y-paid a man as any in
his Majesty's service. Right wheel, and down the pathway! Do ye ride
on either side, and I behind! Our carbines are primed, friend, so stand
true to your promise!'

'Nay, you can rely upon it,' I answered.

'Your little comrade did play you a scurvy trick,' said the sergeant,
'for seeing us ride down the road he did make across to us, and
bargained with the Captain that his life should be spared, on condition
that he should deliver into our hands what he described as one of the
stoutest soldiers in the rebel army. Truly you have thews and sinews
enough, though you are surely too young to have seen much service.'

'This hath been my first campaign,' I answered.

'And is like to be your last,' he remarked, with soldierly frankness. 'I
hear that the Privy Council intend to make such an example as will take
the heart out of the Whigs for twenty years to come. They have a lawyer
coming from London whose wig is more to be feared than our helmets. He
will slay more men in a day than a troop of horse in a ten-mile chase.
Faith! I would sooner they took this butcher-work into their own hands.
See those bodies on yonder tree. It is an evil season when such acorns
grow upon English oaks.'

'It is an evil season,' said I, 'when men who call themselves Christians
inflict such vengeance upon poor simple peasants, who have done no more
than their conscience urged them. That the leaders and officers should
suffer is but fair. They stood to win in case of success, and should pay
forfeit now that they have lost. But it goes to my heart to see those
poor godly country folk so treated.'

'Aye, there is truth in that,' said the sergeant. 'Now if it were some
of these snuffle-nosed preachers, the old lank-haired bell-wethers who
have led their flocks to the devil, it would be another thing. Why
can they not conform to the Church, and be plagued to them? It is good
enough for the King, so surely it is good enough for them; or are their
souls so delicate that they cannot satisfy themselves with that on which
every honest Englishman thrives? The main road to Heaven is too common
for them. They must needs have each a by-path of their own, and cry out
against all who will not follow it.'

'Why,' said I, 'there are pious men of all creeds. If a man lead a life
of virtue, what matter what he believes?

'Let a man keep his virtue in his heart,' quoth Sergeant Gredder. 'Let
him pack it deep in the knapsack of his soul.