tening. 'My head--' I repeated, and again stopped short--
this time at sound of a cry.

It came from the night without: and at once I knew it to be a
repetition of the sound that had aroused me. Nor was it, in fact, a
cry, though it rose like a cry against the wind: rather, a confused
uproar of voices, continuous, drawing nearer and nearer.

Then, as I stared at my host and he at me, the noise became
articulate as drunken singing--'_Tow, row, row! Tow, row, row! . . .
Crop-headed Puritans, tow, row, row. . . . Boot and saddle, and tow,
row, row!_--and, nearing so, broke into chorus,--

'Waller and Hazelrigg, Stapleton, Scroop--
Way! Make way for His Majesty's troop!
Crop-headed Puritans durstn't deny
His Majesty's gentlemen riding by,
With boot and saddle and tow-row-row!'

'Good Lord!' muttered my host, casting out his two hands in despair.
'More soldiers!'

But by this time I had my hand on the door. 'Guide me down the
stairs,' I commanded; 'down to the door! And, before you open it,
quench the light!'

By the time we reached the door the voices were close at hand, coming
down the lane: and by each note of them I grew more clearly
convinced. 'Sir,' I asked in a whisper, 'does this lane lead off
from the road on the near side of Alton?

For a moment it seemed that he did not hear me. 'Pray Heaven I
dowsed the light in time!' he chattered. 'Three visits in one night
is more than my sins deserve. . . . Yes; the lane enters a half-mile
this side of Alton, and returns back--'

'Well enough I know where it returns back' said I. 'Man, did you
bewitch them?--as, a while ago, you bewitched me?'

'Eh?'

I felt that he was peering at me in the dark.

'_Something_ has bewitched them,' I persisted. 'Either the wine or
that devil's toy of yours has hold of them; or the both, belike.
These are the same men, and have travelled full circle, listen to
them!--'tis the music of the spheres, sir.'

'I believe you are right,' said my host, with a chuckle.
'O, Copernicus!'

I drew the door open gently and looked aloft. The night, before so
starry, was now clouded over. The troopers--I could hear their
horses' hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing--were
winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me. A gravel
path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it. This I saw by the
faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance.
I tip-toed across t