“I heard such strange sounds, John, while you were away!”
“Oh!” And he seemed intent on ramming home the charge.
“It was like something falling in a cellar under the house.”
“Old houses are full of such sounds,” he said, looking up at her suddenly. “Thorn sheds bricks and plaster most nights in the year, with the ivy working its way everywhere.”
He made so little of it that Barbara did not press him further, for she had no knowledge of the pit that had been opened for her, with its well-like shoot cut in the thickness of the tower wall. John Gore began to gather up all that belonged to him, and, finding a sack in one of the cupboards, he tumbled the tools and rope into it, tying the mouth of the sack with a strip of stuff torn from the quilt of the couch. His own sword was broken in its scabbard, so he took the hanger down that hung over the fireplace, and also the long carbine that had a strap for slinging across the back.
John Gore had brought his horseman’s cloak with him from under the thorn-tree, and he took it and laid it upon Barbara’s shoulders. Moreover, Mrs. Winnie had lent him a woollen scarf and some gloves, which he had stowed away at the bottom of his holsters, and he knew that the girl would need them because of the keen wind.
“I have left the horse in the woods, Barbe. What sort of shoes are you wearing?”
She showed him them, and he did not commend their flimsiness.
“You must let me carry you, child, or you will have your stockings soaked in those boggy meadows, and we shall be somewhile on the road.”
She glanced at the table where the sack and the arms lay, and then gave him an unequivocal smile.