By this time the inn was thoroughly aroused. Doors were opening and shutting on all sides of me, and questions were being shouted in different tones from room to room. In the midst of the hubbub I heard the landlord come out muttering, and go downstairs to open the door. Instantly I unlatched mine, slipped through it stealthily, sneaked a step or two down the passage, and then came plump in the dark against some one who was moving as softly as myself. The surprise was complete, and I should have cried out at the unexpected collision, had not the unknown laid a cold hand on my mouth, and gently pushed me back into my room. Here there was now a faint glimmer of dawn, and by this I saw that my companion was the serving-maid. "Hist!" she said, speaking under her breath, "Is it you they want?" I nodded. "I thought so," she muttered. "Then you must get out through your window. You cannot pass them. They are a dozen or more, and armed. Quick! knot this about the bars. It is no great depth to the bottom, and the ground is soft from the rain." She tore, as she spoke, the coverlet from the bed, and, twisting it into a kind of rope, helped me to secure one corner of it about the window-bar. "When you are down," she whispered, "keep along the wall to the right until you come to a haystack. Turn to the left there--you will have to ford the water--and you will soon be clear of the town. Look about you then, and you will see a horse-track, which leads to Elstree, running in a line with the London Road, but a mile from it and through woods. At Elstree any path to the left will take you to Barnet, and not two miles lost." "Heaven bless you!" I said, turning from the gloom, the dark sky, and driving scud without to peer gratefully at her. "Heaven bless you for a good woman!" "And God keep you for a bonny boy," she whispered. I kissed her, forcing into her hands--a thing the remembrance of which is very pleasant to me to this day--my last piece of gold. A moment more, and I stood unhurt, but almost up to my knees in mud, in an alley bounded on both sides, as far as I could see, by blind walls. Stopping only to indicate by a low whistle that I was safe, I turned and sped away as fast as I could run in the direction which she had pointed out. There was no one abroad, and in a shorter time than I had expected I found myself outside the town, traveling over a kind of moorland tract bounded in the distance by woods.