“This is plausible, your honour,” said Joyce, respectfully, “and it shows that corporal Strides”—­Joel insisted he was a serjeant, but the real Simon Pure never gave him a title higher than that of corporal—­“and it shows that corporal Strides has an idea of war.  By mounting that piece, and using it with discretion—­refusing it, at the right moment, and showing it at another—­a great deal might be done with it, either in a siege or an assault.  If your honour will excuse the liberty, I would respectfully suggest that it might be well to set the quaker on his legs, and plant him at the gate, as an exhorter.”

The captain reflected a moment, and then desired the overseer to proceed in his account.  The rest of Joel’s story was soon told.  He had mystified the strangers, according to his own account of the matter, so thoroughly, by affecting to withhold nothing, that they considered him as a sort of ally, and did not put him in confinement at all.  It is true, he was placed en surveillance; but the duty was so carelessly performed, that, at the right moment, he had passed down the ravine, a direction in which a movement was not expected, and buried himself in the woods, so very effectually that it would have baffled pursuit, had any been attempted.  After making a very long detour, that consumed hours, he turned the entire valley, and actually reached the Hut, under the cover of the rivulet and its bushes, or precisely by the route in which he and Mike had gone forth, in quest of Maud, the evening of the major’s arrival.  This latter fact, however, Joel had reasons of his own for concealing.

“You have told us nothing of Mr. Woods, Strides,” the captain observed, when Joel’s account was ended.

“Mr. Woods!  I can tell the captain nothing of that gentleman; I supposed he was here.”

The manner in which the chaplain had left the Hut, and his disappearance in the ravine, were then explained to the overseer, who evidently had quitted the mill, on his return, before the divine performed his exploit.  There was a sinister expression in Joel’s eyes, as he heard the account, that might have given the alarm to men more suspicious than the two old soldiers; but he had the address to conceal all he felt or thought.

“If Mr. Woods has gone into the hands of the Injins, in his church shirt,” rejoined the overseer, “his case is hopeless, so far as captivity is consarned.  One of the charges ag’in the captain is, that the chaplain he keeps prays as regulairly for the king as he used to do when it was lawful, and agreeable to public feelin’.”

“This you heard, while under examination before the magistrate you have named?” demanded the captain.

“As good as that, and something more to the same p’int.  The ’squire complained awfully of a minister’s prayin’ for the king and r’yal family, when the country was fightin’ ’em.”

“In that, the Rev. Mr. Woods only obeys orders,” said the serjeant.