"The villains! Who did? No, I'll not ask that, my lad," said the captain, knowing only too well who it must have been; "you have acted nobly, and I am for ever obliged to you. Come in, and have some breakfast, while I dress and report this, and see what is to be done. You are sure there is time?" "They was to go about at dinner-time to get the folks," John squeezed out of his mouth, much against his will. "Then there's time. Thank you with all my heart, John! I'll see you again. Here,"--to a barmaid who had appeared on the scene--"give this young man a hearty good breakfast and a cup of ale--will you?--and I'll be down again presently. Stay till I come, Hewlett, and I'll see you again, and how you are to get home! Why, it is twenty miles! Were you walking all night?" "Only I went to sleep a bit of the time when I was trying to make out the milestone; I don't rightly know how long it was," said John, so much ashamed of his nap that the captain laughed, and said-- "Never mind, Johnnie, you are here in the very nick of time; eat your breakfast, and I'll see you again." The good-natured barmaid let John have a wash at the pump with a bit of yellow soap and the round towel, and he was able to eat his breakfast with a will--a corner of cold pie and a glass of strong ale, such a breakfast as he had never seen, though it was only the leavings of yesterday's luncheon. Everybody was too busy just then to pay him any attention, and he had time to hear all the noises and bells seem to run into one dull sound, and to be nodding in his chair before he was called by a waiter, with--"Ha, youngster, there, look alive! the gentlemen wants you." Now that sleep had once begun upon him, assisted by the ale, John looked some degrees less alive, though far more respectable than on his first arrival. He was ushered into the coffee-room, where three or four gentlemen sat at one table, all in blue and silver, with the captain, and as he pulled his forelock and bobbed his head, the elder of them--a dignified looking man with grey hair and whiskers and a silver-laced uniform, said--"So, my lad, you are come to warn Captain Carbonel of an intended attack on his property?" "Yes, sir," John mumbled, looking more and more of a lout, for he had thought the captain would just go home alone to defend his wife and his machine, and was dismayed at finding the matter taken up in this way, dreading lest he should have brought every one into trouble and be viewed as an informer. "What evidence have you of such intentions?" John looked into his hat and shuffled on his foot, and Captain Carbonel, who knew that Sir Harry Hartman, the old gentleman, was persuaded that Delafield was the place to protect, was in an agony lest John should be too awkward and too anxious to shield his family to convince him. He ventured to translate the words into "How do you know?" His voice somehow made John feel that he must speak, and he said, "Aunt heard it."