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The noise was less down in the streets. The houses intervened and deadened it. At some of the doors women were standing, listening and looking out with grey faces, but one and all fled in at our approach, which seemed to be the signal, wherever we came, for barring doors and shooting bolts; once a man took to his heels before us, and again near the locksmith's we encountered a woman bare-headed and carrying something in her arms. She almost ran into the midst of us, and at the last moment only avoided us by darting up the side-alley by the forge. Whether these people knew us for what we were, and so fled from us, or took us for a party of the rioters, it was impossible to say. The narrow lanes were growing dark, night was falling on the town; only the over-hanging eaves showed clear and black against a pale sky. The way we had to go was short, but it seemed long to me; for a dozen times between the castle steps and Klink's house I thought of the poor girl at her prayers, and pictured what might be happening.

Yet we could not have been more than five minutes going from the steps to the corner beyond the forge, whence we could see Klink's side window. A red glare shone though it, and cleaving the dark mist which filled the alley fell ruddily on the town wall. It seemed to say that we were too late; and my heart sank at the sight. Nor at the sight only, for as we turned the corner, the hoarse murmur we had heard on the Terrace, and which even there had sounded ominous, swelled to an angry roar, made up of cries and cursing, with bursts of reckless cheering, and now and again a yell of pain. The street away before us, where the lane ran into it, was full of smoky light and upturned faces; but I took no heed of it, my business was with the window. I cried to the men behind me and hurried on till I stood before it, and clutching the bars-the glass was broken long ago-looked in.

The room was full of men. For a moment I could see nothing but heads and shoulders and grim faces, all crowded together, and all alike distorted by the lurid light shed by a couple of torches held close to the ceiling. Some of the men standing in such groups as the constant jostling permitted, were talking, or rather shouting to one another. Others were savagely forcing back their fellows who wished to enter; while a full third were gathered with their faces all one way round the corner where I had seen the sick man. Here the light was strongest, and in this direction I gazed most anxiously. But the crowded figures intercepted all view; neither there nor anywhere else could I detect any sign of the girl or child. The men in that corner seemed to be gazing at something low down on the floor, something I could not see. A few were silent, more were shouting and gesticulating.

I stretched my hands through the bars, and grasping a man by the shoulders, dragged him to me. 'What is it?' I cried in his ear, heedless whether he knew me, or took me for one of the ruffians who were everywhere battling to get into the house-at the window we had anticipated some by a second only. 'What is it?' I repeated fiercely, resisting all his efforts to get free.

'Nothing!' he answered, glaring at me. 'The man is dead; cannot you see?'

'I can see nothing!' I retorted. 'Dead is he?'

'Ay, dead, and a good job too!' the rascal answered, making a fresh attempt to get away. 'Dead when we came in.'

'And the girl?'

'Gone, the Papist witch, on a broomstick!' he answered. 'Through the wall or the ceiling or the keyhole, or through this window; but only on a broomstick. The bars would skin a cat!'

I let him go and looked at the bars. They were an inch thick, and a very few inches apart. It seemed impossible that a child, much more a grown woman, could pass between them. As the fellow said, there was barely room for a cat to pass.

Yet my mind clung to the bars. Klink might have hidden the girl, for without doubt he had neither foreseen nor meant anything like this. But something told me that she had gone by the window, and I turned from it with renewed hope.

It was time I did turn. The crowd had got wind of our presence and resented it. All who could not get into the house to slake their curiosity or anger, had pressed into the narrow alley where we stood, while the air rang with cries of 'No Popery! Down with the Papists!' When I turned I found my fellows hard put to it to keep their position. To retreat, close pressed as we were, seemed as difficult as to stand; but by making a resolute movement all together, we charged to the front for a moment, and then taking advantage of the interval, fell back as quickly as we could, facing round whenever it seemed that our followers were coming on too boldly for safety.

In this way, the knaves with me being stout and some of them used to the work, we retreated in good order and without hurt as far as the end of Shoe Wynd. Then I discovered to my dismay that a portion of the mob had made along the High Street and were waiting for us on the steep ascent where the wynd runs into the street.

Hitherto no harm had been done on either side, but we now found ourselves beset front and back, and to add to the confusion of the scene night had set in. The narrow wynd was as dark as pitch, save where the light of a chance torch showed crowded forms and snarling faces, while the din and tumult were enough to daunt the boldest.

