The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans by William Gosse Hay

When Oughtryn had put up his horse, he did not go in to the women, but entered the house by the yard door that opened into the Chamber. He found the red-coat standing with his back to one of the windows in the same wall, his face somewhat pale and hang-dog. His coat and shako lay on a threelegged table by the chimney, and he stood in his grey shirt and dirty white breeches, to protect the knees of which he had bound together a sheaf of straw, and this with wooden bucket and brush lay in the middle of the floor. Half of the room was damp with his scrubbing, the other untouched. It was fine and long. Three small white windows broke the walls on either side, the two most eastern with their shutters closed, the further with their shades raised a few inches over the slate sills. Between the outer pairs and the middle, on each wall, shallow arches had been sunk, and in these, in lieu of papering, some elegant amateur, dreaming of a classic past, had painted archaic shrubs and ferns waist-high, with here and there a Grecian pillar to the height of a woman. The sprays and pendants peeped from the plaster with a veiled air, the leaves, a bluish-emerald, the stiff stems and branches sunken to the drab of old wounds in cupboarded masters. At the west end, in a bow of windows, was a small mantel-piece of stone, its supports grooved and voluted to represent Ionic pillars; while a stone cornice, grooved in harmony--as with a rude tool groping after the Greek--joined walls and ceiling. There were two doors into the hall; one close to the north wall, and another not far from the south. Both were open at the moment, the room indeed being lit from the hall and the span of light beneath the shades. Against the more southern door, an octagonal table and three chairs had been pushed back, the soldier's blue bundle lying there, with his cane, a besom, and an empty drinking-glass.

When Oughtryn came in, he did not at first see the man, and when he had peered round, under his hat, at glass, bundle, coat, and shako, he shrilled out, "Where have ye got, officer?" rousing the hang-dog figure to a gabbling response.