To this the seeming yokel blubbered in reply that he did but wish a sight of the soldier gentlemen at meat, which he said in that broad and slurring speech of our country that he could ever from his childhood put on with exact faithfulness to nature. And just here one of the strangers' horses, neighing wearily without, where he was tied to a tree, "Get out," said my father, "and see to those horses. Put them in the stable, and, if there be not room for all, turn some of your own cattle to graze in the park." And as he was going out slowly dragging one loose shoe after the other, one of the soldiers flung a bone at him, and threatened to flog the coat off his back, and the skin to follow it, if he did not rub down and well feed and water each of their borrowed nags. So to this task he went, with a hundred pounds in gold of my father's in his one pocket that was sound. And five horses he did groom and feed and lodge in that stable, turning three of Sir Michael's out of their places into the park. But one of these, that is, Skewbald Meg, a mare of great hardness of limb and lasting power of wind, though a mean and ewe-necked thing to the eye, he tied, when out of hearing of the sentry on that side of the house, to a tree that stood handy for the direction he must take. He then returned to the stable, and there contrived an appearance of business about the nags, while he concealed upon him a bridle, with which about his waist he at last, having left his lantern burning within, loitered down to Meg in the hollow, where in a trice she was bridled and mounted by as good a horseman and as ill-looking as ever bestrid her lean and mottled ribs. And how he fared in that ride of near upon twenty-five miles to Lyme, and how he was taken safely out of the country by sea, you shall hear when I am come to the letter that came to me out of Holland.