Now, in the old times, I knew every inch of the land round about my uncle’s estate, and the farmsteads were as familiar to me as the pump in our own stable-yard. I remembered, as I stood with my eye to the crack in the shutter, that in the rear of Reuben Trippett’s kitchen there was a lattice at which the maids used to hand in the milk-pails from the byre. ’Twas a matter of thin strips of lath, and in the daytime was left swinging as the wind liked, but in the night a shutter came down over it, and was secured by a bolt. If the shutter, by any good or ill luck,--I cared not which it might properly be called,--had been left up when the house was deserted, I should be able from the byre to hear every word spoken in the kitchen as well as if I had been inside. So, remembering this, I stole round the corner of the house to the byre, all agog to hear what mischief Master Dacre, that scamp Bargery, and t’other three were compassing. That it was mischief I never doubted for a moment; there was not an honest pair of eyes amongst the four that I had seen, and I remembered Anthony’s for more years than I could then call to mind. The byre, like the stable, was cold and empty. I warrant me there had been no cows in it for a twelve-month. I had grown somewhat heated by my adventures in the bog, and the chill stuck to my bones and made me shiver. One glance at the far end of the mistal, however, helped me to forget cold and everything. They had forgotten to put down the shutter when they left the old house, and the lattice window made dim bars of shadow against the swimming light of the candle. There was naught left to me but to steal gently along the slimy walls of the byre (ugh! I can feel the damp of them now, and snuff their fetid odour, which then came thick and heavy to my nostrils) until I came to the lattice. And since I dared not venture to stick my head before it, lest the fellows within should catch sight of me, I got as near to the window frame as I dared, and listened with more attention than I had ever given, I think, to aught before. Anthony Dacre was speaking when I put my ear as close to the latch as I dared, but he had evidently come to the tail of his sentence, and I could make little sense of it. “Fair or foul,” says he, to wind up; “fair or foul.” “And more foul than fair, I warrant me,” thinks I. “A deal more o’ the foul than the fair, Master Anthony, if I know aught o’ thee.” And I composed myself to hear somewhat more. I heard a shuffling of feet on the kitchen floor, as if each man nudged his neighbour’s knee. “Come,” says Anthony; “is there ne’er a tongue amongst the lot o’ you?” The man Bargery spoke--I knew his voice, too. “Why,” says he, “’tis like this: what use is speaking till we know Master Dacre’s plans? Or are we as soldiers that march under sealed orders?” “Ah!” says another; “well put.”