rose wading to his knees in the swamped well of the stern, and
crept to the old helmsman's side.

"Lawless," he said, "we do all depend on you; y' are a brave,
steady man, indeed, and crafty in the management of ships; I shall
put three sure men to watch upon your safety."

"Bootless, my master, bootless," said the steersman, peering
forward through the dark. "We come every moment somewhat clearer
of these sandbanks; with every moment, then, the sea packeth upon
us heavier, and for all these whimperers, they will presently be on
their backs. For, my master, 'tis a right mystery, but true, there
never yet was a bad man that was a good shipman. None but the
honest and the bold can endure me this tossing of a ship."

"Nay, Lawless," said Dick, laughing, "that is a right shipman's
byword, and hath no more of sense than the whistle of the wind.
But, prithee, how go we? Do we lie well? Are we in good case?"

"Master Shelton," replied Lawless, "I have been a Grey Friar - I
praise fortune - an archer, a thief, and a shipman. Of all these
coats, I had the best fancy to die in the Grey Friar's, as ye may
readily conceive, and the least fancy to die in John Shipman's
tarry jacket; and that for two excellent good reasons: first, that
the death might take a man suddenly; and second, for the horror of
that great, salt smother and welter under my foot here" - and
Lawless stamped with his foot. "Howbeit," he went on, "an I die
not a sailor's death, and that this night, I shall owe a tall
candle to our Lady."

"Is it so?" asked Dick.

"It is right so," replied the outlaw. "Do ye not feel how heavy
and dull she moves upon the waves? Do ye not hear the water
washing in her hold? She will scarce mind the rudder even now.
Bide till she has settled a bit lower; and she will either go down
below your boots like a stone image, or drive ashore here, under
our lee, and come all to pieces like a twist of string."

"Ye speak with a good courage," returned Dick. "Ye are not then
appalled?"

"Why, master," answered Lawless, "if ever a man had an ill crew to
come to port with, it is I - a renegade friar, a thief, and all the
rest on't. Well, ye may wonder, but I keep a good hope in my
wallet; and if that I be to drown, I will drown with a bright eye,
Master Shelton, and a steady hand."

Dick returned no answer; but he was surprised to find the old
vagabond of so resolute a temper, and fearing some fresh violence
or treachery, set forth upon his quest for three sure men. The
great bulk of the men had now deserted the deck, which was
continually wetted with the flying sprays, and where they lay
exposed to the shrewdness of the winter wind. They had gathered,
instead, into the hold of the merchandise, among the butts of wine,
and lighted by two swinging lanterns.

Here a few kept up the form of revelry, and toasted each other deep
in Arblaster's Gascony wine. But as the Good Hope continued to
tear through the smoking waves, and toss her stem and stern
alternately high in air and deep into white foam, the number of
these jolly companions diminished with every moment and with every
lurch. Many sat apart, tending their hurts, but the majority were
already prostrated with sickness, and lay moaning in the bilge.

Greensheve, Cuckow, and a young fellow of Lord Foxham's whom Dick
had already remarked for his intelligence and spirit, were still,
however, both fit to understand and willing to obey. These Dick
set, as a body-guard, about the person of the steersman, and then,
with a last look at the black sky and sea, he turned and went below
into the cabin, whither Lord Foxham had been carried by his
servants.


CHAPTER VI - THE GOOD HOPE (concluded)


The moans of the wounded baron blended with the wailing of the
ship's dog. The poor animal, whether he was merely sick at heart
to be separated from his friends, or whether he indeed recognised
some peril in the labouring of the ship, raised his cries, like
minute-guns, above the roar of wave and weather; and the more
superstitious of the men heard, in these sounds, the knell of the
Good Hope.

Lord Foxham had been laid in a berth upon a fur cloak. A little
lamp burned dim before the Virgin in the bulkhead, and by its
glimmer Dick could see the pale countenance and hollow eyes of the
hurt man.

"I am sore hurt," said he. "Come near to my side, young Shelton;
let there be one by me who, at least, is gentle born; for after
having lived nobly and richly all the days of my life, this is a
sad pass that I should get my hurt in a little ferreting skirmish,
and die here, in a foul, cold ship upon the sea, among broken men
and churls."

"Nay, my lord," said Dick, "I pray rather to the saints that ye
will recover you of your hurt, and come soon and sound ashore."

"How!" demanded his lordship. "Come sound ashore? There is, then,
a question of it?"

