In Spite of All — Part 130

The scouts seized him and one glance at the face of the officer told him that his last hour was at hand.

“You come from Waller’s camp,” said Colonel Norton, sharply. “Don’t deny it, I can read it in your craven face. What strength has he there?”

“I was but on an errand,” faltered the poor fellow. “I am nought but a servant, sir.”

“Major Locke’s, sir,” said Tobias, sealing his own doom by the words.

“Ha! that’s good hearing. You are carrying his letters no doubt. Here string him up, men, and we’ll turn out his pockets afterwards, and save him the discomfort of a struggle. These Puritans have such consciences, he would doubtless scruple to part with his trust.”

“Sir, sir,” pleaded poor Tobias. “They can be naught to you--they be no despatches--they be but private letters, and both of them only to ladies, sir.”

At this, Norton burst into a roar of laughter. The two scouts, hating both the work and the officer in command, took advantage of his convulsions of merriment, to loose the prisoner.

“Chuck the despatches and run,” whispered one of them. And Tobias needed no second bidding.

Flinging the letters on the ground, he ran like a hunted hare to the shelter of a little coppice, and though Norton swore at the scouts as they made a feint of rushing in pursuit, and sent more than one shot after the terrified messenger, he was too eager to seize on the letters before the wind whirled them away to trouble much about his victim. Tobias gasping for breath ran madly down the slope, till at length catching his foot on a tree stump he fell violently to the ground, severely spraining his ankle. But a sprained ankle means little to a man who has been at death’s door; he lay patiently enough in the wood till next day, and then limped down to Claverton to learn from the villagers that Waller had retired to Bath, and that the Royalists had abandoned the Avon, and were to attempt the capture of Bath from the north.

What with skirmishes and intricate manoeuvring, it was not until the Royalist forces had encamped at Marshfield that Norton had time to open the letters he had seized. But his satisfied chuckle as he read the first, and the malicious merriment in his eyes, showed that the capture had been worth making. The Major’s letter was short, and ran as follows: