Roxley, the elder of the two other troopers (and who, Gilbert soon decided, was a special favorite with the young captain and a man of some petty rank), exclaimed, with a sneering oath: "Consequence? I should scarce think so!" Jermain, however, bent his eyes pleasantly on the embarrassed boy, and replied: "Faith, no, my young warrior! A tattered and villainous hind, lurking about, whom we sighted slipping into a copse two or three miles above the crossroads." Our hero longed to put the captive upstairs in possession of even this slight portion of what he desired to know. But Boyd took up the cue intuitively. "Did you run him down?" "Ay. By some awkwardness the villain tripped; and though he wrestled with Roxley like a tiger, and won sundry thumps and cuts for his pains, we managed to master him. He is all bone and muscle, I verily believe." "Simply a wandering spy, Captain, depend upon it!" affirmed Dawkin. "Whatever he was busy about," he continued, to Andrew's father, "he refused to speak a syllable of, in spite of all our little measures--ha, ha, Captain! But we will see what the guard-room at Neith can do for him to-morrow. Here's to his obstinacy after Danforth gets hold of him!" "His straps must be looked to sharply before we go to bed," suggested Roxley. "Yes," added the captain, drinking; "'tis a pity that Tracey and Saville must lose their sleep to-night on his account." Boyd shuddered at the mention of those "little measures," and the persuasions of the Neith guard-room. The Spanish boots, the whip-corded eyeballs, the thumb-screw, and brimstone-sliver were meant. God help the poor wretch who became Danforth's victim! Clearly nothing more was to be discovered as to the prisoner from his captors. Andrew determined to slip back to the outer kitchen, and thence up to Lord Armitage with just so much intelligence as he had come by. But he would do well to wait until the exactly right excuse should offer for his leaving the room. The troopers pushed back their chairs and refilled their glasses of whiskey-and-water. Good cheer began to tell on their tongues. Jermain rose, stretched himself, and stared about the room in great good-humor. He noticed a small hanging-shelf with half a dozen books on it, and thereupon turned amiably to Andrew. "So you go to school up in this forsaken region of the kingdom, do you, Andrew? You remind me not a little of a fair young cousin of mine, Eustace Jermain, down in Warwickshire. He is now a scholar, too, prosing away at some Oxford college." "I have always been at school when there was any school to go to, sir. But my father has taught me for the most part, and once or twice I had a tutor, by good luck."