oard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton up to
Rye Port.'

'Ah! The pirate!' said Dan.

'Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this, Ticehurst Will, my
best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the Devil, horned,
tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the
men would work there no more. So I took 'em off the foundations, which
we were strengthening, and went into the Bell Tavern for a cup of ale.
Says Master John Collins: "Have it your own way, lad; but if I was you,
I'd take the sinnification o' the sign, and leave old Barnabas' Church
alone!" And they all wagged their sinful heads, and agreed. Less
afraid of the Devil than of me--as I saw later.

'When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian was limewashing the
kitchen-beams for Mother. He loved her like a son.

"'Cheer up, lad," he says. "God's where He was. Only you and I chance
to be pure pute asses. We've been tricked, Hal, and more shame to me,
a sailor, that I did not guess it before! You must leave your belfry
alone, forsooth, because the Devil is adrift there; and I cannot get my
serpentines because John Collins cannot cast them aright. Meantime
Andrew Barton hawks off the Port of Rye. And why? To take those very
serpentines which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines,
I'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid away in St
Barnabas' church-tower. Clear as the Irish coast at noonday!"

"They'd sure never dare to do it," I said; "and, for another thing,
selling cannon to the King's enemies is black treason--hanging and
fine."

"'It is sure, large profit. Men'll dare any gallows for that. I have
been a trader myself," says he. "We must be upsides with 'em for the
honour of Bristol."

'Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. We gave out
to ride o' Tuesday to London and made a show of taking farewells of our
friends--especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we
turned; rode home to the water-meadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot
at the foot of the glebe, and, come night, stole a-tiptoe uphill to
Barnabas' church again. A thick mist, and a moon striking through. 'I
had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes Sebastian
full length in the dark.

"'Pest!" he says. "Step high and feel low, Hal. I've stumbled over
guns before."

'I groped, and one by one--the tower was pitchy dark--I counted the
lither barrels of twent