8

Luckily there was no cockfight that evening, and the yard at the rear of The Fighting Cocks Inn was empty and dark. Before going in, Dido glanced through the kitchen window and saw Miss Sarah Gusset knitting socks by the fire; nobody else was in the room. Dido slipped softly in the back door.

"There you are, then, dearie," Miss Sarah remarked placidly, finishing off her sock and adding it to a large heap of others. "Where's t'other little lass? And did you find the one you went to look for?" She spoke as if rescuing people from jail were a perfectly normal occupation.

"Yes, ma'am, we did," Dido said quietly. "They're a-waiting outside—I was wondering where we'd best put 'em—it wouldn't do for anyone to lay eyes on 'em."

"No indeed, dearie. They'd best go in our Gentlemen's cellar, the one the Wineberry lads uses in wintertime; they'll be cozy as two mice in a nest there. Just you fetch them in, poor little scrumplings—I daresay you can all do with a bowl of my soup."

Reassured by this calm welcome, Dido went off to fetch her companions. Halfway down the High Street an alley led in from the left. Just as Dido reached its entrance, a man came hurrying out of it; unable to check herself in time, she ran straight into him.

"Croopus, I'm sorry, mister—" she began, and then, getting a sudden glimpse of his face by the glimmer of a street lantern, "Why, it's Pa!"

The man's mouth fell open in utter dismay. "Great fish swallow us, it can't be Dido?" he muttered, gave her a hunted look, and made off at top speed up the hill.

Dido stared after him for a moment, biting her knuckle. But the first need was to get Tobit and Cris under cover; she went on down the hill. When she reached the point at which she had left them they were not to be seen. She gave a soft whistle.

"All clear, it's me—Dido!"

After a pause, long enough for her to grow anxious, Tobit and Cris crept out from behind two bay trees in tubs that ornamented the closed front of a greengrocer's shop.

"That man came by," Tobit whispered nervously. "I think he was hunting for me."

"Humph," Dido muttered to herself. "Here's a fine start. How's my pa got muxed up in this?" But aloud she was encouraging: "There was a chap, but he's gone—went off up the hill. Come on now—look sharp!"

Silently as three fish in a river they ran up the High Street and around to the back of The Fighting Cocks. Miss Sarah was waiting at the back door to let them in.

"That's the dandy," she said comfortably. "Come you down into the cellar now, while there's no folk about."

An iron spike with a side of bacon hanging from it stuck out of the bricks on one side of the big kitchen fireplace. Miss Sarah gave this a sharp tug; a large section of bricks opened outward like a door, revealing a narrow flight of stone steps.

"Take this rush dip, sweetheart, and go you down," Miss Sarah told Dido. "I put the soup on the hob and I've a pair of beds a-warming—I daresay the liddle 'uns'll be middling weary." She spoke as if Tobit and Cris were about six years old and gave them a kindly smile. "Then, when you've settled 'em, dearie, you come up and tap twice to be let out—I know you'll be wanting to have a look at your Cap'n. He's no different, but seems comfortable. Oh, just take the socks as you're a-going down, lovey, will you—I try to keep those Wine berry chaps socked up regular, their poor feet do get so wet."

The brick door closed behind them.

After descending about twenty winding steps they found themselves in a dry, brick-paved, brick-vaulted cellar which was so large that Dido guessed it must extend under the house next door as well as the inn kitchen. At the far end were about forty massive casks, labeled Sack, Rhenish, Canaries, Oporto, etc.; there were also bales of tobacco, crates of corkscrews and clay pipes, and half a dozen fourteen-quart kegs of brandy. Ten hammocks were slung from the ceiling, neatly made up with patchwork quilts; from two of them the handles of copper warming pans protruded. Ten seats, made from sawn-off sections of tree trunk, were ranged in front of a small but hot fire which burned in a kind of hollow pillar, open at one side, in the middle of the room; evidently its chimney ran up into that of the kitchen fireplace in the room above. A pot of soup stood on the hob.

"Jeeminy, this is snug," Dido said with approval. "It's a sight better than jail, or Mother Lubbage's parlor, hey, Cris?" Cris gazed around wonderingly; so did Tobit. Then Dido recollected something.

"Oh, Cris, this here's your brother Tobit; Tobit, meet your sis; reckon you ain't hardly had a chance to look at each other yet."

There followed a silence while they did so and Dido added with friendly impatience, "Well—go on! Don't you want to say summat to one another?"

