Kit's wrath against the inmates of the house now exploded. Calling them "scullions," "scavengers," and names still less flattering, he began kicking and hammering on the door as if to break it down. Moved by the spirit of violence, Hal joined him in this demonstration. The upper windows opened, and voices began screaming "Murder!" and "Thieves!" In a short time several denizens of the neighborhood—which was a neighborhood of nocturnal habits—appeared in the street. Seeing how matters stood, they fell upon Kit and Hal, mauling the pair with fists, and tearing off their outer garments.
Soon a cry went up, "The watch!" whereupon Hal, with memories of restraint and inconvenience to which he had once before been put, called upon Kit to follow, and made a dash toward the end of the street. He speedily was out of pursuit, and the sound of Bottle's voice growling out objurgations, close behind him, satisfied him that the old soldier was at his heels. Hal, therefore, ran on, making no impediment of the bars, and passed the Pens without slack of speed. Stopping in Cow Lane he looked back, and to his surprise saw that he was now quite alone.
He went immediately back over his tracks in search of Bottle, but found no one. Turnbull Street had subsided into its former outward appearance of desertion. Thinking that Bottle might have passed him in the darkness, Hal returned southward. When he arrived in Fleet Street he retained but a confused, whirling recollection of what had occurred. Yet his mood was still for company and carouse. With great joy, therefore, he observed that a humble little ale-house to which he sometimes resorted, near Fleet Bridge, was opening for the day, as dawn was appearing. He went in and ordered wine.
The tapster, who knew him, remarked with astonishment that he was without hat or cloak; and the morning being very cold, and Hal unlikely to meet any person of quality at that hour, the fellow offered him a surcoat and cap, such as were worn by apprentices, to protect him from chill on the way homeward. Hal, who was now half comatose, passively let himself be thus fortified against the weather. With the sum repaid him by Bottle he was able to buy good cheer; his only lack was of company to share it with. He could not hope at this hour to fall in with another late-hour man; it was now time for the early rising folk to be abroad.
In from the street came half a dozen hardy looking fellows, calling for beer to be quickly drawn, as they had far to go to their work. Their dress was of leather and coarse cloth, and the tools they carried were those of carpenters. But to Hal, who now saw things vaguely, they were but fellow mortals, and thirsty. He welcomed them with a flourish and an imperative invitation to drink. This they readily accepted, grinning the while with boorish amusement. When they perforce departed, Hal, unwilling to lose new-found company so soon, attached himself to them; and was several times hindered from dragging them into taverns as they passed, by their promise, given with winks invisible to him, that they would drink on arriving at their destination.
So he went, upheld between a pair of them, and heeding not the way they took. Though it was now daylight, he was past recognizing landmarks. He had the dimmest sense of passing a succession of walled and turreted mansions at his left hand; then of catching glimpses of more open and park-like spaces at his right hand; of going, in a grave kind of semi-stupor, through two gateways and as many courtyards; of being passed on, with the companions to whom he clung, by dull warders, and by a busy, inattentive, pompous man of authority to whom his comrades reported in a body; of traversing with them, at last, a passage and a kind of postern, and emerging in a great garden. Here the carpenters seemed to become sensible of having committed a serious breach in sportively letting him be admitted as one of their own band. They held a brief consultation, looking around in a half frightened way to see if they were observed. They finally led him into an alley, formed by hedgerows, deposited him gently on the ground, and hastened off to another part of the garden. Once recumbent, he turned upon his side and went instantly to sleep.
When he awoke, several hours later, without the least knowledge what garden was this to which his eyes opened, or the least recollection how he had come into it, he saw, looking down at him in mild surprise, a slight, yellow-haired, pale-faced, high-browed, dark-eyed, elderly lady, with a finely curved nose, a resolute mouth, and a sharp chin, and wearing a tight-bodied, wide-skirted costume of silvered white velvet and red silk, with a gold-laced, ermine-trimmed mantle, and a narrow, peaked velvet hat. Hal, in his first bewilderment, wondered where it was that he had previously seen this lady.
"Madam," he said, in a voice husky with cold, "I seem to be an intruder. By your favor, what place is this?"
The lady looked at him sharply for a moment, then answered, simply:
"'Tis the garden of Whitehall palace. Who are you?"