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Poison Island

by Arthur Quiller-Couch · English · Gutenberg #16604 · 490,855 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Poison Island

Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch


        
Release date: August 27, 2005 [eBook #16604]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16604

Credits: Produced by Lionel Sear


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POISON ISLAND ***




Produced by Lionel Sear





POISON ISLAND.

By ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH (Q).




CONTENTS.


Chapter.

I.         HOW I FIRST MET WITH CAPTAIN COFFIN.

II.        I AM ENTERED AT COPENHAGEN ACADEMY.

III.       A STREET FIGHT, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

IV.        CAPTAIN COFFIN STUDIES NAVIGATION.

V.         THE WHALEBOAT.

VI.        MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE CHART.

VII.       ENTER THE RETURNED PRISONER.

VIII.      THE HUNTED AND THE HUNTER.

IX.        CHAOS IN THE CAPTAINS LODGINGS.

X.         NEWS.

XI.        THE CRIME IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE.

XII.       THE BLOODSTAIN ON THE STILE.

XIII.      CLUES IN A TANGLE.

XIV.       HOW I BROKE OUT THE RED ENSIGN.

XV.        CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION--THE MAN IN THE LANE.

XVI.       CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION--THE FLAG AND THE CASHBOX.

XVII.      THE CHART OF MORTALLONE.

XVIII.     THE CONTENTS OF THE CORNER CUPBOARD.

XIX.       CAPTAIN COFFIN'S LOG.

XX.        CAPTAIN COFFIN'S LOG (CONTINUED).

XXI.       IN WHICH PLINNY SURPRISES EVERYONE.

XXII.      A STRANGE MAN IN THE GARDEN.

XXIII.     HOW WE SAILED TO THE ISLAND.

XXIV.      WE ANCHOR OFF THE ISLAND.

XXV.       I TAKE FRENCH LEAVE ASHORE.

XXVI.      THE WOMEN IN THE GRAVEYARD.

XXVII.     THE MAN IN BLACK.

XXVIII.    THE MASTER OF THE ISLAND.

XXIX.      A BOAT ON THE BEACH.

XXX.       THE SCREAM ON THE CLIFF.

XXXI.      AARON GLASS.

XXXII.     WE COME TO DR. BEAUREGARD'S HOUSE.

XXXIII.    WE FIND THE TREASURE.

XXXIV.     DOCTOR BEAUREGARD.





CHAPTER I.



HOW I FIRST MET WITH CAPTAIN COFFIN.

It was in the dusk of a July evening of the year 1813 (July 27, to be
precise) that on my way back from the mail-coach office, Falmouth, to
Mr. Stimcoe's Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen, No. 7, Delamere
Terrace, I first met Captain Coffin as he came, drunk and cursing, up
the Market Strand, with a rabble of children at his heels.  I have
reason to remember the date and hour of this encounter, not only for
its remarkable consequences, but because it befell on the very day
and within an hour or two of my matriculation at Stimcoe's.
That afternoon I had arrived at Falmouth by Royal Mail, in charge of
Miss Plinlimmon, my father's housekeeper; and now but ten minutes ago
I had seen off that excellent lady and waved farewell to her--not
without a sinking of the heart--on her return journey to Minden
Cottage, which was my home.

My name is Harry Brooks, and my age on this remembered evening was
fourteen and something over.  My father, Major James Brooks, late of
the 4th (King's Own) Regiment, had married twice, and at the time of
his retirement from active service was for the second time a widower.
Blindness--contracted by exposure and long marches over the snows of
Galicia--had put an end to a career by no means undistinguished.
In his last fight, at Corunna, he had not only earned a mention in
despatches from his brigadier-general, Lord William Bentinck, but by
his alertness in handling his half-regiment at a critical moment, and
refusing its right to an outflanking line of French, had been
privileged to win almost the last word of praise uttered by his
idolized commander.  My father heard, and faced about, but his eyes
were already failing him; they missed the friendly smile with which
Sir John Moore turned, and cantered off along the brigade, to
encourage the 50th and 42nd regiments, and to receive, a few minutes
later, the fatal cannon-shot.

