people, they stood the more imminent peril to be recognised and slain.

This course was a long one. It took them not far from the house by the

beach, now lying dark and silent, and brought them forth at last by the

margin of the harbour. Many of the ships, as they could see by the clear

moonshine, had weighed anchor, and, profiting by the calm sky, proceeded

for more distant parts; answerably to this, the rude alehouses along the

beach (although in defiance of the curfew law, they still shone with fire

and candle) were no longer thronged with customers, and no longer echoed

to the chorus of sea-songs.

Hastily, half-running, with their monkish raiment kilted to the knee,

they plunged through the deep snow and threaded the labyrinth of marine

lumber; and they were already more than half way round the harbour when,

as they were passing close before an alehouse, the door suddenly opened

and let out a gush of light upon their fleeting figures.

Instantly they stopped, and made believe to be engaged in earnest

conversation.

Three men, one after another, came out of the ale-house, and the last

closed the door behind him. All three were unsteady upon their feet, as

if they had passed the day in deep potations, and they now stood wavering

in the moonlight, like men who knew not what they would be after. The

tallest of the three was talking in a loud, lamentable voice.

"Seven pieces of as good Gascony as ever a tapster broached," he was

The Black Arrow