“This beats the devil himself, Joyce!” said the captain, after a half-hour of total silence.  “Here are all these fellows at work as coolly as if I had just given them their tasks, and twice as diligently.  Their unusual industry is a bad symptom of itself!”

“Your honour will remark one circumstance.  Not a rascal of them all comes within the fair range of a musket, for, as to throwing away ammunition at such distances, it would be clearly unmilitary, and might be altogether useless.”

“I have half a mind to scatter them with a volley”—­said the captain, doubtingly.  “Bullets would take effect among those ploughmen, could they only be made to hit.”

“And amang the cattle, too,” observed the Scotsman, who had an eye on the more economical part of the movement, as well as on that which was military.  “A ball would slay a horse as well as a man in such a skairmish.”

“This is true enough, Jamie; and it is not exactly the sort of warfare I could wish, to be firing at men who were so lately my friends.  I do not see, Joyce, that the rascals have any arms with them?”

“Not a musket, sir.  I noticed that, when Joel first detailed his detachments.  Can it be possible that the savages have retired?”

“Not they; else would Mr. Strides and his friends have gone with them.  No, serjeant, there is a deep plan to lead us into some sort of ambush in this affair, and we will be on the look-out for them.”

Joyce stood contemplating the scene for some, time, in profound silence, when he approached the captain formally, and made the usual military salute; a ceremony he had punctiliously observed, on all proper occasions, since the garrison might be said to be placed under martial law.

“If it’s your honour’s pleasure,” he said, “I will detail a detachment, and go out and bring in two or three of these deserters; by which means we shall get into their secrets.”

“A detachment, Joyce!” answered the captain, eyeing his subordinate a little curiously—­“What troops do you propose to tell-off for the service?”

“Why, your honour, there’s corporal Allen and old Pliny off duty; I think the thing might be done with them, if your honour would have the condescension to order corporal Blodget, with the two other blacks, to form as a supporting party, under the cover of one of the fences.”

“A disposition of my force that would leave captain Willoughby for a garrison!  I thank you, serjeant, for your offer and gallantry, but prudence will not permit it.  We may set down Strides and his companions as so many knaves, and——­”

“That may ye!” cried Mike’s well-known voice, from the scuttle that opened into the garrets, directly in front of which the two old soldiers were conversing—­“That may ye, and no har-r-m done the trut’, or justice, or for that matther, meself.  Och!  If I had me will of the blackguards, every rogue of ’em should be bound hand and fut and laid under that pratthy wather-fall, yon at the mill, until his sins was washed out of him.  Would there be confessions then?—­That would there; and sich letting out of sacrets as would satisfy the conscience of a hog!”