Captain Ravenshaw 9

	Captain Ravenshaw 9

"Troth--your health, mistress!--I am glad you have ale in store. Would there be enough to entertain a few guests withal--some dozen or score poor friends of mine, if they were travelling this way? To tell the truth, I should not like to waste this wine upon such." "Travellers never pass this way," said Meg, plainly not knowing what to make of him. "Oh, we are some way from the highroad here, indeed; but a foolish friend or so might turn out a mile for the pleasure of my company." "I know not what you'd set before 'em to eat, if there were a dozen." "Marry, they would have to bring eatables with 'em,--my reason for having 'em as guests. Only so there be ale enough." "Oh, there is ale," said Meg, without further comment. Ravenshaw, munching the cakes, and oft wetting his throat, looked around the hall. The front doorway faced a wide fireplace at the rear, now empty. At the right was a door to a small apartment, a kind of porter's room, lighted by a single high narrow window; farther back in the hall was the entrance to a passage communicating with other parts of the house; and still farther back, a door leading to the kitchen. At the left hand were, first, a door to a large room, and, second, the opening to a passage like that on the right. By way of this left-hand passage, and a narrow staircase which led from it, the captain was presently shown by old Jeremy to his chamber. It was large and bare, hung with rotten arras, and contained a bed, a joint-stool, and a table with ewer and basin; its window looked into the courtyard. He flung his bruised body on the bed, and soon sank deliciously to sleep. Meanwhile old Jeremy, returning to the hall, found Meg sitting with her chin upon her hands, and gazing into the empty fireplace. "A sturdy fellow," whispered the old man, pointing backward with his thumb, and taking on a jocular air. "Cast eyes on him; a goodly husband mends all; cast eyes on him!" "Thou'rt a fool; go thy ways!" quoth Meg; but she did not move. CHAPTER XVI. THE POET AS A MAN OF ACTION.   "O father, where's my love? were you so careless   To let an unthrift steal away your child?"     --_The Case Is Altered._ Millicent, after the riot had ceased and dinner had been eaten, passed the day with a palpitating heart but a resolved mind. Under cover of her usual needlework, she fashioned a sort of large linen wallet, in which to carry the few things she wished to take with her. Her emotions were, in a less degree, similar to those which had affected her in the hours preceding her former attempt to run away. At supper she looked often with a hidden tenderness at the composed, unsuspecting face of her mother. When the light of evening faded she slipped to her chamber, and put a few chosen objects into the receptacle she had made, wrapped this in a hooded cloak, and dropped it from her window into the concealed space behind the garden shrubbery. She then waited, watching from the window that part of Friday Street in which Master Holyday must appear. At last his slender figure lurched into view in the dusk, and came to a stop outside the gate. Millicent sped across her chamber. At the door she turned, with fast-beating heart, and cast an affectionate, tearful look at the place in which she had spent so much of her childhood and youth, and which seemed to share so many of her untold thoughts. It appeared for an instant to reproach her sorrowfully; but when in her swift thought she justified her action, its aspect changed to that of wishing her Godspeed, and counselling her to hasten. She hurried through the house as if upon some indoor quest, found herself alone in the garden, recovered her cloak and parcel, and went to unfasten the gate. "'Tis I, Master Holyday," she said, in a low tone, as she loosened the bolt. "Good! good! excellent!" came the scholar's reply from outside the gate, in a voice rather parched and excited. Having slid back the bolt, she made to pull the gate open, but it would not move. "What is the matter?" quoth she. "I cannot open it. Push it from your side." She heard his hands laid against it, then his shoulder, then his back. But it would not budge. She examined it closely in the dusky light, and suddenly gave a little cry of despair. "Oh, me! There is a new lock on the gate, and God knows where is the key!" During the afternoon, in fact, Master Etheridge, alarmed by the easy entrance obtained by Ravenshaw and Gregory the previous night, and by Ravenshaw's exit from the garden that day,--an exit after which the gate had been left open,--had caused an additional lock to be put on, a lock to be opened by means of a key which the goldsmith thought best to keep in his own care. "Oh, what shall I do?" she cried, after a futile tug at the lock. "Is there no other way to come out?" queried Holyday, in perturbation. "Alas, no! There's the street door from the gallery, but my father locks it himself at supper-time and keeps the key. I durs'n't go through the shop; if it isn't closed, my father may be in the back shop and the apprentices will surely be in front." "God's name, I know not what--" began the poet, agitated with perplexity and fear of failure, but broke off to "Can't you make another pretext to go out?