and you'll hear all the news.
Soon, perhaps within an hour or two, there would be fighting, and under cover of that a stab in the back or a bullet in the head would clear the Colonel out of Brocton's path for ever. "Take these papers, Master Freake," said I. "Mistress Waynflete will tell you what has happened here, and you can give them back to their owner if you choose.
So I crept back, got a pistol, and stood to the left of the window. I waited till his body darkened the room and then took a furtive look at him. It was no village lover climbing up at peep of dawn to greet his lass. It was one of Brocton's dragoons, one of the five who had been at the Hanyards. In a twink I shot him. Without a word, he slithered down the tiles, leaving a mush of blood-red snow.
His conduct was to me wholly inexplicable. Then, too, there was his obvious understanding with Major Tixall in the matter of the latter's attack on Master Freake. Who was this stranger and why had he incurred Brocton's enmity? Here was a whole string of puzzles awaiting solution. But before I could start the conversation we were again interrupted.
He had learned in Stone that the Colonel had again been taken on ahead towards Newcastle in charge of a troop of Brocton's dragoons under the command of Captain Rigby, "last night's table companion of the dead Major," he explained. "Whatever for?" asked Mistress Waynflete. Master Freake said nothing, but his eyes were troubled, and I knew there was something he would fain conceal.
With a clash the first bullet came through the window and knocked a huge splinter off a bedpost. There were six shots without, and six bullets spattered in a small area opposite. "That's quite good shooting," said the Colonel. "Much better than I expected from such poor stuff." I told him what Jack had said about the mixed quality of Brocton's dragoons.
T'other's a sergeant in my Lord Brocton's dragoons." "Ah, I saw they were hob-and-nob together. A fellow with a ditch in his face you could lay a finger in!" Fortunately for me, the Marquess was busy with a last glass of wine. Here was ill news with a vengeance. I had got out of the smoke into the smother.
"At the 'Ring o' Bells," began Master Freake, addressing me, "you took from my lord Brocton's sergeant, now dead, a bundle of papers?" "Yes, sir." "Among them a letter addressed simply, 'To His Royal Highness'?" "That is so, sir." "You gave that letter to me, unopened, in the presence of Mistress Waynflete?" "I did," said I, and Margaret nodded agreement.
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