It was, therefore, Dick's business to find and to protect Joanna; and
with that end he looked about him at the faces of his men. The three or
four who seemed likeliest to be obedient and to keep sober he drew aside;
and promising them a rich reward and a special recommendation to the
duke, led them across the market-place, now empty of horsemen, and into
the streets upon the further side.

Every here and there small combats of from two to a dozen still raged
upon the open street; here and there a house was being besieged, the
defenders throwing out stools and tables on the heads of the assailants.
The snow was strewn with arms and corpses; but except for these partial
combats the streets were deserted, and the houses, some standing open,
and some shuttered and barricaded, had for the most part ceased to give
out smoke.

Dick, threading the skirts of these skirmishers, led his followers
briskly in the direction of the abbey church; but when he came the length
of the main street, a cry of horror broke from his lips. Sir Daniel's
great house had been carried by assault. The gates hung in splinters
from the hinges, and a double throng kept pouring in and out through the
entrance, seeking and carrying booty. Meanwhile, in the upper storeys,
some resistance was still being offered to the pillagers; for just as
Dick came within eyeshot of the building, a casement was burst open from
within, and a poor wretch in murrey and blue, screaming and resisting,
was forced through the embrasure and tossed into the street below.

The most sickening apprehension fell upon Dick. He ran forward like one
possessed, forced his way into the house among the foremost, and mounted
without pause to the chamber on the third floor where he had last parted
from Joanna. It was a mere wreck; the furniture had been overthrown, the
cupboards broken open, and in one place a trailing corner of the arras
lay smouldering on the embers of the fire.

Dick, almost without thinking, trod out the incipient conflagration, and
then stood bewildered. Sir Daniel, Sir Oliver, Joanna, all were gone;
but whether butchered in the rout or safe escaped from Shoreby, who
should say?

He caught a passing archer by the tabard.

"Fellow," he asked, "were ye here when this house was taken?"

"Let be," said the archer. "A murrain! let be, or I strike."

"Hark ye," returned Richard, "two can play at that. Stand and be plain."

But the man, flushed with drink