--drop another wedding-ring into the street, or something?" "Nay, they would sure stop my going or follow me out at this hour. Oh, would I could leap the wall! By St. Anne, 'tis too bad--Ha! wait a minute." Under the impulse of her thought she sped away without listening for answer, unconscious that her last words had been spoken too low to go beyond the gate. Hence she did not know that Master Holyday, attacked by an idea at the same moment, and expressing himself with equal inaudibility, had as suddenly made off toward the White Horse Tavern. She was in the house ere it occurred to her that she ought to have rid herself of her burden by throwing it over the wall. She thought best not to retrace her steps. So she ran up-stairs and along the passage to a small window that looked down on Friday Street. She pushed open the casement, saw that no one was passing below, and dropped the parcel, trusting it to the darkness. She had a moment's idea of calling to Holyday to come and take it, but a second thought was wiser; she cast a single glance toward the gate, but was uncertain whether she made out his form or not in the decreasing light. Then she went down-stairs, and boldly into the back shop. Her father sat at his small table counting by candle-light the day's money. "Eh! what is it?" he asked, looking sharply up. "What dost thou here, baggage?" "I have an order for George," she replied, quietly, forcing her voice to steadiness, and praying that her throbbing heart and pale face might not betray her. George was an apprentice whom, for his cleverness, Mistress Etheridge was wont to employ on errands. Millicent could see him now in the outer shop, busy with other apprentices in covering the cases and closing up the front. "'Zooks!" grumbled the goldsmith; "thy mother would best take the lad for a page, and be done with it." Millicent passed on to the front shop. "George," said she, when out of her father's hearing, but in that of one or two of the other apprentices, "you are to come with me to Mistress Carroll's next door; there is something to fetch back. Nay, wait till you have done here; I'll run ahead, 'tis but a step." Upon the hazard that her father, in the rear shop, would not lift up his eyes from his money for some little time, she passed out to Cheapside. In a breath she was around the corner, from the crowd and the window-lights, into the dusk and desertion of Friday Street. She stooped and picked up her cloak and bag; then ran on, to the gate. "Speed! speed! there's not a moment to lose!" she whispered, catching the elbow of the man who stood there, and who had not heard her coming swiftly up behind him. He turned and stared, putting his eyes close to hers on account of the darkness; she saw that he had a great, scarred, bearded face, and that his body was twice the breadth of Master Holyday's. "Oh, God!" she exclaimed, drawing back. "I thought you were Master Holyday." "Master Holyday, eh?" growled the man. "What of him?" "I--I was to meet him here," she faltered, looking around with a sinking heart. "Oh!--God's light!--you are the maid, belike? Well, troth, beshrew me but that's the hell of it!" And the fellow grinned with silent laughter. "What mean you? What maid? Know you aught--?" "Of Master Holyday? Sooth, do I! He's on t'other side of this gate." She stared at the closed gate in bewilderment. "What? In the garden?" "Ay, in the garden." The man raised his voice a little. "Sure thou'rt there, Master Holyday?" "Ay," came the reply in the scholar's unmistakable voice. "But the maid is not. Hang her, whither is she gone?" "Here I am," answered the maid, for herself. "In God's name, how got you in there?" "In God's name, how got you out there?" said Holyday, vexatiously. "A minute ago you were here, and I was there. You could not come out, so I went for this gentleman, who lifted me to the top of the wall--" "Which was a service not included in the contract," remarked Cutting Tom. "And here I dropped, thinking to find you," continued Holyday, in exasperation, "and to help you out as he helped me in. And now--" "Well, I am out, nevertheless," she replied, quickly. "So come you out, pray, without more ado; my father may discover at any moment--" "Why, devil take me!" cried Holyday, in despair. "I cannot climb the wall; there's none here to give me a shoulder." "Is there nothing there you can climb upon?" queried Cutting Tom. "Yes," cried Millicent, taking the answer upon herself; "there are benches. Oh, pray, make haste, Master Holyday!" Soon Master Holyday could be heard dragging a bench across the sward; in its ordinary position it would not give him sufficient height, so he seemed to busy himself in placing it properly for his purpose. "_Nomine patris!