"'T is enough said, sergeant," interrupted Sir Michael, resolving to put a good face upon his choice of the lesser evil; "I commend the acuteness of your judgment. It is indeed as much for my honor as yours that suspicion of harboring this fellow should be removed from my house as well as from myself and my daughter. Do you set at once a sufficient guard without to watch every door and window, and while you call into the hall here all that are not needed for that duty, I will rouse some of the fellows that sleep above, and see that you have good food and drink in place of the sleep you must lose. And I doubt not," he added, turning at the door, "such of you as remember Tangier will find my old Burgundy, that has been much praised by good judges, a better substitute for the wines of Spain and Portugal than our west-country ale." Whereupon the sergeant, pleased with prospect of good cheer, went out to make disposition of his men, while my father again mounted the stairs, turning swiftly in his mind the subterfuge by which he purposed getting Ned Royston safely from the house. And indeed I think he did devise a scheme as cunning as any of those happy strokes of adroitness and dexterity for which in the old wars he was justly famous. The soldiers being now below, and the few servants first roused sent to fetch food for the sergeant and his men, my father found the stairs and galleries deserted. Pausing at my door, he gently opened it, and hearing the sound of my half-stifled weeping he bid me not check it, saying that it fell well with his scheme. "Do but as I bid you, my children," said he, "and in less than an hour the poor lad shall be on the road to Bridport; and with Skewbald Meg between his legs 't is pity of the horse and man that would catch him. I can give you no light, for the sentry that is below the window, but you, my little Phil, must make shift to cut away from him those unfashionable curls; and it is little matter for the dark, since the more raggedly you play the barber the better for him; also pull off his great boots, with the gay coat and the waistcoat, and when I return with the real Betty to take his place in the bed, where, I vow, I think she will sleep better than he, I will so clothe him and so raddle his face that his mother would not know him again; and if you must speak in the doing all this, let it be little and in the veriest of whispers." And at this my dear and most wise old father left us, saying aloud, as he shut the door, and with intent to be heard if any were spying upon him: "Get thee to sleep, child. There is no further cause of fear. None shall harm thee."