That moment, I confess, was one of the worst I have known. I felt my men waver; a little more and they might break and the mob deal with us as it would. On the other hand? I knew that to plunge, exposed to attack as we were from behind, into the mass of men who blocked the way to the steps, would be madness. We should be surrounded and trodden down. There were not perhaps fifty really dangerous fellows in the town; but a mob I have noticed is a strange thing. Men who join it, intending merely to look on, are carried away by excitement, and soon find themselves cursing and fighting, burning and raiding with the foremost.

A brief pause and I gave the word to face about again. As I expected, the gang in the alley gave way before us, and the pursued became the pursuers. My men's blood was up now, their patience exhausted; and for a few moments pike and staff played a merry tune. But quickly the mob behind closed up on our heels. Stones began to be thrown, and presently one, dropped I think from a window, struck a man beside me and felled him to the ground.

That was our first loss. Drunken Steve, a great gross fellow, always in trouble, but a giant in strength, picked him up-we could not leave the man to be murdered-and plunged on with us bearing him under his arm.

'Good man!' I cried between my teeth. And I swore it should save the drunkard from many a scrape. But the next moment another was down, and him I had to pick up myself. Then I saw that we were as good as doomed. Against the stones we had no shield.

The men saw it too, and cried out, beside themselves with rage. We were as rats, set in a pit to be worried-in the dark with a hundred foes tearing at us. And the town seemed to have gone mad-mad! Above the screams and wicked laughter, and all the din about us, I heard the great church bell begin to ring, and hurling its notes, now sharp, now dull, down upon the seething streets, swell and swell the tumult until the very sky seemed one in the league against us!

Blind with fury-for what had we done? – we turned on the mob which followed us and hurled it back-back almost to the High Street. But that way was no exit for us; the crowd stood so close that they could not even fly. Round we whirled again, wild and desperate now, and charged down the alley towards the West Gate, thinking possibly to win through and out by that way. We had almost reached the locksmith's-then another man fell. He was of the Waldgrave's following, and his comrade stooped to raise him; but only to fall over him, wounded in his turn.

What happened after that I only knew in part, for from that moment all was a medley of random blows and stragglings in the dark. The crowd seeing half of us down, and the rest entangled, took heart of grace to finish us. I remember a man dashing a torch in my face, and the blow blinding me. Nevertheless I staggered forward to close with him. Then something tripped me up, something or some one struck me from behind as I fell. I went down like an ox, and for me the fight was over.

Drunken Steve and two of the Waldgrave's men fought across me, I am told, for a minute or more. Then Steve fell and an odd thing happened. The mob took fright at nothing-took fright at their own work, and coming suddenly to their senses, poured pell-mell out of the alley faster than they had come into it. The two strangers, knowing nothing of the way or the town, knocked at the nearest door and were taken in, and sheltered till morning.

CHAPTER V.
MARIE WORT

There never was one of my forefathers could read, or knew so much as a horn-book when he saw it; and therefore I, though a clerk, have a brain pan that will stand as much as any scholar's and more than many a simple man's. Otherwise the blow I got that night must have done me some great mischief, instead of merely throwing me into a swoon, in which I lay until the morning was well advanced.

When I came to myself with an aching head and a dry mouth, I was hard put to it for a time to think what had happened to me. The place in which I lay was dark, with spots of red lights like flaming eyes here and there. An odour of fire and leather and iron filled my nostrils. A hoarse soughing as of a winded horse came and went regularly, with a dull rumbling and creaking that seemed to shake the place. Dizzy as I was, I rose on my elbow with an effort, and looked round. But my eyes swam, I could see nothing which enlightened me, and with a groan I fell back. Then I found that I was lying on a straw-bed, with bandages round my head, and gradually the events of the night came back to me. My mind grew clearer. Yet it still failed to tell me where I was, or whence came the hoarse choking sound, like the sighing of some giant of the Harz, which I heard.

At last, while I lay wondering and fearing, a door opened and let into the dark place a flood of ruddy light. Framed in this light a young girl appeared, standing on the threshold. She held a tray in her hand, and paused to close the door behind her. The bright glow which shone round her, gave her a strange unearthly air, picking out gold in her black locks and warming her pale cheeks; but for all that I recognised her, and never was I more astonished. She was no other than the daughter of the Papist Wort-the girl to rescue whom we had gone down to the Red Hart.

I could not restrain an exclamation of surprise, and the girl started and stopped, peering into the corner in which I lay.

'Master Martin,' she said in a low tone, 'was that you?'

