That further search had involved runty hired horses, the roads being almost impossible for a more comfortable coach, and nearly six miserable miles upwards and inland, with nary a hope of even a mean dinner or potable refreshments along the way.

The local magistrate, your typical bluff squire, was not available (though his recumbent form could be espied, sprawled on a settee in his parlour, through the open double doors facing the front gallery of his imposing manor, and his snores were loud enough to unnerve the horses!). Both the vicar and his assisting curate were off "tending to good works"-though they had trotted off on their best hunters, clad in field clothing, bearing fowling guns, and animatedly conversing about " ring-necked peasants" or something such like, as the dour housekeeper of the vicar's manse told them, rather brusquely, between yawns. Evidently, folk did a deal of napping in Welsh Hell Gully.

Trust to Cox'n Andrews, though, to chat up the Cuffies who worked at the hamlet's tumbledown public house, where they dined, to learn that "Mis-sah Tobias" matched the physical description of Toby Jugg to a tee, and where his acreage could be found. Off they'd gone, after an indifferent dinner, but two tankards of rather good ale to the good each, to seek out "Hosier Hall."

"Mistress Hosier, I presume?" Lewrie had said by way of enquiry. He stood with hat in hand, at the edge of the front gallery to a one-story house made of coral "tabby" blocks, ballast stones, and weathered scrap lumber. The gallery wasn't a foot off the ground, its planks uneven and sagging, though the long overhang of the roof, thatched from sugarcane stalks or bamboo or whatever fell to hand on Barbados, gave a more than welcome shade, and the raised gallery that spanned the entire house did provide at least ten degrees of relief from the noonday sun. "Or, should I say, Mistress Jugg?" Lewrie added, keeping a mild and unthreatening smile on his "phyz."