Engel went just before day-dawn, but he came in the middle of the afternoon with a basket. It contained food, for which they were grateful, but Tyndale's eyes gleamed at the sight of a bundle of paper, some ink, and a store of quills.
"Thank God!" he ejaculated. "Ay, and my dear friend, thank you as well, from the bottom of my heart. There need be no hurry now, for with light and these I am as well off here as in a palace. What care I for comfort if my hand is not stayed in my God-given task?"
His eyes gleamed with pleasure as he turned over the sheets and drew out the books from his wallet. But he thought of Herman.
"My son, since I am safe here, you may steal away at night, and you know your way by that secret entrance to your home; and after that it will be easy to pass through the streets to where the girl you love dwells with her father."
Herman took his outstretched hand in his.
"I'll think about it," he answered softly, the love-light in his eyes. "I should like to go, but my duty is here, and she knows I am with you."
"Is there any news of the castle?" Herman asked a moment later, turning to Engel, who was trimming the lantern.
"News?" exclaimed the forester. "I should think there was. Schouts came to terms with Cochlaeus when he had cleared out the ship and sent her away empty, and then, so Sprenkel told me, they went to the dungeon so that the pious Churchman might see his prisoner. I'd have given something to see them going down those slippery steps, and would have hoped for a fall for both of them. But I would have given a week's wages to have seen their faces when they stepped into that horrible dungeon and found that the prisoner was gone!
"Sprenkel was with them, and he told me that Cochlaeus stamped about on the filthy floor, beside himself with rage. He swung round presently and faced Schouts like a madman, then shook his fist at him, and declared that he had been playing with him. And as for Schouts, who thought of the thousand crowns he had lost, when they seemed so certain, his anger blazed out at the Churchman's insults, and, lifting his great fist, he would have struck him down but for a remnant of superstition still lingering in his godless heart.
"'But for the fact that you are a priest, I would have you chained where that Englishman lay!' he cried.