country was to run the risk of the
patrols.

A little way off, upon some open ground, they spied a windmill standing;
and hard by that, a very large granary with open doors.

"How if we lay there until the night fall?" Dick proposed.

And Lawless having no better suggestion to offer, they made a straight
push for the granary at a run, and concealed themselves behind the door
among some straw. The daylight rapidly departed; and presently the moon
was silvering the frozen snow. Now or never was their opportunity to
gain the Goat and Bagpipes unobserved and change their tell-tale
garments. Yet even then it was advisable to go round by the outskirts,
and not run the gauntlet of the market-place, where, in the concourse of
people, they stood the more imminent peril to be recognised and slain.

This course was a long one. It took them not far from the house by the
beach, now lying dark and silent, and brought them forth at last by the
margin of the harbour. Many of the ships, as they could see by the clear
moonshine, had weighed anchor, and, profiting by the calm sky, proceeded
for more distant parts; answerably to this, the rude alehouses along the
beach (although, in defiance of the curfew law, they still shone with
fire and candle) were no longer thronged with customers, and no longer
echoed to the chorus of sea-songs.

Hastily, half running, with their monkish raiment kilted to the knee,
they plunged through the deep snow and threaded the labyrinth of marine
lumber; and they were already more than half-way round the harbour when,
as they were passing close before an alehouse, the door suddenly opened
and let out a gush of light upon their fleeting figures.

Instantly they stopped, and made believe to be engaged in earnest
conversation.

Three men, one after another, came out of the alehouse, and the last
closed the door behind him. All three were unsteady upon their feet, as
if they had passed the day in deep potations, and they now stood
wavering in the moonlight, like men who knew not what they would be
after. The tallest of the three was talking in a loud, lamentable
voice.

"Seven pieces of as good Gascony as ever a tapster broached," he was
saying, "the best ship out o' the port o' Dartmouth, a Virgin Mary
parcel-gilt, thirteen pounds of good gold money----"

"I have had losses, too," interrupted one of the others. "I have had
losses of mine own, gossip Arblaster. I was robbed at Martinmas of five
shillin