"The ship laboureth - the sea is grievous and contrary," replied the
lad; "and by what I can learn of my fellow that steereth us, we
shall do well, indeed, if we come dryshod to land."

"Ha!" said the baron, gloomily, "thus shall every terror attend
upon the passage of my soul! Sir, pray rather to live hard, that ye
may die easy, than to be fooled and fluted all through life, as to
the pipe and tabor, and, in the last hour, be plunged among
misfortunes! Howbeit, I have that upon my mind that must not be
delayed. We have no priest aboard?"

"None," replied Dick.

"Here, then, to my secular interests," resumed Lord Foxham: "ye
must be as good a friend to me dead, as I found you a gallant enemy
when I was living. I fall in an evil hour for me, for England, and
for them that trusted me. My men are being brought by Hamley - he
that was your rival; they will rendezvous in the long holm at
Holywood; this ring from off my finger will accredit you to
represent mine orders; and I shall write, besides, two words upon
this paper, bidding Hamley yield to you the damsel. Will he obey?
I know not."

"But, my lord, what orders?" inquired Dick.

"Ay," quoth the baron, "ay - the orders;" and he looked upon Dick
with hesitation. "Are ye Lancaster or York?" he asked, at length.

"I shame to say it," answered Dick, "I can scarce clearly answer.
But so much I think is certain: since I serve with Ellis
Duckworth, I serve the house of York. Well, if that be so, I
declare for York."

"It is well," returned the other; "it is exceeding well. For,
truly, had ye said Lancaster, I wot not for the world what I had
done. But sith ye are for York, follow me. I came hither but to
watch these lords at Shoreby, while mine excellent young lord,
Richard of Gloucester, {1} prepareth a sufficient force to fall
upon and scatter them. I have made me notes of their strength,
what watch they keep, and how they lie; and these I was to deliver
to my young lord on Sunday, an hour before noon, at St. Bride's
Cross beside the forest. This tryst I am not like to keep, but I
pray you, of courtesy, to keep it in my stead; and see that not
pleasure, nor pain, tempest, wound, nor pestilence withhold you
from the hour and place, for the welfare of England lieth upon this
cast."

"I do soberly take this up on me," said Dick. "In so far as in me
lieth, your purpose shall be done."

"It is good," said the wounded man. "My lord duke shall order you
farther, and if ye obey him with spirit and good will, then is your
fortune made. Give me the lamp a little nearer to mine eyes, till
that I write these words for you."

He wrote a note "to his worshipful kinsman, Sir John Hamley;" and
then a second, which he-left without external superscripture.

"This is for the duke," he said. "The word is 'England and
Edward,' and the counter, 'England and York.'"

"And Joanna, my lord?" asked Dick.

"Nay, ye must get Joanna how ye can," replied the baron. "I have
named you for my choice in both these letters; but ye must get her
for yourself, boy. I have tried, as ye see here before you, and
have lost my life. More could no man do."

By this time the wounded man began to be very weary; and Dick,
putting the precious papers in his bosom, bade him be of good
cheer, and left him to repose.

The day was beginning to break, cold and blue, with flying squalls
of snow. Close under the lee of the Good Hope, the coast lay in
alternate rocky headlands and sandy bays; and further inland the
wooded hill-tops of Tunstall showed along the sky. Both the wind
and the sea had gone down; but the vessel wallowed deep, and scarce
rose upon the waves.

Lawless was still fixed at the rudder; and by this time nearly all
the men had crawled on deck, and were now gazing, with blank faces,
upon the inhospitable coast.

"Are we going ashore?" asked Dick.

"Ay," said Lawless, "unless we get first to the bottom."

And just then the ship rose so languidly to meet a sea, and the
water weltered so loudly in her hold, that Dick involuntarily
seized the steersman by the arm.

"By the mass!" cried Dick, as the bows of the Good Hope reappeared
above the foam, "I thought we had foundered, indeed; my heart was
at my throat."

In the waist, Greensheve, Hawksley, and the better men of both
companies were busy breaking up the deck to build a raft; and to
these Dick joined himself, working the harder to drown the memory
of his predicament. But, even as he worked, every sea that struck
the poor ship, and every one of her dull lurches, as she tumbled
wallowing among the waves, recalled him with a horrid pang to the
immediate proximity of death.

Presently, looking up from his work, he saw that they were close in
below a promontory; a piece of ruinous cliff, against the base of
which the sea broke white and heavy, almost overplumbed the deck;
and, above that, again, a house appeared, crowning a down.

