“And that’s the whole of it,” he concluded, “except that if I hadn’t stayed behind to tidy Moon’s garret up a bit he’d have been worse off than I.”
The parson, with a very grave face, drew a chair up opposite Monjoy, and they continued to talk low and earnestly.
* * * * *
At a little after eleven that morning there appeared in Wadsworth an object the like of which had never before entered the hamlet. It was a single-horse, yellow chaise, with an extra horse for tracing, and it was followed up the steep street by an officer leading his horse and a company of redcoats. In the chaise Cope sat nursing one foot.
There was no smile on his face now. He had (so it was afterwards said) stumped raging about his room throughout the night, cursing, gnawing his nails, and spitting like a cat when any approached him. It seemed he had calculated confidently on the stackyard. He now sat in the yellow chaise like some ugly nodding idol, biting the edge of his forefinger unceasingly, and nesting his foot. The procession reached the square. The redcoats did not pile arms; they formed up four deep in front of the “Gooise,” and detachments were told off by Captain Ritchie to begin the searching immediately. Another party was sent off to reconnoitre the mountainous Scout; and the yellow chaise, with the supervisor in it, remained drawn up before the inn door. When Jeremy Cope took command in person matters were to be expedited.
At a little after one o’clock Pim o’ Cuddy, who for the last two hours had hidden and rehidden and hidden again his brass kettle down the spout of which sixpences would go (the verger seemed now to think the very possession of money a crime), was taken in the guilty act of putting back the kettle into its original hiding-place. He was haled before Cope, and there he fell and grovelled on the ground before the redoubtable dwarf.
“What’s this?” Cope snapped, tearing at his finger with his teeth.
The soldier displayed the kettle.
“Well, and what o’ that?” yelped Cope. “Curse your clumsy limbs, find the red man! His jade of a wife was here yesterday—it’s odds she’s not playing the same trick twice—skip, ye hamfaced fool! Set your heel on that worm first—skip!”
The Scout shimmered in the heat, and spots of red straggled here and there among the bracken and birches and teazels. Besides these, many dark figures moved and clustered, Wadsworth men, Horwick men, men from Booth and Brotherton and Back o’ th’ Mooin. Down in the village the search-parties slowly ascended the street and began in the square and the houses that stood back; and Cope still gnawed at his finger in the yellow chaise, now and then striking the wood with his fist in his mortification.