_" he exclaimed as he bruised his fingers. Finally a thud against the upper part of the gate indicated that he had fixed the bench slantwise. Mounting the incline chiefly by means of hands and knees, he stood trembling at the top, high enough to get a purchase of his elbows on the gate, and so to wriggle his body over. Millicent breathed more freely as soon as his head and shoulders appeared; but, as he was righting himself on the gate-top in order to drop safely outside, there came a voice from within the garden: "Hey? How now? Good lack, more comings and goings!" "Oh, God! that meddling Sir Peregrine!" cried Millicent. "We are found out. Hurry, Master Holyday!" The poet, startled, was still upon the gate, staring back into the garden. With a revival of earlier agility, the old knight came up the sloping bench at a run, took hold of the gate's top with one hand, and of Master Holyday's neck with the other. His eyes fell upon the pair waiting outside. It was not too dark for him to recognise a figure which he had oft observed with the interest of future ownership. "What! Mistress Millicent! And who's this? Master Holyday, o' my life! 'Zooks and 'zounds! here's doings!" The poet, suddenly alive, jerked his neck from the old knight's grasp, and threw himself from the gate without thought of consequences. Luckily, Tom caught him by the body, and saved his neck, though both men were heavily jarred by the collision. "Come!" cried Millicent, seizing Holyday by the sleeve ere he had got his balance. She darted down Friday Street, the poet staggering headlong after her, Cutting Tom close in the rear. "What, ho!" cried Sir Peregrine, astonished out of his wits. "Stop! stay! The watch! constables! Master Etheridge! Runaways, runaways, runaways!" His voice waned in the distance behind Millicent as she hastened on. She still held the poet's sleeve; he breathed fast and hard, but said nothing. In front of the White Horse, four men, at a gruff word from Cutting Tom, fell in with the fugitives, and the whole party of seven ran on without further speech. For a short time, tramping and breathing were the only sounds in Millicent's ears; but soon there came a renewed and multiplied cry of "Runaways! stop them!" whereby she knew that Sir Peregrine had given the alarm, and that her father and his lads had started in pursuit. "God send we get to the boat in time!" she said, as she halted for a single step so that Master Holyday might take the lead. She cast a swift look over her shoulder, and saw two or three torches flaring in the distance. Holyday led across Knightrider Street obliquely, then down the lower part of Bread Street, along a little of Thames Street, and through a short passage to Queenhithe. This wharf enclosed three sides of a somewhat rounded basin, wherein a number of craft now lay at rest in the black water that lapped softly as stirred by the tide and a light wind. Houses were built close together on all three sides. The poet made straight along the east side of the basin, and down a narrow flight of stairs to a large boat that lay there. A man started up in the boat, and held out his hand to help the maid aboard, lighting her steps with a lantern in his other hand,--for a veil of clouds had swept across the sky from the west, and the only considerable light upon the wharf was from a lantern before one of the gabled houses, and from the lattice windows of a tavern. Other boatmen steadied the vessel, so that Millicent boarded without accident; Holyday, coming next, and setting foot blindly upon the gunwale, rather fell than stepped in. Cutting Tom and his men huddled aboard, and the whole party crowded together astern, to leave room forward for the rowers. "Whither?" asked the waterman in command. "Why, down-stream, of course," replied Holyday. "Know you not--how now? Where is Bill Tooby?" "Bill Tooby? He is yonder in his boat, waiting for some that have bespoke him." The man pointed across the basin. Holyday was stricken faint of voice. "Oh, _miserere_!" he wailed. "He is waiting for us. We have come to the wrong stairs." "Hark!" cried Millicent. Cries of "Runaways! Stop them! Stop the maid!" were approaching from, apparently, the vicinity of Knightrider Street. "We must e'en change to the other boat," said Holyday, despairingly. "Oh, heaven, there is not time!" cried Millicent. "If you be in haste," said the waterman, "stay where ye are. Whither shall we carry ye?" "Nay, nay, I durst not!" cried Holyday, and yet stood in helpless indecision. "Come, then!" said Millicent, and leaped from the boat to the stairs. Reaching back for Holyday's hand, she pulled him after her, dragged him up the steps, and led him around the three sides of the basin, their five protectors following close. A larger boat, manned with a more numerous crew, was in waiting at the western stairs. The waterman with whom Ravenshaw had bargained in the morning, making sure of Holyday's face in the light of a lantern, guided the fugitives aboard with orderly swiftness. But already the noise of pursuit was in Thames Street; ere the last man--a slim fellow with a thickly bearded face, which he carried well forward from his body--was embarked, the cries, swelling suddenly as the pursuers emerged from the narrow passage, were upon the wharf, and the red flare of torches came with them. The party in chase was headed by the goldsmith himself, no covering on his head, his gray hair standing out in the breeze; then came his apprentices, and sundry persons who had joined in the hue and cry; the rear was brought up by Sir Peregrine, lamed and winded. Master Etheridge made out the party in the boat at once, and, with threatening commands to the waterman to stop, led his people around to the stairs. "Cast off!" growled Bill Tooby, the waterman, pulling the slim fellow aboard. The order was obeyed, and Millicent, who had sat more dead than alive since her father had come into sight, saw the wharf recede, and a strip of black water spread between the boat and the torch-lit party that stood gazing from the stairs. "Oh, wench, I'll make thee rue this day!" cried the goldsmith, shaking his arms after the boat. As for Sir Peregrine, he looked utterly nonplussed. Then her father spoke hurriedly to his followers, and called loudly for a boat. The waterman to whom Holyday had first led his own party was quick to respond. Meanwhile Tooby's craft headed down-stream. Millicent, looking anxiously back over the water, saw the other boat, or its lantern and one of the torches, shoot out from the stairs. "Think you they will catch us?" she asked Master Holyday. "I think nothing," said the poet, dejectedly, really thinking very small of himself for the mistake which had enabled the goldsmith to come upon their heels. Surprised at the apparent change in Master Holyday since the forenoon, she turned to Tooby. "What think you, waterman?" "Why, mistress, an they make better speed than we, belike they'll catch us; but, an we make better speed than they, belike they'll not catch us," growled Tooby. "And that's the hell of it!" quoth Cutting Tom. CHAPTER XVII. DIRE THINGS BEFALL IN THE FOREST.   "'Mistress, it grows somewhat pretty and dark.'   'What then?'   'Nay, nothing. Do not think I am afraid,   Although perhaps you are.'"--_Beggars' Bush._ The two large boats were not alone upon the river. Here and there, in the distance, moved the tiny lights of a wherry carrying a benighted fare; and up toward the palaces and Westminster more than one cluster of lanterns and torches swept along, where some party of ladies and gentlemen were rowed to a mask or other revels. From one such company the western breeze brought the strains of guitars; Bill Tooby and his comrades, infected with the spirit of melody, began to sing "Heave and ho, rumbelow," in deep voices, in time with the movement of their bodies. Along the northern bank of the river, where the dwellings and warehouses of merchants rose like a wall from the water's edge, the dim lights of windows ran in a straggling, interrupted line. Farther west, where the river washed the stairs to the gardens of the great Strand residences and of the Temple, there were scarce any lights at all. On the south bank, a few glowing windows marked the row of taverns and other houses--many of them of questionable repute--which, set back a little from the river, concealed the bear-gardens and playhouses in the fields behind. But soon, as the boat sped down-stream, the buildings on that bank were flush with the shore, save where Winchester House showed a few lighted windows beyond its terrace. Little did Millicent imagine that anything bearing upon her destiny had ever been spoken or thought on that terrace or in that house. In front, spanning the river, another irregular row of window lights indicated the tall, close-built houses of London Bridge; and the roar of the water, first dammed by the piers and then falling in a kind of cataract through the twenty arches, was already loud in the ears. Millicent kept her eyes on the lights of the boat behind,--only two lights, a lantern at the prow, and a torch held by some one near the stern. They came steadily on, seeming neither to lose nor gain. Suddenly she lost sense of them; but that was when her own boat plunged into one of the arches of the bridge, and seemed to be gulped down by a blacker night, a chill air, and a thunderous noise. Forward and slightly downward the boat flung itself, as if into some gulf of the underworld, but all of a sudden it was out again in the soft air and the calm water, and Millicent, looking up, saw the lit windows of the eastern side of the