“Ay, sweetheart, come what may.”
“Oh, ay—ay—then whatever it costs, even that o’ yon bed, I’ll hug it and think mysel’ happy!... And you’ll come really courting me now, dear—not like the last?”
“Kiss me, Cissie....”
Their lips met. Thrice they kissed; and then she murmured, “And now that I have you I must send you away! Oh, I have so much to do! But you’ll come in the morning, love?”
“Yes, yes,” he promised her, with a brave smile.
But as it happened, he was not to come in the morning, for that afternoon all Horwick was thrown into a new commotion. All the afternoon the square had remained thronged, and at five o’clock more men began to run in, as they had done earlier in the day. At half-past five, a chaise, driven at the head of a company of soldiers, passed down the Fullergate, and in the chaise sat Jeremy Cope, his spectacles off, nodding and blinking, with one short leg curled up beneath him.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CLOTH MERCHANT.
EVERY man who had anything to conceal—a file, a suspicious-looking pair of shears, a paper or snuffbox of clippings—made haste to conceal it; and for that which was already hidden they sought safer and yet safer places. There was a deal of the dangerous stuff about. During the building of the furnaces, filings and such small matters had been disdained, and for weeks had accumulated uncollected. They began now to rummage chimneys, dusty rafters, the upper back-shelves of cupboards, and to hide it again in their gun-cartridges, in hollows they burned in the galley-baulks of their looms (tallowing all over again), in holes in yards and gardens, in the linings of their jackets and caps. The work began within an hour of Cope’s return; it lasted throughout the night. Even neighbours were scarce to be trusted, for no man knew but in his own extremity another might turn against him. And as they ran here and there, hiding and rehiding, they planned itineraries of escape in the last resort.
Before the next day was two hours old they had reason to congratulate themselves on their celerity; for before Monjoy’s house in the Fullergate there stood an empty chaise and a score of redcoats with muskets. Monjoy’s door stood open.
He had not slept there, however, and presently there issued from the door Cope—the same waddling, blinking, imbecile Cope—and an officer. Except for his burins, his sandbag and engraver’s globe of water, they had found nothing indicative of Monjoy’s trade, and a soldier stepped forward and set a seal on the lock of the door. Cope hoisted himself into the chaise, the officer gave orders, and the party swung off down the Fullergate. It was half-past five in the morning. They halted opposite Matthew Moon’s warehouse, and Cope lowered himself from the chaise again.