"'Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become
me, Hal?" He draws it on and capers in the shafts of
window-moonlight - won'erful devilish-like. Then he
sits on the stairs, 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.
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