"It sounds very simple, doesn't it?" she asked.
"Then we watch our chance for a dash—when the Colonel's off his guard," Lukovitch went on.
"But if he won't oblige us in that way?" asked Dunstanbury, with a laugh.
"Then he shall have the reward of his virtue in a better fight for the guns," said Lukovitch. "Now, lads, ready! Listen! I'm going forward with Peter Vassip here and four more. We'll secure the man and his wife; there might be a servant-girl on the premises too, perhaps. When you hear my whistle, the rest of you will follow. You'll take command, my lord?" He turned to Sophy. "Madame, will you come with me or stay here?"
"I'll follow with Lord Dunstanbury," she said. "We ought all to be in the barn before it's light?"
"Surely! A barge might come up or down the river, you see, and it wouldn't do for the men on board to see anybody but Vassip and me, who are to be the lock-keepers."
He and Peter Vassip rode off with their party of four, and the rest waited in a field a couple of hundred yards from the barn—a dip in the ground afforded fair cover. Some of the men began to dismount, but Dunstanbury stopped them. "It's just that one never knows," he said; "and it's better to be on your horse than off it in case any trouble does come, you know."
"There oughtn't to be much trouble with the lock-keeper and his wife—or even with the servant-girl," said Basil Williamson.
"Girls can make a difference sometimes," Sophy said, with a smile. "I did once, in the Street of the Fountain over in Slavna there!"
Dunstanbury's precaution was amply justified, for, to their astonishment, the next instant a shot rang through the air, and, the moment after, a loud cry. A riderless horse galloped wildly past them; the sheepskin rug across the saddle marked it as belonging to a Volsenian.