bridge. She continued gazing back, and very soon the two lights, the little yellow one and the trailing red one, came into view between the piers, still in pursuit at the same distance. "They don't gain upon us," growled Cutting Tom, with a desire of making himself agreeable to the maid. "But they do not lose," said Millicent, in a troubled tone. "Why, sooth, an they still gain not, 'tis sure they'll ne'er catch us." "But they can see where we land," said she, "and they can land there, too, and so follow us to the end." "Then we can e'en teach 'em better manners," said Tom, grandly. "I'd as lief split a throat this night as another." "Oh, no; in heaven's name, no!" she cried. "We must escape them without that. No blows, I beg of you, whate'er befall!" "Yet you see how they stick to our heels. How is it, waterman? Shall we not give 'em the slip soon?" "Belike, and belike not," replied Tooby. "We can do our best, no more." Suddenly Master Holyday, thinking in some manner to redeem himself, had an inspiration. "How if they couldn't see to follow us?" he asked, abruptly. "How if we put out our lights and went on in the dark?" "Not for ten pound a minute," said Tooby, "would I row without lights, a night like this. 'Tis bad enow as it is, with all the ships and small boats lying in the Pool here. E'en with our lanterns, we shall do well an we bump not our nose." There was a silence, broken only by the plash of the oars, the creak of the rowlocks, the strange noises of the river, the lessening sound of what an obscure dramatist of those days describes as     "The bridge's cataracts, and such-like murmurs      As night and sleep yield from a populous number." "But I will e'en try something better," added Tooby, presently, and forthwith gave an inaudible order to his men. They instantly stopped rowing, and even proceeded to stay the boat's movement with the current, so that it remained almost stationary. Millicent cried out in alarm as the lights behind came rapidly nearer. "Peace, mistress," said Tooby. "There will be no blood spilled." He then spoke in a low tone to the men in the bow, and himself strode to the stern, where he stood with his long arms slightly crooked at the elbows as if to be in readiness for action. Swiftly the other boat came alongside. Millicent, holding her breath, wondering what was about to occur, made out her father bending forward in the attitude of one ready to grasp and punish. The torch revealed Sir Peregrine also, limply huddled up so that his beard was between his knees, and two of the apprentices, one of whom held the torch. "Ay, thou dost well to yield, wench!" spake the goldsmith, in tones so wrathful as rather to contradict his words. "Ay, chick," called out Sir Peregrine, reassuringly, "no need to run away from me; I'll give thee no cause for jealousy, I promise thee." Master Etheridge stood up to reach out for his daughter. She had a fearful thought that Tooby had chosen to betray her. But at the same instant Tooby, leaning over to the other boat, violently struck the torch-bearing apprentice's hand, and deftly caught the torch away. She heard a slight crash forward; and then her own boat shot through the water, leaving the other in complete darkness, one of Tooby's men having knocked the lantern from its prow with an oar. Millicent gave a quick breath of relief and put on her cloak; but then she thought of the other boat's danger of running into something, or of being run down itself, and of this she spoke. "Never fear," said Tooby. "He'll no more venture in the dark than I would. We'll fast put yon ship's hull 'twixt them and us, and be out of their ken ere ever they can get a light. And now pull, hearts, for the honour of watermen!" Soon the lights on the left bank, becoming fewer, took such height and shape that Millicent knew her boat was passing the Tower. Somewhere there the water plashed against the underground stairs of Traitors' Gate, that arched cavern which had lifted its iron door often in nights as dark as this, to admit some noble prisoner whose face, redly pale in the torchlight, betokened a heart chilled with a feeling that those damp walls formed a vestibule of death. Master Holyday, for all that was upon his mind, thought of these things, and of much else in the night-clad surroundings; but Millicent kept her eyes fixed on the darkness behind, alert for any moving light that might appear in chase. None such appeared; and by the time the boat had traversed the city of great ships, and had come to where the lights upon the banks were few, and the mysterious noises of the town had given place to those of the country, she had cast away all fear of danger from behind. At Deptford they passed one ship, of which Millicent took no more note than she took of any other of the countless vessels whose lights dotted the gloom around her that night; but on which she might have bestowed a second look