“They got Turnbull the auctioneer, and about a dozen men from Llangarth; them on the horses were that rigged up wi’ mountebank clothes you couldn’t tell who was who—so I heard tell in Crishowell. And they were off over the Wye, an’ into the woods like so many quists. The yeomanry tried the wrong places in the water, and some of them was pretty nigh drowned. There was no talk of chasing—they’d enough to do pulling one another out.”
“Well, well, to be sure!” exclaimed the Pig-driver again with infinite relish, his cheeks widening into a grin as he listened, and his eyes almost disappearing into his head. Then he sighed the sigh of a man who broods upon lost opportunities.
George whirled his legs back into the garden in the same way that he had whirled them out, and steered through the gooseberry bushes towards the cottage followed by his companion. Entering they found themselves in a small room, dark and bare.
Although smoke might be seen to issue from the chimney at this side of the house, it was curious that not a vestige of fire was in the fire-place. A table stood under the window, a few garments hung on a string that stretched across a corner, and two bill-hooks, very sharp and bright, leaned sentimentally towards each other where they stood against the wall. A piece of soap, a bucket of water, and a comb were arranged upon a box; at the end of the room were a cupboard, and a wooden bedstead containing neither bedclothes nor mattress. Besides these objects, there was nothing in the way of furniture or adornment.
Bumpett glanced round and his eye reached the bedstead.
“Name o’ goodness, what have ye done with your bedding?” he inquired, pausing before the naked-looking object.
“It’s down below.”
A partition divided the cottage into two, and George opened a door in this by which they entered the other half of the building. Chinks in the closed-up window let in light enough to show a few tools and a heap of sacks lying in a corner. These were fastened down on a board which they completely concealed. The Pig-driver drew it aside, disclosing a hole large enough to admit a human figure, with the top of a ladder visible in it about a foot below the flooring. The young man stood aside for Bumpett to descend, and when the crown of the Pig-driver’s hat had disappeared, he followed, drawing the board carefully over the aperture.
The room below ran all the length of the house, and a fire at the further end accounted for the smoke in the chimney. Fresh air came in at a hole in the wall, which was hidden outside by a gooseberry bush planted before it; occasional slabs of stone showed where the place had been hollowed from the original rock, and the ceiling was studded with iron hooks. Near the fire was a great heap of sheepskins, surmounted by George’s mattress and all his scanty bedding, on which lay Rhys Walters, his head bound round by a bandage, and a cup of water beside him which he was stretching out his hand for as they entered.
“Here’s Mr. Bumpett,” announced Williams, going gently up to the bed.