So eager was Sir Thomas to pursue the adventure, and make capture of the conspirators with his own hand, that he tarried not for any of the customary formalities.
He resolved to take all responsibility upon himself, and "standing to no repairs," swoop upon the culprits. Accordingly, having mustered the serving-men he had warned for this service, and seen to their efficiency in regard to weapons with a military eye, the whole party wheeled out of the gate-house of Charlecote and took their way towards Stratford.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ATTACK.
Many of our readers, who have searched with curious eye through the various localities and peculiar points of interest at Stratford, will doubtless recollect a small antiquated-looking inn, situated on the Avon's bank,—a building whose outward favour and stout-timbered walls, together with its massive chimneys and general appearance, would proclaim it to have been a house of some mark in its day.
At the period of our story this building had degenerated from a goodly farm-house to a hostel called the Checquers, and was the house of entertainment generally used by the commoner sort of wayfarers. It was a house altogether of no very good repute, in which the brawl and the night-shriek might be occasionally heard by the more respectable dwellers in the town,—a house often visited too by the watch, and carefully looked after by the authorities.
It was a dwelling also often changing owners, and had been lately taken by a stranger, a dark, taciturn, evil-looking host, whose appearance nobody liked, consequently he was but ill supported.
In short, since the present landlord had been its occupant, save and except an occasional guest who appeared to have arrived from foreign parts, and departed as quickly and silently as he had come, the Checquers was almost without guests. So that, albeit its former dissolute repute might be said to have departed from it, the inn had now assumed a mysterious sort of note, and was as celebrated for closed doors and quietude, as it had before been for riot and open debauchery. Some said the landlord was a Jesuit; others, that he was an emissary of the Spaniard; whilst others again affirmed he was both the one and the other, and all agreed that he was an ill-favoured, unneighbourly, and exceedingly disagreeable person.
It was at this hostel, Master Neville and his associates had previously taken up their quarters, and here they had been frequently visited during the dark hours by certain cavaliers who hitherto had seldom remained till dawn.