jack beauty here."

He was getting no nearer to the object of his visit, and, perhaps
thinking it would be well to humour me, he fetched a horn and tried our
Hanyards ale. This gave me a chance of taking stock of him.

He was a thin, wiry man of middle height and middle age. Such a face I
had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I
had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or
he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty
midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in
large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth
originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been
extended, as it seemed, to his left ear by a savage sword slash which had
healed very badly. He had an air of mean, perky intelligence, as of one of
low rank and no breeding who had for many years been accustomed to cringe
to the great and domineer over smaller fry than himself. Some sort of
military rank he had, judging by his stained and frayed but once gaudy
jacket. He carried a tuck of unusual length, stretching along his left
side from heel to armpit, and a couple of pistols were stuck in his belt.

He put down the horn, smacked his lips, and began:

"Master Wheatman, I am searching for a Jacobite spy--a woman. We took her
father up at the 'Barley Mow,' and I learned from a man of yours that the
daughter was at his mother's ale-house down the road. She is not there,
and left to walk to meet her father, she said. She has certainly not done
that, and I have called to see if she is hiding here or hereabouts."

"By gad, we'll nab her if she is," said I heartily. "She's not been