"You and your daughter may proceed on your way unharmed if you surrender.
It's only Wheatman the farmer, now with you, that I want."
He could be heard all over the room to the last syllable, and Margaret
quickly left her place at the window and came towards us, but the Colonel
in a stern whisper ordered her back. "How dare you leave your post! Watch
that wagon!" She crimsoned and returned.
"If Master Freake were here, Oliver, I think he would remark that there
was no market for colonels to-day," said her father to me with a wry
smile. He gave the lid of his snuff-box a final tap, opened it, and held
it out to me. In the sense of the term known to fashionable London, he was
not a good-looking man, but as he stood there, waiting gravely while I
took my pinch, he had the irresistible charm of the highest manliness.
"Do you agree, Colonel?" bawled the sergeant.
"I do not," he shouted, and took his snuff with great relish.
"By God," and now the sergeant roared like a wounded bull, "I'll have you
all in ten minutes." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Here, I say, you
Wheatman, do you agree?"
"Certainly," said I, "I'll come at once.
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