In this mood of content he came after midday to a large village on the borders of Stafford and Shropshire, where he halted for a crust and a jug of ale. The place was so crowded that he judged it was market day, and the one inn had a press about its door like the visiting hours at a debtors’ prison. He despaired of forcing an entrance, so commissioned an obliging loafer to fetch him a tankard, while he dismounted, hitched his bridle to the signpost, and seated himself at the end of a bench which ran along the inn’s frontage.
The ale was long in coming, and Alastair had leisure to observe his neighbours. They were a remarkable crowd. Not villagers clearly, for the orthodox inhabitants might be observed going about their avocations, with many curious glances at the strangers. They were all sizes and shapes, and in every variety of dress from fustian to camlet, but all were youngish and sturdily built, and most a trifle dilapidated. The four men who sat on the bench beside him seemed like gamekeepers out of employ, and were obviously a little drunk. In the throng at the door there were horse-boys and labourers and better-clad hobbledehoys who might have been the sons of yeomen. A raffish young gentleman with a greyhound and with a cock of his hat broken was engaged in an altercation with an elderly fellow who had a sheaf of papers and had mounted a pair of horn spectacles to read them. Through the open window of the taproom floated scraps of argument in a dozen varieties of dialect.
Alastair rubbed his eyes. Something in the sight was familiar. He had seen it in Morvern, in the Isles, in a dozen parts of France and Spain, when country fellows were recruited for foreign armies. But such things could not be in England, where the foreign recruiter was forbidden. Nor could it be enlistment for the English regiments, for where were the bright uniforms and the tuck of drums? The elderly man with the papers was beyond doubt a soldier, but he had the dress of an attorney’s clerk. There was some queer business afoot here, and Alastair set himself to probe it.
His neighbour on the bench did not understand his question. But the raffish young man with the greyhound heard it, and turned sharply to the speaker. A glance at Alastair made his voice civil.
“Matter!” he exclaimed. “The matter, sir, is that I and some twoscore honest men have been grossly deceived. We are of Oglethorpe’s, enlisted to fight the Spaniard in the Americas. And now there is word that we are to be drafted to General Wade, as if we were not gentleman-venturers but so many ham-handed common soldiers. Hark, sir!”
From within the inn came a clatter of falling dishes and high voices.
“That will be Black Benjamin warming to work,” said the young man, proffering a pewter snuffbox in which there remained a few grains of rappee. “He is striving in there with the Quartermaster-Sergeant while I seek to convince Methody Sam here of the deceitfulness of his ways.”
The elderly man, referred to as Methody Sam, put his spectacles in his pocket, and revealed a mahogany face lit by two bloodshot blue eyes. At the sight of Alastair he held himself at attention, for some instinct in him discerned the soldier.
“I ain’t denyin’ it’s a melancholy business, sir,” he said, “and vexatious to them poor fellows. They was recruited by Gen’ral Oglethorpe under special permission from His Majesty, God bless ’im, for the dooty of keeping the Spaniards out of His Majesty’s territory of Georgia in Ameriky, for which purpose they ’as signed on for two years, journeys there and back included, at the pay of one shilling per lawful day, and all vittles and clothing provided ’andsome. But now ’Is Majesty thinks better on it, and is minded to let Georgia slip and send them lads to General Wade to fight the Scotch. It’s a ’ard pill to swallow, I ain’t denyin’ it, but orders is orders, and I ’ave them express this morning from Gen’ral Oglethorpe, who is a-breakin’ the news to the Shropshire Companies.”
One of the drunkards on the bench broke into a flood of oaths which caused Methody Sam to box his ears. “Ye was enlisted for a pious and honourable dooty, and though that dooty may be changed the terms of enlistment is the same. No foul mouth is permitted ’ere, my lad.”
The young gentleman with the greyhound was listening eagerly to what was going on indoors. “Benjamin’s getting his dander up,” he observed. “Soon there will be bloody combs going. Hi! Benjy!” he shouted. “Come out and let’s do the job fair and foursquare in the open. It’s a high and holy mutiny.”
There was no answer, but presently the throng at the door began to fan outward under pressure from within. A crowd of rough fellows tumbled out, and at their tail a gypsy-looking youth with a green bandana round his head, dragging a small man, who had the air of having once been in authority. Alastair recognised the second of the two noncommissioned officers, but while one had protested against oaths the other was filling the air with a lurid assortment. This other had his hands tied with a kerchief, and a cord fastening the joined palms to his knees, so that he presented a ridiculous appearance of a man at his prayers.
“Why hain’t ye trussed up Methody?” the gypsy shouted to the owner of the greyhound.
The sergeant cast an appealing eye on Alastair. There seemed to be no arms in the crowd, except a cudgel or two and the gypsy’s whinger. It was an appeal which the young man’s tradition could not refuse.
“Have patience, gentlemen,” he cried. “I cannot have you prejudging the case. Forward with your prisoner, but first untie these bonds. Quick.”
The gypsy opened his mouth in