Every one has heard what miseries the returning transports endured in
the bitter gale of January, 1809.  The _Londonderry_, in which my
father sailed, did indeed escape wreck, but at the cost of a week's
beating about the mouth of the Channel.  He was, by rights, an
invalid, having taken a wound in the kneecap from a spent bullet, one
of the last fired in the battle; but in the common peril he bore a
hand with the best.  For three days and two nights he never shifted
his clothing, which the gale alternately soaked and froze.  It was
frozen stiff as a board when the _Londonderry_ made the entrance of
Plymouth Sound; and he was borne ashore in a rheumatic fever.
From this, and from his wound, the doctors restored him at length,
but meanwhile his eyesight had perished.

His misfortunes did not end here.  My step-sister Isabel--a beautiful
girl of seventeen, the only child of his first marriage--had met him
at Plymouth, nursed him to convalescence, and brought him home to
Minden Cottage, to the garden which henceforward he tilled, but saw
only through memory.  Since then she had married a young officer in
the 52nd Regiment, a Lieutenant Archibald Plinlimmon; but, her
husband having to depart at once for the Peninsula, she had remained
with her father and tended him as before, until death took her--as it
had taken her mother--in childbirth.  The babe did not survive her;
and, to complete the sad story, her husband fell a few weeks later
before Badajoz, while assaulting the Picurina Gate with fifty axemen
of the Light Division.

Beneath these blows of fate my father did indeed bow his head, yet
bravely.  From the day Isabel died his shoulders took a sensible
stoop; but this was the sole evidence of the mortal wound he carried,
unless you count that from the same day he put aside his "Aeneid,"
and taught me no more from it, but spent his hours for the most part
in meditation, often with a Bible open on his knee--although his eyes
could not read it.  Sally, our cook, told me one day that when the
foolish midwife came and laid the child in his arms, not telling him
that it was dead, he felt it over and broke forth in a terrible cry--
his first and last protest.

In me--the only child of his second marriage, as Isabel had been the
only child of his first--he appeared to have lost, and of a sudden,
all interest.  While Isabel lived there had been reason for this, or
excuse at least, for he had loved her mother passionately, whereas
from mine he had separated within a day or two after marriage, having
married her only because he was obliged--or conceived himself
obliged--by honour.  Into this story I shall not go.  It was a sad
one, and, strange to say, sadly creditable to both.  I do not
remember my mother.  She died, having taken some pains to hide even
my existence from her husband, who, nevertheless, conscientiously
took up the burden.  A man more strongly conscientious never lived;
and his sudden neglect of me had nothing to do with caprice, but
came--as I am now assured--of some lesion of memory under the shock
of my sister's death.  As an unregenerate youngster I thought little
of it at the time, beyond rejoicing to be free of my daily lesson in
Virgil.

I can see my father now, seated within the summer-house by the
filbert-tree at the end of the orchard--his favourite haunt--or
standing in the doorway and drawing himself painfully erect, a giant
of a man, to inhale the scent of his flowers or listen to his bees,
or the voice of the stream which bounded our small domain.  I see him
framed there, his head almost touching the lintel, his hands gripping
the posts like a blind Samson's, all too strong for the flimsy
trelliswork.  He wore a brown holland suit in summer, in colder
weather a fustian one of like colour, and at first glance you might
mistake him for a Quaker.  His snow-white hair was gathered close
beside the temples, back from a face of ineffable simplicity and
goodness--the face of a man at peace with God and all the world, yet
marked with scars--scars of bygone passions, cross-hatched and almost
effaced by deeper scars of calamity.  As Miss Plinlimmon wrote in her
album--

     "Few men so deep as Major Brooks
        Have drained affliction's cup.
      Alas! if one may trust his looks,
        I fear he's breaking up!"

This Miss Plinlimmon, a maiden aunt of the young officer who had been
slain at Badajoz, kept house for us after my sister's death.  She was
a lady of good Welsh family, who after many years of genteel poverty
had come into a legacy of seven thousand pounds from an East Indian
uncle; and my father--a simple liver, content with his half-pay--had
much ado in his blindness to keep watch and war upon the luxuries she
untiringly strove to smuggle upon him.  For the rest, Miss Plinlimmon
wore corkscrew curls, talked sentimentally, worshipped the manly form
(in the abstract) with the manly virtues, and possessed (quite
unknown to herself) the heart of a lion.

