Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/177

 grew silent, for this seemed an entertainment too good for common mirth, and by a great deal better than a hanging. I think indeed that the explorers went up the steps very much as if they were about to be hanged; however this perilous climb was accomplished in safety and they began to tread the boughs warily and tenderly as if they trod eggs, expecting at each step the onset of the enemy. But the fates did not will that any should die by that fearful sword, and they wandered unharmed from one side to the other, from the top to the bottom, and found not him they sought nor any trace of him at all. So they called for more to help them, and one or two young rascals of the town, mere jackanapes at climbing, swarmed up to the swaying summit and lay out on the farthest boughs, these squinting crosswise and those downward, whilst the solid serving men poked and beat and squatted and leaned over in the more central and secure places. But after an hour of this curious forestcraft it evidently appeared that he whom the searchers searched for was not there; and then I must confess the crowd began to jeer and hoot and make horns; since to keep guard all night over nothing and then to seek for it at dawning seemed to them an act of folly. But Sir Rowland was fit to burst with rage, and stamped about reviling his daughter and cursing his men, who (he swore) had slept standing, and at last turned on Master Lawrence, telling him that he had conceived the whole affair in his cloudy besotted brain, and this was all the reward Lawrence got for his pains. But when the story