“We stayed but to break our fast at the stage. Maybe they looked curiously at the inn. As I remember, there was a weasel-beaked fellow mighty sprag to beagle out our business. He made little by that. We ate but a running-banquet there; no sleep for us yet, by your leave. A mouthful snatched, a cup or two of wine to slake our throats, and away we went again. I remember I bestrode a leathern-mouthed Almaine—a devil to ride, but a devil to go. Sir Nicholas had a Barb under him, a fine fleet beast, but mine would have gone for double the distance. Let that pass. We went at full stretch, no rest for man or beast. Thus it is to go abroad on Sir Nicholas’ affairs. But I do not complain. ‘God save you, sir!’ cry I, and I was reeling in the saddle. ‘Will you ride till Doomsday?’ We drew rein then, at the next stage. ‘We have a fair start of them,’ says my master, stretching up his arms. ‘I’m for bed.’ I warrant you I dropped where I stood, and so slept.
“It was all of a piece. We suffered a check here, an ill-chance there. At one stage there were no nags to be had. We wasted a matter of six hours: precious time if you are hunted men. But Sir Nicholas carried all off with a high hand. I shivered to hear him, but it served, it served. He had not been master of a ship’s crew for naught, do you see? We took what horses we would, scattered the ducats here and there. Did a man refuse to sell? A murrain on the fellow! if he would not sell in all honesty he must be robbed. To speak sooth, when it was thus shown him he would, in the general way, sell. Our need? Why, we went upon the King’s business. Did they ask for proof? We waved a folded paper in their silly faces. (It was an inventory of some shirts and other matters sent to the washer woman, I believe, but they were not to know that.) It sufficed. Our errand? Why, there was a dangerous pirate let loose, a very fiend in human shape. Who was this one? Ho, who but El Beauvallet himself! What a stir was there! We were off whiles the dizzards chattered over it.
“We suffered a bad check somewhere south of Burgos. There was not a horse to be had that was not full of windgalls, or past cure of the staggers. We lay up at an inn—a very noisome hole it was, but we took little account of that. It was there we came near to our undoing, but it passed, it passed. There came the sound of a horse ridden hard. I could see the watchful look in my master’s eye; he bore a fidgeting sword in his scabbard those few minutes, nor was my dagger restful in its sheath. A man went by our inn in a cloud of dust. When it cleared he was away, but I know the look of a soldier, do you see? He was rocking in the saddle: well he might if he had o’ertaken us! For we had not gone at a jog-trot, as you may imagine. He was not on our track. Nay, nay, unless I am much mistaken he was bound for the Frontier. We might have stood in his path and mowed at him; he would have paid no heed. All his orders were to stop the Frontier pass. For that matter I believe we might have declared ourselves all along the way, and had better service. The common folk make a hobgoblin of my master, and fear him like the plague—the grandees not far otherwise, from all I could observe.
“Well, we made it in seven days, and might have made it in less, I believe, but for that check south of Burgos. Odds lifelings, but I was glad to leave the post road behind us at Burgos, and strike northwest to Vasconosa. It was to shake off the hounds, you understand, for those that went not to the Frontier would make Santander, as we judged, and that lay to the east of us. A wild, mad journey, and a miracle that we came off, say I!”
Miracle or not, they did indeed come to Vasconosa at dusk upon the seventh day. There was some sort of an inn there, but little else in the village but a few hovels, and the Great House.
Joshua did good work there while Sir Nicholas washed the travel-stains from his person, and changed his dress. He was trimming his beard when Joshua came up to his room. Joshua came strutting, and looked wisely.
“We have beagled out some few matters, so please you, master. The Great House we have seen, and I learn the family came in late last night. Nothing’s to be heard of them yet. We may easily come at the house; there are a dozen ways through the gardens, and no guards save at the gatehouse, and the