Inside the bay the seas ran gayly, raised the Good Hope upon their
foam-flecked shoulders, carried her beyond the control of the
steersman, and in a moment dropped her, with a great concussion, on
the sand, and began to break over her half-mast high, and roll her
to and fro. Another great wave followed, raised her again, and
carried her yet farther in; and then a third succeeded, and left
her far inshore of the more dangerous breakers, wedged upon a bank.

"Now, boys," cried Lawless, "the saints have had a care of us,
indeed. The tide ebbs; let us but sit down and drink a cup of
wine, and before half an hour ye may all march me ashore as safe as
on a bridge."

A barrel was broached, and, sitting in what shelter they could find
from the flying snow and spray, the shipwrecked company handed the
cup around, and sought to warm their bodies and restore their
spirits.

Dick, meanwhile, returned to Lord Foxham, who lay in great
perplexity and fear, the floor of his cabin washing knee-deep in
water, and the lamp, which had been his only light, broken and
extinguished by the violence of the blow.

"My lord," said young Shelton, "fear not at all; the saints are
plainly for us; the seas have cast us high upon a shoal, and as
soon as the tide hath somewhat ebbed, we may walk ashore upon our
feet."

It was nearly an hour before the vessel was sufficiently deserted
by the ebbing sea; and they could set forth for the land, which
appeared dimly before them through a veil of driving snow.

Upon a hillock on one side of their way a party of men lay huddled
together, suspiciously observing the movements of the new arrivals.

"They might draw near and offer us some comfort," Dick remarked.

"Well, an' they come not to us, let us even turn aside to them,"
said Hawksley. "The sooner we come to a good fire and a dry bed
the better for my poor lord."

But they had not moved far in the direction of the hillock, before
the men, with one consent, rose suddenly to their feet, and poured
a flight of well-directed arrows on the shipwrecked company.

"Back! back!" cried his lordship. "Beware, in Heaven's name, that
ye reply not."

"Nay," cried Greensheve, pulling an arrow from his leather jack.
"We are in no posture to fight, it is certain, being drenching wet,
dog-weary, and three-parts frozen; but, for the love of old
England, what aileth them to shoot thus cruelly on their poor
country people in distress?"

"They take us to be French pirates," answered Lord Foxham. "In
these most troublesome and degenerate days we cannot keep our own
shores of England; but our old enemies, whom we once chased on sea
and land, do now range at pleasure, robbing and slaughtering and
burning. It is the pity and reproach of this poor land."

The men upon the hillock lay, closely observing them, while they
trailed upward from the beach and wound inland among desolate sand-
hills; for a mile or so they even hung upon the rear of the march,
ready, at a sign, to pour another volley on the weary and
dispirited fugitives; and it was only when, striking at length upon
a firm high-road, Dick began to call his men to some more martial
order, that these jealous guardians of the coast of England
silently disappeared among the snow. They had done what they
desired; they had protected their own homes and farms, their own
families and cattle; and their private interest being thus secured,
it mattered not the weight of a straw to any one of them, although
the Frenchmen should carry blood and fire to every other parish in
the realm of England.


BOOK IV - THE DISGUISE


CHAPTER I - THE DEN


The place where Dick had struck the line of a high-road was not far
from Holywood, and within nine or ten miles of Shoreby-on-the-Till;
and here, after making sure that they were pursued no longer, the
two bodies separated. Lord Foxham's followers departed, carrying
their wounded master towards the comfort and security of the great
abbey; and Dick, as he saw them wind away and disappear in the
thick curtain of the falling snow, was left alone with near upon a
dozen outlaws, the last remainder of his troop of volunteers.

Some were wounded; one and all were furious at their ill-success
and long exposure; and though they were now too cold and hungry to
do more, they grumbled and cast sullen looks upon their leaders.
Dick emptied his purse among them, leaving himself nothing; thanked
them for the courage they had displayed, though he could have found
it more readily in his heart to rate them for poltroonery; and
having thus somewhat softened the effect of his prolonged
misfortune, despatched them to find their way, either severally or
in pairs, to Shoreby and the Goat and Bagpipes.

For his own part, influenced by what he had seen on board of the
Good Hope, he chose Lawless to be his companion on the walk. The
snow was falling, without pause or variation, in one even, blinding
cloud; the wind had been strangled, and now blew no longer; and the
whole world was blotted out and sheeted down below that silent
inundation. There was great danger of wandering by the way and
perishing in drifts; and Lawless, keeping half a step in front of
his companion, and holding his head forward like a hunting dog upon
the scent, inquired his way of every tree, and studied out their
path as though he were conning a ship among dangers.

