Now Carne himself, while working with new vigour and fresh enterprise,
had a narrow escape from invasion. Captain Stubbard, stirred up now and
again by Mr. Twemlow, had thoroughly searched all covered places, likely
to harbour gunpowder, within at least six miles of his fort, that is to
say, all likely places, save and except the right one. By doing this
he had done for himself--as regards sweet hospitality--among all the
leading farmers, maltsters, tanners, and millers for miles around. Even
those whose premises were not entered, as if they had been Frenchmen,
had a brother-in-law, or at least a cousin, whose wooden bars had been
knocked up. And the most atrocious thing of all, if there could be
anything worse than worst, was that the Captain dined one day, at a
market-ordinary, with Farmer, or you might say Squire Hanger--for the
best part of his land followed to him from his father--and had rum and
water with him, and spoke his health, and tucked Mrs. Hanger up into the
shay, and rode alongside to guarantee them; and then the next day, on
the very same horse, up he comes at Hanger-dene, and overhauls every tub
on the premises, with a parchment as big as a malt-shovel! Such a man
was not fit to lay a knife and fork by.
Some sense of the harm he had done to himself, without a bit of good to
any one, dwelt heavily in the Captain's mind, as he rode up slowly upon
the most amiable of the battery-horses--for all sailors can ride, from
long practice on the waves--and struck a stern stroke, with a stick like
a linstock, upon the old shutter that served for a door and the
front entrance to Carne Castle.
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