"I don’t want to knock the poor old cuckoo down," murmured Bathurst to himself, "but I’ve just got three minutes before that cur reaches the top of the clearing and ... Off with your smock, man, or I fire," he added peremptorily, and pointing the muzzle of his pistol at the trembling shepherd.
Miggs had in the meanwhile fully realised that the masked stranger was in deadly earnest. Why he should want the old smock was more than any shepherd could conceive, but that he meant to have it was very clear. Jock uttered a final plaintive word of protest.
"Kind sir ... but if Oi take off my smock ... I sha’nt be quite d ... d ... decent ... sir ... wi’ only my shirt."
"You shall have my coat," replied Bathurst, decisively.
"Yes! it’s old and shabby, and my waistcoat too.... Now off with that smock, or..."
Once more the muzzle of the pistol gleamed close to Jock Miggs’s head. Without further protest he began to divest himself of his smock. The process was slow and laborious, and Jack set his teeth not to scream with the agony of the suspense.
He himself had had little difficulty in taking off his own coat and waistcoat, for earlier in the day, before he had been so hard pressed, the pain in his shoulder had caused him to slip his left arm out of its sleeve.
Moreover, the excitement of these last fateful moments kept him at fever pitch: he was absolutely unconscious of aught save of the rapid flight of the seconds and the steady approach of dog and men towards the clearing.
Even Jock Miggs, who up to now had been too intent on his own adventure to take much heed of what went on in the gloom beyond, even he perceived that something unusual was happening on the Moor.
"What’s that?" he asked with renewed terror.
"A posse of soldiers at my heels," said Beau Brocade, decisively, "that’s why I want your smock, my man, and if I don’t get it there’ll be just time to blow out your dull brains before I fall into their hands."
This last argument was sufficiently convincing. Miggs thought it decidedly best to obey; he helped his mysterious assailant on with his own smock, cap and kerchief, and not unwillingly attired himself in Beau Brocade’s discarded coat and waistcoat.
"A pistol in your belt in case you need it, friend," whispered Bathurst, rapidly, as he slipped one of the weapons in Miggs’s belt, keeping the other firmly grasped in his own hand.