So low and quick had been questions and answers that the bewildered Sergeant and his soldiers had not succeeded in catching the meaning of the words, but Sir Humphrey's final eager whisper, "Your hand!" reached Jack Bathurst's sensitive ear. The look too in the Squire of Hartington's face had already enabled him to guess the purport of the brief colloquy.
"Nay, Sir Humphrey Challoner," he said loudly, "but 'tis not a marketable commodity you are offering to this lady for sale. I'll break your silence for you. What is the information that you would impart to these gallant lobsters? ... That besides being my mother's son I am also the highwayman, Beau Brocade!"
"No! no! no!" protested Patience, excitedly.
"Odd's my life!" quoth the Sergeant, "but methought..."
"Aye, Beau Brocade," said Sir Humphrey, with a sneer, "robber, vagabond and thief, that's what this ... gentleman means."
"Faith! is that what I meant?" retorted Jack Bathurst, lightly. "I didn't know it for sure!"
But with a wild cry Patience had turned to the Sergeant.
"It's a lie, Sergeant!" she repeated, "a lie, I tell you. This gentleman is ... my friend ... my..."
"Well, whichever you are, sir," quoth the Sergeant, turning to Beau Brocade decisively, "rebel, lord or highwayman, you are my prisoner, and," he added roughly, for many bitter remembrances of the past two days had surged up in his stolid mind, "and either way you hang for it."
"Aye! hang for it!" continued Sir Humphrey, savagely. "So, now methinks, my chivalrous young friend, that we can cry quits at last. And now, Sergeant," said his Honour, peremptorily, "that you've found out the true character of your interesting prisoner, you can restore me my letters, which he caused you to filch from me."