"About your person?"
"Nay! you idiot! about my person? With so cunning a rascal as Beau Brocade at my heels!"
"Then in your valise, Sir Humphrey?"
"What? in a strange inn? Think you the fellow would be above breaking into my room? How do I know that mine host is not one of his boon companions? The rascal has many friends hereabouts."
"B ... b ... but what have you done with them, Sir Humphrey?" queried the attorney, in despair.
"In your ear, Master Mittachip," quoth his Honour, instinctively lowering his voice, lest the walls of the old inn had ears. "I thought the best plan was to hide the letters there, where Lady Patience and her chivalrous highwayman would least expect to find them."
"How so, good Sir Humphrey?"
"I was hard pressed, mind you, and had but a few seconds in which to make up my mind. I dismounted, then lashed my horse into a panic. As I expected he made straight for his own stables, at anyrate, he galloped off like mad in the direction of Aldwark, whilst I remained cowering in the dense scrub, grateful for the mist, which was very dense in the hollow. There I remained hidden for about half an hour, until all sound died away on the Heath. What happened to that damned highwayman or to John Stich I know not, but I did not feel that the letters were safe whilst they were about my person. I knew that I was some distance from this village, and still further from Aldwark, and feared that I should be pursued and overtaken. At any rate, I crept out of my hiding-place and presently found myself close to a wooden hut, not far from the roadside: and there, underneath some bramble and thorny stuff, I hid the letters well out of sight."
"Oh! but they won't be safe there, Sir Humphrey," moaned Mittachip, who seemed to see the golden vision of two hundred guineas vanishing before his eyes. "Think of it. Any moment they might be unearthed by some dolt of a shepherd!"
"'Sdeath! I know that, you fool! They're in a dry place now, but I only mean them to remain there until you can take them to your own house at Wirksworth, and put them in your strong room till I have need of them."