"By assuming feigned characters and names."
"Your purpose was to join Clarke?"
"I am not at liberty to answer that question," replied the prisoner. "Suffice it, sir, I was travelling through this region on a mission of duty. My purpose was to act against the enemy. So far the charge is true, and only to this extent. I came with no design to pry into the condition of the royal troops; I sought only a successful passage through a contested, though sadly overpowered country."
"You offered no money to Adair," said St. Jermyn again, as if insisting on this point of exculpation, "but what you have already called a moderate requital for his entertainment?"
"None," replied the prisoner—"except," he added, "a guinea, to induce him to release, from some wicked torture, a wolf he had entrapped."
"It will not do," said Colonel Innis, shaking his head at St. Jermyn; and the same opinion was indicated in the looks of several of the court.
"I was at Walter Adair's that night, and saw the gentleman there, and heard all that was said by him; and I am sure that he offered Watty no money," said our little apple-girl, who had been listening with breathless anxiety to the whole of this examination, and who had now advanced to the table as she spoke the words. "And I can tell more about it, if I am asked."
"And who are you, my pretty maid?" inquired Colonel Innis, as he lifted the bonnet from her head and let loose a volume of flaxen curls down upon her neck.
"I am Mary Musgrove, the miller's daughter," said the damsel, with great earnestness of manner, "and Watty Adair is my uncle, by my mother's side—he married my aunt Peggy; and I was at his house when Major Butler and Mr. Horse Shoe Robinson came there."
"And what in the devil brought you here?" said Habershaw gruffly.