“Thorn!”
“I have seen a picture of it before the Parliament men made it a ruin. The windows are out, the roof in, and the walls shaggy with ivy. I wonder that they did not batter down the tower.”
Mr. Pepys was screwing up his eyes and shading them with his hand, but things run into a blur at a distance, and much straining made the tears come.
“We had better be mounting, John.”
“Wait! Bide quiet a moment.”
John Gore’s face had a keen, hawk-like look as he leaned forward a little, drawing a beech bough down to shade his eyes. He had seen several white pigeons flutter up from the circular brick dove-cote that still stood in one corner of the court, and beat their wings about a narrow window high up in the tower. The dark ivy seemed to give distinctness to the fluttering specks. Two of the birds had perched upon the sill, and it was then that John Gore’s far-sighted eyes had seen something that made him wonder. For two faint, white things had appeared at the window, like hands thrust out, and the pigeons had fluttered to them as though to be fed.
“What is it, John?”
The sea-captain ignored the question, and Mr. Pepys began to yawn and fidget.
The white birds had fluttered away again, and the faint hands and wrists showed in the dark framing of the narrow window. They looked like hands thrust up in supplication, the hands of a prisoner who could only see the white birds and the sky.
John Gore turned sharply, and climbed into the saddle with the air of a man gripped and held by some inspired suspicion. He rode off slowly, Mr. Pepys following him, and they began to pick their way through the autumn woods. And fortune was kind to them that morning, for they struck a track that led them to the Battle road.