The soldiers being now below, and the few servants first roused sent to fetch food for the sergeant and his men, my father found the stairs and galleries deserted. Pausing at my door, he gently opened it, and hearing the sound of my half-stifled weeping he bid me not check it, saying that it fell well with his scheme.
"Do but as I bid you, my children," said he, "and in less than an hour the poor lad shall be on the road to Bridport; and with Skewbald Meg between his legs 't is pity of the horse and man that would catch him. I can give you no light, for the sentry that is below the window, but you, my little Phil, must make shift to cut away from him those unfashionable curls; and it is little matter for the dark, since the more raggedly you play the barber the better for him; also pull off his great boots, with the gay coat and the waistcoat, and when I return with the real Betty to take his place in the bed, where, I vow, I think she will sleep better than he, I will so clothe him and so raddle his face that his mother would not know him again; and if you must speak in the doing all this, let it be little and in the veriest of whispers." And at this my dear and most wise old father left us, saying aloud, as he shut the door, and with intent to be heard if any were spying upon him: "Get thee to sleep, child. There is no further cause of fear. None shall harm thee."
Silent as mice midway between cat and cheese we fell to doing all that he had bidden us. I was bitterly sorry for the curls, and for the cruel fashion in which my small shears did lop them, but said no word till all was done. And then we sat waiting in the dark, and Ned found my hand and held it, and whispered after a while that he had not yet seen my face; that he doubted it was greatly altered, even as he perceived my body was increased in stature. And he asked me had I grown beautiful as he was used to predict, and I could only answer that I did not think I was fully so foul to look upon as I had been. And he was about getting hot in reply, and even raising his voice a little to vow that I was never that, nor thought he meant I was, and he had for the moment quite forgot to mistress me, as hitherto since I had dragged him headlong through my window, when the door again opened to admit my father, dragging by the arm poor sleep-dazed, blanket-wrapped Betty, who was, I do suppose, from the brief glimpse I caught of her figure as my father did set his candle on the floor without the door, a strange and admirable spectacle. In the darkened room she was mightily amazed, and we must needs thrust her into the bed almost by force, and had well-nigh to gag her mouth before we might check the wheezy thunder that she honored with the delicate title of whispering. Indeed, all this part of our night's adventure had been vastly comical and mirth-provoking had not a life, tenderly dear alike to father and daughter, hung upon our secrecy and despatch. Now Sir Michael had brought with him along with Betty the cast-off clothes of one of the grooms that slept in the garret. And there, still in darkness, we contrived among us to habit Ned in them—foul old broken shoes, a mile too large, which I stuffed with such rags as would keep him from walking out of them; rough woollen stockings, none too clean; his own leathern breeches, which he said were much worn and covered with the dust of all his ride from Oxford, my father did let pass; but the fine long-cloth shirt he would in no manner concede, making him take in its place a filthy clout it was well we could not see as we pulled it over his shorn head. "For," said my father, "there is nothing will so play the traitor to a gentleman disguised as his own linen. The very fabric will still tell tales when the fairness of it has disappeared under the dirt of long use." And then all was done; Ned did take me for a little moment in his arms, when Sir Michael bade him to thrust a hand up the chimney to befoul it with soot, with which, he said, he would have him bedaub face and neck when they had again such light that it might be done in measure and fitness.
"Good-by, Mistress Phil," said he, and "Good-by, dear Ned," said I. My father here slipping quietly out to spy up and down the gallery, and holding the door to behind him, in that last moment I seized Ned's hand, not knowing it was the sooty one, and whispered in his ear: "Why will you be ever throwing mistress at me, dear? Am I not your old friend Phil?" And he: "I did but think, Phil, that so unceremoniously visiting your chamber at night-time, which you know is a thing I never purposed, did call for terms of address more formal than our usage of childhood." Which before I could answer, Sir Michael, satisfied that he was not observed, had him swiftly out in the gallery, my door was closed for the last time that night, and I fell weeping on the bed as if the sun should never shine again.
I slept none of that night, and much of it I wept. But, rising in the sheer idleness of fatigue, when the dawn was well advanced, and chancing to see my face in the mirror, I perceived that I had most plentifully streaked and smeared a tear-wet countenance with the blackness of the soot that had passed in our last moment together from Ned's fingers to mine. Now my eyes and cheeks presented doubtless a spectacle that had moved another to laughter. But from the eyes that alone beheld the figure of ridicule that I was, the thought of how I became so besmirched brought fresh tears, plentiful enough, in all conscience, to have washed it clean of all the grime that face ever carried. But I washed hands and face, and so back to bed, where, worn out, and by this tolerably secure of Ned's evasion, I fell asleep, nor awoke until I was roused somewhat past eight o'clock of the morning.
