“But if them cometh at me?” he asked with proper prudence, and a sense of his importance to three crowded rooms at home. “Why, I ain’t got so much as a stick to help me?” “No fear, little Billy. Guilty conscience makes a coward. You need not let them see you. And if they do, why, they’ll take you for the Giant of the Heath—the old highwayman as was hanged in chains, not a hundred yards from here. My father seed him often; and when he fell down, he took to walking through the fuzz.” “Oh Lor’, no more of that ’Liza! All my teeth be gone a-chatterin’. Give us a sack at any rate, if I meets he.” Mrs. Rowles, who was not very happy herself, handed him a spare sack from the cart; and Bill Tompkins, with many glances right and left, and heartily wishing himself at home, set forth towards the cottage, walking very slowly, and carefully shunning every stick and stone that was visible on the brown, inhospitable earth. As he passed beneath the shattered tree, he looked up with a shudder at the jagged fork, and naked stubs, and contorted limbs, expecting the dead highwayman to clank his ghostly chains. Then he stole on with more courage, for he was tolerably brave, at least as regarded fellow-beings in the flesh. When he came to the fence, a low palisade of fir, he just lifted his long legs over it, without casting about for any gate or door. As he groped along the fence towards the house, he discovered a gate which appeared to be locked, and observing that the palisade was much higher there, he very wisely lifted this gate from its hinges, and left room for himself to slip through at the back, if pursued, and obliged to retreat in a hurry. Then he made his way stealthily through some low shrubs to the corner of the cottage, and considered things. It was quite a small building, with only four windows in front, and a door with a little porch between them. Two windows were on the ground floor, and two above; the windows of the downstair rooms had outer shutters, or rather framed blinds of lattice-work, such as carpenters call “louvres.” These were closed and fastened; but from the one on the right of the porch a strong light came through the interstices of the blind, and streamed in narrow slices on the misty gloom outside. The horizontal laths were turned at such an angle, that a man of common stature could only see the floor between them; but Selsey Bill was almost a giant, and hearing loud voices in that lower room, he approached the window stealthily, and standing on tiptoe, applied one eye to the top of the framework of the blind, where he found a wide slit between the beading and first lath. Through this he could see nearly all that was inside, for the curtains hung back at the end of the pole. Also he could hear pretty well what was said, for the window-glass was thin, and the ceiling low.