Her passionate and poetic words were succeeded, if not cut short, by a thumping on the pavement. Jerky’s wooden leg it was; its owner approaching in the darkness, the rapid repetition of the thumps telling him to be in great haste.
“Winny!” he called to her in urgent tone, “us maunt linger here any longer. Ye know somethin’ as needs our bein’ quick about it.”
“Yes, yes,” she answered, excitedly, as if recalled to a duty she felt guilty of having trifled with or neglected. “I be ready to go on, Jack.”
The guard-sergeant looked a little puzzled. There was a secret, after all, which had not been confided to him. What could it be?
Rough Forester though he had been, bold soldier as he now was, he lacked the courage, or rather the rudeness, to ask. It might be a question unwelcome.
Divining his thoughts, the woman said in a whisper,—
“Something Rob, us have sweared not to tell o’ to anybody, ’till’t be all over an’ done. When’s I see you at the inn ’twill be over, an’ ye shall hear all about it.”
“That be enough, Win?” said in rejoinder the trusting Rob; and the two great figures went apart in the shadowy night, the separation preceded by their lips once more meeting in a resonant smack.
On along the streets passed the cadger party; Jack urging Jinkum to haste by a succession of vociferous “yee-ups,” and now and then a sharp touch of the stick. He seemed angry with himself, or perhaps more at Winny, for having tarried so long by the gate.
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed in a troubled tone, “what if us get theer too late? Ye know, the Glo’ster governor told we not to waste one second o’ time. Maybe better keep on straight to the castle. What d’ye say, Winny?”