Upon this unsuspected courage, and upon the strength of her affection
for me, she had drawn on the day when she stood up to my father--of
whom, by the way, she was desperately afraid--and told him that his
neglect of me was a sin and a shame and a scandal.  "And a good
education," she wound up feebly, "would render Harry so much more of
a companion to you."

My father rubbed his head vaguely.  "Yes, yes, you are right.  I have
been neglecting the boy.  But pray end as honestly as you began, and
do not pretend to be consulting my future when you are really
pleading for his.  To begin with, I don't want a companion; next, I
should not immediately make a companion of Harry by sending him away
to school; and, lastly, you know as well as I, that long before he
finished his schooling I should be in my grave."

"Well, then, consider what a classical education would do for Harry!
I feel sure that had I--pardon the supposition--been born a man, and
made conversant with the best thoughts of the ancients--Socrates, for
example--"

"What about him?" my father demanded.

"So wise, as I have always been given to understand, yet in his own
age misunderstood, by his wife especially!  And, to crown all, unless
I err, drowned in a butt of hemlock!"

"Dear madam, pardon me; but how many of these accidents to Socrates
are you ascribing to his classical education?"

"But it comes out in so many ways," Miss Plinlimmon persisted; "and
it does make such a difference!  There's a _je ne sais quoi_.
You can tell it even in the way they handle a knife and fork!"

That evening, after supper, Miss Plinlimmon declined her customary
game of cards with me, on the pretence that she felt tired, and sat
for a long while fumbling with a newspaper, which I recognized for a
week-old copy of the "Falmouth Packet."  At length she rose abruptly,
and, crossing over to the table where I sat playing dominoes (right
hand against left), thrust the paper before me, and pointed with a
trembling finger.

"There, Harry! What would you say to that?"

I brushed my dominoes aside, and read--

"The Reverend Philip Stimcoe, B.A., (Oxon.), of Copenhagen Academy,
7. Delamere Terrace, begs to inform the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentry
of Falmouth and the neighbourhood that he has Vacancies for a limited
number of Pupils of good Social Standing.  Education classical, on
the lines of the best Public Schools, combined with Home Comforts
under the personal supervision of Mrs. Stimcoe (niece of the late
Hon. Sir Alexander O'Brien, R.N., Admiral of the White, and K.C.B.).
Backward and delicate boys a speciality.  Separate beds.  Commodious
playground in a climate unrivalled for pulmonary ailments.  Greenwich
time kept."

I did not criticise the advertisement.  It sufficed me to read my
release in it; and in the same instant I knew how lonely the last few
months had been, and felt myself an ingrate.  I that had longed
unspeakably, if but half consciously, for the world beyond Minden
Cottage--a world in which I could play the man--welcomed my liberty
by laying my head on my arms and breaking into unmanly sobs.

I will pass over a blissful week of preparation, including a journey
by van to Torpoint and by ferry across to Plymouth, where Miss
Plinlimmon bought me boots, shirts, collars, under-garments, a
valise, a low-crowned beaver hat for Sunday wear, and for week-days a
cap shaped like a concertina; where I was measured for two suits
after a pattern marked "Boy's Clarence, Gentlemanly," and where I
expended two-and-sixpence of my pocket-money on a piratical
jack-knife and a book of patriotic songs--two articles indispensable,
it seemed to me, to full-blooded manhood; and I will come to the day
when the Royal Mail pulled up before Minden Cottage with a merry
clash of bits and swingle-bars, and, the scarlet-coated guard having
received my box from Sally the cook, and hoisted it aboard in a
jiffy, Miss Plinlimmon and I climbed up to a seat behind the
coachman.  My father stood at the door, and shook hands with me at
parting.

"Good luck, lad," said he; "and remember our motto: _Nil nisi recte!_
Good luck have thou with thine honour.  And, by the way, here's half
a sovereign for you."

