John Gore heard the bustle of the landlady’s petticoat, and retreated up the stairs to the private parlor overhead. He walked to and fro for a while, with a frown of thought on his face, before crossing to the bedchamber to pack his belongings into the little leather valise he carried strapped to the saddle. He was fastening the straps when he heard footsteps on the stairs, and caught Mistress Green Stays coming up with a bosomful of clean linen. “Betty, my girl, run down and ask your mother to let me know her charges. I am following my friend on to Chichester in an hour.” The girl looked surprised, but, putting down her linen, went below about the bill. Her mother came up betimes with some show of concern, hoping that the gentleman had not found anything lacking. John Gore relieved her from any such doubt, paid her her money, with a gold piece thrown in, and asking her to fill his flask for him and make him a small parcel of food, he gathered up cloak, sword, pistols, and valise, marched down the stairs and out by a side door into the stable-yard. His horse had finished a good meal of bran and oats when a stable-boy pitched the saddle on again, while John Gore stood and looked on. Through the doorway of the stable he had a view of the street, and kept his eyes upon it, knowing that the smithy lay down in the borough of Sanglake. Mistress Green Stays came in with John Gore’s flask and some food tied up in a clean napkin, and John Gore gave her a kiss and a piece of silver while the boy was fastening the girths under the nag’s belly. The girl had gone, blushing a little, with the coin in her palm, when Captain Grylls’s black horse came up the street with a hostler at his head. John Gore appeared to remember of a sudden that he had left a bunch of seals in his bedroom, and he walked off, telling the boy to keep the horse warm in the stable, for the beast’s coat was still wet with the sweat of the morning. From the window of the upper parlor John Gore saw Captain Grylls come out into the road and look at the new shoe on his nag’s foot. He had a roll of brown tobacco leaves between his lips, and looked flushed and comforted by his dinner. John Gore saw that the captain was ready to mount before he went down again into the stable-yard. A clatter of hoofs warned him that his man was on the road, so he mounted and rode quietly out of the yard with his eyes on the watch for Captain Grylls.