The Head-Woodsman and Huriel went with them without a word to Joseph, by which I plainly saw that, although the pair were opposed to the spirit of the other bagpipers, they thought it none the less their duty not to warn Joseph, nor to betray in the slightest degree the secrets of the guild. In spite of the threats which were made, I was not deterred from following them at a distance, without other precaution than carelessly sauntering down the same road, with my hands in my pockets, and whistling as if I were paying no attention to them or their affairs. I knew they would not let me get near enough to overhear their plots, but I wanted to make sure in what direction they meant to lie in wait, so as to get there later, if possible, unobserved. With that notion in my head, I signed to Leonard to keep the others at the tavern until I returned to call them. But my pursuit was soon ended. The inn stood on a street which ran down-hill to the river, and is now the mail route to Issoudun. In those days it was a breakneck little place, narrow and ill-paved, lined with old houses with pointed gables and stone mullions. The last of these houses was pulled down a year ago. From the river, which ran along the wall below the inn of the Bœuf Couronné, a steep ascent led to the market-place, which was then, as it is now, that long unevenly paved space, planted with trees, bordered on the left by old houses, on the right by the broad moat, full of water, and the great wall (then unbroken) of the castle. The church closes the market-place at the further end, and two alleys lead down from it, one to the parsonage, the other past the cemetery. The bagpipers turned down the latter path. They were about a gunshot in advance of me, that is to say, just time enough to pass along the path by the cemetery and out into the open country by the postern of the English tower, unless they chose to stop at this particular spot; which was not very convenient, for the path--which ran between the moat of the castle on one side and the bank of the cemetery on the other--was only wide enough for one person at a time. When I judged that the bagpipers must have reached the postern, I turned the corner of the castle under an arcade which in those days was used as a footpath by the gentry on their way to the parish church. I found I was all alone when I entered the path by the churchyard, a place few Christian men would set foot in alone after nightfall,--not only because it led past the cemetery, but because the north flank of the castle had a bad name. There was talk of I don't know how many persons drowned in the moat in the days of the English war; and some folks swore they had heard the cocadrillos whistle on that particular path when epidemics were about.