"'Slife!" said he, "you killed the fellow with the hatchet! But, captain, concerning that surrounding; I don't like that"——
"Peace!" said the tory; "the first duty you are to learn is, to hold your tongue—the next, to obey." He gave the wild band a signal, and they instantly betook themselves to the bushes, or to hiding-places of which Sterling was ignorant. "This man came to me as a deserter, and was therefore trusted by one who should have been wiser: he has met his fate. You I can trust, because I know you are a doomed man like myself. You must recover your horse."
"Ay, faith; but how?—'Slife! what's the matter now?" he cried, observing his companion start suddenly at what seemed to him the whistle of a wood-robin, and look eagerly from the covert. The sound was repeated once, and once again; and then the refugee, turning to him, said,—
"You must claim him. Get you quickly to the wood-side, and follow on after the others, so as to recover him before they open your saddle-bags."
"Death and the devil! you are joking! What! run my head into the lion's jaws? and just to recover a vagabond horse, that flings me whenever the humour seizes him?"
"If you lose your horse, you lose yourself. We can be burthened by no footmen."
"Footmen? why I see no horses!"
"Ay: but away with you. Seek the men you came with, and return with them to Elsie Bell's."
"God bless my soul!" said Sterling, in alarm; "that young knave Falconer will smoke me in a moment."
"Knock him on the head then."