had she known all that was to be known. The tide, the current, and the wind being with the rowers, it seemed not long till Tooby hinted that Master Holyday would do well to keep his eyes open for the place of landing. The scholar, scanning the blue-black darkness in perplexity, said that he could not for his life see anything of the shore. Tooby asked him whether he knew the different landmarks by name. The scholar was acquainted with those in the neighbourhood of where they should land. Thenceforth the waterman called out the name of each village, wharf, riverside tavern, hill, tributary, or well-known country-seat, the contents of the darkness being known to him perhaps by his sense of distance, perhaps by reference to some far-off light, perhaps sometimes by the smell of marsh or wood. Holyday began to recognise the names; and at last told the waterman to put ashore at the mouth of a certain creek. The boat glided along a low bank and stopped. Tooby, standing up, held out his lantern to show where there was safe footing. Master Holyday, leaping out too hastily, alighted up to his knees in water. Millicent, aided by the waterman's hand, stepped ashore. Cutting Tom and his men lost no time. Ere it seemed possible, the lights of the boat were moving swiftly away. Its departure, and especially that of Tooby, left Millicent with a sudden pang of loneliness and misgiving. But she reflected that the last stage of her flight was reached; taking new heart, she grasped Holyday's sleeve, and waited to be led. The party had two lanterns and a torch, all which had been lighted in the boat. Cutting Tom assigned one lantern to Holyday, the other to the slim fellow with the projecting head, the torch to himself. The poet, with a deep sigh, and craning his neck to peer into the mysterious blackness beyond the little area of feeble light, started forward; Millicent clung to his elbow; Cutting Tom placed himself at her other side, and the four men followed close. The walkers proceeded slowly, Master Holyday having often to stop to ascertain his way. At first the turf under them was springy, then it became softer, and sometimes one's foot would sink into a tiny pool; then the ground became higher, and presently they entered a wood. This seemed interminable; not only was poor Master Holyday compelled to pause every minute to identify his whereabouts but also the protruding roots, fallen boughs, and frequent underbrush made every step a matter of care. As they moved their torch and lanterns, so the light and shadow constantly moved about them; trunks and boughs, bush and brake, would suddenly appear and as quickly vanish as the yellow rays swung here and there. The breeze rustled unceasingly among the leaves, and the air was pleasant with forest odours. Millicent's fancy peopled the shades with sleeping giants, goblins, witches, dragons, and all the creatures of the old tales of fairies and knights errant. She thought a similar terror must have come upon the others; her companion hesitated so when he strove to pierce the shadows with wide-open eyes; and Cutting Tom kept so close to her; while one of the men had stepped up to the other side of Holyday and tightly grasped his arm. "'Tis a weary journey, mistress," complained the poet. "Nay, I find it pleasant sport," said she, feeling that one of the two must show a light heart. Holyday's manner all evening had been so at variance with his readiness to fight a dangerous man some hours earlier, that she made no attempt to understand the alteration; she merely attended to the need of keeping up his spirits, though her own heart faltered. But she could not help adding: "Is there much more of this wood to go through?" "More than I wish there were," replied Holyday. They went some distance farther in silence. Then the slim fellow with a lantern suddenly gave two coughs. Instantly Cutting Tom gripped Millicent's arm, stood still, and said to Holyday: "A plague on your eyes, sir! you are leading us the wrong way." Holyday, stopping perforce with all the rest, replied, in amazement: "'Tis the right way; I have come by this path to fish in the Thames a hundred times." "Poh! fish me no fish, sir!" cried Cutting Tom, while the slim lantern-bearer strode around to the front. "Am I to be led astray, and this maid here, for your designs? You have dragged us too long through this cursed wood--and that's the hell of it!" "'Tis the right way, I tell you," said Holyday; "and how can you say otherwise, when you know not whither we are bound?" "But I do know whither we are bound--and that's the hell of it!" "I begin to think you are an impudent fellow," quoth Holyday, momentarily reckless through loss of patience; "and _that's_ the hell of it, in your Bedlam gibberish!" "Death!" bellowed Cutting Tom; "'hell of it' belongs to me; no man in England dare steal my speech!" He handed his torch to one of the men, ran at the