“It is nobody,” replied the comrade of the soldier who had given the challenge:—“this is the second time thou hast been fooled to-night.”
“Thou art the fool, deaf dunderhead, and wouldst not hear a troop of horse till they were down on thee:—what dost thou know of the wars, bumpkin? I tell thee I heard a horse at the far end of yon lane as clear as I hear thy clapper; and there may be royal troopers closer than we think for. Dost mind? when I fire, take to thy scrapers, and join the post at the barn.”
“Well, call me bumpkin as you will, you may be right: I warn’t thinking about horses, nor listening, you see. Your ears are sharp enough for both;—a plague o’ the Parliament folk;—I was thinking about them pretty bodies that wear white caps and yellow kerchiefs. I was to ha’ been wed, man, at Michaelmas, but for all this to do about the litia: what’s the King done to me?”
“Why you talk like a fool: hold your tongue.—Who goes there?” again roared the old musketeer,—but Juxon kept a breathless silence.—“You talk like a fool. Pay is pay, and victuals victuals, and one side as good as t’ other; and ours will be the best for booty, man.”
“Booty! what’s that?”
“Why you must be a queer simpleton not to know: why money, and plate, and rich gear, and wines, and grub of all sorts; all’s fish that comes to net, man: that’s the best part of a soldier’s life.”
“Why what’s he got to do with them things, if they beynt his’n?”
“Beynt his’n!” said the old soldier with a tone of contempt: “why make ’em his’n.”
“Why that’s what I call plain picking and stealing; and it’s taught in the Catechiz that you musn’t do that.”
“Ay, that’s all very well for brats at a parson’s village school; but that wo’n’t do for them that know better. Besides, the Catechiz, as you call it, is no good now; it’s all wrong foundation.”