CHAPTER XXXI
"WE'VE GOTTEN BEAU BROCADE!"
The presence of Philip at the inn had done much to cheer Patience in her weary waiting. He and John Stich had reached the Packhorse some time before cockcrow, and the landlord had been only too ready to do anything in reason to further the safety of the fugitive, so long as his own interests were not imperilled thereby.
This meant that he would give Philip a serving-man's suit and afford him shelter in the inn, for as long as the authorities did not suspect him of harbouring a rebel; beyond that he would not go.
Lady Patience had paid him lavishly for this help and his subsequent silence. It was understood that the fugitive would only make a brief halt at Brassington: some more secluded shelter would have to be found for him on the morrow.
For the moment, of course, the thoughts of everyone in the village would be centred in the capture of Beau Brocade. The highwayman had many friends and adherents in the village, people whom his careless and open-handed generosity had often saved from penury. To a man almost, the village folk hoped to see him come out victorious from the awful and unequal struggle which was going on on the Heath. So strong was this feeling that the beadle, who was known to entertain revengeful thoughts against the man who had played him so impudent a trick the day before, did not dare to show his rubicund face in the bar-parlour of either inn on that memorable night.
No one had gone to bed. The men waited about, consuming tankards of small ale, whilst discussing the possibility of their hero's capture. The women sat at home with streaming eyes, plaintively wondering who would help them in future in their distress, if Beau Brocade ceased to haunt the Heath.
Patience herself did not close an eye. Her hand clinging to that of Philip, she sat throughout that long, weary night watching and waiting, dreading the awful dawn, with the terrible news it would bring.
And it was when the first rosy light shed its delicate hue over the tiny old-world village, that the sweet-scented morning air was suddenly filled with the hoarse triumphal cry,—
"We have gotten Beau Brocade!"