"An she think she would find freedom that way, she knows not Rumney. If thine only care were to be no more troubled of her, thou couldst do little better than let Rumney take her off thy hands."
"I would kill thee, Kit, if I knew not thou saidst that but to rally me! Yet I will not grant it true, either. She might contrive to tame this Rumney beast, and work us much harm. Well, smile an thou wilt! Thine age gives thee privileges with me, and I will confess 'tis her own safety most concerns me in this anxiety. Sink this Rumney in perdition!—why did I ever encumber us with him and his rascals?"
"Speaking of his rascals, now," said Kit, "I have noticed some of them rather minded to heed your wishes than Rumney's commands. There hath been wrangling in the gang."
"There is one, methinks," assented Hal, "that would rather take my orders than his leader's. 'Tis the round-headed, sharp-eyed fellow, Tom Cobble. He is a runagate 'prentice from London, and seemeth to have more respect for town manners than for Rumney's."
"And there is a yeoman's son, John Hatch, that rides near me," added Kit. "He hath some remnant of honesty in him, or I mistake. And one Ned Moreton, who is of gentle blood and mislikes to be overborne by such carrion as Rumney. And yon scare-faced, fat-paunched fellow, Noll Bunch they call him, hath been under-bailiff in a family that hath fled the country. I warrant he hath no taste for robbery; methinks he took to the road in sheer need of filling his stomach, and would give much to be free of his bad bargain. There be two or three more that might make choice of us, in a clash with their captain; but the rest are of the mangiest litter that was ever bred among two-legged creatures."
"Then win over quietly whom thou canst, Kit. But let us have no clash till we must."
Rumney and his men looked almost meek while passing through Halifax. And herein behold mankind's horror of singularity. In other towns these robbers had been under as much possibility of recognition and detention; but in those towns the result of their arrest would have been no worse than hanging, and was not hanging the usual, common, and natural ending of a thief? But in Halifax there was that unique "Gibbet Law," under which thieves were beheaded by a machine something like the guillotine which another country and a later century were yet to produce. There was in such a death an isolation, from which a properly bred thief, brought up to regard the hempen rope as his due destiny, might well shrink.
But the robbers could sleep with easy minds that night, for Master Marryott put Halifax eight miles behind ere he rested.
Similar arrangements to those of the preceding night were made at the inn chosen as a stopping-place. The coach, furnished for comfortable repose, stood near a fire, under roof. Hal, who thought that he had now mastered the art of living without sleep, set himself to keep guard again, by Francis, near the coach doorway. It was Anthony's night to share Rumney's couch of straw; Kit Bottle's to watch for Barnet's men.
Master Marryott, sitting by the fire, was assailed by fears lest the pursuivant had abandoned the false chase. If not, it was strange, when the slow progress with the coach was considered, that he had not come in sight. Hal reassured himself by accounting for this in more ways than one. Barnet must have been detained long in recruiting men to join in the pursuit. He may have been hindered by lack of money, also, for he had left London without thought of further journey than to Welwyn. He could press all necessary means into service, in the queen's name, as he went; but in doing this he must experience much delay that ready coin would have avoided. True, Barnet would have learned at Clown that the supposed Sir Valentine had named himself as a London player; but he would surely think this a lie, as Mistress Hazlehurst had thought it.