is,
indeed, it would have been too late to do--they thanked those who
had come to aid them, and returned home to Steeple, where they
had matters to arrange. As they went they gathered from this man
and that tidings which made the whole tale clear to them.

They learned, for instance, then and afterwards, that the galley
which had been thought to be a merchantman put into the river
Crouch by design, feigning an injury to her rudder, and that on
Christmas eve she had moved up with the tide, and anchored in the
Blackwater about three miles from its mouth. Thence a great boat,
which she towed behind her, and which was afterwards found
abandoned, had rowed in the dusk, keeping along the further shore
to avoid observation, to the mouth of Steeple Creek, which she
descended at dark, making fast to the Staithe, unseen of any. Her
crew of thirty men or more, guided by the false palmer Nicholas,
next hid themselves in the grove of trees about fifty yards from
the house, where traces of them were found afterwards, waiting
for the signal, and, if that were necessary, ready to attack and
burn the Hall while all men feasted there. But it was not
necessary, since the cunning scheme of the drugged wine, which
only an Eastern could have devised, succeeded. So it happened
that the one man they had to meet in arms was an old knight, of
which doubtless they were glad, as their numbers being few, they
wished to avoid a desperate battle, wherein many must fall, and,
if help came, they might be all destroyed.

When it was over they led Rosamund to the boat, felt their way
down the creek, towing behind them the little skiff which they
had taken from the water-house--laden with their dead and
wounded. This, indeed, proved the most perilous part of their
adventures, since it was very dark, and came on to snow; also
twice they grounded upon mud banks. Still guided by Nicholas, who
had studied the river, they reached the galley before dawn, and
with the first light weighed anchor, and very cautiously rowed
out to sea. The rest is known.

Two days later, since there was no time to spare, Sir Andrew was
buried with great pomp at Stangate Abbey, in the same tomb where
lay the heart of his brother, the father of the brethren, who had
fallen in the Eastern wars. After he had been laid to rest amidst
much lamentation and in the presence of a great concourse of
people, for the fame of these strange happenings had travelled
far and wide, his will wa