Whether by Cope’s favour or not, Matthew Moon was suffered to go about unmolested; but he was watched at every turn, knew it, and even when alone no more betrayed himself than he had done when Cope had wheeled so swiftly round from the sealing of the crane door. Crossing the market-place, he noticed two or three strangers in plain clothes among the soldiers, and these seemed to hang constantly about the door of the “Cross Pipes.” At first he felt a wrathful mounting of his blood. Had Cope not finished with that house yet? Then suddenly his brows contracted; he thought he saw the reason; and he began to plot again. A butcher’s lad, an impudent, whistling young rascal, called at his house for orders for meat. Matthew gave the lad a letter, with precise instructions, for Dooina Benn, to be given to her at her own home. Dooina was now taking turns with Cicely to watch Sally, who had been given another draught. “You’re sure you understand, Teddy?” said the merchant anxiously, and the lad gave him an intelligent look and a grimace. “Ye don’t want it ta’en straight to the ‘Pipes,’ ye mean?” he said, and the merchant nodded and gave him sixpence. The lad delivered the message to Dooina (with whom Cole the clogger had taken up his quarters), and so it came to Cicely Monjoy, who read it and thrust it immediately into the kitchen fire. It informed her that for the present Arthur was safe, and that if all should seem quiet about two o’clock in the morning she was to take a basket of provisions to Webster’s stackyard, a mile out of Horwick, near the dean in which she had returned Arthur his ring. She was to do this on successive nights, and should she not see Arthur, she was to do it none the less. The crafty merchant contrived, also, to communicate with Webster, who owned the stackyard. Except for himself, Matthew Moon, cloth merchant, there was none to set a spoke in Cope’s wheel, and he took to ways a little more devious than his ordinary with readiness. “He’ll watch his wife, will he?” he muttered. “Well, wives won’t tell what they don’t know.” In the meantime Arthur Monjoy sat on the empty box in the garret up the Fullergate. Except for a crust that he had slipped into his pocket in preparing for his busy night, he had not eaten since the previous midday, and it was now evening--Friday evening. Matthew, however, would see to that, if Matthew still had his liberty; and, in anticipation, Monjoy had occupied himself during the day by shredding to pieces an old end of crane-rope and knotting the fibres together. Towards eight o’clock (as he knew from the chiming of the Piece Hall clock) he opened his crane doors an inch or two, and paid out his length of string till it touched earth; then he fastened the other end of it to the empty box and tightened his belt.