as a
joy to him after his long confinement in the house.

The streets, as he and Hope passed through them, were full of soldiers.
Companies of yeomen marched and countermarched in indifferent order
through every thoroughfare. Pickets of regulars, their bayonets fixed,
stood at the street corners and in front of the principal buildings.
Troops of dragoons, rattling and jingling, trotted briskly in one
direction or another. Orderlies cantered their horses from place to
place. Business in the town was almost suspended. Many of the shops
were shut. Grave citizens, engaged in pressing affairs, hurried, with
downcast eyes, along the causeways, seldom stopping to speak to each
other, greeting acquaintances with hasty nods. Women of the better sort,
if they ventured out at all, walked quickly, heavily cloaked and veiled.
The trollops and street walkers of a garrison town emerged from
their lairs even at midday, and stood in little groups at the corners
exchanging jests with the soldiers on picket duty, or shouted ribaldries
to the yeomen and dragoons who passed them. Idle maid servants, sluttish
and dishevelled, leaned far out of the upper windows of the houses
to gaze at the pageant beneath them. In the High Street a crowd of
loafers--coarse women and soldiers off duty--was gathered in front of
an iron triangle where, it was understood, some prisoners were to be
flogged. Town, Major Fox, Major Barber, and some other officers in
uniform, strolled up and down in front of the Exchange, rudely jostling
such merchants as ventured to enter or leave the building.

James Hope walked slowly through the streets, chatting cheerfully
to Neal as he went. Now and then he even stopped to watch a troop of
dragoons go by or to gaze at the uniforms of the soldiers who stood on
guard. In crowded places he waited quietly until he saw a way of passing
on without pushing or attracting attention to his movements. The trial
was a severe one for Neal's nerves. It was hard to pose as a curious
sightseer within a few feet of men who could have earned fifty pounds by
arresting him.

At last, after many pauses, and what seemed an interminable walk, Hope
stopped at the door of a respectable looking house and knocked. A woman
half opened the door and eyed them suspiciously. Then, recognising
a whispered pass-word of some sort from Hope, she admitted them and
ushered them into a room on the ground floor. James Finlay sat at a
table with writing materials