It seemed they did not. They stared and stared. Tobit twisted a lock of his hair around his finger; Cris sucked a finger and rubbed it against the collar of her sheepskin jacket. At last Dido said, "Well, if you don't feel like talking, best eat," and ladled soup into earthenware bowls. Tobit gulped his down ravenously; Cris almost forgot to eat, watching every movement he made. Still neither of them spoke.

"Rumple me," Dido thought. "If I'd only just met my brother for the first time I'd have a sight more to say, I reckon. What a rum pair they are!" She stacked the soup bowls, put a couple of logs on the fire, and added aloud,

"Sweet dreams, then, mates. Us'll talk about plans in the morning. Now, don't you go a-making any ruckus, or chattering all night. Those is your hammocks a-warming. I'd best go and look after my Cap'n now."

She left, feeling that the silence behind her was closing and thickening, and becoming colored, like water into which a brilliant dye is slowly being poured; she had the fancy that if she turned and tried to go down the stairs again she would find it almost impossible to push her way.

When she had tapped twice and been let out by Miss Sarah, she went up to the attic and hung anxiously over Captain Hughes. His condition was unchanged, but he certainly seemed peaceful enough, and appeared to have been tidied up a good deal.

"I took off all those nasty old cobwebs," Miss Sarah explained, "and wrapped him up from head to toe in brandy leaves; that's why he smells so medical."

"What's brandy leaves, missus?"

"Lily leaves soaked in brandy; my old mother always used to say they'd cure any trouble but a broken heart. Now don't you fret about him, dearie, we'll get him better one way or another. My stars! He's a fine-looking fellow, isn't he—handsome as a herring. Yan sent a message to say he'd be round in the banquet hall at screech o' dawn for a confabulation. He went to the Angel but could get no news, he said to tell you. So you'd best get a bit o' sleep yourself. I had to put you in the loft, as all our guest rooms are full, but you'll sleep as soft as a silkworm there, for that's where the owlers keep their packs."

"What's owlers, ma'am?" Dido asked, as Miss Sarah opened a small trap door over the attic stairs, which led to the roof.

"Wool smugglers, dearie."

And indeed Dido discovered that all the space between the joists was packed with wool to a depth of several feet, so that it was like sleeping on a marvelously thick, springy mattress the size of a whole room. She burrowed herself a nest and lay in luxury. She could hear genuine owls calling, among the chimney pots outside; the owl hoots changed imperceptibly into the chattering of starlings, and she found that splinters of light were making their way between the tiles and that Miss Sarah had stuck her head through the trap door and was calling softly,

"Morning time, love! There's a bowl o' porridge keeping hot for you in the kitchen!"

While Dido gulped down her porridge, Miss Sarah, busy frying twenty eggs for the inn guests, said,

"I'll see to the Cap'n presently, don't you fret your head about him. And I reckon the liddle 'uns down below can sleep a bit longer yet; I've not heard chirp nor cheep from them. You can take down their breakfastses when you come back from seeing my nevvy Yan."

So Dido slipped out to the banquet hall and found Yan Wineberry already there, carving a whistle from an elder twig. His brown face looked less cheerful than usual and he greeted Dido soberly.

"I've not been able to find out anything about the boy, my duck. That Tegleaze be missing too—" he was beginning, when Dido, first glancing cautiously about the big empty room, whispered,

"Hush! It's all rug, we got him!"

"Nay! You never!"

As Dido described the mysterious way in which Cris had discovered, without being told, that Tobit was down the well, he looked more and more astonished.

"Well! That beats cockfighting!" he said at length. "I'd alius beard as twins was a bit uncanny and could understand each other wi'out talking but I never heard naught to equal that! And fancy you two liddle things being able to shove that gurt stone back and wrastle him out—he'd a bin drowned for sure by now, if you hadn't. That well be a hundred foot deep, easy. Who put him down there?"

"He just said some men. He and Cris was both a bit dumbstruck when I got 'em back here last night. But I reckon as how it was old Mystery."

Yan nodded. "Cousin Will said he'd not been back to the Angel all night, nor that mate of his, the fellow who plays the hoboy. They must still be out, searching for the boy—guessed he'd climbed outa the well when they saw the top shoved back, I daresay."

"What can we do with Tobit and Cris?" Dido said. "They can't stop in your aunt Sary's cellar forever."

"I've been thinking about that, duck. I reckon it'd be best if they came up to London with us, on our run."

"Croopus," said Dido, somewhat taken aback. But then she began to see that this was a sensible suggestion. "It'd keep them out o' trouble here for sure; and no one'd be looking for them in London. But what about on the way—how can you keep them hid?"

