We must now change the scene, and without much consideration of the "pathos and bathos delightful to see," must remove the reader from the higher and more refined society of Lord Walton, his sister, and the Earl of Beverley, to the small sanded parlour of the little alehouse in the village. We must also advance in point of time for about three hours, and put the hour-hand of the clock midway between the figures one and two, while the minute-hand is quietly passing over the six. All was still in the place; the soldiery were taking their brief repose, except a sentinel who walked up and down, pistol in hand, at each entrance of the village; and the villagers themselves, having recovered from the excitement caused by the arrival of the party, and the drinking and merriment which followed it, had taken possession of such beds as the troopers left them, and were enjoying the sweet but hard-earned slumber of daily labour. Two living creatures occupied the parlour of the alehouse: a large tabby cat, which--as if afraid that the mice upon which she waged such interminable and strategetic war might take advantage of her own slumbers to surprise her--had mounted upon a three-legged stool, and was enjoying her dreams in peace, curled up in a comfortable ball; and Captain Barecolt, who, seated in a wooden arm-chair, with his long leg-bones, still in their immemorial boots, stretched upon another, kept watch, if such it could be called, with a large jug of ale beside him, from which he took every now and then deep draughts, for the purpose, as he mentally declared, of "keeping himself awake." The effect was not exactly such as he expected, for from time to time he fell into a doze, from which a sort of drowsy consciousness of the proximity of the ale roused him up every quarter of an hour, to make a new application to the tankard. At length, feeling that these naps were becoming longer, he drew his legs off the chair, muttering-- "This won't do! I shall have that dried herring, Randal, upon me; I must take a pipe and smoke it out." And thereupon he moved hither and thither in the parlour, looking for the implements necessary in the operation to which he was about to apply himself. These were speedily found, and a few whiffs soon enveloped him in a cloud as thick as that in which Homer's Jove was accustomed to enshrine himself on solemn occasions; and in the midst of this, the worthy captain continued ruminating upon the mighty deeds he had done and was to do.