The dealers withdrew into the hut, wondering at the abrupt termination of their interview, and implicitly confiding in the power of the Cripple to make good his threat.
"The Lord have mercy upon us!" said the mercer, in a smothered voice, after they had entered the door; "the Cripple hath matters on hand which it were not for our good to pry into. Pray you, Nichol, let us make our survey and do his bidding, by setting forth at once. I am not the man to give him offence."
The cause of this unexpected dismissal of the visiters was the apparition of Cocklescraft, whose figure, in the doubtful light of the morning, was seen by Rob at a distance, on the profile of the bank in the neighbourhood of the Wizard's Chapel. He had halted upon observing the Cripple in company with strangers, and had made a signal which was sufficiently intelligible to the person to whom it was addressed, to explain his wish to meet him.
Rob, having thus promptly rid himself of his company, now swung on his short crutches, almost as rapidly as a good walker could have got over the ground, towards the spot where the Buccaneer had halted.
"Steer your cockleshell there to the right, old worm!" said the Freebooter, as Rob came opposite to the bank on which he stood. "You shall find it easier to come up by the hollow."
"The plagues of a foul conscience light on thee!" replied the Cripple, desisting from farther motion, and wiping the perspiration from his brow. "Is it more seemly I should waste my strength on the fruitless labour to clamber up that rough slope, or thou come down to me? You mock me, sirrah!" he added, with an expression of sudden anger; "Thou know'st I cannot mount the bank."
"Thou know'st I can drag thee up, reverend fragment of a sinful man!" returned Cocklescraft, jocularly; "yes, and with all thy pack of evil passions at thy back, besides. Would you hold our meeting in sight from the window of the hut, where you have just lodged a pair of your busy meddlers—your bumpkin cronies in the way of trade? It was such as these that, but a few nights ago, set his Lordship's hounds upon our tracks. Come up, man, without farther parley."
The Cripple's fleeting anger changed, as usual, to that bitter smile and chuckle with which he was wont to return into a tractable mood, as he said,—
"A provident rogue! a shrewd imp! He has his instinct of mischief so keen that his forecast never sleepeth. The devil hath made him a perfect scholar. There, Dickon, give me thy hand," he added, when he came to the steep ascent which his machine of locomotion was utterly inadequate to surmount. "Give me thy hand, good cut-throat. Help me to the top."
The muscular seaman, instead of extending his hand to his companion, descended the bank, and taking the bowl and its occupant upon his shoulder, strode upward to the even ground, and deposited his load with as little apparent effort as if he had been dealing with a truss of hay.