"Cl'k!" from the coachman, shortening up his enormous bunch of reins;
_ta-ra-ra!_ from the guard's horn close behind my ear; and we were
off!

Oh, believe me, there never was such a ride!  As we swept by the
second mile stone I stole a look at Miss Plinlimmon.  She sat in an
ecstasy, with closed eyes.  She was, as she put it, indulging in
mental composition.

     Verses composed while Riding by the Royal Mail.

     "I've sailed at eve o'er Plymouth Sound
        (For me it was a rare excursion)
      Oblivious of the risk of being drown'd,
        Or even of a more temporary immersion.

     "I dream'd myself the Lady of the Lake,
        Or an Oriental one (within limits) on the Bosphorus;
      We left a trail of glory in our wake,
        Which the intelligent boatman ascribed to phosphorus.

     "Yet agreeable as I found it o'er the ocean
        To glide within my bounding shallop,
      I incline to think that for the poetry of motion
        One may even more confidently recommend the Tantivy Gallop."



CHAPTER II.


I AM ENTERED AT COPENHAGEN ACADEMY.

Agreeable, too, as I found it to be whirled between the hedgerows
behind five splendid horses; to catch the ostlers run out with the
relays; to receive blue glimpses of the Channel to southward; to dive
across dingles and past farm-gates under which the cocks and hens
flattened themselves in their haste to give us room; to gaze back
over the luggage and along the road, and assure myself that the rival
coach  (the Self-Defence) was not overtaking us--yet Falmouth, when
we reached it, was best of all; Falmouth, with its narrow streets and
crowd of sailors, postmen, 'longshoremen, porters with wheelbarrows,
and passengers hurrying to and from the packets, its smells of pitch
and oakum and canvas, its shops full of seamen's outfits and
instruments and marine curiosities, its upper windows where parrots
screamed in cages, its alleys and quay-doors giving peeps of the
splendid harbour, thronged--to quote Miss Plinlimmon again--"with
varieties of gallant craft, between which the trained nautical eye
may perchance distinguish, but mine doesn't."

The residential part of Falmouth rises in neat terraces above the
waterside, and of these Delamere Terrace was by no means the least
respectable.  The brass doorplate of No. 7--"Copenhagen Academy for
the Sons of Gentlemen.  Principal, the Rev. Philip Stimcoe, B.A.
(Oxon.)"--shone immaculate; and its window-blinds did Mrs. Stimcoe
credit, as Miss Plinlimmon remarked before ringing the bell.

Mrs. Stimcoe herself opened the door to us, in a full lace cap and a
maroon-coloured gown of state.  She was a gaunt, hard-eyed woman,
tall as a grenadier, remarkable for a long upper lip decorated with
two moles.  She excused her condescension on the ground that the
butler was out, taking the pupils for a walk; and conducted us to the
parlour, where Mr. Stimcoe sat in an atmosphere which smelt faintly
of sherry.

Mr. Stimcoe rose and greeted us with a shaky hand.  He was a thin,
spectacled man, with a pendulous nose and cheeks disfigured by a
purplish cutaneous disorder (which his wife, later on, attributed to
his having slept between damp sheets while the honoured guest of a
nobleman, whose name I forget).  He wore a seedy clerical suit.

While shaking hands he observed that I was taller than he had
expected; and this, absurdly enough, is all I remember of the
interview, except that the room had two empty bookcases, one on
either side of the chimney-breast; that the fading of the wallpaper
above the mantelpiece had left a patch recording where a clock had
lately stood (I conjectured that it must be at Greenwich, undergoing
repairs); that Mrs. Stimcoe produced a decanter of sherry--a wine
which Miss Plinlimmon abominated--and poured her out a glassful, with
the remark that it had been twice round the world; that Miss
Plinlimmon supposed vaguely "the same happened to a lot of things in
a seaport like Falmouth;" and that somehow this led us on to Mr.
Stimcoe's delicate health, and this again to the subject of damp
sheets, and this finally to Mrs. Stimcoe's suggesting that Miss
Plinlimmon might perhaps like to have a look at my bedroom.

