'Good Lord!' muttered my host, casting out his two hands in despair. 'More soldiers!' But by this time I had my hand on the door. 'Guide me down the stairs,' I commanded; 'down to the door! And, before you open it, quench the light!' By the time we reached the door the voices were close at hand, coming down the lane: and by each note of them I grew more clearly convinced. 'Sir,' I asked in a whisper, 'does this lane lead off from the road on the near side of Alton? For a moment it seemed that he did not hear me. 'Pray Heaven I dowsed the light in time!' he chattered. 'Three visits in one night is more than my sins deserve. . . . Yes; the lane enters a half-mile this side of Alton, and returns back--' 'Well enough I know where it returns back' said I. 'Man, did you bewitch them?--as, a while ago, you bewitched me?' 'Eh?' I felt that he was peering at me in the dark. '_Something_ has bewitched them,' I persisted. 'Either the wine or that devil's toy of yours has hold of them; or the both, belike. These are the same men, and have travelled full circle, listen to them!--'tis the music of the spheres, sir.' 'I believe you are right,' said my host, with a chuckle. 'O, Copernicus!' I drew the door open gently and looked aloft. The night, before so starry, was now clouded over. The troopers--I could hear their horses' hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing--were winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me. A gravel path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it. This I saw by the faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance. I tip-toed across to the hedge, and, peering over, was relieved of my last doubt: for at the tail of the procession and under charge of one drunken trooper for whipper-in, rode all my poor comrades with arms triced behind them and ankles lamentably looped under their horses' bellies. Even as they passed a thought came into my head: and the face of the whipper-in--seen dimly in the shadow of a lantern he joggled at his saddle-bow--decided me. I slipped off my sash, looped it loosely in my hand, and so, without waiting to say farewell to my host, slid down the bank into the lane. Though I shot over the frozen bank a deal faster than ever I intended and dropped on the roadway with a thud, the trooper, bawling his chorus, did not turn in his saddle. I tip-toed after him, between a walk and a run, and still he did not turn. Not till I was level with his stirrup did he guess that I was on him; and even so he could scarcely roar out a curse before I had my sash flung over him and with a jerk fetched him clean out of his saddle. As he pitched sideways, the lantern fell with a clatter and rolled into the hedge. 'What the devil's up with you, back there!' At the noise, I heard two or three of the midmost troopers rein up.