They brought a farm horse, with baskets slung across its back in the Sussex manner, and into them the gold was put. I looked down into the vault as the men left it, and saw that Relf was there, and that they had tried every great stone in the walls in search of another chamber, but that there had not been one. And when he came up I was about to draw up the ladder after him, and looked down for the last time. There at the ladder's foot sat the elvish toad, and it seemed to me that it looked pitifully up at the light. How many years might it have been without sunlight or touch of dew or cool green leaves that it had loved? And I was fain to climb down and take it up in my hand and set it free on the grass outside the house, where a dock spread its broad leaves. It crawled under them in haste, and I saw it no more. Then I found that Spray the smith was watching me, and he said a strange thing. "That is a good deed, master," he said. "I think that you shall never be in prison." "May I never be so," I answered, wondering. "I am a forest-bred man," he said, "and I love all beasts," and then he turned away, and went to the men who were waiting for the earl's word. And when all was ready Relf came to me and said that he would go to his own place with his men, and that he would ask me to take word to his wife and daughter that all was safe at home. The outlaws had been too busy in the town to seek further for plunder, or had not cared to do so at once. So he went, as we started, and I was pleased with the chance of having speech with Sexberga. Now there was a moaning overhead as we went through the woods along the ridge above the valley, and hot breaths of air began to play in our faces. The clouds raced above us more swiftly, and black masses of scud drifted yet faster below them from across the hard black backs of the downs to the westward. There was something strange in the feeling of the weather that seemed to betoken more than a storm of wind and rain, and we were silent and oppressed as we marched. Now we came to the crest of the hill where the track goes down to the level of the river and marshes and to the causeway, which we crossed in the early morning. I could see now how narrow the outlet of the river was between the hills where it joined the main tidal waters, and the causeway was low, and both it and the bridge were very ancient. They call it Boreham Bridge, and it is a place that I shall not forget. When we were halfway down the steep hill suddenly the first blast of the gale smote us in the face, and that with a roar and howl and rush that drowned all other sounds. The branches flew from the trees along the hillside, and more than one great trunk gave way at last to that onset. Then all along the coastline grew and widened a white line of flying spindrift that hid the distant gray walls of Pevensea on its low island, and shone like snow against the black dun-edged cloud that came up from out of the sea.