A LOAD OF HAY.
Lieutenant Tregenna was quite prepared to find the gentlemen at Hurst Court in a very merry mood, after the hours which they had spent at the dinner-table since his abrupt departure.
He sent in his message that his business was urgent, and chose to wait in the great hall, with the staghounds sniffing about his ankles, rather than have to discuss small-talk with the ladies, as the old butler wished him to do.
In a few minutes Squire Waldron, not very steady as to gait, or clear as to utterance, came out of the dining-parlor, followed by the brigadier, who was less coherent still.
The news of the murder of the coastguardsman, however, startled them both into sobriety; and the squire made less difficulty than Tregenna had expected about making out a warrant for the apprehension of the one man whom he had tracked down.
“What’s his name, say you?” asked the squire, who had conducted his companions into the study, through the walls of which they could hear the stertorous snoring of the other guests, who had fallen asleep, whether upon or under the table Tregenna could only guess.
“I know only that he is called Tom,” replied Tregenna, who remembered that the parson had uttered that name.
“Ah, then ’twill be ‘Gardener Tom,’ as they call him, as fine a lad as ever you clapped eyes on,” almost sighed the squire, as he began to make out the warrant, not without erasures, in a decidedly ‘after-dinner’ handwriting. “Poor Tom, poor Tom! You will not have him moved to-night, general, and jolt a man in a fever across the marshes to Rye?”
“Egad, squire, since he will certainly be hanged, what signifies a jog more or less to his rascally bonesh?” retorted the brigadier ferociously.
The warrant made out, and the soldiers summoned from the servants’ hall, where they had been regaled by the squire’s command, the lieutenant and the brigadier took leave of their host, and started from the house without loss of time, Tregenna keeping pace on foot with the officer’s charger, while the soldiers followed.