The bedroom assigned to me opened out of Mrs. Stimcoe's own.
("It will give him a sense of protection.  A child feels the first
few nights away from home.")  Though small, it was neat, and,
for a boy's wants, amply furnished; nay, it contained at least one
article of supererogation, in the shape of a razor-case on the
dressing-table.  Mrs. Stimcoe swept this into her pocket with a turn
of the hand, and explained frankly that her husband, like most
scholars, was absent-minded.  Here she passed two fingers slowly
across her forehead.  "Even in his walks, or while dressing, his
brain wanders among the deathless compositions of Greece and Rome,
turning them into English metres--all cakes especially"--she must
have meant alcaics--"and that makes him leave things about."

I had fresh and even more remarkable evidence of Mr. Stimcoe's
absent-mindedness two minutes later, when, the sheets having been
duly inspected, we descended to the parlour again; for, happening to
reach the doorway some paces ahead of the two ladies, I surprised him
in the act of drinking down Miss Plinlimmon's sherry.

The interview was scarcely resumed before a mortuary silence fell on
the room, and I became aware that somehow my presence impeded the
discussion of business.

"I think perhaps that Harry would like to run out upon the terrace
and see the view from his new home," suggested Mrs. Stimcoe, with
obvious tact.

I escaped, and went in search of the commodious playground, which I
supposed to lie in the rear of the house; but, reaching a back yard,
I suddenly found myself face to face with three small boys, one
staggering with the weight of a pail, the two others bearing a full
washtub between them; and with surprise saw them set down their
burdens at a distance and come tip-toeing towards me in a single
file, with theatrical gestures of secrecy.

"Hallo!" said I.

"Hist!  Be dark as the grave!" answered the leader, in a
stage-whisper.  He was a freckly, narrow-chested child, and needed
washing.  "You're the new boy," he announced, as though he had
tracked me down in that criminal secret.

"Yes," I owned.  "Who are you?"

"We are the Blood-stained Brotherhood of the Pampas, now upon the
trail!"

"Look here," said I, staring down at him, "that's nonsense!"

"Oh, very well," he answered promptly; "then we're the 'Backward Sons
of Gentlemen'--that's down in the prospectus--and we're fetching
water for Mother Stimcoe, because the turncock cut off the company's
water this morning!  See?  But you won't blow the gaff on the old
girl, will you?"

"Are you all there is, you three?" I asked, after considering them a
moment.

"We're all the boarders.  My name's Ted Bates--they call me Doggy
Bates--and my father's a captain out in India; and these are Bob
Pilkington and Scotty Maclean.  You may call him Redhead, being too
big to punch; and, talking of that, you'll have to fight Bully
Stokes."

"Is he a day-boy?" I asked.

"He's cock of Rogerses up the hill, and he wants it badly.
Stimcoes and Rogerses are hated rivals.  If you can whack Bully
Stokes for us--"

"But Mrs. Stimcoe told me that you were taking a walk with the
butler," I interrupted.

Master Bates winked.

"Would you like to see him?"

He beckoned me to an open window, and we gazed through it upon a bare
back kitchen, and upon an extremely corpulent man in an armchair,
slumbering, with a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his head to
protect it from the flies.  Master Bates whipped out a pea-shooter,
and blew a pea on to the exposed lobe of the sleeper's ear.

"D--n!" roared the corpulent one, leaping up in wrath.  But we were
in hiding behind the yard-wall before he could pull the bandanna from
his face.

"He's the bailiff," explained Master Bates.  "He's in possession.
Oh, you'll get quite friendly with him in time.  Down in the town
they call him Mother Stimcoe's lodger, he comes so often.  But, I
say, don't go and blow the gaff on the old girl."

On our way to the coach-office that evening I felt--as the saying
is--my heart in my mouth.  Miss Plinlimmon spoke sympathetically of
Mr. Stimcoe's state of health, and with delicacy of his
absent-mindedness, "so natural in a scholar." I discovered long
afterwards that Mr. Stimcoe, having retired to cash a note for her,
had brought back a strong smell of brandy and eighteen-pence less
than the strict amount of her change.  I knew in my heart that my new
schoolmaster and his wife were a pair of frauds, and yet I choked
down the impulse to speak.  Perhaps Master Bates's loyalty kept me on
my mettle.

