But before Dick could answer, a voice spoke in the darkness from close by. Dick could see the speaker’s black and white badge, and the respectful salute which he addressed to his superior.
“My lord,” said he, “if these gentlemen be unfriends to Sir Daniel, it is a pity, indeed, we should have been at blows with them; but it were tenfold greater that either they or we should linger here. The watchers in the house—unless they be all dead or deaf—have heard our hammering this quarter-hour agone; instantly they will have signalled to the town; and unless we be the livelier in our departure, we are like to be taken, both of us, by a fresh foe.”
“Hawksley is in the right,” added the lord. “How please ye, sir? Whither shall we march?”
“Nay, my lord,” said Dick, “go where you will for me. I do begin to suspect we have some ground of friendship, and if, indeed, I began our acquaintance somewhat ruggedly, I would not churlishly continue. Let us then, separate, my lord, you laying your right hand in mine; and at the hour and place that ye shall name, let us encounter and agree.”
“Y’ are too trustful, boy,” said the other; “but this time your trust is not misplaced. I will meet you at the point of day at St. Bride’s Cross.—Come, lads, follow!”
The strangers disappeared from the scene with a rapidity that seemed suspicious; and, while the outlaws fell to the congenial task of rifling the dead bodies, Dick made once more the circuit of the garden wall to examine the front of the house. In a little upper loophole of the roof he beheld a light set; and as it would certainly be visible in town from the back windows of Sir Daniel’s mansion, he doubted not that this was the signal feared by Hawksley, and that ere long the lances of the Knight of Tunstall would arrive upon the scene.
He put his ear to the ground, and it seemed to him as if he heard a jarring and hollow noise from townward. Back to the beach he went hurrying. But the work was already done; the last body was disarmed and stripped to the skin, and four fellows were already wading seaward to commit it to the mercies of the deep.
A few minutes later, when there debouched out of the nearest lanes of Shoreby some two score horsemen, hastily arrayed and moving at the gallop of their steeds, the neighbourhood of the house beside the sea was entirely silent and deserted.
Meanwhile Dick and his men had returned to the alehouse of the “Goat and Bagpipes” to snatch some hours of sleep before the morning tryst.