They found three or four of the inferior followers of the court in possession of the public-house; but, though two of them were known to the politic captain, they were not personages whom he chose to trust; and, conveying Mr. Dry to an upper room, he bestowed a small piece of silver upon one of the boys of the place, to run up to Beverley and bring down one Corporal Curtis from his troop. In the mean while, he informed Mr. Dry that it would be as well if he would give up into his secure keeping, to be duly accounted for at an after period, all his worldly goods and chattels, including his tawny-sheathed steel-mounted sword; and, though that worshipful person submitted with but an ill grace to the law of necessity, the pitiless captain employed very searching measures to ascertain that he retained nothing, either on his person or in his saddle-bags, but a decent change of apparel. When this was done, as Corporal Curtis had not yet appeared, Captain Barecolt called for a pottle of good wine, the cost of which he disbursed from Mr. Dry's store, noting it carefully down in a small, dirty memorandum-book, as he sagely remarked that he would have to reckon with that gentleman when they parted. The last cup was in the pottle-pot, and the gallant officer was seriously thinking of calling for more, when a tall, athletic man was ushered in, having some resemblance to Barecolt himself, into whose hands the captain consigned Mr. Dry, with a positive and loud injunction not to lose sight of him even for a moment, and to shoot him through the head if he attempted to escape.
Corporal Curtis promised to obey, saying drily, with a nod at their companion, that he remembered the march from Bishop's Merton; and Barecolt, leaving him in such good hands, mounted his horse and rode off to Beverley. He was kept there for many hours before he could obtain a private audience of Lord Walton; but at the end of that period he was closeted with the young nobleman for a long time, and when their conference was at an end they walked away together to the quarters of Major Randal, where another long private conversation took place. What passed might be difficult as well as tedious to tell; but in the end, towards five o'clock of the afternoon, Captain Barecolt returned to the village, where he had left his captive, accompanied by two stout troopers selected by himself from his own troop; and ascending to the chamber of Mr. Dry, he announced to him, in a tone that admitted of no reply, that he must mount and accompany him at once towards Bishop's Merton.
"I have determined, most worshipful sir," he said, as soon as he had sent Corporal Curtis out of the room, "to see you safe on your way till we are within half-a-day's march of Longsoaken. You will then have the goodness to give an order for the payment of your ransom to one of my friends, who will rejoin us when he has received it, and then I will set you free."
"How do I know you will do that?" demanded Dry, of Longsoaken, in a sullen tone.
"By making use of your common sense, Mr. Dry," replied Captain Barecolt. "Could I not hang you now if I liked it? Can I not hang you now if it pleases me? Will I not hang you now if you affect to doubt the honour of a gentleman and a soldier? So no more on that score, but descend, mount, and march--as you needs must."
There was no remedy And Mr. Dry obeyed, with vague hopes indeed of making his escape by some fortunate accident on the way. He argued that, in the distracted state of the country, it was barely possible for Captain Barecolt to pass across a great part of England without either encountering some force of the opposite party or pausing in some town which had espoused the parliamentary cause, and he believed that in either case his liberation must take place. But he little knew the forethought of that great stratagetic mind. Barecolt had furnished himself with correct information regarding the views and feelings of all the places he had to pass; and, instead of taking his way by Coventry and Worcester, he led his little troop direct to Nottingham, Derby, and Shrewsbury, almost in the same course that the king followed shortly after; and at every halting-place Mr. Dry found himself so strictly watched that his hopes declined from hour to hour. He was never left alone, even for a moment, Captain Barecolt himself, or one of the three soldiers who accompanied him, remaining with him night and day. The only chance that seemed left was in meeting with some friends as the party approached Bishop's Merton; but when Mr. Dry remembered that he was totally unarmed, his heart, never the most firm or most daring, felt inconceivably low at the thought of a struggle; and the sanguinary and ferocious conversation of his captor, the list of slain that his arm had sent to their long account, the bloody battles he had seen, and the dire deeds he had done, made him tremble for the result of any attempt to escape.
At length familiar objects began to greet the eyes of Mr. Dry. He saw places and things which he had often seen before, and knew that he must be within one day's journey of Bishop's Merton; and the very feeling revived in some degree his fainting courage. "Surely," he thought, "the people here must have retained their devotion to the good cause." But, alas! as he rode one morning into a town where he had often bought and sold, he beheld a party of Lord Hertford's horse sitting jesting with the girls in the market-place; and the conversation which he heard as he went along showed him that times had changed, and that people had changed with them.
On leading him up, as had been the inviolable custom since they set out, to a high room in the inn, Captain Barecolt, with a stern tone and countenance, told Corporal Curtis to set a soldier at the door, and to suffer no one to enter. Then waving his captive to a seat, he took a stool opposite, and after a solemn pause addressed him thus:--
"Now, worshipful Master Dry, doubtless you have been puzzling the small wits that God has given you to discover how it happens that an officer like myself, high in the king's confidence, has been induced to traverse so great an extent of country, solely for the purpose of receiving from a mechanical and trading person like yourself the pitiful sum of five hundred pounds, which might have been transmitted by various other means; and it is but fitting that you should know the worst. I and other persons of high rank and station have been made acquainted how, on the death of a poor old man, one Sergeant Neil, you rifled his cottage, and possessed yourself, amongst other things, of sundry papers appertaining to a young lady, who for some years has gone under the name of Arrah Neil, and was supposed to be his grand-daughter.--Don't interrupt me. Having brought you thus far, it is necessary to tell you, that besides an order upon some wealthy man at Bishop's Merton for the five hundred pounds before mentioned, which I shall send on by one of my troopers, it is necessary to your safety and liberation that you should furnish Corporal Curtis with an exact statement of where the said papers are to be found in your house at Longsoaken, and with an order to your people there to aid and assist my said corporal in searching for and finding those documents, expressly stating that you have immediate need of them--don't interrupt me--which indeed is the exact truth; for you must know that I have authority, under the hand of competent persons, in case you should show any reluctance to deliver up property belonging to other people, which you have stolen, to hang you upon the branch of a convenient tree in Wilbury Wood, as one taken in arms in open rebellion, otherwise in flagrant delict, worshipful Master Dry. While dinner is getting ready, therefore, you will be good enough to think deliberately over these particulars, and make up your mind as to whether you will like the state of suspense at which I have hinted better than a surrender of that which is not yours."
The varieties of hue which Mr. Dry's countenance had assumed while he listened to this long oration cannot be described here, for the very attempt would require us to go through almost every shade that ever graced a painter's pallet. Captain Barecolt had three times told him not to interrupt him, but it was a very unnecessary caution, as that worthy gentleman was too much confounded and thunderstruck to be able to utter a word; and when at length his captor rose, and, going to the door, conversed with the soldier for a few minutes, he remained in a state of impotent rage, bitterness, and disappointment, which had the curious effect of making him bite his under lip well-nigh through with his teeth.