, Captain Clarke!' cried one of the troopers who had
sprung down to examine them. 'They have the Government saddle and
holsters. Here is a wooden gate which opens on a pathway leading to the
house.'

'We had best dismount, then,' said Sir Gervas, jumping down and tying
his horse beside the others. 'Do you, lads, stay by the horses, and if
we call for ye come to our aid. Sergeant Holloway, you can come with us.
Bring your pistols with you!'

Chapter XXX. Of the Swordsman with the Brown Jacket

The sergeant, who was a great raw-boned west-countryman, pushed the gate
open, and we were advancing up the winding pathway, when a stream of
yellow light flooded out from a suddenly opened door, and we saw a dark
squat figure dart through it into the inside of the house. At the same
moment there rose up a babel of sounds, followed by two pistol shots,
and a roaring, gasping hubbub, with clash of swords and storm of oaths.
At this sudden uproar we all three ran at our topmost speed up the
pathway and peered in through the open door, where we saw a scene such
as I shall never forget while this old memory of mine can conjure up any
picture of the past.

The room was large and lofty, with long rows of hams and salted meats
dangling from the smoke-browned rafters, as is usual in Somersetshire
farmhouses. A high black clock ticked in a corner, and a rude table,
with plates and dishes laid out as for a meal, stood in the centre.
Right in front of the door a great fire of wood faggots was blazing, and
before this, to our unutterable horror, there hung a man head downwards,
suspended by a rope which was knotted round his ankles, and which,
passing over a hook in a beam, had been made fast to a ring in the
floor. The struggles of this unhappy man had caused the rope to whirl
round, so that he was spinning in front of the blaze like a joint
of meat. Across the threshold lay a woman, the one whose cries had
attracted us, but her rigid face and twisted body showed that our
aid had come too late to save her from the fate which she had seen
impending. Close by her two swarthy dragoons in the glaring red coats of
the Royal army lay stretched across each other upon the floor, dark and
scowling even in death. In the centre of the room two other dragoons
were cutting and stabbing with their broad-swords at a thick, short,
heavy-shouldered man, clad in coarse brown kersey stuff, who sprang
about among the chairs and round the table with a lon