Ewart.

'Not the twentieth part of a drop,' said Nanty. 'No Dutch courage for
me--my heart is always high enough when there's a chance of fighting;
besides, if I live drunk, I should like to die sober. Here, old
Jephson--you are the best-natured brute amongst them--get the lad
between us on a quiet horse, and we will keep him upright, I warrant.'

As they raised Fairford from the ground, he groaned heavily, and asked
faintly where they were taking him to.

'To a place where you will be as snug and quiet as a mouse in his hole,'
said Nanty, 'if so be that we can get you there safely. Good-bye, Father
Crackenthorp--poison the quartermaster, if you can.'

The loaded horses then sprang forward at a hard trot, following each
other in a line, and every second horse being mounted by a stout fellow
in a smock frock, which served to conceal the arms with which most of
these desperate men were provided. Ewart followed in the rear of the
line, and, with the occasional assistance of old Jephson, kept his young
charge erect in the saddle. He groaned heavily from time to time; and
Ewart, more moved with compassion for his situation than might have been
expected from his own habits, endeavoured to amuse him and comfort him,
by some account of the place to which they were conveying him--his words
of consolation being, however, frequently interrupted by the necessity
of calling to his people, and many of them being lost amongst the
rattling of the barrels, and clinking of the tackle and small chains by
which they are secured on such occasions.

'And you see, brother, you will be in safe quarters at Fairladies--good
old scrambling house--good old maids enough, if they were not
Papists,--Hollo, you Jack Lowther; keep the line, can't ye, and shut
your rattle-trap, you broth of a--? And so, being of a good family, and
having enough, the old lasses have turned a kind of saints, and nuns,
and so forth. The place they live in was some sort of nun-shop long ago,
as they have them still in Flanders; so folk call them the Vestals of
Fairladies--that may be, or may not be; and I care not whether it be or
no.--Blinkinsop, hold your tongue, and be d--d!--And so, betwixt great
alms and good dinners, they are well thought of by rich and poor, and
their trucking with Papists is looked over. There are plenty of priests,
and stout young scholars, and such-like, about the house it's a hive of
them. More shame that government send dragoons out after-a