ride o' Tuesday to London and made a show of taking farewells of our
friends--especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we
turned; rode home to the watermeadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot at
the foot of the glebe, and, come night, stole a-tiptoe up hill to
Barnabas' church again. A thick mist, and a moon striking through.

'I had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes
Sebastian full length in the dark.

'"Pest!" he says. "Step high and feel low, Hal. I've stumbled over guns
before."

'I groped, and one by one--the tower was pitchy dark--I counted the
lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease straw. No conceal
at all!

'"There's two demi-cannon my end," says Sebastian, slapping metal.
"They'll be for Andrew Barton's lower deck. Honest--honest John Collins!
So this is his warehouse, his arsenal, his armoury! Now see you why your
pokings and pryings have raised the Devil in Sussex? You've hindered
John's lawful trade for months," and he laughed where he lay.

'A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry
stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and
tail.

'"Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become me, Hal?" He
draws it on and capers in the shafts of window-moonlight--won'erful
devilish-like. Then he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a
board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit
in, and screeched at the horns of him.

'"If you'd keep out the Devil, shut the door," he whispered. "And that's
another false proverb, Hal, for I can hear your tower-door opening."

'"I locked it. Who a-plague has another key, then?" I said.

'"All the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says, and peers into
the blackness. "Still! Still, Hal! Hear 'em grunt! That's more o' my
serpentines, I'll be bound. One--two--three--four they bear in! Faith,
Andrew equips himself like an Admiral! Twenty-four serpentines in all!"

'As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins's voice come up all
hollow: "Twenty-four serpentines and two demi-cannon. That's the full
tally for Sir Andrew Barton."

'"Courtesy costs naught," whispers Sebastian. "Shall I drop my dagger on
his head?"

'"They go over to Rye o' Thursday in the wool-wains, hid under the
wool-packs. Dirk Brenzett meets them at Udimore, as before," says John.

'"Lord! What a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says Sebastian. "I lay we