Penruddocke came back, Master Bertie following him.
"It must not be done to-night," he announced quietly, with a nod which meant that he would explain the reason afterward. "We will meet again to-morrow at four in the afternoon instead of at eight in the evening. Until then two must remain on guard with him. It is right he should have some time to repent, and he shall have it."
This did not at once find favor.
"Why not run him through now?" said one bluntly. "And meet to-morrow at some place unknown to him? If we come here again we shall, likely enough, walk straight into the trap."
"Well, have it that way, if you please," answered Sir Thomas, shrugging his shoulders. "But do not blame me afterward if you find we have let slip a golden opportunity. Be fools if you like. I dare say it will not make much difference in the end!"
He spoke at random, but he knew how to deal with his crew, it seemed, for on this those who had objected assented reluctantly to the course he proposed. "Barnes and Walters are here in hiding, so they had better be the two to guard him," he continued. "There is no fear that they will be inclined to let him go!" I looked at the men whom the glances of their fellows singled out, and found them to belong to the little knot of fanatics I had before remarked: dark, stern men, worth, if the matter ever came to fighting, all the rest of the band put together.
"At four, to-morrow, then, we meet," Sir Thomas concluded lightly. "Then we will deal with him, never fear! Now it is near midnight, and we must be going. But not all together, or we shall attract attention."
Half an hour later Master Bertie and I rode softly out of the courtyard and turned our faces toward the city. The night wind came sweeping across the valley of the Thames, and met us full in the face as we reached the brow of the hill. It seemed laden with melancholy whispers. The wretched enterprise, ill-conceived, ill-ordered, and in its very nature desperate, to which we were in honor committed, would have accounted of itself for any degree of foreboding. But the scene through which we had just passed, and on my part the knowledge that I had given up a fellow-being to death, had their depressing influences. For some distance we rode in silence, which I was the first to break.
"Why did you put off his punishment?" I asked.
"Because I think he will give us information in the interval," Bertie answered briefly. "Information which may help us. A spy is generally ready to betray his own side upon occasion."