aking farewells of our
friends--especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we
turned; rode by night to the watermeadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot
at the foot of the glebe, and stole a-tiptoe up hill to Barnabas's church
again. A thick mist, and a moon coming 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 slits of window-moonlight--won'erful devilish-like.
Then he sits on the stair, 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
are the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawf