In a quarter of an hour Maurice returned.
“The next thing, Neal, is to get you out of this town. It’s full of soldiers, and there are sentries at every turn, but I’ve got the word for the night, and I think we’ll be able to manage.”
He walked round the room peering carefully at the drunken men who lay on the floor.
“‘Here’s a fellow that’s about your size, Neal. He seems to be a captain of some sort, a yeomanry captain by the look of him. I’m hanged if it isn’t our friend Twinely again. We’ll take the liberty of borrowing his uniform for you. There’ll be a poetic justice about that, and he’ll sleep all the better for having these tight things off him.”
He knelt down and stripped Captain Twinely.
“Now then, quick, Neal. Don’t waste time. Daylight will be on us before we know where we are. Take your own things with you in a bundle. Change again somewhere when you get out of the town, you’ll be safer travelling in your own clothes. Take some food with you. Here, I’ll make up a parcel while you dress. I’ll stick in a bottle of wine. Now you’re right. Walk boldly past the sentries. If you’re challenged curse the man that challenges you. The word for the night is ‘Clavering.’ Travel by night as much as you can. Keep off the main roads. Strike straight for home. It’ll be a queer thing if you can’t lie safe round Dunseveric for a few days till we get you out of the country.”
CHAPTER XV
Lord Dunseveric and Maurice breakfasted together at eight o’clock on the morning of Neal’s escape. They sat in the room where Lord O’Neill lay, and had a table spread for them beside the window. It was impossible to eat a meal in any comfort elsewhere in the inn. Indeed, but for the special exertions of the master and his maid it would have been difficult to get food at all. Maurice was triumphant and excited. Since Neal had not been brought back it was reasonable to suppose that he had made good his escape out of the town, and there was every hope that he would get safe to the coast. Once there he had friends enough to feed him, and hiding-places known to few, and almost inaccessible to soldiers or yeomen.
Lord Dunseveric asked no questions about Maurice’s doings in the night. He felt perfectly confident that Neal had got off somehow. The details of the business he would hear later on. For the present he preferred to know nothing about them.