scholar, dealt him a blow between the eyes, seized his lantern, and dragged Millicent away, motioning the slim knave to lead on. The knave took a direction leftward from their former one. "What mean you?" cried the maid, trying to release herself. "I'll not leave Master Holyday." One of the men caught her by the free arm, and she was borne away by him and Cutting Tom. Glancing back, she saw that the two remaining men, one of whom had quickly stuck the torch in the ground, were grappling with Holyday, who was struggling between them. "In God's name, what would you do?" Millicent cried, as her captors hastened on at the heels of the new guide. The men vouchsafed no answer. After a little while, at a word from Cutting Tom, they stopped and waited. Tom gave a whistle, which was answered from the direction whence they had last come,--evidently by one of the men who had remained with Holyday. Being at intervals repeated, and answered at lessening distances, the whistle proved to be for the purpose of guiding these two men. Soon they appeared with the torch, but without Holyday. "Oh, heaven! what have you done with him?" cried Millicent, turning cold. "Only lightened him of these, lady," said one of the twain, indicating a bundle of clothing under his arm. "And left him tied safe to a tree, lest he roam about i' the dark and do himself an injury," quoth the other. "Come," said Tom, tightening his grasp on the girl's arm. The guide moved on, and the party made haste through the forest. "Whither are you taking me?" Millicent asked, tearfully, but got no reply. Wondering and appalled, scarce believing she was herself, oft doubting the reality of this strange journey, she walked as she was compelled. At last they came out of the wood and made their way over a flat, heathy plain. It seemed to Millicent that they had worked back to the neighbourhood of the river. Cutting Tom grew impatient, muttered to himself, and presently asked: "How far now?" "'Tis straight before us," said the guide, in a voice muffled as if by the heavy beard that covered his face. A narrow rift in the clouds let through a moment's moonlight; Millicent had a brief vision of lonely country, with a little cluster of gables ahead; then all was blotted out in thicker darkness. CHAPTER XVIII. RAVENSHAW'S SLEEP IS INTERRUPTED. "Captain, rally up your rotten regiment, and begone."--_A King and No King._ Master Jerningham, having communicated his good hopes to Sir Clement Ermsby on the deck of his ship, considered that, as the maid was not to leave London till nightfall, and, as he was now between London and the Grange, he had ample time to reach his country-house and send away the captain ere she could be brought there by her escort. He therefore resolved to proceed with leisure and order. And first, as he had long fasted, and as he had a night's business before him, he went ashore to his accustomed tavern at Deptford, and had supper with Sir Clement in a room where they were alone. "We shall take one of our own boats and four of our men," said Jerningham, "and row down to the old landing at the Grange. 'Tis but a short walk thence to the house. You and two of the men would best wait without the house, whilst I go in and send away Ravenshaw. If he saw you and so many men he might smell some extraordinary business, and have the curiosity to set himself against my orders." "If he should do so, nevertheless," said Ermsby, "then, as you said awhile ago--You may want our help in that." "Then I must e'en call you. But I shall try to have him without his weapons." "What would Mistress Meg say to another ghost in the house?" "Hang her, mad wench! Ay, she would be howling of murder and blood. I know not--she might fly to my lord bishop with the news. Well, I can tie her up and lock her in a chamber, at the worst. Yet she is a very devil. I think I'd best breed no more trouble at the last. I'll not have the knave killed unless he cannot be got away otherwise." "An you send him away, will you leave some one in his place?" "Ay, to keep Meg quiet till we are safe at sea. I'll leave Meadows, and charge him not to tell her of our sailing. He is a trusty fool." "But what will she say to this goldsmith's wench being housed overnight in the Grange?" "Why, I'll have a tale ready when we arrive: that I am saving the maid from a runaway marriage, to take back to her father; or that the maid is for you; or some such story." "Best say the maid is for me. Women who have gone that road are ever ready to push others into it." "Not always. But I shall contrive to make Meg tolerate the other's presence for a few hours, e'en if I must do it with promises. I can offer to find her a husband,--this Ravenshaw, an she like his looks, or another that may be bought. I think she has grown out of her sulks, and into the hope of rehabilitation, by this time. As for the Cheapside maid, first I will try wooing; she may