"Who goes there?" came a quiet but manly toned challenge.
"Otto Engel. Is anybody about?" the forester asked.
"Not that I can see. The pirate lord up yonder has found enough booty to last two or three nights, and there is not so much as a sentinel at the landing-stage. Still, don't linger. I'd like to get away. One never knows who may be about. Which is the Englishman?"
"I am," said Tyndale, going closer to the boatman, and before long he was seated in the flat-bottomed boat, and, the others having stepped into it, the forester was helping to pull to the other bank.
"Now 'tis easy going, please God," said Engel, when they stepped out on the meadow and the boatman made his craft fast.
"I'd not be too sure of it!" he exclaimed, "and it were best to be alert when such an one as Cochlaeus is on the quest for anybody tainted with heresy."
The boatman stood in his boat and looked about him, and they could barely see his movements in the darkness.
"It's well that there was no moon while we were crossing, but I think she's coming. If you hurry over the meadow you may reach the forest yonder before she comes away from those clouds which look like breaking up. And we are not likely presently to have a very dark night."
"We'll go at once," said Engel, and, bidding Tyndale take his arm since it would help him, and telling Roye to carry the wallet, he bade the boatman "good-night," and moved across the meadow.
They had barely entered the forest when the moon swept out into a sky where broken clouds began to drift, and the meadow they had crossed, as likewise the river, and again beyond it the forest where the castle stood, were in the full flood of silver light, only obscured for a few moments as a cloud veiled the moon. They paused to watch the scene, and then they exclaimed almost with one voice: