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“Good morning!” said the soldier amiably, with an up-country twang in his voice, “Good-morning, my pretty dears! And if you come from the farm below, what may be the name of it?”

“Lawhibbet,” I answered, seeing that Margery closed her lips tight.

“Ay, Lawhibbet; that’s the name I was told.” He nodded in the friendliest manner.

“Are you the rebels?” I blurted out, while Margery gripped my arm; but this boldness only fetched a laugh from the big man.

“Some of ’em,” said he; “though you’ll have to unlearn that name, my young whipstercock, seein’ we’re here to stay for a while. The Earl marched down into Fowey last night while you were asleep, and is down there now making it right and tight. Do you ever play at blind-man’s buff in these parts?”

Three or four soldiers had gathered behind him by this, and were staring down on us. One of them blew a clumsy kiss to Margery.

“Do you mean the child’s game?” I asked, wondering whatever he could be driving at.

“I do; but perhaps, sir, you are too old to remember it.” He winked at the men and they guffawed. “It begins, ‘How many horses has your father got?’ ‘Six,’ says you; ‘black, red, and grey’–or that’s the number according to our instructions. ‘Very good then,’ says we; ‘turn round three times and catch which you may.’ And the moral is, don’t be surprised if you find the stable empty when you get home. There’s a detachment gone to attend to it after seizing the ford below; hungry men, all of them. No doubt they’ll be visiting the bacon-rack after the stable, and if missy knows where to pick up the new-laid eggs she might put a score aside for us poor artillerymen.”

We turned from them and hurried down the slope. “Rebels!” said Margery once, under her breath; but the blow had stunned us and we could not talk. In the stable yard we found, as the artillerymen had promised, a company of soldiers leading out the horses, and my father watching them with that patient look which never deserted him. He turned to Margery–

“Go into the kitchen, my dear. They will want food next, and we have to do what we can. They have been civil, and promise to pay for all they take. I do not think they will show any roughness.”

Margery obeyed with a set face. For the next hour she and Lizzie were busy in the kitchen, frying ham and eggs, boiling great pans of milk, cutting up all the bread of the last baking, and heating the oven for a fresh batch. The men, I am bound to say, took their food civilly, that morning and afterwards; and for a fortnight at least they paid reasonably for all they took. For several days I hung closer about the ingle than ever I had done in my life; not that a boy of fourteen could be any protection to the women-folk, but to be ready at least to give an alarm should insult be offered. But we had to do with decent men, who showed themselves friendly not only in the house but in their camp down by the ford, whither, after the first morning, Lizzie and I trudged it twice a day with baskets of provisions. Lizzie indeed talked freely with them, but I held my tongue and glowered (I dare say) in my foolish hate. Margery kept to the house.

‘Twas, I think, on August 15th that the first hope of release came to us, by the King’s troops seizing the ford-head across the river; and this happened as suddenly as our first surprise. Lizzie and I were carrying down our baskets at four o’clock that day, when we heard a sound of musketry on the St. Veep shore and on top of it a bugle twice blown. Running to the top of a knoll from which the river spread in view, I saw some rebels of our detachment splashing out from shore in a hurry. The leaders reached mid-stream or thereabouts, and paused. Doubtless they could see better than I what was happening; for after they had stood there a couple of minutes, holding their fire–the musketry on the St. Veep bank continuing all the while–some twenty men came running out of the woods there and fled across towards us, many bullets splashing into the water behind them. They reached their comrades in the river-bed, and the whole body stood irresolute, facing the shore where nothing showed but a glint of steel here and there between the trees. Thus for ten further minutes, perhaps, they hesitated; then turned and came sullenly back across the rising water. In this manner the royal troops won the ford-head, and kept it; for although the two cannon opened fire that evening from the earthwork above us, and dropped many balls among the trees, they did not dislodge the regiment (Colonel Lloyd’s) which lay there and held one of the few passes by which the rebels could break away.