The parliamentarian looked at Captain Barecolt, and Captain Barecolt looked at the parliamentarian. The former had a cynical sort of smile on his countenance, as if he recognised in the worthy captain a personage whom he had seen before under different circumstances; but Barecolt's face was a perfect blank, at least if that which bore so prominent a gnomon could be called so. At all events it said nothing; there was not the slightest glance of recognition in his eyes; there was not the smallest curl of consciousness round his mouth. He looked full in the officer's face, with the stare of a stranger, for very nearly a minute, and then civilly asked him if he would not sit down and join their party. "No, I thank you," replied the parliamentarian, with the same sneering smile; "but I think I shall ask you to join ours." "I am much obliged, my friend," replied Barecolt, without any change of countenance; "but I have nearly dined." "Dined or not dined," rejoined the other, "you must come along with me." "How now?" cried Barecolt, rising with a look of indignation; "I thought, from your look, that you were a God-fearing and worthy man; but if you be, as I now judge from your words, one of the malignant fermenters of strife in Israel, I tell you you are in the wrong part of the country to play your pranks, even if you had a company of swaggering rakehelly troopers at your heels." "Come, come," replied the other, "I am what I seem, and what you know me right well to be. Did you ever hear of a certain Captain Batten, sir? Were you ever at such a place as Bishop's Merton?" "Of a Captain Batten I have heard when I was in London," replied Barecolt, boldly, "and I have seen him too, but you are not he; for, in the first place, he is a godly and well-disposed person, and in the next place I do not recollect you. Then, as for Bishop's Merton, the very name of it is naught, and smacks of Prelacy and Popery." "I am not Captain Batten, certainly," replied the other; "but I was cornet of his troop when you were at Bishop's Merton, and I watched you well along the road for forty miles and more, after you had made him prisoner. You have changed your dress, but I know you, Captain Barecolt."