"
"Good lad! Ten of 'em would be long odds in the open; here we ought to
have the laugh of them. Load your pistols! Damme, it's a bit chilly.
Fortunately there's some warm work ahead."
He stamped up and down the room, swishing his arms round his body, and
stopping every now and again to make some trifling change in our hurriedly
contrived barricade. Margaret stood by quietly at the window, and when I
had reloaded my pistols, I joined her there.
The ladder had been shifted and now lay along in the snow. There, too,
lay the body of the dragoon I had shot, crumpled up in his death-agony. A
brood of owls were clucking and cluttering about under the hovel, and
there, too, leaning against the rear wheel of the wain, were a lumpish
wagoner and our surly host. The one was stolidly smoking, the other was
holding the battered lantern out at arm's length, and I could, as it were,
see him growling to the lout at his side, "'Ew's to fork out for this'n?"
A girl went towards them from the house, circling, with averted head, far
round the dead dragoon, bearing them from the kitchen a smoking jug of ale.
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