be compliant of her own accord. But if she hold out, there's nothing for it but the sleeping potion. Gregory will fetch that with him; I bade him get it in Bucklersbury on his way to Friday Street." "May it give her pleasant dreams!" "When she is fast asleep," continued Jerningham, "I'll leave Gregory to watch her, and we'll come back to welcome my lord bishop in the morning. And to-morrow, when my lord has seen the last of us, and the tide is bearing us down the river, we need only put the ship to at the old landing, walk to the house, and carry her aboard. There will be none to see but Meg and old Jeremy, and they shall not know the ship is ours, or that we are farther bound than Tilbury." Sir Clement's appetite, which had been less neglected of late, was satisfied before Jerningham's, and the knight proposed that he should go and get the boat in readiness while the other finished eating. Jerningham consented, naming the men who were to be taken from the ship's crew upon the night's business. "I will join you very soon," said he, as Sir Clement left the room. Jerningham brought his supper to an end, and bade a drawer fetch the reckoning. Waiting for the boy's return, he flung himself on his back on a bench that stood against the wall. The knowledge that all was provided for, that his course was fully thought out, and that only action lay before him, brought to his mind a restfulness it had not lately known. The effect of his heavy meal acted with this to snare his senses; so long it was since sleep had overtaken him, he was not on guard against it. When the tavern lad came back with the score, the gentleman's eyes were closed, his breathing was slow and deep. Knowing by experience that sleeping gentlemen sometimes resented disturbance, the drawer went away more quietly than he had entered; Master Jerningham was a good customer, and might as well pay last as first. Sir Clement saw the boat ready, and then busied himself in the study of maps and charts by candle-light in the cabin, pending Jerningham's appearance. In his preoccupation, he lost thought of the night's affair, in which Jerningham bore all the responsibility. He took no observance of the increasing darkness outside, until at last he became wonderingly sensible of Jerningham's delay. Hastening ashore, he found the sleeper in the tavern. "Good God!" cried Jerningham, springing up at his friend's call; "what's the hour? How long have I slept? Death! is all lost?" "Nay, there is time, if we bestir ourselves." "Then we must fly. My plans are all undone if she be there before I send away that captain." Learning what o'clock it was, Jerningham found he had yet time to write a short pretended letter, to serve as pretext for Ravenshaw's journey. This done, he hastened to the boat. Not until he was being rowed past Blackwall, did it occur to him that, in the haste of departure, he had not looked to the thorough arming of the party, and that there was not a firearm with the whole company. "Oh, pish! there is steel enough among us to cut eight captains' throats with a clean blade apiece, an it comes to throat-cutting," said Ermsby. "'Twould come to that soon enough, but for the storm Meg would raise. Plague take her! would I had the heart to quiet her the sure way! But I cannot steel myself to that. I must be led by circumstance; 'tis for this captain's doings to say whether his throat need be cut. He had no pistol when he left me. As for his sword and dagger"--here Jerningham raised his voice and called to one of the men rowing: "Goodcole, thou hast some skill in sleights, and cutting purses, and the like, I have heard." "Ay, sir," was the confident reply. "In my time I have been called the knave with the invisible fingers. My friends used to say I could filch a man's shirt off his back while he stood talking to me in the street." "Poh!" growled another of the men; "I much doubt whether you can pick a pocket." "Here's a handful of testers I picked from yours," said Goodcole, resting his oar for a moment that he might return his comrade the coins. There was a brief stoppage from rowing while the other men hastily investigated the condition of their own pockets. "Excellent Goodcole!" quoth Sir Clement Ermsby. "Thou art a proficient in a most delicate craft." "Thou couldst take away a man's sword and dagger ere he knew it, belike," said Jerningham. "I could take away his teeth, or the thoughts in the centre of his head," promptly answered Goodcole. "Perchance I shall put thee to the test by and by," said Jerningham. In good time they found the landing with their lights, made the boat fast, and hastened through the darkness to the country-house. The gate of the courtyard was not fastened. Jerningham first led the way to a small penthouse in one corner of the yard, where he desired that Sir Clement and two of the men should remain until he saw how the captain took the new commands.