Meantime to the tale of that same evasion which was, as I supposed, well accomplished. To tell it briefly, my father bade him play the clown as best he could, and, after his face had been cunningly smeared with that same soot, had led him by the back stair to the kitchen; whence, after Sir Michael had joined the soldiers eating and drinking in the great hall, he was sent by the cook, who was in the secret, to bear a dish of some dainty to the company. This, as before arranged, he let fall with a great clatter, bringing Sir Michael down upon him in pretence of anger; who did there, with many a curse on his clumsiness, so cuff him about head and ears, that it set all the redcoats laughing. "Silly varlet!" quoth Sir Michael, "is the cook underhanded that such as you must be fetched from garden and stable to spoil our meat? I warrant men are hanged for less in these days."
To this the seeming yokel blubbered in reply that he did but wish a sight of the soldier gentlemen at meat, which he said in that broad and slurring speech of our country that he could ever from his childhood put on with exact faithfulness to nature. And just here one of the strangers' horses, neighing wearily without, where he was tied to a tree, "Get out," said my father, "and see to those horses. Put them in the stable, and, if there be not room for all, turn some of your own cattle to graze in the park." And as he was going out slowly dragging one loose shoe after the other, one of the soldiers flung a bone at him, and threatened to flog the coat off his back, and the skin to follow it, if he did not rub down and well feed and water each of their borrowed nags.
So to this task he went, with a hundred pounds in gold of my father's in his one pocket that was sound. And five horses he did groom and feed and lodge in that stable, turning three of Sir Michael's out of their places into the park. But one of these, that is, Skewbald Meg, a mare of great hardness of limb and lasting power of wind, though a mean and ewe-necked thing to the eye, he tied, when out of hearing of the sentry on that side of the house, to a tree that stood handy for the direction he must take. He then returned to the stable, and there contrived an appearance of business about the nags, while he concealed upon him a bridle, with which about his waist he at last, having left his lantern burning within, loitered down to Meg in the hollow, where in a trice she was bridled and mounted by as good a horseman and as ill-looking as ever bestrid her lean and mottled ribs. And how he fared in that ride of near upon twenty-five miles to Lyme, and how he was taken safely out of the country by sea, you shall hear when I am come to the letter that came to me out of Holland.
And here this episode of my life may be counted at an end. For my father, having pressed upon his guests both bottle and tankard, until each man made a pillow where his head did strike in falling, and having sent out copious flagons until the sentries lacked little of being in the same case, did in the leisure thus obtained so drill and instruct every waking soul in the house that it was a sure matter that all, in case of need, would have the same story to tell: as, that Sir Michael had no horses but what might now be seen upon the place; that any who thought he had a skewbald mare was vastly mistook; that the scullion that was so roundly cuffed and rated was a half-witted thing from the stable that had now run off in terror of the beating promised him the night before by one of the sergeant's men; and so forth. All that night, as I have said, my father came not near me, thinking there had been enough and to spare already done in that part of the house, and not wishing to arouse any suspicion that might, in the sergeant's muddled head, survive the fumes of the wine. But between eight and nine of the clock Sir Michael knocked loudly at my door, asking, so that all might hear if they would, how I did, had I slept, and so forth. Then in a little voice he bade me tell Betty to keep her bed, to remember she was yet very sick, and that I should hide Ned's boots, sword, and clothes betwixt the mattresses, where Betty's huge person should keep them safe. All this, said he, merely as safeguard against another visit to my room.
And very shortly thereafter arose a great cursing below, and a swearing of many horrible oaths by the sergeant, with low grumbling accompaniment of his men, as they rose from many a twisted posture of swinish slumber. When with sousing, brushing, and breakfasting they were again brought to some semblance of men, the futile search after him that was by this well out of their reach was begun. Nor did it cease till close on noon. Now, as the sergeant and his file of men passed along the gallery, when there was left no further corner into which they might thrust nose, eyes, or sword-point seeking for hidden softness of human flesh, some spirit of bravado did seize upon me, and I flung open the door of my chamber, where all morning I had kept pretence of nursing poor Betty, sick only of an ill temper to be kept a lig-a-bed against her will; and I called to the sergeant that he had not searched here by daylight, and that all was at his service, even poor Betty, being now awake; and he came to the door, and stood upon the threshold, looking in upon us while Betty sat up in the bed and glared upon him, fear and anger struggling for mastery in her broad countenance, and rendering it grotesquely terrible. Now I was clothed this time in fit manner, with gown and hair fresh and neat, and, spite of my sorrow at losing Ned and the terrors of the night just passed, I had a sense of triumph in my growing certainty of his escape that I think I scarce tried to keep from appearing in my countenance. For a moment he regarded me doubtfully, and then there sprang into his eye a light as of days when he had been other than he now seemed, and I thought he would have spoken gaily and kindly. But, my father coming to the door, the sergeant checked his words, and, his eye lighting upon Betty, a dark cloud of suspicion passed over his face. This was succeeded by a look of resignation truly humorous and comical, as he thanked me for the help I had already given him, which was indeed, he said, more than he had deserved, apologized for the disturbance he had caused, and so bowed himself out. He straightway marched his detachment into Drayton, and, having failed by violent means to avenge the death of his ensign, he now had recourse to the law, summoning to him the coroner, and insisting upon a speedy inquest, in hope to discover—the few witnesses of the deed being put upon oath—the name of whom, if taken flagrante delicto, he would have hanged before it could be told.