But how to get home was a puzzle, blind and half suffocated as he was; and he scarce knew whether anger or relief came uppermost to his mind when he felt his arm taken, and a voice that he knew said in his ear: 

“For shame, Frederick!  It is a disgrace to London the way you and your comrades go on.  And now of all times to jest when the foe is at our doors.  Shame upon you!  The old dame has given you no more than your due.  But come with me, and I will get you home ere the town be awake; and have a care how you offend again like this, for the Magistrates will not suffer jests of such a kind at such a time.  Know you not that it is almost enough to frighten a timid serving wench into the distemper to see such signs upon the doors?  And if it break out in the midst of us, who can say where it will end?”

It was Reuben Harmer who spoke, as Frederick very well knew.  The young men had been boys together, and as Reuben was two years the elder, he assumed a tone in speaking which Frederick now keenly resented.  But it was no time to repel an overture of help, and he sullenly forced himself to accept Reuben’s good offices.  The great clotted periwig was with some difficulty got off, and then it was possible to remove the worst of the tar from face and eyes.  Frederick at last could see clearly and breathe freely, but presented so lamentable an object that he only longed to get safe home to the shelter of his father’s house.

The costly periwig of curls had perforce to be left in the gutter, hopelessly ruined, and Frederick, who had given more money for it than he could well afford, shook his fist at the house which contained the redoubtable old woman who had thus fooled and bested him.

“You Scourers will find that you can play your meddlesome games too often,” remarked Reuben sternly, his eyes upon the red cross and the half-completed words above.  “I would that all the city were of the same spirit as Lady Scrope.  She always keeps a quantity of hot pitch or tar beside her bed, with a lamp burning beneath it, in case of attacks from robbers.  You may thank your stars that it descended not boiling hot upon your head.  Had she been so minded to punish you, she would have done so fearlessly.  You may be thankful it was no worse.”

Frederick sullenly picked up his hat, which he had laid aside while painting the door, and which had thus escaped injury, pulled it as far over his face as it would go, and turned abruptly away from Reuben.

“I’ll be revenged on the old hag yet!” he muttered between his teeth.  “I’ve got a double debt to pay to this house now.  I’ll not forget it either.”

He turned abruptly away and scuttled home by the narrowest alleys he could find, whilst Reuben went about looking for the red crosses, and giving timely notice to the master of the house, that they might be erased, as quietly and quickly as possible.

Accident had led Reuben early abroad that day, but he made use of his time to undo as far as he was able the mischievous jesting of Frederick’s band of Scourers.