"We have had a very narrow squeak for it this time, Percy, old boy."
"Very, Ralph! I would rather go through twenty battles, again, than feel as I felt when I saw you start, and thought that I should never see you again, alive."
"Well, we have no time to lose now, Percy. Have you got your boots on again? If so, let us start at once. The major and men must be very anxious, long before this. It must be full an hour since we came."
"It has been the longest hour I ever passed, Ralph. There now, I am ready, if you are."
"We must go out very quietly, Percy. I have no doubt that they have got sentries posted all about. They know that we are in the neighborhood I wish I knew how many there are of them."
"I found out, from the landlord, that all the fifteen men we saw here were billeted upon him," Percy said. "He told me at first, when I asked him, that he could do nothing for me in the way of a bed, because there were three or four in every room. I said that a stable and a little straw would do for us, very well, and then he thought of this outhouse.
"At the same rate, there must be at least a hundred men in the village."
They now opened the door of the outhouse, went quietly out, and made their way through a garden at the back of the house towards the wood.
"Stand still a few minutes, Percy," Ralph said, in a whisper, "and let us see if we can find out where the sentries are placed. I expect that they form a cordon round the village.
"Lie down by this wall. We can see them, there, and they cannot see us."