"We're all hid together, duckie—'tis a secret way we go, see?"

"And what happens when you get there?"

"Well," Yan said, "they could stop with my auntie Grissie in Wardrobe Court, where we always puts up; she'd keep an eye on 'em. And I was thinking—we always takes a load o' corkscrews and two-three tubs of Hollands to Sir Percy Tipstaff—he's the Lord Chief Justice, you know—I could tell him as how there'd been a frame-up on young Tobit. Sir Percy knows I'm a trustable chap—I reckon he'd pay heed to me."

"Oh. Yan!" Dido hugged him warmly. "That's a prime plan. It's no use talking to old Lady Tegleaze or any of the nobs down here—the ones as hasn't a screw loose is all in it together, thick as gutter mud."

"And I'll take your letter to Lord Forecastle too."

"I wish I could come along," Dido said wistfully.

"You're kindly welcome, my duck."

"No, I'd best stay with poor old Cap'n Hughes. And if I'm seen about the town, Mr. Mystery and Sannie and the rest of 'em'll likely think that Tobit and Cris are still stowed here too, and that'll put 'em off the scent."

Yan agreed with this.

"But you take care of yourself, lovey," he cautioned her. "Don't you go getting chucked down a well."

"I'm fly!" said Dido. "No one's liable to sneak up on me 'thout my hearing 'em. Now, where should Tobit and Cris come—where do you start your run?"

"We meets at the Cuckoo Tree. The ten-shilling men pick up the stuff at Appledram Camber and fetch it so far—then five of us takes it on to London."

"Cris and Tobit better not go back to the Cuckoo Tree now old goody Lubbage knows that's where Cris used to go."

"No," Yan agreed. "I reckon they'd best get the carrier's cart to Pulborough—my uncle Ned's the driver, he'll take 'em hid inside a pair o' cider barrels or summat—get off at the White Hart pub by Stopham Bridge, and one of us Wineberry chaps'll meet 'em there. And you give them Cap'n Hughes's letter and I'll see it's delivered."

This sounded like a watertight plan, but still Dido hesitated.

"Which day d'you reckon to get to London?"

"Tuesday—if we don't have too many deliveries along the way."

"Suppose there was trouble here—spose summat went wrong and I wanted to get in touch with you afore you got to London?"

"There's three pubs along the way where I'll ask for a message: the Rose at Run Common, the Ring o' Bells at Ripley, and the Rising Sun in Wandsworth."

"The Rose, the Ring, and the Rising Sun—that's easy to remember. And you'll take mortal good care o' the Cap'n's Dispatch, won't you—I've a notion it's someway connected wi' the coronation, and that's why the Cap was so desperate anxious to get it there the day before."

"Don't you worrit—I'll keep it locked up, along o' the Lord Mayor's dallop of tea and the Lady Mayoress's pipkin of pink lemon perfume," he promised.

"And if so be as you're chatting with old Lord Forecastle," Dido said, "could you ask him to send a decent doctor down here? That Subito's too scared of Mother Lubbage to be any more use than a pastry pickaxe."

Yan said he would see to it.

That seemed to take care of everything. "I'll be getting back then," Dido said, and slipped into the alley, looking vigilantly all around her. After a cautious interval, Yan followed her.

Dido carried bowls of porridge down to Cris and Tobit. They were awake, and seemed quite content with each other's company, but still could not, or need not, talk together. They had gone back to their old occupation of staring at one another's faces.

Dido, finding their silence rather fidgeting, asked Tobit how he had come to be in the well, and he told her the whole tale.

"So it was old Mystery—and he's your cousin from furrin parts. No wonder he likes to come a-sneaking around Tegleaze after cockshut, measuring the flowerbeds and sizing up the pigsties," Dido said thoughtfully. "But what a murks)' set-out to push you down the well. Anyway I bet he's in a proper taking now—a-looking for you right, left, and rat's ramble. And you say the luck-piece fell down the well too?"

"I should think it must have. And so far as I care, it can stay there—Grandmother was only waiting for me to come of age so she could get hold of it and sell it for gambling money, my cousin wants it to sell to the Margrave of Bad Somewhere to pay for a Hanoverian plot—and it's never done me any good."

Dido was inclined to agree.

"Anyhow it can bide there for the time—nobody but us knows it's there, reckon it's safe enough." She chuckled. "I'll lay old Mystery's tearing out his hair in handfuls wondering where it's got to—he probably reckoned you made off with it."

"Well, so I did," said Tobit proudly.

Dido had observed a change in him since his adventure. It was hard to put into words, but be seemed more sensible, less given to play-acting and senseless dares.

She explained the plan in regard to Uncle Ned and the carrier's cart and the trip to London. Tobit's eyes certainly brightened at the thought of perhaps being able to see the coronation after all, but he was not so wildly excited as Dido had thought he would be; while Cris seemed very little interested in the prospect.

"The cart don't pass here till dusk, so you'll have to stay down here for the day. You'd better play cat's cradle or summat—you can't just sit staring all day."

Neither Tobit nor Cris knew how to play cat's cradle; Dido pulled a length of string out of her pocket and instructed them, looping it over Tobit's hands, crossing it, and showing Cris how to take hold of the crisscrosses, pull them under and out, and so make a new framework. In no time they had got the hang of it and were completely absorbed.

Dido dumped a log on the fire and went upstairs, feeling rather lonely.

I wish I was a-going up to London with them and the Wineberry Men, and not staying here in this spooky little town, she thought enviously. And don't I just hope the Fust Lord of the Admiralty sends back some decent doctor as can put the poor old Cap'n to rights.

It was another driply foggy day; twilight came early, long before the arrival of Uncle Ned. During the afternoon Dido helped Uncle Jarge and his son Ted pack Tobit and Cris into sacks, with handfuls of wool and all the smugglers' socks Miss Sarah had knitted to stuff out the crannies so that they looked like a load of grain or seed. Then Uncle Ted arrived in his ancient covered wagon drawn by a spavined gray mare who went along so slowly that her driver never bothered to stop her, but simply loaded and unloaded as she wandered along. The canvas cover was pulled aside, the two sacks were placed on the cart. Dido did not dare call good-bye, as two or three other people were hoisting goods on at the same time, so she gave each sack a friendly pat under pretext of settling them in place, and jumped down on to the cobbles again.

"Eh, dear," she thought. "I do hope Cap'n Hughes's Dispatch will really be all right."

She had given it to Tobit, with strict instructions to hand it over to Yan Wineberry as soon as they were alone together.

"Jub on, mare," said Uncle Ned, the mare plodded slowly on up the bill, and Dido went off to Wm. Pelmett, Chymist, to get some more treacle, since Captain Hughes had finished the first gallon. The apothecary's shop was open for an hour on Sunday evenings, for the sale of treacle and cough jujubes, because so many people made themselves hoarse singing hymns in church.

"I can see you've a sweet tooth, missie," said Mr. Pelmett, handing her the treacle with a gluey smile.

Dido gave him a scowl in return.

As she was carrying the heavy jar up the High Street she caught a glimpse, in the distance, of a lanky, familiar figure, just turning left in the direction of the church.

"I'll not lose him twice!" Dido vowed. Thrusting the jar of treacle into the arms of a startled small boy, she told him to carry it to The Fighting Cocks Inn and ask Miss Sarah for a spoonful.

"Say I said you was to have one!" And she made off at top speed in pursuit of the retreating figure. As he had not seen her and did not realize she was after him, she was able to dodge swiftly around the block and so meet him face to face in front of the church.

"Hello, Pa dear!" she greeted him affably. "Ain't you a-going to speak to me? Your own little Dido? How's Ma? And Penny-lope?"

Mr. Twite—for it was undoubtedly Dido's father— would have turned and run once again, but his daughter had him firmly by the jacket buttons.

"Now, Pa! Don't you try and scarper! Jigger it, some dads would be pleased to see their child as had been twice round the world and given up for drownded. Come and sit down on a tombstone and tell us the family news."

"Why, there's none that I know of, my chickadee. Indeed, for the last year or so I have been a happy man, free from family afflictions." But seeing there was no help for it, he allowed her to lead him to a dry tombstone behind a hollybush in the churchyard, where they could talk unobserved. "Your dear lamented mother was lost to us when Battersea Castle blew up—so was your aunt Tinty and your cousins—your sister eloped with a very ineligible young fellow who traveled in buttonhooks—and I am under the painful necessity of supplying hoboy music for a strolling puppet troupe, since the Bow Street runners conceived a wholly unjustified suspicion that I was in some way connected with the Battersea Castle explosion."

"Swelp me," said Dido. "The whole family's gone, then?" She was not particularly cast down, since her mother had never been at all fond of her. "But what about Simon? And our house in Rose Alley?"

"Sold, sold, alas—or so I understand, not having been able to inquire personally—to pay some few trifling debts. So I have not even a home to offer you. As to Simon—the young boy who used to lodge with us?—I really cannot say." Mr. Twite sighed. He pulled a hoboy from the front of his waistcoat and played a few melancholy notes on it, then, becoming enthusiastic, launched out into a spirited jig.

