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"What! knowing, as I did, that the traitor Desborough had concealed in his canoe a prisoner on parole nay, worse, a deserter from our service with a view of conveying him out of the country?" "How did you know it?" "Because I at once recognized him, through the disguise in which he left the hut, for what he was. That discovery made, there remained but one course to pursue."
"Was I? It is necessary to keep that sort of girl at arm's length; she would become intolerable if you didn't. Thank goodness, we have seen the last of her. Now, come and sit down here and have a talk. What shall we do this afternoon, Rose? Only two more days! What do you want to do most?" "Clare and Lady Desborough are coming back to tea," suggested Rose, with a laugh.
"Whew!" said Sam. "We are going to have some of the old-fashioned work over again. Let us hope Desborough will get hold of them before they come this way." "Some of our fellow-countrymen," said Halbert, "are, it seems to me, more detestably ferocious than savages, when they once get loose." "Much of a muchness no better, and perhaps no worse," said Sam.
He then read aloud, and as he named the parties one by one, he added a short commentary on each name, addressed, indeed, to Alice, but in such a tone that showed he cared not for its being heard by the soldier. "Desborough the ploughman Desborough as grovelling a clown as is in England a fellow that would be best at home like an ancient Scythian, under the tilt of a waggon d n him.
He was sober and measured in his speech, and it was seldom, even in the bosom of his own family, that he would speak of the scenes which he had taken part in, or of the great men, Fleetwood and Harrison, Blake and Ireton, Desborough and Lambert, some of whom had been simple troopers like himself when the troubles broke out.
"Old Chaucer, sir, hath told us the real moral on't He was an old frequenter of the forest of Woodstock, here" "Chaser?" said Desborough; "some huntsman, belike, by his name. Does he walk, like Hearne at Windsor?"
Lord Beverdale contented himself with rallying his fair guest on the becomingness of "good works." But he continued, "You're offering a dreadful example to these ladies, Miss Desborough, and I know I shall never hereafter be able to content them with any frivolous morning amusement at the Priory. For myself, when I am grown gouty and hideous, I know I shall bloom again as a district visitor."
"But I understood you to say," said Miss Desborough, with an impatient flash of eye, "that your grandfather wished to be buried with his kindred in the north?" "Ay, miss," said the girl apologetically, "an naw 'ees savit th' munny. Abbut e'd bean tickled 'ad 'ee knowed it! Dear! dear! 'ee niver thowt et 'ud be gi'en by stranger an' not 'es ownt fammaly."
The same relation furnished Desborough's address to Mrs. Blanchflower, and a letter from the lady reached him: "I have no reproaches to make, excepting that I am sorry you should think that we would pursue you." Desborough wrote back: "I cannot do more than guess the accusation you lay against me. I acted as I thought was best, and I give you my word that I would die before hurting you or yours.
In another instant Dinah had rushed to a window, which seemed to be on the same side of the house as the voices namely, at the back; and, in the narrow court below, she saw Lord Desborough, the Master Builder, her brother, and Reuben, all clustered together, with ladders and ropes, and all calling aloud to those within to show themselves.