Chapter 25

CHAPTER VI - ARBLASTER AGAIN

When Dick and Lawless were suffered to steal, by a back way, out of
the house where Lord Risingham held his garrison, the evening had
already come.

They paused in shelter of the garden wall to consult on their best
course. The danger was extreme. If one of Sir Daniel's men caught
sight of them and raised the view-hallo, they would be run down and
butchered instantly. And not only was the town of Shoreby a mere
net of peril for their lives, but to make for the open country was
to run the risk of the patrols.

A little way off, upon some open ground, they spied a windmill
standing; and hard by that, a very large granary with open doors.

"How if we lay there until the night fall?" Dick proposed.

And Lawless having no better suggestion to offer, they made a
straight push for the granary at a run, and concealed themselves
behind the door among some straw. The daylight rapidly departed;
and presently the moon was silvering the frozen snow. Now or never
was their opportunity to gain the Goat and Bagpipes unobserved and
change their tell-tale garments. Yet even then it was advisable to
go round by the outskirts, and not run the gauntlet of the market-
place, where, in the concourse of people, they stood the more
imminent peril to be recognised and slain.

This course was a long one. It took them not far from the house by
the beach, now lying dark and silent, and brought them forth at
last by the margin of the harbour. Many of the ships, as they
could see by the clear moonshine, had weighed anchor, and,
profiting by the calm sky, proceeded for more distant parts;
answerably to this, the rude alehouses along the beach (although in
defiance of the curfew law, they still shone with fire and candle)
were no longer thronged with customers, and no longer echoed to the
chorus of sea-songs.

Hastily, half-running, with their monkish raiment kilted to the
knee, they plunged through the deep snow and threaded the labyrinth
of marine lumber; and they were already more than half way round
the harbour when, as they were passing close before an alehouse,
the door suddenly opened and let out a gush of light upon their
fleeting figures.

Instantly they stopped, and made believe to be engaged in earnest
conversation.

Three men, one after another, came out of the ale-house, and the
last closed the door behind him. All three were unsteady upon
their feet, as if they had passed the day in deep potations, and
they now stood wavering in the moonlight, like men who knew not
what they would be after. The tallest of the three was talking in
a loud, lamentable voice.

"Seven pieces of as good Gascony as ever a tapster broached," he
was