At this juncture, Sir Cecil and his followers appeared at the threshold.

“He has escaped!” exclaimed the knight; “we have searched every corner of the house without finding a trace of him.”

“Back!” cried Rowland.  “Don’t you hear those shouts?  Yon fellow’s clamour has brought the whole horde of jail-birds and cut-throats that infest this place about our ears.  We shall be torn in pieces if we are discovered.  Davies!” he added, calling to the attendant, who was menacing Wood with a severe retaliation, “don’t heed him; but, if you value a whole skin, come into the house, and bring that woman with you.  She may afford us some necessary information.”

Davies reluctantly complied.  And, dragging Mrs. Sheppard, who made no resistance, along with him, entered the house, the door of which was instantly shut and barricaded.

A moment afterwards, the street was illumined by a blaze of torchlight, and a tumultuous uproar, mixed with the clashing of weapons, and the braying of horns, announced the arrival of the first detachment of Minters.

Mr. Wood rushed instantly to meet them.

“Hurrah!” shouted he, waving his hat triumphantly over his head.  “Saved!”

“Ay, ay, it’s all bob, my covey!  You’re safe enough, that’s certain!” responded the Minters, baying, yelping, leaping, and howling around him like a pack of hounds when the huntsman is beating cover; “but, where are the lurchers?”

“Who?” asked Wood.

“The traps!” responded a bystander.

“The shoulder-clappers!” added a lady, who, in her anxiety to join the party, had unintentionally substituted her husband’s nether habiliments for her own petticoats.

“The ban-dogs!” thundered a tall man, whose stature and former avocations had procured him the nickname of “The long drover of the Borough market.”  “Where are they?”

“Ay, where are they?” chorussed the mob, flourishing their various weapons, and flashing their torches in the air; “we’ll starve ’em out.”

Mr. Wood trembled.  He felt he had raised a storm which it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to allay.  He knew not what to say, or what to do; and his confusion was increased by the threatening gestures and furious looks of the ruffians in his immediate vicinity.

“I don’t understand you, gentlemen,” stammered he, at length.

“What does he say?” roared the long drover.

“He says he don’t understand flash,” replied the lady in gentleman’s attire.

“Cease your confounded clutter!” said a young man, whose swarthy visage, seen in the torchlight, struck Wood as being that of a Mulatto.  “You frighten the cull out of his senses.  It’s plain he don’t understand our lingo; as, how should he?  Take pattern by me;” and as he said this he strode up to the carpenter, and, slapping him on the shoulder, propounded the following questions, accompanying each interrogation with a formidable contortion of countenance.  “Curse you!  Where are the bailiffs?  Rot you! have you lost your tongue?  Devil seize you! you could bawl loud enough a moment ago!”