"Well, we must search the inn. What a miserable fool I was not to ask that young feller if there was any one in the carriage when he saw it!" Dick hesitated for a moment. Should he tell what he knew? A French prisoner was an enemy of his country; might it not be his duty to help the dragoons to capture him? But reflecting that the man might be nothing worse than a smuggler, in which case to inform against him would only embitter the inimical feeling of the villagers against him, besides being an ungracious act in itself, he decided to say nothing. After a long-continued knocking and the expenditure of much abusive language, Doubledick once more opened the door. "Ye’ll gie me the rheumatiz and send me to my grave," he said with a whine. "What be ye rampin’ men o’ war wantin’ now?" "We’re going to search your inn for that there mounseer, my fine feller, and you’d best take it quiet, or you’ll find yourself strapped to one of our hosses and carried with all your bones a-rattling afore the Colonel." "Search, if ye must. Name it all, why should I hinder ’ee! Turn the inn topsy-versy, ye’ll find nothing but maybe a rat or a cockroach." The sergeant and two of the troopers entered. They searched the tap-room, the inn-parlour, kitchen, cellars, bedrooms, lofts; rummaged cupboards, empty barrels, a clock-case, the copper in the scullery, an overturned water butt in the backyard; all to no purpose. "He’s not here, that’s certain," said the sergeant at last, dashing the perspiration from his brow. "We must have overshot the villain somehow. Plague on it! We shall have to ride back to Truro and try to get on his tracks, or the Colonel will be in a rare passion." "I won’t ask ’ee to stay, brave men," said Doubledick, "knowing what terrible rages noble officers do fly into. But a nibleykin o’ real old stingo won’t do ’ee no harm, and ye can drink confusion to Boney. Hee! hee!" All the soldiers accepted the liquor with alacrity, and the two who had already tasted its quality winked at each other, not acquainting their comrades with their previous pleasurable experience. Smacking their lips and declaring that the innkeeper was a real good-hearted fellow, they remounted and rode up the hill. Doubledick watched them until they were out of sight, a leer of triumph on his face. Dick heard him chuckle as he shut the door and shuffled up the stairs. The light was extinguished, and Dick, vexed with himself for remaining so long and so unprofitably, set off homeward in the track of the dragoons. A few minutes after he had left, a heavily-cloaked figure—the same that Dick had seen a while before—stole down the steps at the side of the inn, and, looking round cautiously, approached the door and rapped six times upon it, pausing a brief while after every second tap. Immediately after the sixth, the casement above opened, and Doubledick, looking out, said in a hoarse whisper: "Be that you, Zacky?"