While John Gore rode through the woods when the evening mists began to dim the splendor of the trees so that they were like shrines of gold seen through the drift of incense, Simon Pinniger sat in the kitchen at Thorn drinking to get his temper up and his blood hot and muddled against the night. He would spread out his great hands before the fire and look at them with a kind of sottish pride, keeping an uneasy eye upon the woman Nance, who in turn kept a keen eye on him.
“What is it to be, Sim?” she asked, with the air of one who must keep a surly dog in good temper with himself.
The man drew off a great red neckerchief that he was wearing, made a loop, and, putting one fist through it, drew the ends tight with his teeth and the other hand.
“That’s my trick,” he said, dropping the end from his mouth; “them Spaniards have a liking for it, and Spaniards are particular in the playing of such tricks.”
There was to be a moon that night, and the thickets were black at sunset against the cold yellow of a winter sky. Frost hung in the air, with a gusty, arid northeast wind that came sweeping south with a sense of coming snow, while great purple cloudbanks loomed slowly into the north. The grass was already stiffening, and the leaves made a dry thin rattle as John Gore drew up in the beech-thicket over against Thorn. He had brought an extra cloak with him, and a loin-cloth for his horse, and after some searching he found a little hollow where dead bracken stood, and where the beast would be sheltered from the wind. He buckled the bridle about a young ash whose black buds and branches stood out against the sky.
John Gore took his sword, pistols, and tools into Thorn with him that night, tying them up in the end of a red scarf, and swinging them after him as he straddled the gate. He hid the sword and one pistol in the ivy at the foot of the tower, and set out on a reconnoissance, holding close under the deep shadow of the walls, and keeping a long knife ready in case the dog should be loose and on the prowl. There was a faint silvery glow low down in the eastern sky, but no moon as yet, and John Gore, meeting the keen north wind, thought of Barbara in that cold room, and felt his heart warm to her, and to Mrs. Winnie as he remembered the blazing kitchen at Furze Farm.