“They take us to be French pirates,” answered
Lord Foxham. “In these most troublesome
and degenerate days we cannot keep our own shores
of England; but our old enemies, whom we once chased
on sea and land, do now range at pleasure, robbing
and slaughtering and burning. It is the pity
and reproach of this poor land.”
The men upon the hillock lay, closely observing them,
while they trailed upward from the beach and wound
inland among desolate sand-hills; for a mile or so
they even hung upon the rear of the march, ready,
at a sign, to pour another volley on the weary and
dispirited fugitives; and it was only when, striking
at length upon a firm high-road, Dick began to call
his men to some more martial order, that these jealous
guardians of the coast of England silently disappeared
among the snow. They had done what they desired;
they had protected their own homes and farms, their
own families and cattle; and their private interest
being thus secured, it mattered not the weight of
a straw to any one of them, although the Frenchmen
should carry blood and fire to every other parish in
the realm of England.
BOOK IV—THE DISGUISE
CHAPTER I—THE DEN
The place where Dick had struck the line of a high-road
was not far from Holywood, and within nine or ten
miles of Shoreby-on-the-Till; and here, after making
sure that they were pursued no longer, the two bodies
separated. Lord Foxham’s followers departed,
carrying their wounded master towards the comfort
and security of the great abbey; and Dick, as he saw
them wind away and disappear in the thick curtain
of the falling snow, was left alone with near upon
a dozen outlaws, the last remainder of his troop of
volunteers.
Some were wounded; one and all were furious at their
ill-success and long exposure; and though they were
now too cold and hungry to do more, they grumbled
and cast sullen looks upon their leaders. Dick
emptied his purse among them, 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.
