It was done, and the man dead in an instant of time. The orderly, gazing at the officer, looked scared for a moment, and galloped away for his life.
“Fire! fire!” cries out Father Holt, sending another shot after the trooper, but the two servants were too much surprised to use their pieces, and my lord calling to them to hold their hands, the fellow got away.
“Mr. Holt, _qui pensoit à tout_,” says Blaise, “gets off his horse, examines the pockets of the dead officer for papers, gives his money to us two, and says, ‘The wine is drawn, monsieur le marquis,’—why did he say marquis to monsieur le vicomte?—‘we must drink it.’
“The poor gentleman’s horse was a better one than that I rode,” Blaise continues; “Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I gave a cut to Whitefoot, and she trotted home. We rode on towards Newbury; we heard firing towards midday: at two o’clock a horseman comes up to us as we were giving our cattle water at an inn—and says, All is done. The Ecossois declared an hour too soon—General Ginckel was down upon them. The whole thing was at an end.
“ ‘And we’ve shot an officer on duty, and let his orderly escape,’ says my lord.
“ ‘Blaise,’ says Mr. Holt, writing two lines on his table-book, one for my lady, and one for you, Master Harry; ‘you must go back to Castlewood, and deliver these,’ and behold me.”
And he gave Harry the two papers. He read that to himself, which only said, “Burn the papers in the cupboard, burn this. You know nothing about anything.” Harry read this, ran upstairs to his mistress’s apartment, where her gentlewoman slept near to the door, made her bring a light and wake my lady, into whose hands he gave the paper. She was a wonderful object to look at in her night attire, nor had Harry ever seen the like.
As soon as she had the paper in her hand, Harry stepped back to the chaplain’s room, opened the secret cupboard over the fireplace, burned all the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest do before, took down one of his reverence’s manuscript sermons, and half burnt that in the brazier. By the time the papers were quite destroyed it was daylight. Harry ran back to his mistress again. Her gentlewoman ushered him again into her ladyship’s chamber; she told him (from behind her nuptial curtains) to bid the coach be got ready, and that she would ride away anon.