The darkness swallowed him up ere he reached the open door of the courtyard, but I lingered a moment in the porch and listened to the sound of his horse’s feet on the road outside. I heard him ride to the corner. The horse broke into a quick trot: I knew by the sound that the man was making along the road to Pomfret. I went back into the house. A stable-lad nodded his head by the kitchen fire, and Gregory was coming from the cellar with a mug of ale. “’Tis for the man without, Master Richard,” says he. “On such a night----” “The man is gone,” says I. “He would stay for naught--’tis but a book he has brought me--drink the ale yourself, Gregory.” I hastened to my own chamber and broke the seal of the packet, which bore my name and address in Matthew Richardson’s hand. There was little writing within for anybody to read, but the lines signified much to my eyes. “That which you wot of,” it ran, “has come to pass, and it now behoves us to do what we are resolved upon. Within twenty-four hours of your receipt of this, then, you will join me at the third milestone on the road between Doncaster and Sheffield.--M. R.” As I finished reading this brief epistle for the second time, Gregory came tapping at my door again. “Your uncle is asking for you, Master Richard,” says he. “Sir Jarvis has finished his supper, and they are talking of the war--Lord help us all!--though, indeed, it seems as if Sir Nicholas forgot his pains in discussing of fights and such-like. But I misdoubt that to-morrow----” He lighted me down the stair, shaking his grey hair and muttering to himself. In the great kitchen he left me, and I went over to the hearth and placed Matthew Richardson’s letter amidst the glowing cinders. I stood there until I saw it crumble into white ashes. III. When I went into the hall, my uncle and Sir Jarvis sat in their chairs by the hearth, the great screen protecting them from the draught, and the fire piled up with logs, and glowing so bright that you had fancied it was a winter’s night rather than an August evening. On the table between them stood a second flask of Sir Nicholas’s Tokay, and I observed that in his excitement my good uncle had filled his own glass and sipped largely from it, which was a bad thing for his gout, and to be paid for afterwards. Sir Jarvis Cutler was smoking tobacco from a pipe--a newfangled habit which I knew my uncle could not abide, but which he evidently forgave in a guest so much after his own heart. “Sit thee down, Dick,” says Sir Nicholas. “Od’s body, I wondered what had got thee. These boys, Sir Jarvis, will for ever be at their books--pour thyself out a glass of wine, Richard: ’tis vastly different stuff, I warrant me, to what you find in your common rooms at Oxford. Sir Jarvis, spare not--there is more where that came from--if it were not for the gout I would help you to crack more bottles than one. Nay, Dick, forget thy books and rhymes, man!--this is no time for a long face.”