"You don't mean to say you were there, sir!" The Sergeant took his hand from Hopper's shoulder, and went round to see whether he was joking.
"To be sure I was, as large as life, and twice as natural! Had a holiday, as you know, and got leave off from dinner. Mother Muggridge gave me grub enough to go to Halifax. I had been meaning to go there ever so long, because everybody seems to funk it so. Why there's nothing there to be afraid of: though it makes you look about a bit. And you aren't sorry to come out of it."
"Did you tell Mr. Penniloe, you had been there, Master Hopper?"
"Sergeant, do you see any green in my eye?" Horatio dropped his pen, and enlarged the aperture of one eye, in a style very fashionable just then, but never very elegant.
"No sir, I can't answer fairly that I do. And I don't believe there ever was much, even when you was a babby."
"Mum's the word, you see then—even to old Muggridge, or she might be fool enough to let out. But I say, Sergeant, I've got a little job for you to do. Easy enough. I know you won't refuse me."
"No sir, that I won't. Anything whatever that lays in my power, Master Hopper."
"Well, it's only this—just to come with me to-morrow—half-holiday, you know, and I can get off, plum-duffs—always plum-duffs on a Saturday, and you should just see Pike pitching into them—and we'll give the afternoon to it, and examine Blackmarsh pretty thoroughly."
"Blackmarsh, Master Hopper! The Forbidden land—where Sir Robert upon his black horse, and forty hounds in full cry before him, may be seen and heard, sweeping through the air, like fiends!"
"Oh, that's all my eye, and Betty Martin! Nobody believes that, I should hope. Why Sergeant, a man who knows all about Xerxes, and has taken half the capitals in Europe—oh, I say, Sergeant, come, you are not afraid now, and a fellow of sixteen, like me, to go there all by myself, and stop—well, nearly half-an-hour!"