“Good luck!” echoes Sir Percy, under his breath, as he strides down the length of the rotten pier, his gaze now fixed on the black and swiftly ebbing tide, now raised to meet a sky no whit the brighter than the sobbing waters beneath it. No stars, nor moon; only a sickly thin gleam shot out of the lamp that swings far up Little Boy Yard over the door of the tavern. Dark, sad, despairing, the whole of it, with but the lap, lap of the Thames’s life beating against the old piles, as it swirls and swings on its hurrying way to fall once again into the sea. Percy de Bohun is no cowardly sort, even to think of ending his woes in a watery grave; he is merely a brave, sore-stricken young man, whose whole faith and heart have been pinned to one who has forsaken him forever (as he thinks); and, with the instincts of his kind, he is glad to be here, away from mankind or woman either, to get his grip once more on himself, to fight out for the last time, he swears, the wild, jealous covetousness which is tugging at his heartstrings, to quell the tumult in his soul, and then to get back home to his uncle’s house like a Christian; and, God helping him! to lead a decent life and a brave life, for King and country in the great new world across the seas. All this and more traverses his brain, the “more” being mostly tantalizing visions of Lady Peggy in all the gamut of her humors, slipping in and out of every resolution he makes, every fond farewell he swears he’ll take of her most dear, most faithless memory forever! His eyes are bent upon the ground. He neither sees nor hears, nor would heed if he did, aught about him. In truth there is not anything to hear, save the river on its journey. But there is something to see. Sir Robin’s two desperadoes, a-lurking yonder up in the close shadow of the timbered tenements, which line the precinct on the side where the oil-lamps shine. Across the narrow street, where the huddling houses, with their broken chimneys, rag-stuffed windows, flapping strings of bird-cages, old clothes, and forlorn archways, are deeper in gloom even than their opposites, there’s ambushed another. One who, arrived in town the night before, and set down at Mr. Brummell’s in Peter’s Court, made a change of garments and off again, since the master of the house was out, to a quiet inn in High Holborn; spent there a few hours; then out of doors and wandered as far as the Temple Church; back again to the inn, and, with rising excitement, and an almost frantic and curious impatience, awaited the fall of night; then a hackney coach to Westminster, alighting at Horseferry Road; dismissing the vehicle; thence afoot to the pier; hiring a boat; a pull alone down the river to Dove Pier; tying the skiff to a rusty hook; a quick run bent to ground; up, and across the yard to her present place of concealment.