Planting ourselves firmly in the midst of the crowd, so that the armed guard would pass within a few feet of us, we jostled with the surging mass, till at length we could see the features of the prisoner. Instinctively an exclamation of surprise burst from my lips. Stripped of coat and doublet, his face cut and bruised and stained with dried blood and dirt, was--not Chaloner, but the so-called Southampton "merchant," the charlatan Cutler! Half dead with fear, his legs hardly able to support his trembling body, the wretched man was urged onwards by his guards, as, with his hands pressed to his ears as if to shut out the threats and execrations of the crowd, he was marched towards the provost's quarters. "What has he done?" I asked, laying a detaining hand on the shoulder of a dragoon who, carrying the trickster's torn coat, was following the guards. "Done?" he replied. "Dost know the villain?" "I know that he has done us more than once," I replied grimly. "I trove he'll do you no more, for he'll dance at the end of a rope within the hour," said the soldier, preparing to move on. "For he has been caught in the act of robbing the dead." "Then we've seen the last of Master Cutler," remarked my companion as we resumed our way. "At least, unless we see his body gracing a gallows." Upon arriving at the ground where the arms of the surrendered army had been deposited, we were somewhat dismayed at the magnitude of our task; but upon our applying to the camp marshal for permission to try and recover our weapons, that officer was able to inform us of the probable place where Chaloner's dragoons had stacked their arms. Muskets had been piled in a military manner, but stands of pikes, swords, pistols, breastplates, morions, Swedish feathers, and other arms of offence and defence lay heaped in indescribable disorder. For over an hour we searched without success, till I suggested that we might question some of the prisoners who had been retained to clean out the church, and, my comrade falling in with the idea, we returned to the scene of our recent adventures. After a short conversation with the captain of the guard, an officer of Hopton's troop, with whom Firestone was acquainted, we entered the building. "There's our man," exclaimed the colonel, pointing to the sergeant of dragoons who had so brutally used us on the day of our capture by Chaloner. "Come hither, sirrah," said Firestone, and the man, now thoroughly frightened, obeyed. "What did you do with our arms when your men mishandled us?" "I know not," stammered the man. "Think again," continued my companion, "or we must needs refresh your failing memory." "I know not," repeated the sergeant. "Two rebels even now dance at the end of a rope outside the Shire Hall," remarked Firestone in a dry, casual sort of voice. "They murdered their prisoners and burnt the houses of loyal Cornishmen; methinks I know of a third who ill-treated men having the misfortune to fall into his hands."