We gave out to ride o' Tuesday to London and
made a show of taking farewells of our friends - especially
of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we
turned; rode home to the water-meadows; hid our horses
in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and, come night,
stole a-tiptoe uphill to Barnabas' church again. A thick
mist, and a moon striking 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 ware-
house, 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.
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