"Deminus Coristinus, mulier non est responsibilis pro suis ectionibus. Facit et credit omnia qua mendet enimel mertuus."
"Eheu domine!" replied the lawyer; "sic est vita dolorosa!"
Bridesdale was all lit up, and the front door was open to receive the soaked wayfarers, but no one could be induced to enter it. Mr. Terry asked Honoria to leave his dry suit and a pair of shoes at the kitchen, when he would take them to the carriage house, and change there. The lawyer and the detective had no dry suit, so Mrs. Carruthers brought them some of her husband's clothes, and two umbrellas, under which they carried their bundles, wrapped in bath towels, to the place the veteran had chosen. While the three drawing-room guests stripped, rubbed themselves down with the grateful towels, and put on their dry attire, the kitchen filled up with the humid and steaming Pilgrims, Rufus, the idiot boy, and his mother. Constable Rigby lodged his prisoner on some straw in an empty stall in the stable, and, producing a pair of handcuffs, which he had left there, secured him, fastening also a stall chain round one of his legs with a padlock. The constable was severe, but he had lost two prisoners the previous day, had been abused by Sylvanus Pilgrim, and was very wet and tired. To the credit of Sylvanus be it said, that he came out with Ben Toner's clothes, and lent them to his elderly rival, and actually carried the corporal's wet garments into the kitchens, there to hang with a large assortment of others, drying before the two stoves, in full blast for the purpose. The gum coats had fairly protected the clothes of Matilda and Monty, but their feet needed reclothing, and it took some time to dry their heads. Maguffin had taken off his wet things, and was asleep in the loft bed, keeping one ear open for the safekeeping of the colonel's horses. Tryphena and Tryphosa were both up; and into their hands Rufus consigned the dripping habiliments of their two admirers as well as his own, his fraternal relation allowing him to appear before the ladies of the kitchen in a long white garment with frills that had never been constructed for a man. "Guess it ain't the last time you'll have to dry them clothes, gals," said the sportive Rufus, skipping along in his frilled surplice, when Tryphena chased him out of the apartment with a sounding smack between the shoulders. Tryphena hesitated to send the mad woman into the room in which Serlizer was sleeping, not knowing the nature of their relations at the Select Encampment. Matilda, however, evidenced no intention of retiring, or feeling of drowsiness. She talked, with the brightness and cheerfulness of other days, and in a gentle, pleasant voice, but on strange wild themes that terrified the two young women. Monty looked at the fire and then at Tryphosa, saying: "I hain't a goin' to light no more fires no more." "Why?" asked Tryphosa, and the answer came, which revealed a genuine working of the intellect: "'Cos Sylvy says hit's wicked." His mother turned, and said: "Monty, you must not mind what Sylvanus says or anybody else; you must mind what he says."
The boy looked his mother full in the face, and replied in a very decided tone, "Hi'm blowed hif I do!"
In the forepart of the house, only the ladies were up. The doctor and the colonel, the captain and the Squire, slept the sleep of tired men with good consciences, and the wounded dominie was enjoying a beautiful succession of rose-coloured dreams, culminating in a service, at which a tall soldierly man in appropriate costume gave away into his hand that of a very elegant and accomplished lady, saying, as he did so, "Can I do less for the heroic saver of her uncle's life?" Mr. Terry's appearance, on entering to salute his daughter, exacted no remark. The lawyer looked somewhat bucolic, but highly respectable. But poor little Mr. Bangs was buried in clothing, and tripped on his overflowing trowser legs, as he vainly strove to put his right hand outside of its coatsleeve, for the purpose of shaking hands with the company. Mrs. Carmichael took pity on him, and turned back his cuffs, and, his hands being thus of use to him, he employed them to do the same with the skirts of his trousers. The usually polite veteran took Coristine to a corner of the room, and, between violent coughs of suppressed laughter, said: "Och, Misther Coristine, it's the dumb aguey I'll be havin' iv his clawthes is not droied soon. It's Bangs by name he is and bangs by natur'. Shure, this bangs Banagher, an' Banagher bangs the world." The young ladies had not yet entered the apartment, and the three night-watchers were busy relating to the three matrons the terrible events of the night. The lawyer was sitting with his back to the door, conversing with Mrs. Carruthers, when Miss Carmichael came tripping in, followed by Miss Du Plessis and Miss Halbert. The lawyer's hair was brown, and so was her uncle's. The coat was the Squire's, and the white collar above it. So she slipped softly up to the back of the chair, took the brown head between her hands, and administered a salute on the forehead, with the words: "Why, Uncle John!—," then suddenly turned and fled, amid the laughter of the veteran and his daughter, and the amused blushes and smiles of her mother. The other young ladies came forward and joined in the conversation, but Miss Carmichael did not show her face until the family was summoned for prayers. The colonel came down in his usual urbane smiling way, saying that he had taken the liberty of looking in upon his dear friend and prisoner, and was rejoiced to find that he had spent a good night. The captain could be heard descending the staircase, and telling somebody that he was becalmed again with a spell of foul weather. The somebody was the Squire, who insisted that thieves had been through his wardrobe, and then eagerly asked for news from the encampment. All were shocked beyond measure when they heard of the terrible tragedy. "I wished the man no good," said the Squire, with a regretful expression on his manly face, "but, if he had been ten times the deep dyed villain he was, I couldn't have dreamt of such an awful fate for him." The captain remarked that in the midst of life we are in death, that the ways of Providence are mysterious, and that where a man makes his bed he must lie down, all of which he considered to be good Scripture and appropriate to the occasion. "Yoah fohce met with no moah casualties, I hope, Captain Bangs? I do not see our fishing friend, Mr. Bigglethorpe; is he safe, suh?" These questions led to an account of the fisherman's heroic attempt to release the self-imprisoned occupants of the underground passage, of his wounds, and of the subsequent exploits of the lawyer and the detective. Coristine escaped upstairs to put himself in shape for breakfast, and to visit his wounded friend. He found that gentleman progressing very favourably, and perfectly satisfied with his accommodation.
After morning prayers, conducted by the Squire with unusual solemnity, the lawyer asked Miss Carmichael if she alone would not shake hands with him, making no allusion to any previous encounter. She complied, with a blush, and seemed pleased to infer that the Captain, above all, had not heard of her mistake. The two had no time for explanations, however, as, at the moment, Messrs. Errol and Perrowne, who had been told there was a fire out towards the Lake Settlement, came in to learn about it, and were compelled to sit down and add something substantial to their early cup of coffee. They reported the rain almost over, and the fire, so far as they could judge from the distance, the next thing to extinguished. Once more the trays were in requisition for the invalids, and again the colonel and Mr. Perrowne acted as aids to Miss Du Plessis and Miss Halbert. Just as soon as he could draw her attention away from the minister, Coristine remarked to Miss Carmichael: "I have the worst luck of any man; I never get sick or wounded or any other trouble that needs nursing." The young lady said in a peremptory manner, "Show me your hands;" and the lawyer had to exhibit two not very presentable paws. She turned them palms up, and shuddered at the scorched, blistered and scratched appearance of them. "Where are Mr. Errol's gloves I put on you?"
"In the pocket of my wet coat in the kitchen."
"Why did you dare to take them off when I put them on?"
"Because I was like the cat in the proverb, not that I was after mice you know, but I couldn't fire in gloves."
"Well, your firing is done now, and I shall expect you to come to me in the workroom, immediately after breakfast, to have these gloves put on again. Do you hear me, sir?"