The dear soul and I bade one another farewell, she not without tears.
The coach bore her away; and I walked back through the crowded
streets with my spirits down in my boots, and my fists thrust deep
into the pockets of my small-clothes.

In this dejected mood I reached the Market Strand just as Captain
Coffin came up it from the Plume of Feathers public-house, cursing
and striking out with his stick at a mob of small boys.



CHAPTER III.


A STREET FIGHT, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

He emerged upon the street which crosses the head of Market Strand,
and, dropping his arms, stood for a moment us if in doubt of his
bearings.  He was flagrantly drunk, but not aggressively.
He reminded me of a purblind owl that, blundering Into daylight, is
set upon and mobbed by a crowd of small birds.

The 'longshoremen and loafers grinned and winked at one another, but
forbore to interfere.  Plainly the spectacle was a familiar one.

The man was not altogether repulsive; pitiable, rather; a small, lean
fellow, with a grey-white face drawn into wrinkles about the jaw, and
eyes that wandered timidly.  He wore a suit of good sea-cloth--
soiled, indeed, but neither ragged nor threadbare--and a blue and
yellow spotted neckerchief, the bow of which had worked around
towards his right ear.  His hat, perched a-cock over his left eye,
had made acquaintance with the tavern sawdust.  Next to his
drunkenness, perhaps, the most remarkable thing about him was his
stick--of ebony, very curiously carved in rings from knob to ferrule,
where it ended in an iron spike; an ugly weapon, of which his
tormentors stood in dread, and small blame to them.

While he stood hesitating, they swarmed close and began to bay him
afresh.

"Captain Coffin, Captain Coffin!"  "Who killed the Portugee?"
"Who hid the treasure and got so drunk he couldn't find it?"
"Where's your ship, Cap'n Danny?"  These were some of the taunts
flung; and as the urchins danced about him, yelling them, the passion
blazed up again in his red-rimmed eyes.

Amongst the crowd capered Ted Bates.  "Hallo, Brooks!" he shouted,
and, catching at another boy's elbow, pointed towards me.
Beyond noting that the other boy had a bullet-shaped head with ears
that stood out from it at something like right angles, I had time to
take very little stock of him; for just then, us Captain Coffin
turned about to smite, a stone came flying and struck him smartly on
the funny-bone.  His hand opened with the pain of it, but the stick
hung by a loop to his wrist, and, gripping it again, he charged among
his tormentors, lashing out to right and left.

So savagely he charged that I looked for nothing short of murder; and
just then, while I stood at gaze, a boy stepped up to me--the same
that Ted Bates had plucked by the arm.

"Look here!" said he, frowning, with his legs a-straddle.
"Doggy Bates tells me that you told him you could whack me with one
hand behind you."

I replied that I had told Doggy Bates nothing of the sort.

"That's all right," said he.  "Then you take it back?"

He had the air of one sure of his logic, but his under lip--not to
mention his ears--protruded in a way that struck me as offensive, and
I replied--

"That depends."

"My name's Stokes," said he, still in the same reasonable tone.
"And you'll have to take coward's blow."

"Oh, indeed!" said I.

"It's the rule," said he, and gave it me with a light, back-handed
smack across the bridge of the nose; whereupon I hit him on the point
of the chin, and, unconsciously imitating Captain Coffin's method of
charging a crowd, lowered my head and butted him violently in the
stomach.

I make no doubt that my brain was tired and giddy with the day's
experiences, but to this moment I cannot understand why we two
suddenly found ourselves the focus of interest in a crowd which had
wasted none on Captain Coffin.

But so it was.  In less time than it takes to write, a ring
surrounded us--a ring of men staring and offering bets.  The lamp at
the street-corner shone on their faces; and close under the light of
it Master Stokes and I were hammering one another.

