“Yes, sir. And,” John bethought him, “there was a great row going on at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ and when I came past Poppleby, a whole lot of them come out singing ‘Down with the machines.’”
“That’s more like it, if it was not a mere drunken uproar,” said Sir Harry.
“I suppose you did not know any of the voices?” said one of the other gentlemen.
John could hold his tongue this time. “And you came all this way by night, twenty miles and odd, to warn Captain Carbonel, on your aunt’s information?” said Sir Harry, thoughtfully. “Are you sure that she could hear distinctly?”
“One can hear in her room talk in our garden as well as if it was in the room,” replied John.
“Well! you are a good lad, well intentioned,” said Sir Harry. “Here’s half-a-crown to pay your journey back. We will consider what is to be done.”
John had rather not have taken the half-crown, but he did not know how to say so, so he pulled his forelock and accepted it.
Captain Carbonel came out of the coffee-room with him, and called to the hostler to let him lie down and rest for a couple of hours, when the Red Rover would change horses there, and then call him, and pay for his journey back to Poppleby.
So John lay down on clean straw and slept, too much tired out to put thoughts together, and unaware of the discussion among the gentlemen. For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett’s warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only went by hearsay.
Captain Carbonel, who was, of course, in an agony to get home and defend his property, but was firmly bound by his notions of discipline, argued that the lad was the son of the most disaffected man in the parish, and that his silence was testimony to the likelihood that his father was consulting with the ringleader. The invalid woman he knew to be sensible and prudent, and most unlikely either to mistake what she heard, or to send her nephew on such a night journey without urgent cause, and he asked permission to go himself, if the troop were wanted elsewhere, to defend his home. Finally, just as the debate was warming between the officers, a farmer came in from Delafield, and assured them that all was quiet there. So the horses were brought out, and there was much jingling of equipments, and Johnnie awoke with a start of dismay. He had never thought of such doings. He had only thought of Captain Carbonel’s riding home, never of bringing down what seemed to him a whole army on his father.