As they talked in desultory fashion, there came along the passage a whistled stave of _Johnny Cope_. Cole the clogger entered, and he stood for a moment wondering at the laughter that greeted him. Then he bethought him and laughed also. “Nay, I must ha’ picked it up from th’ bird,” he said, as he took his seat; and then, somebody else remarking that it was a good song for all that, the talk drifted to the never-stale subject of the ’45. (By the way, Scotland itself did not contain a more rampant Jacobite than Dooina Benn. Not that she knew politics from a crow’s nest, but because Charles Edward, passing through Carlisle, had stilled his bagpipes opposite the house of a lady brought to bed, and had sent her his salutations and compliments. “When did yon t’other piece o’ pork ever do aught like that?” Dooina would demand.) All at once, when, among other matters, mention had been made of Hawley’s misadventure at Falkirk, the excise officer was seen to be chuckling extraordinarily to himself. His narrow shoulders heaved, he sobbed with his private mirth, and the whole parlour watched in amazement his soft convulsion of delight. “Come, out with it, Cope!” Monjoy cried, and the exciseman gave a sigh, took off and wiped his glasses, and the edges of his battered purple lids shone with tears. “Hn! hn! hn! hn! It must seem extraordinary to you, gentlemen, but--hn! hn!--once in a while I cannot resist these attacks. When you spoke of General Hawley--hn! hn!--I was put in mind of a very droll circumstance when he was in France. I will relate it. One day, being among certain of his officers, he said--just as I might have said that our friend who came in whistling was at the door--he said, ‘There is a spy coming in from the French army’--no more than that; hn! hn! And so the officers formed themselves into a hasty court-martial, and in a very little while (this is what made me laugh) the man was brought in--on a gallows! Hn! hn! he! he! ho! ho! ho!... A little grim, to be sure, grim and droll at the same time, eh? ‘Came in!’ Yes, he came in ... ah!” There was something abominable, unnameable, in his relish of it, and for the moment he himself seemed disconcerted by the dead silence with which his story was received. He still chuckled nervously, as if to outface some hostile impression he had created; and in a minute Monjoy said quietly, glancing towards the door, “You have an extraordinary turn of humour, Cope.” The heavy lids drooped, and Cope’s hand patted the air away from his cheek. “La, Mr. Monjoy!” he murmured; but before the gesture was completed, Matthew Moon had advanced to the table, his brows contracted. “See here, whatever they call ye,” he said. “‘Grim,’ ye said; but it might easy be grimmer. Now just take it on yourself that that’s the last tale o’ that sort ye tell in this house.”