om him, out of the darkness, were the same as we heard
first in the darkness--"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and if they
did another old man no harm they certainly seemed to afford great
satisfaction to this one.

All that night we walked steadily eastward, passing through sleeping
villages and by sleeping farmhouses, and meeting none who showed any desire
to question us. In the early morning I bought bread and cheese from a
sleepy wife at a little shop in a village that was just waking up, and we
ate as we walked, and slept in a haystack till late in the afternoon. We
tramped again all night, and long before daylight we smelt salt water, and
when the sun rose we were sitting on a cliff watching it come up out of the
sea.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW WE CAME UPON A WHITED SEPULCHRE AND FELL INTO THE FIRE

We wandered a great way down that lonely coast before a fishing village
hove in sight. At regular intervals we came upon watchmen on the look-out
for invaders or smugglers, and to all such we gave wide berth, by a circuit
in the country or by dodging them on their beats. It was only towns we
feared, and of those there were fortunately not many. In the villages we
had no difficulty in buying food, and to all who questioned we were on our
way to the Nore to join a King's ship and fight the Frenchmen. To cover Le
Marchant's lack of speech, we muffled his face in flannel and gave him a
toothache which rendered him bearish and disinclined for talk. And so we
came slowly down the coast, with eyes and ears alert for chance of
crossing, and wondered at the lack of enterprise on the part of the
dwellers there which rendered the chances so few.

Many recollections crowd my mind of that long tramp along the edge of the
sea. But greater matters press, and I may not linger on these. We had many
a close shave from officious village busybodies, whose patriotism flew no
higher than thought of the reward which hung to an escaped prisoner of war
or to any likely subject for the pressgang.

One such is burnt in on my mind, because thought of him has done more to
make me suspicious of my fellows, especially of such as make parade of
their piety, than any man I ever met.

He was a kindly-looking old man with white hair and a cheerful brown face,
and his clothes were white with flour dust which had a homely, honest
flavour about it. He was in a small shop, where I went for food one
evening, engaged in talk with the woman who ke