"Night, you drunken dolt," replied one of the men. "It's matins by this time, but are you sure that you have not seen a man in a friar's gown? If you lie to me, your ears won't be safe for the next month.
"A man in a friar's gown?" said the piper with a hiccup, "ay, to be sure I did."
"When? Where?" cried the soldiers eagerly.
"Why, in Tamworth, yesterday morning," answered the piper; and one of the men, giving him a smart blow with his fist, told him to go on his way, with no very commendatory valediction.
Playing his part admirably well, the piper reeled down the road, passing two other patroles, each of which stopped and interrogated him, as the other men had done; somewhat more briefly, however, when they found he had been stopped and questioned before. At length, sitting down by the road side, as if his legs refused to carry him farther, when two of his interrogators had just passed on, he waited till they had gone to a little distance, and then plunged into the wood. He soon forced his way on, to one of the lesser paths, but there he stopped to consider, saying to himself--"How shall I make Boyd hear, if he be roaming about? I'll go straight to his house; but this forest is for all the world like a rabbit burrow; and I may be popping out of one hole while he is popping into another, if I cannot contrive to send some messenger to his ears, that will run a few hundred yards on each side of me, at least. I must not try the pipes again, but I will make the belling of a deer. If he hears that at this season of the year, he will be sure to come up to see what's the matter."
Accordingly, by placing his fingers after a fashion of his own upon his lips, he contrived to produce a very accurate imitation of the peculiar call of the deer at certain periods of the year; he continued to emit these sounds from time to time, as he walked on, till at length he heard a rustle in the brushwood near.
"Now that's either a stag," he said to himself, "who, like a young gallant of nineteen, makes love at all times and seasons, and I shall have his horns in my stomach in a minute; or else it is Boyd or one of his men, and I have hit the mark. I must risk the horns, I fancy."
A moment after, a low voice said--
"Who goes there?"
"Sam the piper," answered our good friend, "looking for what he cannot find;" and the next moment, pushing through the shrubs, the tall and powerful form of the woodman stood before him.