"Tush, copperface! What have you to do with the flavour of the news? The virtue of thy belt, indeed! Precious little virtue is there within its compass, ha, ha! You have little to complain of, John Alward, for a midnight tramp. It is scant twelve miles from this to Mattapany, and thine errand is done. Thou mayst be snoozing on a good truss of hay in Master Sewall's stable before midnight, if you make speed. Think of my ride all the way to Notley Hall,--and round about by the head of the river too--for I doubt if I have any chance to get a cast over the ferry to-night. Simon the boat-keeper is not often sober at this hour: and if he was, a crustier churl--the devil warm his pillow!--doesn't live 'twixt this and the old world. He gets out of his sleep for no man." "But it is a dark road mine," replied the groom. "A plague upon it! I have no stomach for this bush and brier work, when a man can see the limb of a tree no more than a cobweb." "A dark road!" exclaimed the master of the kennels, laughing. "A dark road, John! It is a long time, I trow, since there has been a dark road for thy night rides, with that nose shining like a lighted link a half score paces around thee. It was somewhat deadened last September, I allow, when you had the marsh ague, and the doctor fed you for a week on gruel--but it hath waxed lately as bright as ever. I wish I could buckle it to my head-strap until to-morrow morning." A burst of laughter, at this sally, which rang through the hall, testified the effect of the falconer's wit and brought the groom to his feet. "'S blood, you grinning fools!" he ejaculated, "haven't you heard Derrick's joke a thousand times before, that you must toss up your scurvy ha-haws at it, as if it was new! He stole it--as the whole hundred knows--from the fat captain, old Dauntrees in the fort there; who would have got it back upon hue and cry, if it had been his own;--but the truth is, the Captain filched it from a play-book, as the surveyor told him in my hearing at Garret Weasel's, where the Captain must needs have it for a laughing matter." "It is a joke that burns fresh every night," replied Derrick; "a thing to make light of. So, up with the bottom of the pot, boy, and feed it with mother's milk: it will stand thee in stead to-night. Well done, John Alward! I can commend thee for taking a jest as well as another." "Master Derrick," said the other, "this is not the way to do his Lordship's bidding: if we must go, we should be jogging now. I would I had thy ride to take, instead of my own,--short as you think it." "Ha, say you that! By the rochet, John, you shall have it, an it please Master Secretary! But upon one condition." "Upon what condition?" "That you tell me honestly why you would choose to ride twenty miles to Notley rather than twelve to Mattapany."