’Waller and Hazelrigg, Stapleton, Scroop—­
      Way!  Make way for His Majesty’s troop! 
      Crop-headed Puritans durstn’t deny
      His Majesty’s gentlemen riding by,
      With boot and saddle and tow-row-row!’

‘Good Lord!’ muttered my host, casting out his two hands in despair.  ‘More soldiers!’

But by this time I had my hand on the door.  ’Guide me down the stairs,’ I commanded; ’down to the door!  And, before you open it, quench the light!’

By the time we reached the door the voices were close at hand, coming down the lane:  and by each note of them I grew more clearly convinced.  ‘Sir,’ I asked in a whisper, ’does this lane lead off from the road on the near side of Alton?

For a moment it seemed that he did not hear me.  ’Pray Heaven I dowsed the light in time!’ he chattered.  ’Three visits in one night is more than my sins deserve. . . .  Yes; the lane enters a half-mile this side of Alton, and returns back—­’

‘Well enough I know where it returns back’ said I.  ’Man, did you bewitch them?—­as, a while ago, you bewitched me?’

‘Eh?’

I felt that he was peering at me in the dark.

‘Something has bewitched them,’ I persisted.  ’Either the wine or that devil’s toy of yours has hold of them; or the both, belike.  These are the same men, and have travelled full circle, listen to them!—­’tis the music of the spheres, sir.’

‘I believe you are right,’ said my host, with a chuckle. 
‘O, Copernicus!’

I drew the door open gently and looked aloft.  The night, before so starry, was now clouded over.  The troopers—­I could hear their horses’ hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing—­were winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me.  A gravel path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it.  This I saw by the faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance.  I tip-toed across to the hedge, and, peering over, was relieved of my last doubt:  for at the tail of the procession and under charge of one drunken trooper for whipper-in, rode all my poor comrades with arms triced behind them and ankles lamentably looped under their horses’ bellies.

Even as they passed a thought came into my head:  and the face of the whipper-in—­seen dimly in the shadow of a lantern he joggled at his saddle-bow—­decided me.  I slipped off my sash, looped it loosely in my hand, and so, without waiting to say farewell to my host, slid down the bank into the lane.

Though I shot over the frozen bank a deal faster than ever I intended and dropped on the roadway with a thud, the trooper, bawling his chorus, did not turn in his saddle.  I tip-toed after him, between a walk and a run, and still he did not turn.  Not till I was level with his stirrup did he guess that I was on him; and even so he could scarcely roar out a curse before I had my sash flung over him and with a jerk fetched him clean out of his saddle.  As he pitched sideways, the lantern fell with a clatter and rolled into the hedge.