"Hip! hip! hip! hurray!"
Wearied and dazed with the fatigue of her long vigil, Patience had sunk into a torpor when those shouts, rapidly drawing nearer to the village, roused her from this state of semi-consciousness.
She hardly knew what she had hoped during these past anxious hours: now that the awful certainty had come, it seemed to stun her with the unexpectedness of the blow.
"We've gotten Beau Brocade!"
The village folk turned out in melancholy groups from the parlour of the inn; they too had entertained vague hopes that their hero would emerge unscathed from the perils which encompassed him; to them too the news of his capture came as that of a sad, irretrievable catastrophe. They congregated in small, excited numbers on the village green, their stolid heads shaking sadly at sight of the squad of soldiers, who were bringing in a swathed-up bundle of humanity, smothered about the head in a scarlet coat, and with hands and legs securely strapped down with a couple of military belts. Only the fine brown cloth coat, the beautifully-embroidered waistcoat and silver-mounted pistol proclaimed that miserable, helpless bundle to be the gallant Beau Brocade.
The soldiers themselves were in a wild state of glee; they had carried their prisoner in triumph all the way from the Heath, and had never ceased shouting until they had deposited him on the green. Owing to the unusual hour, and to the absence of His Honour, Squire West, the pinioned highwayman was to be locked up in the pound until noon.
In the small private parlour of the Packhorse Patience had sat rigid as a statue, while those shouts of triumph seemed to strike her heart as with a hammer. Her fist pressed against her burning mouth, she was making desperate efforts to smother the scream of agony which would have rent her throat.
But with one bound John Stich was soon out of the Packhorse, where he, too, with aching heart and mind devoured with anxiety, had watched and waited through the night.
It did not take him long to reach the green, and using his stalwart elbows to some purpose, he quickly made a way for himself through the small crowd and was presently looking down on the huddled figure which lay helpless on the ground.
There was the Captain's fine brown coat sure enough, with its ample, silk-lined, full skirts, and rich, cut-steel buttons; there was the long, richly-embroidered waistcoat; the lace cuffs at the wrists, and the handsome sword-belt, through which the finely-chased silver handle of the pistol still protruded. But John Stich had need but to cast one glance at the hands, and another at the feet encased in rough countryman's boots, to realise with a sudden, wild exultation of his honest heart that in some way or other his Captain had succeeded in once more playing a trick on his pursuers, and that the man who lay there muffled on the ground was certainly not Beau Brocade.