“ ’Tis a warm corner, to be sure,” replied Dick, “and a pleasant, and a well hid.”
“It had need to be,” returned Lawless, “for an they found it, Master Shelton, it would break my heart. But here,” he added, burrowing with his stout fingers in the sandy floor, “here is my wine cellar; and ye shall have a flask of excellent strong stingo.”
Sure enough, after but a little digging, he produced a big leathern bottle of about a gallon, nearly three-parts full of a very heady and sweet wine; and when they had drunk to each other comradely, and the fire had been replenished and blazed up again, the pair lay at full length, thawing and steaming, and divinely warm.
“Master Shelton,” observed the outlaw, “y’ ’ave had two mischances this last while, and y’are like to lose the maid—do I take it aright?”
“Aright!” returned Dick, nodding his head.
“Well, now,” continued Lawless, “hear an old fool that hath been nigh-hand everything, and seen nigh-hand all! Ye go too much on other people’s errands, Master Dick. Ye go on Ellis’s; but he desireth rather the death of Sir Daniel. Ye go on Lord Foxham’s; well—the saints preserve him!—doubtless he meaneth well. But go ye upon your own, good Dick. Come right to the maid’s side. Court her, lest that she forget you. Be ready; and when the chance shall come, off with her at the saddlebow.”
“Ay, but, Lawless, beyond doubt she is now in Sir Daniel’s own mansion,” answered Dick.
“Thither, then, go we,” replied the outlaw.
Dick stared at him.
“Nay, I mean it,” nodded Lawless. “And if y’are of so little faith, and stumble at a word, see here!”
And the outlaw, taking a key from about his neck, opened the oak chest, and dipping and groping deep among its contents, produced first a friar’s robe, and next a girdle of rope; and then a huge rosary of wood, heavy enough to be counted as a weapon.
“Here,” he said, “is for you. On with them!”
And then, when Dick had clothed himself in this clerical disguise, Lawless produced some colours and a pencil, and proceeded, with the greatest cunning, to disguise his face. The eyebrows he thickened and produced; to the moustache, which was yet hardly visible, he rendered a little service; while, by a few lines around the eye, he changed the expression and increased the apparent age of this young monk.
“Now,” he resumed, “when I have done the like, we shall make as bonny a pair of friars as the eye could wish. Boldly to Sir Daniel’s we shall go, and there be hospitably welcome for the love of Mother Church.”
“And how, dear Lawless,” cried the lad, “shall I repay you?”
“Tut, brother,” replied the outlaw, “I do naught but for my pleasure. Mind not for me. I am one, by the mass, that mindeth for himself. When that I lack, I have a long tongue and a voice like the monastery bell—I do ask, my son; and where asking faileth, I do most usually take.”
The old rogue made a humorous grimace; and although Dick was displeased to lie under so great favours to so equivocal a personage, he was yet unable to restrain his mirth.
With that, Lawless returned to the big chest, and was soon similarly disguised; but, below his gown, Dick wondered to observe him conceal a sheaf of black arrows.
“Wherefore do ye that?” asked the lad. “Wherefore arrows, when ye take no bow?”
“Nay,” replied Lawless, lightly, “ ’tis like there will be heads broke—not to say backs—ere you and I win sound from where we’re going to; and if any fall, I would our fellowship should come by the credit on’t. A black arrow, Master Dick, is the seal of our abbey; it showeth you who writ the bill.”
“An ye prepare so carefully,” said Dick, “I have here some papers that, for mine own sake, and the interest of those that trusted me, were better left behind than found upon my body. Where shall I conceal them, Will?”
“Nay,” replied Lawless, “I will go forth into the wood and whistle me three verses of a song; meanwhile, do you bury them where ye please, and smooth the sand upon the place.”
“Never!” cried Richard. “I trust you, man. I were base indeed if I not trusted you.”
“Brother, y’are but a child,” replied the old outlaw, pausing and turning his face upon Dick from the threshold of the den. “I am a kind old Christian, and no traitor to men’s blood, and no sparer of mine own in a friend’s jeopardy. But, fool, child, I am a thief by trade and birth and habit. If my bottle were empty and my mouth dry, I would rob you, dear child, as sure as I love, honour, and admire your parts and person! Can it be clearer spoken? No.”
And he stumped forth through the bushes with a snap of his big fingers.
Dick, thus left alone, after a wondering thought upon the inconsistencies of his companion’s character, hastily produced, reviewed, and buried his papers. One only he reserved to carry along with him, since it in nowise compromised his friends, and yet might serve him, in a pinch, against Sir Daniel. That was the knight’s own letter to Lord Wensleydale, sent by Throgmorton, on the morrow of the defeat at Risingham, and found next day by Dick upon the body of the messenger.
Then, treading down the embers of the fire, Dick left the den, and rejoined the old outlaw, who stood awaiting him under the leafless oaks, and was already beginning to be powdered by the falling snow. Each looked upon the other, and each laughed, so thorough and so droll was the disguise.
“Yet I would it were but summer and a clear day,” grumbled the outlaw, “that I might see myself in the mirror of a
