“Are you mad, Mr. Ronayne, or do you suppose that I am mad enough to entertain such a proposition, and thus weaken my force still more?  Forfeit your commission if you fail!  Why, sir, you would deserve to forfeit your commission, if you even succeeded in any thing so wholly at variance with military prudence.  Gentlemen, recollect what I have said—­I expect you to use the utmost vigilance to-night, and, Mr. Elmsley, fail not instantly to report the fishing-boat.”  Thus enjoining, he passed slowly on to his quarters.

“D—­n your military prudence, and d—­n your pompous cold-bloodedness!” muttered the fiery ensign between his teeth—­scarcely waiting until his captain was out of hearing.

“Hush,” interrupted Elmsley in a whisper.  “He will hear you.  Ha!” he continued after a short pause, during which they moved on towards the mess-room, “you begin to find out his amiable military qualities, do you!  But tell me, Ronayne, what the deuce has put this Quixotic expedition into your head?  What great interest do you take in these fishermen, that you should volunteer to break your shins in the wood, this dark night, for the purpose of seeking them, and that on the very day when your ladye faire honors these walls, if I may so dignify our stockade, with her presence for the first time.  Come, come, thank Headley for his refusal.  When you sit down to-morrow morning, as I intend you shall, to a luxurious breakfast of tea, coffee, fried venison, and buckwheat-cakes, you will find no reason to complain of his adherence to military prudence.”

“Elmsley,” returned his friend, seriously, “I can have no disguise from you at such a moment.  You know my regard for Maria Heywood, although you cannot divine its depth, and could I but be the means of saving her father, you can well understand the joy I should feel.”

“Certainly, my dear fellow, but you know as well as myself, that there exists not the shadow of a hope of this.  That scarecrow, Giles, half-witted as he is, tells too straightforward a story.”

“Elmsley,” persisted his friend, “there is every hope—­ every reasonable expectation that he may yet survive.  Maria herself first opened my eyes to the possibility, for, until then, I had thought as you do; and deeply did her words sink in my heart, when she said, reproachfully, that, instead of sending a party to escort her, it would have been far better to dispatch them to the farm, where her father might, at that moment, be sustaining a siege—­ the house being strong enough to admit of a temporary defence, by even a couple of persons.”

“And what said you to that?”

“What could I say?  I looked like a fool, and felt like a school-boy under the iron rod of a pedagogue—­but I resolved.”

“And what did you resolve, my enterprising knight errant?”

“You have just heard my proposal to the gentleman who piques himself upon his military prudence.” returned the youth, with bitter irony.