em, leaving himself nothing; thanked them for the courage
they had displayed, though he could have found it more readily in his
heart to rate them for poltroonery; and having thus somewhat softened
the effect of his prolonged misfortune, despatched them to find their
way, either severally or in pairs, to Shoreby and the "Goat and
Bagpipes."

For his own part, influenced by what he had seen on board of the _Good
Hope_, he chose Lawless to be his companion on the walk. The snow was
falling, without pause or variation, in one even, blinding cloud; the
wind had been strangled, and now blew no longer; and the whole world was
blotted out and sheeted down below that silent inundation. There was
great danger of wandering by the way and perishing in drifts; and
Lawless, keeping half a step in front of his companion, and holding his
head forward like a hunting dog upon the scent, inquired his way of
every tree, and studied out their path as though he were conning a ship
among dangers.

About a mile into the forest they came to a place where several ways
met, under a grove of lofty and contorted oaks. Even in the narrow
horizon of the falling snow, it was a spot that could not fail to be
recognised; and Lawless evidently recognised it with particular delight.

"Now, Master Richard," said he, "an y' are not too proud to be the guest
of a man who is neither a gentleman by birth nor so much as a good
Christian, I can offer you a cup of wine and a good fire to melt the
marrow in your frozen bones."

"Lead on, Will," answered Dick. "A cup of wine and a good fire! Nay, I
would go a far way round to see them."

Lawless turned aside under the bare branches of the grove, and, walking
resolutely forward for some time, came to a steepish hollow or den, that
had now drifted a quarter full of snow. On the verge a great beech-tree
hung, precariously rooted; and here the old outlaw, pulling aside some
bushy underwood, bodily disappeared into the earth.

The beech had, in some violent gale, been half-uprooted, and had torn up
a considerable stretch of turf; and it was under this that old Lawless
had dug out his forest hiding-place. The roots served him for rafters,
the turf was his thatch; for walls and floor he had his mother the
earth. Rude as it was, the hearth in one corner, blackened by fire, and
the presence in another of a large oaken chest well fortified with iron,
showed it at one glance to be the den of a man, and not the burrow o