About a mile into the forest they came to a place where several
ways met, under a grove of lofty and contorted oaks. Even in the
narrow horizon of the falling snow, it was a spot that could not
fail to be recognised; and Lawless evidently recognised it with
particular delight.

"Now, Master Richard," said he, "an y' are not too proud to be the
guest of a man who is neither a gentleman by birth nor so much as a
good Christian, I can offer you a cup of wine and a good fire to
melt the marrow in your frozen bones."

"Lead on, Will," answered Dick. "A cup of wine and a good fire!
Nay, I would go a far way round to see them."

Lawless turned aside under the bare branches of the grove, and,
walking resolutely forward for some time, came to a steepish hollow
or den, that had now drifted a quarter full of snow. On the verge,
a great beech-tree hung, precariously rooted; and here the old
outlaw, pulling aside some bushy underwood, bodily disappeared into
the earth.

The beech had, in some violent gale, been half-uprooted, and had
torn up a considerable stretch of turf and it was under this that
old Lawless had dug out his forest hiding-place. The roots served
him for rafters, the turf was his thatch; for walls and floor he
had his mother the earth. Rude as it was, the hearth in one
corner, blackened by fire, and the presence in another of a large
oaken chest well fortified with iron, showed it at one glance to be
the den of a man, and not the burrow of a digging beast.

Though the snow had drifted at the mouth and sifted in upon the
floor of this earth cavern, yet was the air much warmer than
without; and when Lawless had struck a spark, and the dry furze
bushes had begun to blaze and crackle on the hearth, the place
assumed, even to the eye, an air of comfort and of home.

With a sigh of great contentment, Lawless spread his broad hands
before the fire, and seemed to breathe the smoke.

"Here, then," he said, "is this old Lawless's rabbit-hole; pray
Heaven there come no terrier! Far I have rolled hither and
thither, and here and about, since that I was fourteen years of
mine age and first ran away from mine abbey, with the sacrist's
gold chain and a mass-book that I sold for four marks. I have been
in England and France and Burgundy, and in Spain, too, on a
pilgrimage for my poor soul; and upon the sea, which is no man's
country. But here is my place, Master Shelton. This is my native
land, this burrow in the earth! Come rain or wind - and whether
it's April, and the birds all sing, and the blossoms fall about my
bed - or whether it's winter, and I sit alone with my good gossip
the fire, and robin red breast twitters in the woods - here, is my
church and market, and my wife and child. It's here I come back
to, and it's here, so please the saints, that I would like to die."

"'Tis a warm corner, to be sure," replied Dick, "and a pleasant,
and a well hid."

"It had need to be," returned Lawless, "for an they found it,
Master Shelton, it would break my heart. But here," he added,
burrowing with his stout fingers in the sandy floor, "here is my
wine cellar; and ye shall have a flask of excellent strong stingo."

Sure enough, after but a little digging, he produced a big leathern
bottle of about a gallon, nearly three-parts full of a very heady
and sweet wine; and when they had drunk to each other comradely,
and the fire had been replenished and blazed up again, the pair lay
at full length, thawing and steaming, and divinely warm.

"Master Shelton," observed the outlaw, "y' 'ave had two mischances
this last while, and y' are like to lose the maid - do I take it
aright?"

"Aright!" returned Dick, nodding his head.

"Well, now," continued Lawless, "hear an old fool that hath been
nigh-hand everything, and seen nigh-hand all! Ye go too much on
other people's errands, Master Dick. Ye go on Ellis's; but he
desireth rather the death of Sir Daniel. Ye go on Lord Foxham's;
well - the saints preserve him! - doubtless he meaneth well. But go
ye upon your own, good Dick. Come right to the maid's side. Court
her, lest that she forget you. Be ready; and when the chance shall
come, off with her at the saddle-bow."

"Ay, but, Lawless, beyond doubt she is now in Sir Daniel's own
mansion." answered Dick.

"Thither, then, go we," replied the outlaw.

Dick stared at him.

"Nay, I mean it," nodded Lawless. "And if y' are of so little
faith, and stumble at a word, see here!"

And the outlaw, taking a key from about his neck, opened the oak
chest, and dipping and groping deep among its contents, produced
first a friar's robe, and next a girdle of rope; and then a huge
rosary of wood, heavy enough to be counted as a weapon.

"Here," he said, "is for you. On with them!"

And then, when Dick had clothed himself in this clerical disguise,
Lawless produced some colours and a pencil, and proceeded, with the
greatest cunning, to disguise his face. The eyebrows he thickened
and produced; to the moustache, which was yet hardly visible, he
rendered a like service; while, by a few lines around the eye, he
changed the expression and increased the apparent age of this young
monk.

"Now," he resumed, "when I have done the like, we shall make as
bonny a pair of friars as the eye could wish. Boldly to Sir
Daniel's we shall go, and there be hospitably welcome for the love
of Mother Church."

"And how, dear Lawless," cried the lad, "shall I repay you?"

"Tut, brother," replied the outlaw, "I do naught but for my
pleasure. Mind not for me. I am one, by the mass, that mindeth
for himself. When that I lack, I have a long tongue and a voice
like the monastery bell - I do ask, my son; and where asking
faileth, I do most usually take."

The old rogue made a humorous grimace; and although Dick was
displeased to lie under so great favours to so equivocal a
personage, he was yet unable to restrain his mirth.

With that, Lawless returned to the big chest, and was soon
similarly disguised; but, below his gown, Dick wondered to observe
him conceal a sheaf of black arrows.

"Wherefore do ye that?" asked the lad. "Wherefore arrows, when ye
take no bow?"

"Nay," replied Lawless, lightly, "'tis like there will be heads
broke - not to say backs - ere you and I win sound from where we're
going to; and if any fall, I would our fellowship should come by
the credit on't. A black arrow, Master Dick, is the seal of our
abbey; it showeth you who writ the bill."

"An ye prepare so carefully," said Dick, "I have here some papers
that, for mine own sake, and the interest of those that trusted me,
were better left behind than found upon my body. Where shall I
conceal them, Will?"

"Nay," replied Lawless, "I will go forth into the wood and whistle
me three verses of a song; meanwhile, do you bury them where ye
please, and smooth the sand upon the place."

"Never!" cried Richard. "I trust you, man. I were base indeed if
I not trusted you."

"Brother, y' are but a child," replied the old outlaw, pausing and
turning his face upon Dick from the threshold of the den. "I am a
kind old Christian, and no traitor to men's blood, and no sparer of
mine own in a friend's jeopardy. But, fool, child, I am a thief by
trade and birth and habit. If my bottle were empty and my mouth
dry, I would rob you, dear child, as sure as I love, honour, and
admire your parts and person! Can it be clearer spoken? No."

And he stumped forth through the bushes with a snap of his big
fingers.

Dick, thus left alone, after a wondering thought upon the
inconsistencies of his companion's character, hastily produced,
reviewed, and buried his papers. One only he reserved to carry
along with him, since it in nowise compromised his friends, and yet
might serve him, in a pinch, against Sir Daniel. That was the
knight's own letter to Lord Wensleydale, sent by Throgmorton, on
the morrow of the defeat at Risingham, and found next day by Dick
upon the body of the messenger.

Then, treading down the embers of the fire, Dick left the den, and
rejoined the old outlaw, who stood awaiting him under the leafless
oaks, and was already beginning to be powdered by the falling snow.
Each looked upon the other, and each laughed, so thorough and so
droll was the disguise.

"Yet I would it were but summer and a clear day," grumbled the
outlaw, "that I might see myself in the mirror of a pool. There be
many of Sir Daniel's men that know me; and if we fell to be
recognised, there might be two words for you, brother, but as for
me, in a paternoster while, I should be kicking in a rope's-end."

Thus they set forth together along the road to Shoreby, which, in
this part of its course, kept near along the margin or the forest,
coming forth, from time to time, in the open country, and passing
beside poor folks' houses and small farms.

Presently at sight of one of these, Lawless pulled up.

"Brother Martin," he said, in a voice capitally disguised, and
suited to his monkish robe, "let us enter and seek alms from these
poor sinners. Pax vobiscum! Ay," he added, in his own voice,
"'tis as I feared; I have somewhat lost the whine of it; and by
your leave, good Master Shelton, ye must suffer me to practise in
these country places, before that I risk my fat neck by entering
Sir Daniel's. But look ye a little, what an excellent thing it is
to be a Jack-of-all-trades! An I had not been a shipman, ye had
infallibly gone down in the Good Hope; an I had not been a thief, I