Outwardly calm, his own heart was a whirlpool of doubts. How could he stop behind a wall and send this lad out into the open to face heaven knew what? Yet here surely his obvious duty lay. Should the enemy storm, what could a legless old sailor and a brace of boys do against them? And unless he was mistaken mischief was brewing. Where was the Gentleman all this time? Yesterday he had been everywhere all the time. To-day the Parson had caught but one fleeting glimpse of him. The old soldier preferred his enemy's activity to his quiet. Was this the lull before the storm? "I only want you to go to the mouth of the drain, and see him off," he said with calm cheerfulness. "Once away, you'd only hamper him." That was truth at all events. Once away, Knapp's chance lay in his feet. With luck the little man'd be in Lewes in an hour and a half. With luck a good man on a good horse'd be in Chatham before night, another at the Admiralty, a third at Merton,--that was, if Beau Beauchamp would leave his actress for the moment to play the man. With luck Nelson wouldn't have sailed. Lots of luck, true! still, who was it was on their side? The fog of his doubts cleared away. He turned to the boy with glowing eyes. "Kit," he whispered, hugging the lad's arm, "we'll have a Gazette to ourselves yet." THE SALLY CHAPTER XLIX MAKING READY The kitchen was dim as a sick-room, and strangely hushed. No one spoke but the Parson and he in whispers, lecturing Knapp, undressing in the corner. The gravity of the enterprise, its certain perils, the issues at stake, oppressed the room. Death was there already; as yet indeed only a ghost at each man's elbow, in a few moments maybe to become incarnate. Kit felt it and sickened. Perched upon the table, his back to the boarded window, he whetted his dirk upon his shoe, and wondered if those others, those men, Knapp most of all, felt as he did. Privately he thanked heaven that the dusk hid his face. Through chinks and splintered bullet-holes, the light stole in, making daggers across the darkness. It splashed the walls, the great stone-flags, the black mouth of the cellar, and the dresser in the corner. There sat Knapp, a grey ghost spotted here and there with light. The little rifleman was naked now, save for a pair of fighting drawers. A heap of clothes sprawled at his feet. The little rifleman was like a child. Broken-hearted a minute back, now he was as a lion in leash. There was an adventure forward, and the off chance of a fight: he brimmed at the thought of it. Without imagination, he knew no fear; with little experience of pain, he didn't much believe in it. They wouldn't catch _him_; they wouldn't hit _him_! Before him knelt the Parson with low head, swathing his feet with strips of torn towel, absorbed as a surgeon, careful as a mother. "Is that easy?--now how's that?--try your foot down! Another turn round the ankle?--Remember, it'll be rough going till you strike the grass."