“To keep the wind out,” said the man’s voice. “Good-night, gentlemen,” and they heard something thud and grind against the door, as though the fellow had jammed a piece of timber against it.
Mr. Pepys put his shoulder to the door, but could not move it.
“The scoundrel has wedged us in, John!”
Slow, solid footsteps died away across the court-yard. They heard the rattle of a falling chain and the whimpering of a dog. And presently they heard the beast come sniffing at the door.
Mr. Pepys looked at his companion, and then glanced with no appetite at their supper.
“Stars and garters, John! I don’t like this at all. Keep away from that beer—the rogues may have poisoned it; I would rather share the water with the nags. Get your pistols out, John. Just listen to that brute of a dog sniffing and scraping to get at us. If you catch me asleep to-night, sir, you may call me a fat fool!”
XXVIII
Nevertheless, Mr. Pepys fell fast asleep on the hay that night, for the Sussex air and the ale at Furze Farm triumphed over his presentiments of violence and murder. The sea-captain, who was of harder fibre than the Secretary, sat in the hay with his pistols beside him and his ears on the alert for any sound that the night might send.
The candle in the lantern guttered about midnight, and John Gore was left in the dark to listen to Mr. Pepys’s snoring and the heavy breathing of the tired horses. He could hear rats scrambling and squeaking in the walls, the harsh creaking of a rusty vane over one gable-end of the barn, and the occasional sniffing of the dog’s nose at the door. The barn was warm enough, and full of a musty fragrance, what with the heat of the horses and the hay, and John Gore might have followed Mr. Pepys’s example had he not come by the habit of keeping watch at sea. And worthy man though Mr. Pepys was, John Gore commended him for falling asleep, being desirous of thinking his own thoughts without the distraction of his companion’s tongue.
The place and its people puzzled John Gore, and he trusted them even less than did Mr. Pepys. There might be priests in hiding, or some secret to be guarded, for John Gore guessed that only the couple’s greed had persuaded them to give casual strangers shelter in the barn for the night. Their surly aloofness, as though they were risking something for five gold pieces, had set the sea-captain’s curiosity at work. The place had a moat and a gate that suggested a manor-house or a grange of some size. Nor did the folk themselves smell of the country. John Gore determined to reconnoitre the place at dawn if he were able to force the door.