"—don't like it Jack," he was saying, "no duty for a gentleman and King's officer, we're no damned catchpolls ... word hath come in roundabout way of a Jacobite rebel in these parts.... Two o' my captains out with search parties ... poor devil!"
Slowly the clamour of voices and laughter died away, the candles burned low and lower in their sconces and through a blue haze the Major espied Sir Benjamin asprawl in his chair, his fine coat wine-splashed, his great peruke obscuring one eye, snoring gently. Hard by, Alvaston lay forward across the table, his face pillowed upon a plate, deep-plunged in stertorous slumber while the Colonel, sitting opposite, leaned back in his chair and stared up solemnly at the raftered ceiling. Candles were guttering to their end, the long chamber, the inn itself seemed strangely silent and the broad casement already glimmered with the dawn.
"Jack," said the Colonel suddenly, "'tis odd—'tis devilish odd I vow 'tis, but place feels curst—empty!" The Major glanced around the disordered chamber and shivered. "Jack, here's you and here's me—very well! Yonder's Sir Benjamin and Lord Alvaston—very well again! But question is—where's t'others?"
"Why I think, I rather think George, they're under the table."
Hereupon the Colonel made as if to stoop down and look but thought better of it, and stretching out a foot instead, touched something soft and nodded solemnly:
"B'gad Jack—so they are!" said he and sat staring up at the rafters again while the pallid dawn grew brighter at the window.
"Man Jack," he went on with a beaming smile, "'tis a goodish spell since we had an all-night bout together. Last time I mind was in Brabant at——" The Colonel sat up suddenly, staring through the casement where, in the sickly light of dawn, stood a figure which paused opposite the window to stare up at the sleeping inn, and was gone.
"Refuse me!" exclaimed the Colonel, still staring wide of eye, "Jack—did ye see it?"
"Aye, George!"
"Then Jack if we're not drunk we ought to be—but drunk or no, we've seen a ghost!"