Finally, when the sergeant was ordered to keep me at his
peril till such time as I could be lodged in Carlisle jail, Brocton
greedily tossed off a bumper of wine and laughed aloud at some vulgar
sally from a lady in a green paduasoy. On leaving I bowed to the Duke. He
was a vigorous, able man with the manners and morals of a bull.
Brocton followed the sergeant out. There was a consultation between them
of which I heard nothing, but the result was that the sergeant picked up a
man as guide who was waiting at the front door, obviously for the purpose,
and took me through and beyond the village to a house on the roadside. The
place was of fair size, built of rough slabs of stone, and evidently a
farm-house. The owner was a lumpish, ungainly fellow, astonishingly
bow-legged. He had a little yapping dog, which jumped backwards and
forwards between his knees like a trick-dog through a hoop.
Preparations had been made for my coming, "by his lordship," as the
farmer blabbed out. I was taken upstairs to a back room, ironed, in the
way I have described, by the parish constable, who had been prayed in aid
for the job, and locked in in the dark.
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