And I won't rest"--and he swore an
oath quite unfit for boyish ears--"till I've hunted you down!"
"No one will come within a mile of the Deil's Den," said the unruffled
Tinker. "It's haunted by a headless woman and a redheaded man with his
throat cut. But perhaps you've seen them. Besides, I've told them
that there's a man in brown who shouts and waves, and then disappears
when anyone comes to the tower. Why, if they see you, they'll run for
their lives." He spoke with a convicting quietness.
Mr. Lambert doubled up over the parapet in a gasping anguish.
"You're not going to leave here till you give me a letter for your
clerk, telling him to hand over Sir Tancred Beauleigh's promissory
note," said Tinker.
Mr. Lambert rejected the suggestion in extravagant language.
"You bandy words with me!" cried the Baron Hildebrand Anne of
Ardrochan. "Lambert of London, beware! Think, rash rogue, on your
grinders! Hans and Jorgan, prepare the red-hot pincers! You have a
quarter of an hour to reflect, Lambert."
He flung himself off his pony, tethered it, strode down to the spring
which trickled out of the hillside some forty yards away, and came back
bearing a big jug full of water.
Mr.
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