"It's some one in the street," answered another voice. "Yet it sounded vastly near, too."
This, however, was quite sufficient warning for the knight to be silent; and taking up one of the books upon which he had been sitting, he found that it was an English version of the Bible, with copies of which it appears that Master William Hans was in the habit of supplying the English protestants. Our mother Eve's bad old habit of prying into forbidden sources of knowledge affects us all more or less; and as the Bible was at that time prohibited in England, except to the clergy, Sir Osborne very naturally opened it and began reading. What effect its perusal had upon his mind matters little: suffice it that he read on, and found sufficient matter of interest therein to occupy him fully. Hour after hour fled, and day waned slowly; but having once laid his hand upon that book, the knight no longer felt the tardy current of the time, and night fell before the day which he anticipated as so tedious seemed to have half passed away.
A long while elapsed, after the darkness had interrupted Sir Osborne in his study, before the warehouse was closed for the night; which, however, was no sooner accomplished than good Master Hans, accompanied by his friend Skippenhausen, came to deliver them from their confinement.
"He! he! he!" cried the merchant, as they came forth. "Did you hear what a noise they made, my coot lord, when they came searching this morning? They did not find them, though, for they were all in beside you."
"What do you mean?" demanded the knight. "Who were in beside us? Nobody came here."
"I mean the Bibles; I mean the Word of God," cried the merchant; "the bread of life, that those villains came seeking this morning, which, if they had got, they would have burnt most sacrilegiously, as an offering to the harlot of their idolatry."
"Then I was wrong in supposing that they searched for me?" said the knight, with a smile at his own mistake.
"Oh, no; not for you at all!" replied the merchant. "It was the Bibles that Skippenhausen brought over from Holland, for the poor English protestants, who are here denied to eat of the bread or drink of the water of salvation. But now, my lord, if you will condescend to be weighed, you will be ready to sail at four in the morning; for your horses and horse-armour are all weighed and aboard, and the cargo will be complete when your lordship and your gentleman are shipped."
Finding that Master Skippenhausen was bent upon ascertaining his weight, Sir Osborne consented to get into the merchant's large scales; and being as it were lotted with Longpole, his horse-bags, and his armour, he made a very respectable entry in the captain's books. After this, Master Hans led him into his counting-house, and displayed his books before him; but as the items of his account might be somewhat tedious, it may be as well merely to say, that the young knight found he had expended, in the short time he had remained in Henry's luxurious court, more than two thousand five hundred marks; so that of the two thousand seven hundred which he had possessed in the hands of the Fleming, and the thousand which he had won at the Duke of Buckingham's, but one thousand two hundred and a trifle remained.
Sir Osborne was surprised; but the accurate merchant left no point in doubt, and the young knight began to think that it was lucky he had been driven from the court before all his funds were completely expended. He found, however, to his satisfaction, that a great variety of arms and warlike implements, which he had gathered together while in Flanders, and had left in the warehouses of the merchant since he had been in England, had been shipped on board Skippenhausen's vessel, whose acknowledgment of having received them William Hans now put into his hand; and having paid him the sum due, and received an acquittance, he led him once more upstairs into the scene of the last night's revel.