"Ne'er inquire too carefully so that they be good ones," quoth Scarlett the campaigner. "I took the loan of them from the stables of the Inn of the Coronation. I know of one who will see them safe home," said Marie. "Is their hire paid for?" asked Wat the Scot. "Faith, aye," said Jack Scarlett; "I myself have paid the fat old villain Sheffell for them over and over again. Let us go on. It skills not to be too nice in distinctions when one argues under the shadow of the gallows. The rascal shall have his horses back safe enough when we are done with them." They went by unfrequented ways, following their slim, alert guide down by-ways that echoed under their feet, by quiet, evil-smelling streets vocal with night-raking cats, past innumerable prowling dogs with their backs chronically arched at the shoulders, half in general defiance of their kind, and half with bending over baskets of domestic rubbish. They came after a while to the shade of the little wood beyond the great canal; and there, sure enough, tied to the green-sparred wooden box, which in Dutch fashion had been put round some of the trees of rarer sort, were three horses, all busily employed trying to crop the herbage to the limit of their several tethers. "And the third?" queried Scarlett, looking at them. "Whose leg goes across the saddle of the third?" "I come with you," said Marie, hastily and anxiously; "believe me, I can guide you to a little haven where are ships wherein you may reach your own land--or, at least, if it please you, escape safely out of this country of enemies." "And who may you be, my pretty little young man with the babe's face, and where gat you the spirit that makes you speak so brisk and bold?" Marie looked at Wat through the dim light as though to beseech him to answer for her. Said Wat, overcoming a natural touch of shyness and reluctance, "This is the friend of mine who got me out of prison, and who was kind to me beyond all thanks when I abode therein. She is only 'the Little Marie,' whom you remember at the Hostel of the Coronation. After that night she went back there no more." "She!" cried Scarlett; "_she_, did he say? 'Only the Little Marie,' quotha! Well, that is a good deal for a Scot of the Covenant, one that for lack of other helpers will have to company with the Hill-wanderers, so far as I can see, when he goes back to his own land." "Aye," said Wat, dryly, "but we are not back yet." "I kenned," returned Scarlett, every whit as dryly, "that we were on one love-quest. But had I kenned that we were on two of them at once, the devil a foot would I have stirred out of my good lodgings, or away from the bield of that excellent and truly buxom householder, the Frau Axel." So far they had spoken in Scots, but the Little Marie, listening with tremulous eagerness to the tone of their conversation, laid her hand wistfully on Scarlett's arm.