While the chain heated, Jack amused himself by going through his victim's clothing and trying to guess how many gold coins were in his purse. After a couple of minutes (by the pocket-watch, which lay open on the floor) Jack reached into the fire with the tongs and drew out a length of yellow-hot chain. Before it could cool he draped it across an anvil, then smashed it with a heavy chisel-pointed hammer, and then he was free. Except that a yard of hot chain still dangled from his neck, and he could not pull it through his neck-loop without burning himself. So he quenched it in a trough of water. But then he found that in breaking it he'd smashed the last link, and broadened it, so it would no longer pass through the neck-loop. He did not want to spend the time to heat the chain back up, so he was stuck with the collar, and an arm's length of chain, for now. No matter, really. It was dark outside, he would be seen only as a silhouette, and he needed only that it be a respectable type of silhouette – a shape that people would not discharge weapons at without thinking twice. So he yanked the wig (now wrecked and burnt, but still a wig) off the dead 'Scot' and put it on – discarding, however, the unwieldy tam-o'-shanter. He pulled on the boots that John Churchill had donated, and took the long cape that the 'Scot' had been wearing. Also his gloves – an old habit to cover the V branded on his thumb. Finally he pilfered the saddle from the horse – it was a magnificent saddle – and carried it out into the stable-yard.