We were fighting by rule, too.  Some one--I cannot say who--had taken
up the affair, and was imposing the right ceremonial upon us.  It may
have been the cheerful, blue-jerseyed Irishman, to whose knee I
returned at the end of each round to be freshened up around the face
and neck with a dripping boat-sponge.  He had an extraordinarily wide
mouth, and it kept speaking encouragement and good advice to me.
I feel sure he was a good fellow, but have never set eyes on him from
that hour to this.

Bully Stokes and I must have fought a good many rounds, for towards
the end we were both panting hard, and our hands hung on every blow.
But I remember yet more vividly the strangeness of it all, and the
uncanny sensation that the fight itself, the street-lamp, the crowd,
and the dim houses around were unreal as a dream: that, and the
unnatural hardness of my opponent's face, which seemed the one
unmalleable part of him.

A dreadful thought possessed me that if he could only contrive to hit
me with his face all would be over.  My own was badly pounded; for we
fought--or, at any rate, I fought--without the smallest science; it
was blow for blow, plain give-and-take, from the start.  But what
distressed me was the extreme tenderness of my knuckles; and what
chiefly irritated me was the behaviour of Doggy Bates, dancing about
and screaming, "Go it, Stimcoes! Stimcoes for ever!"  Five times the
onlookers flung him out by the scruff of his neck; and five times he
worked himself back, and screamed it between their legs.

In the end this enthusiasm proved the undoing of all his delight.
Towards the end of an intolerably long round, finding that my arms
began to hang like lead, I had rushed in and closed; and the two of
us went to ground together.  Then I lay panting, and my opponent
under me--the pair of us too weary for the moment to strike a blow;
and then, as breath came back, I was aware of a sudden hush in the
din.  A hand took me by the shirt-collar, dragged me to my feet, and
swung me round, and I stared, blinking, into the face of Mr. Stimcoe.

"Dishgrashful!" said Mr. Stimcoe.  He was accompanied by a constable,
to whom he appealed for confirmation, pointing to my face.
"Left immy charge only this evening, Perf'ly dishgrashful!"

"Boys will be boys, sir," said the constable.

"M' good fellow "--Mr. Stimcoe comprehended the crowd with an
unsteady wave of his hand--"that don't 'pply 'case of men.  _Ne tu
pu'ri tempsherish annosh_; tha's Juvenal."

"Then my advice is, sir--take the boy home and give him a wash."

"He can't," came a taunting voice from the crowd.  "'Cos why?
The company 've cut off his water."

Mr. Stimcoe gazed around in sorrow rather than in anger.  He cleared
his throat for a public speech; but was forestalled by the
constable's dispersing the throng with a "Clear along, now, like good
fellows!"

The wide-mouthed man helped me into my jacket, shook hands with me,
and said I had no science, but the devil's own pluck-and-lights.
Then he, too, faded away into the night; and I found myself alongside
of Doggy Bates, marching up the street after Mr. Stimcoe, who
declaimed, as he went, upon the vulgarity of street-fighting.

By-and-by it became apparent that in the soothing flow of his
eloquence he had forgotten us; and Doggy Bates, who understood his
preceptor's habits to a hair, checked me with a knowing squeeze of
the arm, and began, of set purpose, to lag in his steps.  Mr. Stimcoe
strode on, still audibly denouncing and exhorting.

"It was all my fault!"  Master Bates pulled up and studied my mauled
face by the light of a street-lamp.  "The beggar heard me shouting
his own name, silly fool that I was!"

I begged him not to be distressed on my account.

"What's the use of half a fight?" he groaned again.  "My word,
though, won't Stimcoe catch it from the missus!  She sent him out to
get change for your aunt's notes--'fees payable in advance.'  I know
the game--to pay off the bailey; and he's been soaking in a
public-house ever since.  Hallo!"

We turned together at the sound of footsteps approaching after us up
the street.  They broke into a run, then appeared to falter; and,
peering into the dark interval between us and the next lamp, I
discerned Captain Coffin.  He had come to a halt, and stood there
mysteriously beckoning.

"You--I want you!" he called huskily.  "Not the other boy!  You!"

