CHAPTER IV.

MILITARY PREPARATIONS.--THE COMMANDER AND HIS MAN.--ARAM IS
PERSUADED TO PASS THE NIGHT AT THE MANOR-HOUSE.

Falstaff.--"Bid my Lieutenant Peto meet me at the town's end.
.. I pressed me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts
in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads."
--Henry IV.

They had scarcely reached the Manor-house, before the rain, which the
clouds had portended throughout the whole day, began to descend in
torrents, and to use the strong expression of the Roman poet--the night
rushed down, black and sudden, over the face of the earth.

The new watch were not by any means the hardy and experienced soldiery,
by whom rain and darkness are unheeded. They looked with great dismay
upon the character of the night in which their campaign was to commence.
The valorous Peter, who had sustained his own courage by repeated
applications to a little bottle, which he never failed to carry about
him in all the more bustling and enterprising occasions of life,
endeavoured, but with partial success, to maintain the ardour of his
band. Seated in the servants' hall of the Manor-house, in a large
arm-chair, Jacobina on his knee, and his trusty musket, which, to the
great terror of the womankind, had never been uncocked throughout the
day, still grasped in his right hand, while the stock was grounded on
the floor; he indulged in martial harangues, plentifully interlarded
with plagiarisms from the worshipful translations of Messrs. Sternhold
and Hopkins, and psalmodic versions of a more doubtful authorship.
And when at the hour of ten, which was the appointed time, he led his
warlike force, which consisted of six rustics, armed with sticks of
incredible thickness, three guns, one pistol, a broadsword, and a
pitchfork, (a weapon likely to be more effectively used than all the
rest put together;) when at the hour of ten he led them up to the room
above, where they were to be passed in review before the critical eye
of the Squire, with Jacobina leading the on-guard, you could not fancy
a prettier picture for a hero in a little way, than mine host of the
Spotted Dog.

His hat was fastened tight on his brows by a blue pocket-handkerchief;
he wore a spencer of a light brown drugget, a world too loose, above a
leather jerkin; his breeches of corduroy, were met all of a sudden half
way up the thigh, by a detachment of Hessians, formerly in the service
of the Corporal, and bought