The soldiers behind Cochlaeus sat grimly in their saddles, but they understood. Schouts was not likely to admit any armed men who might prove awkward if once they got across the bridge and held the gate, keeping it wide open for hundreds to come who might be lurking in the forest for surprise. And as for Cochlaeus, were it not for their own honour as soldiers in the service of the Burgomaster of the city, they would have been well content to see this heretic hunter lying stark and still on this same bridge to which he had come to parley with the robber lord. "What must I do?" Cochlaeus cried angrily, irritated by this undisguised insolence. It was an intrusion on his dignity which he would not have brooked elsewhere. But here was a lawless lord's stronghold, and the master of it was known up and down the river as one who was a law unto himself, and dictated terms, especially within his own domain. "What must you do?" the warden responded in surprise at the question. "Come in alone, or go away again, just as you may please. I have my lord's orders, and I won't go from them. Nor dare I. None of these soldiers, therefore, may enter. My lord will have none of them inside of his castle. He said so when I took your message to him." The soldiers on the drawbridge moved their horses back, and stood with the others, while Cochlaeus, going forward in an ill-humour, rode in at the dark gateway. Then his temper gave place to fear, for it dawned upon him that he was placing himself in the power of a man who might retort on the Church to which he was an inveterate enemy, and hold this heretic hunter for ransom. His face paled, and his hand trembled on the rein when the drawbridge began to rise and the portcullis rushed down, the sound of the loud rattle of chains coming as a reminder of the helplessness of his position, and how completely he was in the power of the bandit lord. "Caught like a rat in a trap, I'll be bound," muttered Otto Engel, who, like his companions, was watching all that passed, and trying to gauge how far this night visit of Cochlaeus was likely to affect the prisoner in the castle. "Ay, like a rat in a trap! God grant he may never come out alive!" he said, when the gates clanged together. "But come, friends. Let us be on the move, lest that Inquisitor has come to buy William Tyndale, and will pay Schouts' price. Then there is no saving the poor man." The ranger moved away at a run, winding in and out among the bushes, leaping over little runlets and brushing through thick undergrowth; but his comrades kept pace with him, so that when he halted under a gnarled oak, whose great branches hung so heavily that he had to stoop to pass beneath them, the others were but a little way behind. "Is this the place?" Herman asked, bending low to look for Engel, who was completely hidden.