I had never heard her speak before, and I found, perhaps by reason of my low state, and a softness which pain induces in the roughest, a peculiar sweetness in her voice. I would not answer for a moment. I made her speak again.

'Master Martin,' she said, advancing timidly, 'are you yourself again?'

'I don't know,' I muttered. In very fact I was so much puzzled that this was nearly the truth. 'If you will tell me where I am, I may be able to say,' I added, turning my head with an effort.

'You are in the kitchen behind the locksmith's forge,' she answered plainly. 'He is a good man, and you are in no danger. The window is shuttered to keep the light from your eyes.'

'And the noise I hear is the bellows at work?'

'Yes,' she answered, coming near. 'It is almost noon. If you will drink this broth you will get your strength again.'

I seized the bowl and drank greedily. When I set it down, my eyes seemed clearer and my mind stronger.

'You escaped?' I said. The more I grew able to think, the more remarkable it seemed to me that the girl should be here-here in the same house in which I lay.

'Through the window,' she answered, in a faint voice.

As she spoke she turned from me, and I knew that she was thinking of her father and would fain hide her face.

'But the bars?' I said.

'I am very small,' she answered in the same low tone.

I do not know why, but perhaps because of the weakness and softness I have mentioned, I found something very pitiful in the answer. It stirred a sudden rush of anger in my heart. I pictured this, helpless girl chased through the streets by the howling pack of cravens we had encountered, and for a few seconds, bruised and battered as I was, I felt the fighting spirit again. I half rose, then turned giddy, and sank back again. It was a minute or more before I could ask another question. At last I murmured-

'You have not told me how you came here?'

'I was coming up the alley,' she answered, shuddering, 'when at the corner by this house I met men coming to meet me. I fled into the passage to escape them, and finding no outlet, and seeing a light here, I knocked. I thought that some woman might pity me and take me in.'

'And Peter did?'

'Yes,' she answered simply. 'May Our Lady reward him.'

'We were the men you met,' I said drowsily. 'I remember now. You were carrying your brother.'

'My brother?'

'Yes, the child.'

'Oh, yes,' she answered, in rather a strange fashion; but I was too dull to do more than notice it. 'The child of course.'

I could ask no more, for my head was already splitting with pain. I lay back, and I suppose went off into a swoon again, sleeping all that day and until the morning of the next was far advanced.

Then I awoke to find the place in which I lay changed from a cave of mystery to a low-roofed dingy room; the shutter of the window standing half-open, admitted a ray of sunshine and a breath of pure air. A small fire burned on the hearth, a black pot bubbled beside it. For the room itself, a litter of old iron stood in every corner; bunches of keys and rows of rusty locks-padlocks, fetter-locks, and door-locks-hung on all the walls. One or two chests, worm-eaten and rickety, but prized by their present possessor for the antiquity of their fastenings, stood here and there; with a great open press full of gun-locks, matchlocks, wheel-locks, spring-locks and the like. Half a dozen arquebuses and pistols decorated the mantel-piece, giving the room something of the air of an armoury.

In the midst of all this litter sat old Peter himself, working away, with a pair of horn glasses on his forehead, at a small lock; which seemed to be giving him a vast amount of trouble. A dozen times at least I watched him fit a number of tiny parts together, only to scatter them again in his leather apron, and begin to pare one or other of them with a little file. At length he laid the work down, as if he were tired, and looking up found my eyes fixed upon him.

He nodded cheerfully. 'Good,' he said. 'Now you look yourself, Martin. No more need of febrifuges. Another night's sleep, and you may go abroad.'

'What day is it?' I said, striving to collect my thoughts.

'Friday,' he answered, looking at me with his shrewd, pleasant eyes. He was an old man, over sixty, a widower with two young children, and clever at his trade. I never knew a better man. 'Wednesday night you came here,' he continued, showing in his countenance the pleasure it gave him to see me recovering.

'I must go to the castle,' I exclaimed, rising abruptly and sitting up. 'Do you hear? I must go.'

'I do not see the necessity,' he answered, looking at me coolly, and without budging an inch.

'My lady will need me.'

'Not at all,' he answered, in the same quiet tone. 'You may make your mind easy about that. The Countess is safe and well. She is in the castle, and the gates are shut.'

'But she has not-' Then I stopped. I was going to say too much.

'She has not half a dozen men with her, you would say,' he replied. 'Well, no. But one is a man, it seems. The young lord has turned a couple of cannon on the town, and all our valiant scoundrels are shaking in their shoes.'

