d their voices, and Mrs. Mugford appeared to be making
new offers. But the Corporal had heard enough. Keeping himself
carefully concealed he walked along the hedge until he found a rack
over it, which seemed to be well worn, leading down to the cottages
below, and by this rack he curled himself up in the bushes, and waited.
In a short time the village was dark and silent, for in those days
oil-lamps were never seen in a cottage; and the Corporal found waiting
rather cold work, but he had bivouacked on colder nights in the wars,
and lay patiently in his place. A little after ten the moon rose, but
it was full eleven o'clock before the Corporal heard the bushes rustle,
and at last made out a man creeping cautiously alongside the hedge.
Nearer and nearer he came, straight to the rack in the hedge, where
after pausing for a moment to listen, he was beginning to scramble up;
when the Corporal suddenly laid hold of his ankles, brought him
sprawling down, rolled him into the hedge-trough, and was instantly on
top of him, with his knee on his chest and his hand on his throat. The
unfortunate creature was too much paralysed by fright to resist; and
the Corporal soon dragged his face round into the moonlight and saw
that he had caught the man that he wanted.

"So you've come here again, Henry Bale," said the Corporal; "I told you
that it would be the worse for you, if you did."

"My name's Mugford," gasped the man, now struggling a little.

"And when did you get your discharge?" asked the Corporal; "and why are
you hanging about the woods instead of living with your mother like an
honest man? But when you're back at Plymouth they'll know you as Henry
Bale fast enough, I'll warrant."

The man trembled, and begged abjectly for mercy; but the Corporal only
pulled out a knife, without relaxing his hold on his throat, turned him
over on his face, and cut his waistband. "Now," he said, "the best
thing that you can do is to surrender and come quietly along with me.
Give me your hands." And pulling a piece of twine from his pocket he
tied the man's thumbs together behind his back. Then raising him to
his feet he shoved him over the rack in the hedge, and led him past
Mrs. Mugford's windows, where a rushlight was burning, into the road
and so to the stables at Bracefort. There he locked his prisoner into
a separate loose-box with a barred window, having first tied his wrists
before him, instead of his thumbs behind him; and th