"'Arf a mo!" said the little man. "'Tain't no good runnin' orf in that uniform. Wot we've got to do is to find some togs. Then if they comes back we're just honest rustics, see?"
Sam stood up. The sudden panic of his companions had communicated itself to his slower brain. He also trembled at the prospect of recapture.
"That's the ticket, mate. You've got it. You're a smart little cove. Wot's yer name?" This, he implied, was condescension.
"Hoswald—Hoswald Smiff—my farver was a toff, a flash cove, 'e was. Come on, mates—there's sure to be some togs upstairs—shudn't wonder if they've left some dibs be'ind 'em, too."
"They left the beer, anyway," said Bill. His tone implied that people who left beer would leave anything.
Rather unsteadily, the trio ascended the steep and narrow stairs of the inn. Sam carried a lighted candle which Oswald Smith had found in the kitchen. A disappointment awaited them. In every room the drawers stood open, empty, their contents carried off. The trio swore in harmony and in fugues. They cursed with the pointless fluency of drunken men baulked of an intention. Then they lurched downstairs again.
"Wot'll we do now?" asked Bill, his face pale with fright. "They'll be on us before morning, sure!"
"Certain!" said Oswald.
"I ain't goin' back," said Sam doggedly. "I'm fed up." He stood and tried to think, his mind harassed by the necessity for a disguise which had been suggested to it.
Bill drank deeply from his tankard and, in the middle of the draught, was visited by a brilliant idea.