ce, no Dick Redhead could be
seen! This was queer, and prowling stealthily round the building, we
found that it was securely barred, sheltered, and fastened up,
although by the light through the chinks, and a confused hum, it
seemed, of merry voices, there was a considerable number of guests
within. Still, Master Dick did not shew, and I was thoroughly at a
loss how to act. It would not certainly have been difficult to force
an entrance, but I doubted that I should be justified in doing so;
besides, if they were such desperadoes as Mary Ransome intimated, such
a measure must be attended with loss of life--a risk not to be
incurred except when all less hazardous expedients had failed, and
then only for a sufficient and well-defined purpose. I was thus
cogitating, when there suddenly burst forth, overpowering the howling
of the wind and the pattering of the rain, a rattling and familiar
chorus, sung by at least a dozen rough voices; and I had not a doubt
that the crew of the _Fair Rosamond_ were assisting at a farewell
revel previous to sailing, as that Hope, which tells so many
flattering tales, assured them they would, at dawn.

Such merriment did not certainly sound like the ferocious exultations
of intending assassins; still, I was very anxious to make ten or a
dozen amongst them; and continuing to cast about for the means of
doing so, our attention was at length fixed upon a strange object, not
unlike a thirty-six pounder red-hot round shot, not in the least
cooled by the rain, projecting inquiringly from a small aperture,
which answered for a window, halfway up the sloping roof. It proved to
be Master Dick's fiery head, but he made us out before we did him. 'Is
that Bill Simpson?' queried Dick, very anxiously. The seaman
addressed, as soon as he could shove in a word edgewise with the
chorus and the numerous wind-instruments of the Forest, answered that
'it _was_ Bill Simpson; and who the blazes was that up there?' To
which the answer was, that 'it was Dick, and that he should be
obliged, if Bill had a rope with him, he would shy up one end of it.'
Of course we had a rope: an end was shied up, made fast, and down
tumbled Master Dick Redhead without his hat, which, in his hurry, it
appeared, he had left behind in the banqueting-room. His explanation
was brief and explicit. He had accompanied the young woman to the
present building, as I ordered; and being a good deal wrought upon by
her grief and lamentations, had s