They learned, for instance, then and afterwards, that the galley which had been thought to be a merchantman put into the river Crouch by design, feigning an injury to her rudder, and that on Christmas eve she had moved up with the tide, and anchored in the Blackwater about three miles from its mouth.  Thence a great boat, which she towed behind her, and which was afterwards found abandoned, had rowed in the dusk, keeping along the further shore to avoid observation, to the mouth of Steeple Creek, which she descended at dark, making fast to the Staithe, unseen of any.  Her crew of thirty men or more, guided by the false palmer Nicholas, next hid themselves in the grove of trees about fifty yards from the house, where traces of them were found afterwards, waiting for the signal, and, if that were necessary, ready to attack and burn the Hall while all men feasted there.  But it was not necessary, since the cunning scheme of the drugged wine, which only an Eastern could have devised, succeeded.  So it happened that the one man they had to meet in arms was an old knight, of which doubtless they were glad, as their numbers being few, they wished to avoid a desperate battle, wherein many must fall, and, if help came, they might be all destroyed.

When it was over they led Rosamund to the boat, felt their way down the creek, towing behind them the little skiff which they had taken from the water-house—­laden with their dead and wounded.  This, indeed, proved the most perilous part of their adventures, since it was very dark, and came on to snow; also twice they grounded upon mud banks.  Still guided by Nicholas, who had studied the river, they reached the galley before dawn, and with the first light weighed anchor, and very cautiously rowed out to sea.  The rest is known.

Two days later, since there was no time to spare, Sir Andrew was buried with great pomp at Stangate Abbey, in the same tomb where lay the heart of his brother, the father of the brethren, who had fallen in the Eastern wars.  After he had been laid to rest amidst much lamentation and in the presence of a great concourse of people, for the fame of these strange happenings had travelled far and wide, his will was opened.  Then it was found that with the exception of certain sums of money left to his nephews, a legacy to Stangate Abbey, and another to be devoted to masses for the repose of his soul, with some gifts to his servants and the poor, all his estate was devised to his daughter Rosamund.  The brethren, or the survivor of them, however, held it in trust on her behalf, with the charge that they should keep watch and ward over her, and manage her lands till she took a husband.