The brow of the hill seemed rapidly diminishing; the abrupt steep was at length gained, when the whole glorious garniture of the heavens, uninterrupted, from that majestic height, was suddenly revealed.  True, it was a November night, but unusually clear and vivid; the stars seemed to burn rather than shine, so piercing was their effulgence.  The vast track of the milky way appeared to span the dark and level platform, like the bow of some triumphal arch.  They seemed to stand on a huge circle, black, bare,—­its verge unapproachable, contrasting deeply with the encompassing splendour.  Proceeding onwards, a dark speck was visible, springing out abruptly from the verge of the horizon.  Its bulk rapidly increased, their path evidently tending in that direction.  A shrill whistle from the guide was now answered by a corresponding signal.  Presently they were challenged by a sentinel.

“Vale” growled out the rough voice of their conductor.

“Is it thou, Will?” said the guard.  “And what neck art thou fitting for the noose; breeding occupation for the hangsman, I trow.”

“Not half so ripe as thine own, gossip.  Here be two gentles that have commission, I guess, to look at the beacons, to see they are in trim and properly watched.  ’Tis well the guard is set.  Holloa, Nicholas Dewhurst, bring the flagon.  I am wheezing like an old wife’s bellows, nigh disinherited of my birthright, the free quaffing o’ the air.  I shall die and be canonised.”

Will, in his eagerness to attain this glorious end, left his companions with the sentinel, who speedily conducted them into a rude hut, erected as a temporary shelter to those on the look-out for signals.  In this narrow shed a lamp was burning.  Two of the abbot’s servants, stretched before a smouldering heap of turf, were scarcely roused by the vociferations of Will, as he strode over them in his way to the provender.  A long pull, and a loud smack, announced the satisfactory relish that ensued.

“Hoa, ye lozel knaves!—­who sleeps when Will’s awake?” This reflection was accompanied by a smart blow on that part of the recumbent’s person where it was most conveniently administered.

“Begone, sot!” was the abrupt reply, not over-abundantly expressive of good humour at this disturbance.  Will looked again towards the flagon; but great was his dismay on beholding it in the very act of disemboguing its precious contents into another gulf as insatiable as his own.  Ralph Newcome, incited thereto by his own discrimination, together with the resistless relish of their guide, as soon as the latter had partially concluded, took up the subject, and long, powerful, and undeviating were the requisitions that he made.

“Plague on thy civility!—­A fly will drink from anybody’s cup, and so will a Yorkshireman,” growled the uncourteous churl.

Ralph had, however, braced himself tightly to the task, and stood with an air of dogged defiance, stoutly confronting his accuser,—­though, being a man of few words, the principal weight of the argument rested upon Will, whose eloquence was with difficulty interrupted on any subject.