Another and another song succeeded, and, after about an hour spent in this manner, the party separated and retired to rest, while Annie Walton asked herself, with an agitated breast, "What is the meaning of this?" The sensations were new to her, and for more than an hour they banished sleep from her pillow.
[CHAPTER IX.]
We must now change the scene, and without much consideration of the "pathos and bathos delightful to see," must remove the reader from the higher and more refined society of Lord Walton, his sister, and the Earl of Beverley, to the small sanded parlour of the little alehouse in the village. We must also advance in point of time for about three hours, and put the hour-hand of the clock midway between the figures one and two, while the minute-hand is quietly passing over the six. All was still in the place; the soldiery were taking their brief repose, except a sentinel who walked up and down, pistol in hand, at each entrance of the village; and the villagers themselves, having recovered from the excitement caused by the arrival of the party, and the drinking and merriment which followed it, had taken possession of such beds as the troopers left them, and were enjoying the sweet but hard-earned slumber of daily labour.
Two living creatures occupied the parlour of the alehouse: a large tabby cat, which--as if afraid that the mice upon which she waged such interminable and strategetic war might take advantage of her own slumbers to surprise her--had mounted upon a three-legged stool, and was enjoying her dreams in peace, curled up in a comfortable ball; and Captain Barecolt, who, seated in a wooden arm-chair, with his long leg-bones, still in their immemorial boots, stretched upon another, kept watch, if such it could be called, with a large jug of ale beside him, from which he took every now and then deep draughts, for the purpose, as he mentally declared, of "keeping himself awake."
The effect was not exactly such as he expected, for from time to time he fell into a doze, from which a sort of drowsy consciousness of the proximity of the ale roused him up every quarter of an hour, to make a new application to the tankard. At length, feeling that these naps were becoming longer, he drew his legs off the chair, muttering--
"This won't do! I shall have that dried herring, Randal, upon me; I must take a pipe and smoke it out."
And thereupon he moved hither and thither in the parlour, looking for the implements necessary in the operation to which he was about to apply himself. These were speedily found, and a few whiffs soon enveloped him in a cloud as thick as that in which Homer's Jove was accustomed to enshrine himself on solemn occasions; and in the midst of this, the worthy captain continued ruminating upon the mighty deeds he had done and was to do.
He thought over the past, and congratulated himself upon his vast renown; for Captain Barecolt was one of those happy men who have a facility of believing their own fictions. He was convinced that, if he could but count them up, he had performed more feats of valour and slaughtered more bloody enemies than Amadis de Gaul, Launcelot of the Lake, the Admiral de Coligni, or the Duke of Alva. It was true he thought such events soon passed from the minds of great men, being common occurrences with them, so that he could not remember one-half of what he had done, which he only regretted for the sake of society; but he was quite sure that whenever opportunities served he should be found superior to any of the great captains of the age, and that merit and time must lead him to the highest distinction. This led him on to futurity, and he made up his mind that the first thing he would do should be to save the king's life when attacked on every side by fifteen or sixteen horsemen. For this, of course, he would be knighted on the spot, and receive the command of a regiment of horse, with which he proposed to march at once to London, depose the lord mayor, and, proceeding to the Parliament-house, dissolve the Parliament, seize the speaker and twelve of the principal members, and hang Sir Harry Vane. This, he thought, would be work enough for one day; but the next morning he would march out with all the cavaliers he could collect, defeat the Earl of Essex on one side, rout Waller on the other, and then, with his prisoners, proceed to head-quarters, where, of course, he would be appointed general-in-chief, and in that capacity would bring the king to London.
What he would do next was a matter of serious consideration, for, the war being at an end, Othello's occupation was gone; and as, during all this time he had made sundry applications to his friend the tankard, his imagination was becoming somewhat heavy on the wing, so that, in a minute or two after he fell sound asleep, while the pipe dropped unnoticed from his hand, and fractured its collar-bone upon the floor.
He had scarcely been asleep ten minutes when the door of the room slowly opened, and a round head covered with short curls was thrust in, with part of a burly pair of shoulders. The door was then pushed partly open, and in walked a stout man in a good brown coat, who, advancing quietly to the side of Captain Deciduous Barecolt, laid his hand upon his arm. Now, what Captain Barecolt was dreaming of at that moment it is impossible for the author of these pages to tell; but his vision would appear to have been pugnacious, for the instant the intruder's grasp touched his left arm he started up, and, stretching out his right hand to a pistol which lay between the tankard and himself on the table, snatched it up, levelled it at the head of his visiter, and pulled the trigger.