I took good stock of the man, wondering if he were a
spy. He was a dirty old man enough. His dirty fingers poked
through ragged mittens. His cheeks were all swathed up in a
woollen comforter. I made the mistake of looking at him so hard
that I made him look at me. Seeing that I was staring at him,
with a face full of suspicion, he walked boldly up to me, holding
out his hat for my charity. We stared at each other, while he
blew a blast on his pan-pipes, at which everybody laughed.
"Come, come, boy," said Lord Grey to me, "we want those letters
done. Never mind about the puppets. Here, old man" (giving him a
penny), "you take yourself off now. Or are you going to enlist?"
The people laughed again at this, while the old man, after a
flourish of his hat to me, piped up lively quickstep, called
"Jockeys to the Fair."
He disappeared after this. I did not see him again until our
troubles began, later in the morning. I was finishing off the
last of my letters, when some of our scouts rode in to make a
grave report to the Duke. They had ridden in pretty hard, their
horses were lathered all over. They themselves were in an
internal lather; for they had just had their first sight of war.
They had come into touch (so they declared) with the whole of
Albemarle's militia, marching out to attack them. On being
questioned, it turned out that they had heard this from an
excited labourer who had run to them with the news, as they stood
guard in a roadside field a few miles out of Lyme.
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