"Ah," said Dido, "I suspicioned it was you playing, soon as I heard the hoboy tuning up for old Mystery's Mannikin show. So you're Mystery's mate, are you? How long've you been with him, Pa?"

"Why, but a few weeks, child. I was introduced to him by a most respectable gentleman, a Colonel FitzPickwick. I understand Mr. Mystery has only recently come from one of our delightful colonies."

"And is already up to his whiskers in a plot to pinch Tegleaze Manor and put Bonnie Prince Georgie on the throne, helped by those old witches and that dicey pair o' footmen; Pa, Pa," said Dido sorrowfully, "why will you let yourself get imbrangled with such a jammy-fingered set o' coves? It's sure to lead to trouble."

"Not if we succeed, my dove; it'll be all garnets and gravy then, and Sir Desmond Twite, conductor at Sadlers Wells, and a house in Cheyne Walk."

"But you won't succeed, Pa."

"Oh? And why not, my sprite?" Mr. Twite gave her a sharp look.

Dido was tempted to tell him that the Tegleaze luck-piece, which was to have paid for the conspiracy, had been dropped in a well, but she resisted the urge. She said,

"Stealing may be respectable in your circles, Pa, but attempted murder ain't going to be so easy to laugh off."

"Humph," muttered Mr. Twite. "I wondered, when I came back and found the well stone had been pushed aside, if your little meddling hands had been at work. I had the devil of a job to get it back. So the boy did escape, did he?"

"Some trustable chaps as I know of are on their way to London this minute to lay an information about the whole affair before the Lord Chief Justice," Dido went on, impressively. "So if I was you, Pa, I'd mizzle while the mizzling's good."

"Oh, ho!" said Mr. Twite gaily, not a bit impressed. "But suppose I told you, my dear little chickadee, that some trustworthy chaps I know are perfectly informed about your trustworthy chaps and plan to get their information off them and destroy it before they reach London. Hey, dee, marathon me, what a set of simple souls those Jacobites be!" he hummed.

Dido gaped at him, utterly taken aback by this news.

"Yes, yes," Mr. Twite went on agreeably, "our friend Mystery—ah, there's a clever spark for you—got an equally clever old lady called Mrs. Lubbage to find out through some timid-hearted relative of one of those gallant Wineberry Men all about their so-called secret route to London. Unknown to the Preventive Men, maybe, but not to us; a concealed canal, I understand, all the way from the Arun River to the Thames, along which the barge of contraband plies its worthy way. With one extra crew member on board, ho ho, snug between the lavender water and the Lapsang Souchong and the spirits of licorice! So this famous Dispatch will vanish before it ever reaches London; and by Thursday, you know, it won't matter if twenty Lord Chief Justices know about the affair, it will be too late; too late, too late, too late, to retaliate," he sang joyously.

"Sir Christopher Wren
Let fall his goosefeather pen
But, he said, whatever else falls
It won't be St. Paul's.

Ah me, ah me, even the best of us are sometimes faulty in our judgments, are we not?"

"Sir Christopher Wren?" said Dido slowly. "The Wren's Nest?"

Mr. Twite suddenly stopped short in his caroling.

"You didn't know that, then, my duckling? Well, as it's too late now to prevent it, I'll strike a bargain with you. I will unfold to you the whole Wren's Nest project—ah, and what a startlingly sublime and sweepingly satisfactory scheme it is—in return for one small piece of information which doubtless you have at your clever little fingertips. What has become of that volatile pair, the youthful Tegleaze heir and his bewitching twin, like as one pin to another pin? Oh where and oh where can they be, with their noses turned up and their toes turned out, afloat on the bonnie blue sea? Or words to that effect," he added, suddenly darting another sharp look at his daughter.

But Dido was hardly heeding him.

"I couldn't say where they are, Pa, I'm sure," she truthfully replied.

"Oh, well, in that case, no cash, no crumpet."

"That's right," Dido said inattentively. "I must go, Pa, my Cap'll be wanting a dose of treacle."

"Indeed, indeed, the gallant Dispatch bearer. Poor fellow, what a misfortune that his coach should overturn, and he on his way to town with tidings of such urgent import."

"So long, Pa." As impatient to leave him as she had been to question him, Dido gave her father a hasty nod and almost ran in the direction of The Fighting Cocks. Had she looked back she would have seen him staring thoughtfully after her. But she did not look back.