I had sooner not have ventured this much exposure, but it is ill to face starvation for safety's sake.
The cottage lay but a hundred yards off, and soon I approached it.

It was hard on six o'clock now, and I looked to find the inmates up and stirring.

I wondered also whether Monmouth were gone to await Barbara and myself at the Merry Mariners in Deal; alas, we were too near the trysting-place! Or had he heard by now that the bird was flown from his lure and caged by that M.de Perrencourt who had treated him so cavalierly?
I could not tell.

Here was the cottage; but I stood still suddenly, amazed and cautious.

For there, in the peaceful morning, in the sun's kindly light, there lay across the threshold the body of a man; his eyes, wide-opened, stared at the sky, but seemed to see nothing of what they gazed at; his brown coat was stained to a dark rusty hue on the breast, where a gash in the stuff showed the passage of a sword.