The landlord had no desire to return to his couch. He was too excited by the strange events of the night, and too eager to meditate upon what manner they affected him, and the nature of the mystery he had been confronted with, to have any hope of going to sleep. Therefore he rekindled the fire, brewed himself a posset, charged his long pipe with tobacco, and sat down to reflection. He was hugely pleased with his own conduct of the last half-hour. The woman was entirely at his mercy. He would be able to wring her jewels and money from her with ridiculous ease; whilst at the eleventh hour, when all their portable possessions had become his own, he would still be able to save his reputation by giving them over to Cromwell’s men. He gazed tenderly on the bright jewel in his hand. He amused himself by computing the value of the stones within it, and figuring out in his mind what he stood to gain. These were brave times indeed! Why, he had already earned more during that last half-hour than in a year of quiet, jog-trot trading. And this was, doubtless, nothing to the wealth they had upstairs. He only hoped the soldiers would not return and discover their owners, ere he could take them for himself. But Master Gamaliel was not without a certain confidence in his own acquisitiveness; he shrewdly suspected that in any case they were doomed to lodge in his custody. Oh, if the King would only come his way as well! He then turned his attention to the strange events of the night. He was morally sure that the woman had gone forth to discover Diggory Fargus’s boat or that of some other mariner, and that her meeting with Will Jackson, the serving-man, was, as far as she was concerned, an accidental one. But what could account for her extraordinary behaviour on his appearance? Why had she adopted so wrought and passionate an attitude towards him? Most probably for the same reason that she had adopted it a little later towards himself: she feared him. Him, too, she had been beseeching. Of course she had been begging him not to betray her; but why should she be at such pains to implore a fellow like that not to do so? The landlord recalled the incident of Will Jackson going up the ladder. It was then he first knew that she and her husband were at the inn. Gamaliel recalled how his serving-man had rushed pellmell to the ground as though he had seen a ghost, whilst the woman above pierced the night with her wild cry. What could be the significance of that recognition?