What had happened? Why, this.—
After the fiasco in Talland Cove Captain Arbuthnot had formed up his Dragoons and given the word to ride back to Bodmin Barracks, their temporary quarters, whence Mr. Smellie had summoned them.
He was in the devil of a rage. From the Barracks to Talland Cove is a good fourteen miles as the crow flies, and you may allow another two miles for the windings of the road (which, by the way, was a pestilently bad one). To ride sixteen miles by night, chafing all the while under the orders of a civilian, and to return another sixteen, smarting, from a fool's errand, is (one must admit) excusably trying to the military temper. Smellie, to be sure, and Smellie alone, had been discomfited. Smellie's discomfiture had been so signally personal as to divert all ridicule from the Dragoons. Smellie, moreover, had made himself confoundedly obnoxious.
Smellie had given himself airs during the ride from Bodmin; and Captain Arbuthnot had with an ill grace submitted to them, because the fellow knew the country. They were quit of him now; but how to find the way home Captain Arbuthnot did not very well know. He rode forward boldly, however, keeping his eyes upon the stars, and steering, so far as the circuitous lanes would allow him, north by west.
Bearing away too far to the right, as men are apt to do in the darkness, he missed the cross-ways by Ashen-cross, whence his true line ran straight through Pelynt; and after an hour or so of blind-man's-buff in a maze of cornfields, the gates of which seemed to hide in the unlikeliest corners, emerged upon a fairly good high road, which at first deceived him by running west-by-north and then appeared to change its mind and, receding through west, took a determined southerly curve back towards the coast. In short, Captain Arbuthnot had entirely lost his bearings.
Deciding once more to trust the stars, he left the high road, struck due north across country again and by and by found himself entangled in a valley bottom beside the upper waters of the same stream which Gunner Sobey had forded two hours before and some miles below. The ground hereabouts was marshy, and above the swamp an almost impenetrable furze-brake clothed both sides of the valley. The Dragoons fought their way through, however, and were rewarded, a little before dawn, by reaching a good turf slope and, at the head of it, a lane which led them to the small village of Lanreath.
The inhabitants of Lanreath, aroused from their beds by the tramp of hoofs and with difficulty persuaded that their visitors were not the French, at length directed Captain Arbuthnot to the village inn, the "Punchbowl," where he wisely determined to bait and rest his horses, which by this time were nearly foundered. Being heavy brutes, they had fared ill in the morass, and the most of them were plastered with mud to their girths.
The troopers, having refreshed themselves with beer, flung themselves down to rest, some on the settles of the inn-kitchen, others on the benches about the door, and others again in the churchyard across the road, where they snored until high day under the curious gaze of the villagers.
So they slept for two hours and more; and then, being summoned by trumpet, mounted and took the road again, the most of them yet heavy with slumber and not a few yawning in their saddles and only kept from nodding off by the discomfort of their tall leathern stocks.
In this condition they had proceeded for maybe two miles, when from a by-lane on their left a horseman dashed out upon the road ahead, reined up, and, wheeling his horse in face of them, stood high in his stirrups and waved an arm towards the lane by which he had come.