was a huckabacky sound about
his words.

There was another furious hissing from the pan, followed by a fresh
slap, for a second great rasher had been thrust in _vice_ number one
nicely cooked and just placed in the hot dish that had been intended for
trout.

"Did they catch them, Mrs Champernowne?" shouted Uncle Paul.

"I haven't heard, sir," was the reply; "but dear, dear, they are pretty
well sure to, for there's not much chance for the poor fellows. Oh, it
makes my heart bleed when I hear sometimes that one of them has been
shot down by the soldiers."

Rodd went on tip-toe across the creaking floor to open his door a little
farther, listening with strained ear, for his bright young imagination
pictured the thin pale youth, wild-eyed and breathless, out of his
hiding-place and running for liberty across the open moor, and hearing
again the distant reports of the muskets.

"But that doesn't often happen, sir, for between you and me and the
post, seeing that the prisoners are only soldiers, after all, I don't
believe that though they have their orders, our men ever try to hit
them; and very glad I am."

"Ah, ah, ah, Mrs Champernowne, that isn't loyal, you know, that isn't
loyal to his Majesty the King and your country."

"I can't help that, Dr Robson, and I am not speaking, sir, as a
subject, but as a woman and a mother who has a brave stout boy in our
good King's Guards. Now suppose, sir, that you were a mother." Uncle
Paul grunted audibly.

"And had a boy the same as I have, and Bony Napolyparty had taken him
prisoner. How would you like him to be shot down?"

Rodd literally jumped in his alarm, for there was a tremendously wild
cissing from the pan and a horrible suggestion therewith that Mrs
Champernowne had been turning the rasher with so much energy that she
had thrown the cooking slice on to the fire itself instead of into its
native pan, while a sudden gush as of hot burning fat came up the little
stairs.

But the pleasant sizzling sounds began again directly, and Rodd, who was
ravenously hungry, consequent upon the bad part he had played over the
sandwiches beneath the tor, sighed in relief as he realised that the
widow's energetic treatment had only splashed a little of the fat over
the side of the pan.

As Rodd listened for a continuation of the political discussion, in
which it seemed to him that Uncle Paul had got the worst of it, for
neither the widow nor he spoke for the next three or f