'A couple of cannon! But there are no cannon in the castle!'

'You are mistaken,' Peter answered drily. He had a very dry way with him at times. 'I have seen the muzzles of them, myself, and you can see them, if you please, from the attic window. One is trained on the market-place, and one to fire down the High Street. To-morrow morning our Burgomaster and the Minister are to go up and make their peace. And I can tell you some of our brisk boys feel the rope already round their necks.'

'Is this true?' I said, hardly able to believe the tale.

'As true as you please,' he answered. 'If you will take my advice you will lie quietly here until to-morrow morning, and then go up to the castle. No one will molest you. The townsfolk will be only too glad to find you alive, and that they have so much the less to pay for. I should not wonder if you saved half a dozen necks,' Peter added regretfully. 'For I hear the Countess is finely mad about you.'

At this mention of my lady's regard my eyes filled so that I had much ado to hide my feelings. Affecting to find the light too strong I turned my back on Peter, and then for the first time became aware that I had a companion in misfortune. On a heap of straw behind me lay another man, so bandaged about the head that I could see nothing of his features.

'Hallo!' I exclaimed, raising myself that I might have a better view of him. 'Who is this?'

'Your man Steve,' Peter said briefly. 'But for him and another, Master Martin, I do not think that you would be here.'

'You do well to remind me,' I answered, feeling shame that I had not yet thanked him, or asked how I came to be in safety. 'How was it?'

'Well,' he said, 'it began with the girl. The doings on Wednesday night were not much to my mind, as you may suppose, and I shut up early and kept myself close. About seven, when the racket had not yet risen to its height, there came a knocking at my door. For a while I took no notice of it, but presently, as it continued, I went to listen, and heard such a sobbing on the step as the heart of man could not resist. So I opened and found the Papist girl there with a child. I do not know,' Peter continued, pushing forward his greasy old cap and rubbing his head, 'that I should have opened it if I had been sure who it was. But as the door was open, the girl had to come in.'

'I do not think you will repent it!' I said.

'I don't know that I shall,' he answered thoughtfully. 'However, she had not been long inside and the bolts shot on us, when there began a most tremendous skirmish in the lane, which lasted off and on for half an hour. Then followed a sudden silence. I had given the girl some food, and told her she might sleep with the children upstairs, and we were sitting before the fire while she cried a bit-she was all over of a shake, you understand-when on a sudden she stood up, and listened.

'"What is it?" I said.

'She did not answer for a while, but still stood listening, looking now at me and now towards the forge in a queer eager kind of way. I told her to sit down, but she did not seem to hear, and presently she cried, "There is some one there!"

'"Well," said I, "they will stop there then. I don't open that door again to-night."

'She looked at me pitifully, but sat down for all the world as if I had struck her. Not for long, however. In a minute she was up again, and began to go to and fro between the kitchen and the forge door like nothing else but a cat looking for her kittens. "Sit down, wench," I said. But this time she took no heed, and at last the sight of her going up and down like a dumb creature in pain was too much for me, and I got up and undid the door. She was out in a minute, seeming not a bit afraid for herself, and sure enough, there were you and Steve lying one on the top of the other on the step, and so still that I thought you gone. Heaven only knows how she heard you.'

'Peter,' I said abruptly, 'have you any water handy?'

'To be sure,' he replied, starting up. 'Are you thirsty?'

I nodded, and he went to get it, blaming himself for his thoughtlessness. He need not have reproached himself, however. I was not thirsty; but I could not bear that he should sit and look at me at that moment. The story he had told had touched me-and I was still weak; and I could not answer for it, I should not burst into tears like a woman. The thought of this girl's persistence, who in everything else was so weak, of her boldness who in her own defence was a hare, of her strange instinct on our behalf who seemed made only to be herself protected-the thought of these things touched me to the heart and filled me with an odd mixture of pity and gratitude! I had gone to save her, and she had saved me! I had gone to shield her from harm, and heaven had led me to her door, not in strength but in weakness. She had fled from me who came to help her; that when I needed help, she might be at hand to give it!

'Where is she?' I muttered, when he came back and I had drunk.

'Who? Marie?' he asked.

'Yes, if that is her name,' I said, drinking again.

'She is lying down upstairs,' he answered. 'She is worn out, poor child. Not that in one sense, Master Martin,' he continued, dropping his voice and nodding with a mysterious air, 'she is poor. Though you might think it.'

'How do you mean?' I said, raising my head and meeting his eyes. He nodded.

