It was perhaps an hour later, and Dick was on the point of going home, when the silence of the night was again broken by the sharp ringing clatter of hoofs. The sergeant and his three men returned, a white mist rising from their horses' backs.
"We caught the carriage," said the sergeant, as he rode up, "but 'twas empty as a sucked egg. The driver said he'd lost his way on the moor coming from Truro, and was going on home to Redruth. Have you seen anything?"
"Not a thing," replied one of the troopers at the door.
"Well, we must search the inn. What a miserable fool I was not to ask that young feller if there was any one in the carriage when he saw it!"
Dick hesitated for a moment. Should he tell what he knew? A French prisoner was an enemy of his country; might it not be his duty to help the dragoons to capture him? But reflecting that the man might be nothing worse than a smuggler, in which case to inform against him would only embitter the inimical feeling of the villagers against him, besides being an ungracious act in itself, he decided to say nothing.
After a long-continued knocking and the expenditure of much abusive language, Doubledick once more opened the door.
"Ye'll gie me the rheumatiz and send me to my grave," he said with a whine. "What be ye rampin' men o' war wantin' now?"
"We're going to search your inn for that there mounseer, my fine feller, and you'd best take it quiet, or you'll find yourself strapped to one of our hosses and carried with all your bones a-rattling afore the Colonel."
"Search, if ye must. Name it all, why should I hinder 'ee! Turn the inn topsy-versy, ye'll find nothing but maybe a rat or a cockroach."
The sergeant and two of the troopers entered. They searched the tap-room, the inn-parlour, kitchen, cellars, bedrooms, lofts; rummaged cupboards, empty barrels, a clock-case, the copper in the scullery, an overturned water butt in the backyard; all to no purpose.