."

"Bother the soldiers!" cried Waller hotly. "Let them do their work
themselves. I don't know anything about enemies. You are half-starved
and ill, and if you stop till I come back I'll run off and get you
something to eat. I could take you home with me at once, but if I did
the servants would see you, and begin to talk, and then it might get to
the ears of the soldiers, if there are any about. Don't run away till I
come back with them," continued Waller, with a mocking laugh. "You
don't want any more water, do you?"

The lad shook his head.

"Then creep in there under those ferns. Nobody could see you even if he
came by, and Bunny Wrigg is the only one likely to be about here.
Clever as he is, I don't suppose he would spy you out. Why, I shouldn't
have seen you if you hadn't started up as you did. That's right. I
shan't be long."

Waller snatched up the two joints of his rod, and the creel which he had
thrown down, and started off at a smart trot in and out amongst the
great beeches, not traversing the way by which he had come, but striking
a bee-line for home.

CHAPTER FOUR.

A RAID ON THE LARDER.

Brackendene was the very model of an Elizabethan country house, with
clusters of twisted chimneys, and ivy clinging to the red bricks
everywhere that it could find a hold.

There was an attractive porch opening out upon the well-kept pleasaunce,
but, instead of going straight to it, Waller looked sharply to right and
left, saw nobody and heard nothing but a dull, distant _thump, thump_,
and the barking of a dog from somewhere at the back.

The next minute he was through one of the dining-room casements, and
crossed into the hall, where he stood listening for a moment or two to
the _thump, thump_, which now sounded nearer.

"That's Martha at her churn," he muttered. "How stupid it seems!
Anyone would think I was a thief."

He felt like one as he crossed the hall, opened a big oak door
cautiously, and made his way into the great red-brick-floored kitchen,
where from an opening to his left the thumping of the churn came louder
still, accompanied by a dull humming sound, something like the buzz of a
musical bee, but which was intended by the utterer to represent a tune.

Waller nodded his head with satisfaction, and went off to his right out
of the kitchen into a cool stone passage, and then through a door into a
stone-floored larder, whose wire-covered, ivy-shaded windows gave upon
the north.