The crowd had scattered and its soberer members now clustered in small knots with a desperate effort at nonchalance. Opposite the inn door horsemen had halted, and the leader, a tall man with the black military cockade in his hat, was looking sternly at the group, till his eye caught the Methody. “Ha! Sewell,” he cried, and the Methody, stricken into a ramrod, stood erect before him.
“These are recruits of ours?” he asked. “You have explained to them the new orders?”
“Sir,” said the ramrod, raising his voice so that all could hear, “I have explained, as in dooty bound, and I ’ave to report that, though naturally disappointed, they bows to orders, all but a gypsy rapscallion, of whom we be well quit. I ’ave likewise to report that Bill and me ’as been much assisted by this gentleman you sees before you, without whom things might ’ave gone ugly.”
The tall soldier’s eyes turned towards Alastair and he bowed.
“I am in your debt, sir. General Oglethorpe is much beholden to you.”
“Nay, sir, as a soldier who chanced upon a difficult situation I had no choice but to lend my poor aid.”
The General proffered his snuffbox. “Of which regiment?”
“Of none English. My service has been outside my country, on the continent of Europe. I am born a poor Scottish gentleman, sir, whose sword is his livelihood. They call me Maclean.”
General Oglethorpe looked up quickly. “A most honourable livelihood. I too have carried my sword abroad—to the Americas, as you may have heard. I was returning thither, but I have been intercepted for service in the North. Will you dine with me, sir? I should esteem your company.”
“Nay, I must be on the road,” said Alastair. “Already I have delayed too long. I admire your raw material, sir, but I do not covet your task of shaping it to the purposes of war.”
The General smiled sourly. “In Georgia they would have been good soldiers in a fortnight. Here in England they will be still raw after a year’s campaigning.”
They parted with elaborate courtesies, and looking back, Alastair saw what had five minutes before been an angry mob falling into rank under General Oglethorpe’s eye. He wondered what had become of Ben the Gypsy.
Flambury proved but a short two-hours’ journey. It was a large village with a broad street studded with ancient elm trees, and, as Alastair entered it, that street was thronged like a hiring fair. The noise of human voices, of fiddles and tabrets and of excited dogs, had greeted him half a mile off, like the rumour of a battlefield. Wondering at the cause of the din, he wondered more when he approached the houses and saw the transformation of the place. There were booths below the elm trees, protected from possible rain by awnings of sacking, where ribbons and crockery and cheap knives were being vended. Men and women, clothed like mummers, danced under the November sky as if it had been May Day. Games of chance were in progress, fortunes were being spae’d, fairings of gingerbread bought, and, not least, horses sold to the accompaniment of shrill cries from stable boys and the whinnyings of startled colts and fillies. The sight gave Alastair a sense of security, for in such an assemblage a stranger would not be questioned. He asked a woman what the stir signified. “Lawk a mussy, where be you borned,” she said, “not to know ’tis Flambury Feast-Day?”
The Dog and Gun was easy to find. Already the darkness was falling, and while the street was lit with tarry staves, the interior of the hostelry glowed with a hundred candles. The sign was undecipherable in the half light, but the name in irregular letters was inscribed above the ancient door. Alastair rode into a courtyard filled with chaises and farmers’ carts, and having with some difficulty found an ostler, stood over him while his horse was groomed, fed and watered. Then he turned to the house, remembering Mr. Kyd’s recommendation to the landlord. If that recommendation could procure him some privacy in this visit, fortunate would have been his meeting with the laird of Greyhouses.
The landlord, discovered not without difficulty, was a lusty florid fellow, with a loud voice and a beery eye. He summoned the traveller into his own parlour, behind the taproom, from which all day his bustling wife directed the affairs of the house. The place was a shrine of comfort, with a bright fire reflected in polished brass and in bottles of cordials and essences which shone like jewels. The wife at a long table was mixing bowl after bowl of spiced liquors, her face glowing like a moon, and her nose perpetually wrinkled in the task of sniffing odours to detect the moment when the brew was right. The husband placed a red-cushioned chair for Alastair, and played nervously with the strings of his apron. It occurred to the traveller that the man had greeted him as if he had been expected, and at this he wondered.
The name of Mr. Kyd was a talisman that wrought mightily upon the host’s goodwill, but that goodwill was greater than his powers.
“Another time and the whole house would have been at your honour’s service,” he protested. “But today—” and he shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, you shall have a bed, though I have to lie myself on bare boards, but a private room is out of my power. We’ve but the three of them, and they’re all as throng as a beehive. There’s Tom Briggs in the Blue Room, celebrating the sale of his string of young horses—an ancient engagement, sir; and there’s the Codgers’ Supper in the Gents’ Attic, and in Shrewsbury there’s five pig dealers sleeping on chairs. That’s so, mother?”
“Six in Shrewsbury,” said the lady, “and there’s five waiting on the Attic, as soon as the Codgers have supped.”
“You see, sir, how I’m situated. You’ll have a good bed to yourself, but I fear I must ask you
