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But most of the Switzers escaped, thanks to the attention the mob paid to the houses and what was going forward on the galleries; and these, extricating themselves joined us one by one, so that gradually a little ring of stern faces gathered about the stair-foot.
I should go through it twenty, or even thirty, for I am resolved to go on reading, but at the end of the tenth, my ear unconsciously strained catches the sound of a step at the stair-foot. It is not the footman's. It is firmer, heavier, and yet quicker. Eight weary months is it since I last heard that footfall.
"Guard the stair-foot, Winter!" and he ran up. Two women cowered upon the floor, shrieking and praying with hands clasped over their heads. He saw that the arms of one of them were of the most exquisite whiteness, and judging her to be the lady, bent over her. "Lady! you are safe. I will protect you. I am Hereward." She sprang up, and threw herself with a scream into his arms. "Hereward! Hereward!
We could hear at the close-mouth and far up and down the street the shouting of the burghers, and knew that at the stair-foot they were trying to pull out the bottom-most of the marauders like tods from a hole. I stood between the housebreakers and the women-folk beside me John Splendid looking wonderfully ugly for a man fairly clean fashioned at the face by nature.
Sir James claimed to have stood at the stair-foot, while Dighton and another did the murder, smothering the princes in their bed. To this they both testified, though the king, for reasons unexplained, did not publish their testimony. Henry also sent spies abroad, to search into the truth concerning the assumed adventurer.
Allan called cheerily up from the stair-foot. John, casting collars automatically from suitcase to dresser-top, growled. "Congratulations! I need prayers more!" he said under his breath. "But poor little thing! I might as well have stepped on a kitten! ... I certainly did tell her to hope for better things and they'd come.... I didn't know I was going to be one of 'em!"
Then I hastened downstairs. Godfrey met me at the stair-foot, and led the way into what was evidently a lounging-room. A tray containing some cold meat, bread and butter, cheese, and a few other things, stood on a side-table, and to this Godfrey added two bottles of Bass. "No doubt you're hungry after the ride," he said. "I know I am," and he opened the bottles.
"Poor Aunt Jo is so tired she ought to be carried up herself," said gentle Franz, putting his arm round her as she paused at the stair-foot, looking quite exhausted by her fright and long walk. "Let's make an arm-chair," proposed Tommy. "No, thank you, my lads; but somebody may lend me a shoulder to lean on," answered Mrs. Jo.
"How late the children are," she said at last, lifting the boiling pot on the hob. Then she went to the stair-foot and called, "Marc, Jeanneton, Pierre, Marie. Breakfast is ready, my children. Toinette but where, then, is Toinette? She is used to be down long before this." "Toinette isn't upstairs," said Marie from above. "Her door is wide open, and she isn't there."
He forced himself to go upstairs, following the cry, which at every moment grew louder. At the top he cast a final glance below. The old woman stood at the stair-foot, shading the candle from the draught with a hand that shook with something more than age.
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