Will Gordon went back up the stairs. Presently he was down again with the weapons, with enough and to spare of ammunition, a loaf of wheaten bread, a flask of wine, and the broad leathern belt with the gold-pieces, which slipped down like a weighty serpent as he laid it in Wat's hands. The money had been kept sacred for just such an emergency. The cousins bade each other a kindly adieu in the fashion of other and happier times, and then Will Gordon returned sadly to his wife. Wat stepped back to the shelter where he had left Marie, but she was not to be seen. He looked every way and called softly; but the girl had vanished. "It is perhaps as well!" he said, the Scot's prudence within him warring with his gratitude towards the girl who had twice risked her life for him without thought of reward. He took his way alone across the broad squares and over the canals to Jack Scarlett's lodgings. There was a light in the window as he approached. He knocked gently, and a gruff voice ordered him to come in, or else (as an equally satisfactory alternative) to proceed incontinently to quite other regions. Wat entered, and there, seated upon the side of his bed, he found Scarlett with one boot off and the other still upon his foot. His eyes were set in his head, and a kindly, idiotic smile was frozen on his face. At the sight of Wat, pale as death, with his clothes frayed and disarranged with his long sojourn in prison, Scarlett started up. With a vigorous wave of his hand he motioned his visitor away. "Avaunt! as the clerks say. Get away, briskly, or I will say the Lord's Prayer at thee (that's if I can remember it). Come not near a living man. Wat Gordon in the flesh with a long sword was bad enough; but Wat Gordon dead, with an unshaven chin and clothed out of a rag-shop, is a thousand times worse. Alas, that it should come so soon to this! I am shamed to be such a shaveling in my cups! Yet of a truth I drank only seven bottles and a part of an eighth. This comes of being a poor orphan, and being compelled to drink the most evil liquor of this unfriendly country!" "Scarlett," said Wat, seriously, "listen to me. I am going on a long quest. Will you come with me? I need a companion now as a man never needed comrade before! Mine enemy has stolen my love, and I go to find her!" "Away--get away!" cried Scarlett. "I want not to die yet awhile. I desire time to repent--that is, when I grow old enough to repent. There is Sergeant Hilliard over there at the end of the passage," he went on, eagerly, as if a famous idea had struck him, "his hair is gray, if you like, and he has a most confounded gout. He will gladly accompany you. Be advised, kind ghost. Have the goodness to cross the stairway to Hilliard. Remember, I was ever thy friend in life, Wat Gordon!"