"You will do just what I ask, faithful old compeers," rejoined Diogenes more earnestly than was his wont. "You will lie very low and take the greatest possible care not to run your heads into the same rope wherein mayhap mine will dangle presently. Nor will you be playing the part of cowards, for you have not yet learned the A B C of that part, and you will remember that on your safety and freedom of action lies my one chance, not so much of life as of saving my last shred of honour."
"What do you mean?"
"The jongejuffrouw—" he whispered, "I swore to bring her back to her father and I must cheat a rascal of his victory. In the confusion—at dawn to-morrow—think above all of the jongejuffrouw.... In the confusion you can overpower the guard—rush the miller's hut where she is ... carry her off ... the horses are in the shed behind the hut ... you may not have time to think of me."
"But...."
"Silence—they listen...."
"One of us with the jongejuffrouw—the other to help you——"
"Silence ... I may be a dead man by then—the jongejuffrouw remember—make for Ryswyk with her first of all—thence straight to Haarlem—to her father—you can do it easily. A fortune awaits you if you bring her safely to him. Fulfil my pledge, old compeers, if I am not alive to do it myself. I don't ask you to swear—I know you'll do it—and if I must to the gallows first I'll do so with a cry of triumph."
"But you...."
"Silence!" he murmured again peremptorily, but more hoarsely this time for fatigue and loss of blood and tense excitement are telling upon his iron physique at last—he is well-nigh spent and scarce able to speak. "Silence—I can hear Jan's footsteps. Here! quick! inside my boot ... a wallet? Have you got it?" he added with a brief return to his habitual gaiety as he felt Socrates' long fingers groping against his shins, and presently beheld his wallet in his compeer's hand. "You will find money in there—enough for the journey. Now quick into the night, you two—disappear for the nonce, and anon when sauve qui peut rings in the air—to-night or at dawn or whenever this may be, remember the jongejuffrouw first of all and when you are ready give the cry we all know so well—the cry of the fox when it lures its prey. If I am not dangling on a gibbet by then, I shall understand. But quick now!—Jan comes!—Disappear I say!..."
Quietly and swiftly Socrates slipped the wallet with some of the money back into his friend's boot, the rest he hid inside his own doublet.