"I have come to help you to escape. I have three horses waiting for you, and I have discovered that the password for the night is 'Guelderland.'"
"And the horses," queried Wat, "whence came they?"
"Ne'er inquire too carefully so that they be good ones," quoth Scarlett the campaigner.
"I took the loan of them from the stables of the Inn of the Coronation. I know of one who will see them safe home," said Marie.
"Is their hire paid for?" asked Wat the Scot.
"Faith, aye," said Jack Scarlett; "I myself have paid the fat old villain Sheffell for them over and over again. Let us go on. It skills not to be too nice in distinctions when one argues under the shadow of the gallows. The rascal shall have his horses back safe enough when we are done with them."
They went by unfrequented ways, following their slim, alert guide down by-ways that echoed under their feet, by quiet, evil-smelling streets vocal with night-raking cats, past innumerable prowling dogs with their backs chronically arched at the shoulders, half in general defiance of their kind, and half with bending over baskets of domestic rubbish.
They came after a while to the shade of the little wood beyond the great canal; and there, sure enough, tied to the green-sparred wooden box, which in Dutch fashion had been put round some of the trees of rarer sort, were three horses, all busily employed trying to crop the herbage to the limit of their several tethers.
"And the third?" queried Scarlett, looking at them. "Whose leg goes across the saddle of the third?"
"I come with you," said Marie, hastily and anxiously; "believe me, I can guide you to a little haven where are ships wherein you may reach your own land—or, at least, if it please you, escape safely out of this country of enemies."