"Truly, 't is warm," said the sergeant. "But I ask your pardon, madam, for thus discussing private matters. Your story is a plain one, and may help to the fellow's capture." And then he took some steps towards the door, and I thought the danger was over, and I had much ado to keep my countenance from showing the sudden lightening of my heart. But even as he was going some devil of raillery, or cruelty, prompted him to turn and say that in his company he was counted an excellent tooth-drawer, and that he would just have a look at poor Betty's mouth. For a moment I could not speak, but turned to the bed as if to protect my old nurse, perceiving, as I turned, a movement as of a hand beneath the quilt; and I knew that Ned was feeling for his sword-hilt, and waiting to be discovered. At that I laid my hand upon his shoulder, and, finding again my voice, "Be still, dear Betty," I cried, "there is no need of rising yet. And I do pray you, Master Sergeant, that you will go now, when I have so fully told you everything. Her poor tooth will again be raging if she be disturbed." And this I said so pleadingly that the man was quite subdued, saying, with more of kindness than he had yet used: "Indeed, madam, I spoke but in jest, for which I ask your pardon." And so he left the room, closing the door behind him, and I turned to regard my father. But before I could reach him to tell in his ear the reason of it all, and who it was indeed that there lay in the bed, he rose from the seat he had not left since his entering, and I at once knew why he had sat so close. For he lifted from the settle, crushed out of all shape by his sitting upon it, Ned's hat, which, not finding to be on the floor, I had thought to be fallen upon the grass below. Then did we look hard and long in each other's eyes, and my father thrust out his thumb towards the bed with a gesture of questioning, and I answered him with one word, so softly breathed that his eyes must needs take the office of his ears. Then he raised the hat. "He must find it below," he said, and, stealing to the window, of which the casement still stood open, he leaned out, and, seeing the sentry at the far end of his beat, flung out the hat softly with a skimming motion, so that it fell upon the grass at some distance from the house, and almost without sound. And returning from the window he found Ned standing upright, freed from the kerchief I had bound on his head, bearing in his countenance the flush of a strong indignation; for he felt, as he has explained to me, that the shame of that ignominious concealment would never leave him. But the flush died speedily away on my father's holding out his hand, in silence, indeed, but with his old frank and kindly smile. They grasped each the other's with a great clasp, and then Sir Michael whispered: "We must get him out of this," and went out at the door.