may we soon
have all the red coats in the country cut up into such head-gear."

It was fortunate for Neal that he found Felix Matier's conversation
amusing and Felix Matier's books interesting. He had ample opportunity
of enjoying them during the week which followed the dragoons' riot.
Donald Ward refused, as long as possible to allow him to get out of bed,
and even when Neal was up and dressed, peremptorily forbade him to leave
the house. He spoke weighty words about his experience of wounds, of
frightful consequences which followed cuts on the head when the cold of
the outer air got at them, of men who had died of lockjaw because they
would not take care of scalp wounds, of burning eruptions which broke
out on the unwary, of desperate fevers threatening life and reason.

Neal was puzzled. He had tumbled about among the rocks at Ballintoy a
good deal during his boyhood, cutting and bruising most parts of his
body. Even his head had not escaped. There was a deep scar under his
hair which he had come by in the course of an attempt to enter a long
fissure among the rocks of the Skerries, off Port-rush. But such wounds
had troubled him very little. He had never made a fuss about them or
taken any special precautions on account of them, neither knowing nor
caring anything about the evils which may follow wounds, which do follow
wounds, in pampered bodies. He could not understand why his uncle, who
was certainly not otherwise given to morbid coddling, should insist upon
such excessive care of a cut which was healing rapidly.

The fact was that Donald Ward was nervous about Neal, not at all on
account of his cut head, which was nothing, but because Captain Twinely
and his yeomen had returned to Belfast. It leaked out that the military
authorities were not pleased with Captain Twinely. He had brought back
three prisoners and the cannon, but he had not brought back Micah
Ward, who was particularly wanted. Captain Twinely, angry at his cold
reception, and furious at the hanging of his trooper, was anxious to
revenge himself upon some one. Lord Dun-severic was too great a man
to be attacked. The Government could not afford to interfere with his
methods of executing justice in North Antrim. Captain Twinely was given
a broad hint that he must hawk at lower game, and keep his mouth shut
about the hanging of his trooper. There was no objection to the yeomen
outraging women so long as they confined themselves to farmers' wives,
but