"After that we traced him to this solitary God-forsaken hole, but presently we saw that this molens was not so deserted as it seemed, so we hung about until now ... then we ventured nearer ... and here we are."
Here they were of course, but how was it possible to contravene the orders of Jan? What could these scarecrows have to say to the Laughing Cavalier?
"Just to ask him if there's anything we can do," murmurs Socrates persuasively. "He's like to hang to-morrow, you said, well! grant something then to a dying man."
Grave heads shake in the gloom.
"Our orders are strict...."
"'Tis a matter of life and death it seems...."
"Bah!" quoth Pythagoras more insinuatingly still, "we are two to your thirty! What have ye all to fear?"
"Here! tie my hands behind my back," suggests Socrates. "I only want to speak with him. How could we help him to escape?"
"We would not think of such a thing," murmurs Pythagoras piously.
Anxious glances meet one another in consultation. More than one kindly heart beats beneath these ragged doublets. Bah! the man is to hang to-morrow, why not give pleasure to a dying man?