formed an acute angle with the village street, when the soldiers, with the brigadier at their head, came trooping slowly through the village on their return journey. Alas! they had no captured outlaws at their bridle; they looked tired, hot, dispirited; their commander was swearing lustily, after the military fashion of the times; and the women of the village, keen-witted enough to guess that the squadron would be in an ill-humor,[47] kept within doors, and satisfied their curiosity by furtive peeps from behind the drapery of their windows.

[47]

The brigadier perceived the lieutenant, called “Halt,” in a guttural voice, to his men, and proceeded to unfold his grievances, with a plentiful interlarding of strange oaths.

It was the old story that Tregenna knew so well: nobody had seen the smugglers; nobody had heard them; nobody had the least idea that there were such people about, or could give a suggestion as to the way they had gone.

“Ods my life, sir, we got to the river through following what I took for their trail; but there was no bridge, and I knew no means of getting across it, since the water appeared to be high and the stream swift. So, sir, the d——d rascals may e’en be at t’other end of the county by this, and curse me if I see how they’re to be got at, when every wench and every child in the place is on their side—damme!”

While he thus railed on, Tregenna became suddenly aware that he had an attentive listener in the person of the respectable-looking woman with the basket, who had evidently followed[48] the lieutenant down the hill, and who now stood close to the bridle of the brigadier’s charger, whose nose she presently began to caress with her broad brown hand.

[48]

The brigadier, incensed by what he considered a piece of gross impertinence on the part of one of the country-folk, drew back his horse with a jerk, and uttered an oath, bursting the next moment into a not very refined reproof for her temerity. The woman remained however entirely unmoved by it, and as the horse retreated, she followed him up, until she again stood close to the bit he was champing.

“May I make so bold as give him a drink of water, sir?” asked she, in a pleasant, deep voice, with less of the rough country accent than one would have expected from her. “Sure you’ve had a long, hard ride, and one should be merciful to one’s beast.”

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