“Curse it, Charlie, what was that?  It scared me so, I have dropped my box; my flint is gone, and everything.  Will the brimstone catch from your pipe, my lad?”

“My pipe is out, Phelps, ever so long.  Damn it, I am not afraid of an owl, man.  Give me the lanthorn, and stay here.  I’m not half done with you yet, my friend.”

“Well said, my boy, well said!  Go straight to Carver’s, mind you.  The other sleepy heads be snoring, as there is nothing up to-night.  No dallying now under Captain’s window.  Queen will have nought to say to you; and Carver will punch your head into a new wick for your lanthorn.”

“Will he though?  Two can play at that.”  And so after some rude jests, and laughter, and a few more oaths, I heard Charlie (or at any rate somebody) coming toward me, with a loose and not too sober footfall.  As he reeled a little in his gait, and I would not move from his way one inch, after his talk of Lorna, but only longed to grasp him (if common sense permitted it), his braided coat came against my thumb, and his leathern gaiters brushed my knee.  If he had turned or noticed it, he would have been a dead man in a moment; but his drunkenness saved him.

So I let him reel on unharmed; and thereupon it occurred to me that I could have no better guide, passing as he would exactly where I wished to be; that is to say under Lorna’s window.  Therefore I followed him without any especial caution; and soon I had the pleasure of seeing his form against the moonlit sky.  Down a steep and winding path, with a handrail at the corners (such as they have at Ilfracombe), Master Charlie tripped along—­and indeed there was much tripping, and he must have been an active fellow to recover as he did—­and after him walked I, much hoping (for his own poor sake) that he might not turn and espy me.

But Bacchus (of whom I read at school, with great wonder about his meaning—­and the same I may say of Venus) that great deity preserved Charlie, his pious worshipper, from regarding consequences.  So he led me very kindly to the top of the meadow land, where the stream from underground broke forth, seething quietly with a little hiss of bubbles.  Hence I had fair view and outline of the robbers’ township, spread with bushes here and there, but not heavily overshadowed.  The moon, approaching now the full, brought the forms in manner forth, clothing each with character, as the moon (more than the sun) does, to an eye accustomed.

I knew that the Captain’s house was first, both from what Lorna had said of it, and from my mother’s description, and now again from seeing Charlie halt there for a certain time, and whistle on his fingers, and hurry on, fearing consequence.  The tune that he whistled was strange to me, and lingered in my ears, as having something very new and striking, and fantastic in it.  And I repeated it softly to myself, while I marked the position of the houses and the beauty of the village.  For the stream, in lieu