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He had pulled on his jacket, but evidently without turning down the sleeves of his shirt, which showed through just beneath his shoulders in two rolls like mock muscles, while a very much battered felt hat, with a flap looped up to form three cocks, was worn jauntily upon his head. "Morning, sir," said the sergeant, looking the boy up and down sharply. "Are you Squire Froy?"
But Waller Froy, only son of the Squire of Brackendene, was not going to wield a twelve-foot fly-rod, tapering and lissom, and suitable for sending a delicate line floating through the air to drop its lure lightly on the surface of the water. Such practices would have been utterly impossible on any part of the woodland rivulet.
"You wouldn't break; you are too soft and inji-rubbery, old chap. Here, you two, set him on his pins again. I am very sorry. Mr Froy, sir, about this ladder, but you see it wasn't my men's fault." "No, of course not," said Waller. "They couldn't help it. Blundering up against the ladder like that! It looks as if he had been drinking."
"To dodge these bloodhounds, as you call them, and give them the slip; and as for old bumpy Gusset, this is his doing, because he's got a spite against father, and if you and I don't serve him out for it, my name's not Waller Froy. Pst!" he whispered, with his lips close to the other's ear. "Don't make a rustle nor a sound," he continued, after whispering for a few moments, "and never stir.
"I am a-doin' of my duty, Master Waller Froy," said the man, swelling up like a turkey-cock, which bird he seemed greatly to resemble as, having found his voice, he began to show his importance, but with no other effect than to make the soldiers grin, while one of them, who had walked out past the sentry and picked up the cocked hat with the muzzle of his musket, now presented it to him.
But though Waller Froy had so many yards of twisted silk upon his winch for the convenience of lowering and winding-in his bait, the tangle of bushes and overhanging boughs necessitated fishing with a tight line, with trust in its strength for the rapid hauling out of the prize.
Then, as he slowly undressed and laid his head upon the pillow, he had one more wandering thought: "Will father do anything more about that poor fellow Boyne?" The next minute Waller Froy had ceased to think, and thought no more till he opened his eyes upon the light of another bright autumn morning. "Father said he would sleep upon it. What will he say to me when we meet?"
Waller nodded his head with satisfaction, and went off to his right out of the kitchen into a cool stone passage, and then through a door into a stone-floored larder, whose wire-covered, ivy-shaded windows gave upon the north. But Waller Froy had no thought for the situation of the larder.
"Well, master," he said, "my lads aren't much of angels, and they can't fly up on to the roof, but they are looking hungry, as fellows as haven't had a bite for the last six hours; so, with your leave, Mr Froy, sir, I will give orders for a flank attack upon that there bread and cheese. Fall in, my lads! Left face! Forward!
I will sleep upon it and see what I think is my duty on the subject to-morrow morning." "Ah," thought Waller Froy, as he went slowly up, candle in hand, to the room from which his prisoner had so lately escaped; and his first act was to pick up the jacket Godfrey Boyne had thrown upon the floor. "Why, I needn't have minded," said Waller to himself.
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