Such merriment did not certainly sound like the ferocious exultations of intending assassins; still, I was very anxious to make ten or a dozen amongst them; and continuing to cast about for the means of doing so, our attention was at length fixed upon a strange object, not unlike a thirty-six pounder red-hot round shot, not in the least cooled by the rain, projecting inquiringly from a small aperture, which answered for a window, halfway up the sloping roof.  It proved to be Master Dick’s fiery head, but he made us out before we did him.  ’Is that Bill Simpson?’ queried Dick, very anxiously.  The seaman addressed, as soon as he could shove in a word edgewise with the chorus and the numerous wind-instruments of the Forest, answered that ‘it was Bill Simpson; and who the blazes was that up there?’ To which the answer was, that ’it was Dick, and that he should be obliged, if Bill had a rope with him, he would shy up one end of it.’  Of course we had a rope:  an end was shied up, made fast, and down tumbled Master Dick Redhead without his hat, which, in his hurry, it appeared, he had left behind in the banqueting-room.  His explanation was brief and explicit.  He had accompanied the young woman to the present building, as I ordered; and being a good deal wrought upon by her grief and lamentations, had suggested that it might be possible to get Dr Lee and her father to a place of safety without delay, proverbially dangerous.  This seemed feasible; inasmuch as the fellow left in charge by Wyatt was found to be dead-drunk, chiefly owing, I comprehended, to some powerful ingredients infused in his liquor by Dr Lee.  All was going on swimmingly, when, just as Dick had got the doctor on his back, an alarm was given that the crew of the Fair Rosamond were close at hand, and Dick had but just time to climb with great difficulty into the crazy loft overhead, when a dozen brawny fellows entered the place, and forthwith proceeded to make merry.

A brief council was now held, and it was unanimously deemed advisable that we should all climb up to Dick’s hiding-place by means of the rope, and thence contrive to drop down upon the convivial gentlemen below, in as convenient a manner as possible, and when least expected.  We soon scaled the loft, but after-proceedings were not so easy.  The loft was a make-shift, temporary one, consisting of loose planks resting upon the cross rafters of the roof, and at a considerable height from the floor upon which the smugglers were carousing.  It would, no doubt, have been easy enough to have slid down by a rope; but this would place the first three or four men, if no more, at the mercy of the contrabandists, who, I could see through the wide chinks, were all armed, and not so drunk but that they thoroughly knew what they were about.  It behoved us to be cool, and consider well the best course to pursue.  Whilst doing so, I had leisure to contemplate the scene below.  Wyatt was not there; but around a table, lighted by two dip-candles