'It is between ourselves,' he said; 'but I am afraid there is a good deal in what our rascals here say. I am afraid, to be plain, Master Martin, that the father was like all his kind: plundered many an honest citizen, and roasted many a poor farmer before his own fire. It is the way of soldiers in that army; and God help the country they march in, be it friend's or foe's!'

'Well?' I said impatiently; 'but what of that now?' The mention of these things fretted me. I wanted to hear nothing about the father. 'The man is dead,' I said.

'Ay, he is,' Peter answered slowly and impressively. 'But the daughter? She has got a necklace round her neck now, worth-worth I dare say two hundred men at arms.'

'What, ducats?'

'Ay, ducats! Gold ducats. It is worth all that.'

'How do you know?' I said, staring at him. 'I have never seen such a thing on her. And I have seen the girl two or three times.'

'Well, I will tell you,' he answered, glancing first at the window and then at Steve to be sure that we were not overheard. 'I'll tell you. When we had carried you into the house the other night she took off her kerchief, to tear a piece from it to bind up your head. That uncovered the necklace. She was quick to cover it up, when she remembered herself, but not quick enough.'

'Is it of gold?' I asked.

He nodded. 'Fifteen or sixteen links I should say, and each as big as a small walnut. Carved and shaped like a walnut too.'

'It may be silver-gilt.'

He laughed. 'I am a smith, though only a locksmith,' he said. 'Trust me for knowing gold. I doubt it came from Magdeburg; I doubt it did. Magdeburg, or Halle, which my Lord Tilly ravaged about that time. And if so there is blood upon it. It will bring the girl no luck, depend upon it.'

'If we talk about it, I'll be sworn it will not!' I answered savagely. 'There are plenty here who would twist her neck for so much as a link of it.'

'You are right, Master Martin,' he answered meekly. 'Perhaps I should not have mentioned it; but I know that you are safe. And after all the girl has done nothing.'

That was true, but it did not content me. I wished he had not seen what he had, or that he had not told me the tale. A minute before I had been able to think of the girl with pure satisfaction; to picture with a pleasant warmth about my heart her gentleness, her courage, her dark mild beauty that belonged as much to childhood as womanhood, the thought for others that made her flight a perpetual saving. But this spoiled all. The mere possession of this necklace, much more the use of it, seemed to sully her in my eyes, to taint her freshness, to steal the perfume from her youth.

For I am peasant born, of those on whom the free-companions have battened from the beginning; and spoil won in such a way seemed to me to be accursed. Whether I would or no, horrid tales of the storming of Magdeburg came into my mind: tales of streets awash with blood, of churches blocked with slain, of women lying dead with living babes in their arms. And I shuddered. I felt the necklace a blot on all. I shrank from one, who, with the face of a saint, wore under her kerchief gold dyed in such a fashion!

That was while I lay alone, tossing from side to side, and troubling myself unreasonably about the matter; since the girl was nothing to me, and a Papist. But when she came presently to me with a bowl of broth in her hands and a timid smile on her lips-a smile which gave the lie to the sadness of her eyes and the red rims that surrounded them-I forgot all, necklace and creed. I took the bowl silently, as she gave it. I gave it back with only one 'Thank you,' which sounded hoarse and rustic in my ears; but I suppose my eyes were more eloquent, for she blushed and trembled. And in the evening she did not come. Instead one of the children brought my supper, and sitting down on the straw beside me, twittered of Marie and 'Go' and other things.

'Who is Go?' I said.

'Go is Marie's brother,' the child answered, open-eyed at my ignorance. 'You not know Go?'

'It is a strange name,' I said, striving to excuse myself.

'He is a strange man,' the little one retorted, pointing to Steve. 'He does not speak. Now you speak. Marie says-'

'What does Marie say?' I asked.

'Marie says you saved his life.'

'Well, you can tell her it was the other way,' I exclaimed roughly.

Twice that night when I awoke I heard a light footstep, and turned to see the girl, moving to and fro among the rusty locks and ancient chests in attendance on Steve. He mended but slowly. She did not come near me at these times, and after a glance I pretended to fall asleep that I might listen unnoticed to her movements, and she be more free to do her will. But whenever I heard her and opened my eyes to see her slender figure moving in that dingy place, I felt the warmth about my heart again. I forgot the gold necklace; I thought no more of the rosary, only of the girl. For what is there which so well becomes a woman as tending the sick; an office which in a lover's eyes should set off his mistress beyond velvet and Flanders lace.