I obeyed, having a reputation to keep up in the eyes of Doggy Bates;
but my courage was oozing as I walked towards the old man, and I came
to a sudden stop about five yards from him.

"Closer!" he beckoned.  "Good boy, don't be afraid.  What's your
name, good boy?"

"Harry Brooks, sir."

"Call me 'sir,' do you?   Well, and you're right.  I could ride in my
coach-and-six if I chose; and some day you may see it.  How would you
like to ride in your coach-and-six, Harry Brooks?"

"I should like it finely, sir," said I, humouring him.

"Yes, yes, I'll wager you would.  Well, now--come closer.  Mum's the
word, eh?  I like you, Harry Brooks; and the boys in this town "--he
broke off and cursed horribly--"they're not fit to carry slops to a
bear, not one of 'em.  But you're different.  And, see here: any time
you're in trouble, just pay a call on me.  Understand?  Mind you, I
make no promises."  Here, to my exceeding fright, he reached out a
hand, and, clutching me by the arm, drew me close, so that his breath
poured hot on my ear, and I sickened at its reek of brandy.
"It's _money_, boy--_money_, I tell you!"

He dropped my arm, and, falling back a pace, looked nervously about
him.

"Between you and me and the gatepost, eh?" he asked.

His hand went down and tapped his pocket slily, and with that he
turned and shuffled away down the street.  I stared after him into
the foggy darkness, listening to the tap of his stick upon the
cobbles.



CHAPTER IV.


CAPTAIN COFFIN STUDIES NAVIGATION.

Events soon to be narrated made my sojourn in tutelage of Mr. Stimcoe
a brief one, and I will pass it lightly over.

The school consisted of four boarders and six backward sons of
gentlemen resident in the town, and assembled daily in a large
outhouse furnished with desks of a peculiar pattern, known to us as
"scobs."  Mr. Stimcoe, who had received his education as a
"querister" at Winchester (and afterwards as a "servitor" at Pembroke
College, Oxford), habitually employed and taught us to employ the
esoteric slang--or "notions," as he called it--of that great public
school; so that in "preces," "morning lines," "book-chambers," and
what-not we had the names if not the things, and a vague and quite
illusory sense of high connection, on the strength of which, and of
our freedom from what Mrs. Stimcoe called "the commercial taint," we
made bold to despise the more prosperous Rogerses up the hill.

Upon commerce in the concrete--that is to say, upon the butchers,
bakers, and other honest tradesmen of Falmouth--Mrs. Stimcoe waged a
predatory war, and waged it without quarter.  She had a genius for
opening accounts, and something more than genius for keeping her
creditors at bay.  She never wheedled nor begged them for time; she
never compromised nor parleyed,  nor condescended to yield an inch to
their claims for decent human treatment.  She relied simply upon
browbeating and the efficacy of the straight-spoken lie.  A more
dauntless, unblushing, majestic liar never stood up in petticoats.

She was a byword in Falmouth; yet, strange to say, her victims kept a
sneaking fondness for her, a soft spot In their hearts; while as
sporting onlookers we boys took something like a fearful pride in the
Warrior, as we called her.  It was not in her nature to encourage any
such weakness, or to use it.  She would not have thanked us for it.
But we had this amount of excuse: that she fed us liberally when she
could browbeat the butcher; and if at times we went short, she shared
our privation.  Also, there must have been some good in the woman, to
stand so unflinchingly by Stimcoe.  Stimcoe's books had gone into
storage at the pawnbroker's; but in his bare "study," where he heard
our construing of Caesar and Homer, stood a screen, and behind it an
eighteen-gallon cask.  A green baize tablecloth covered the cask from
sight, and partially muffled the sound of its running tap when
Stimcoe withdrew behind the screen, to consult (as he put it) his
lexicon.

His one assistant, who figured in the prospectus as "Teacher of
English, the Mathematics, and Navigation," was a retired
packet-captain, Branscome by name, but known among us as Captain
Gamey, by reason of an injured leg.  He had taken the hurt--a
splintered hip-bone--while fighting his ship against a French
privateer off Guadeloupe, and it had retired him from the service of
my lords the Postmaster-General upon a very small pension, and with a
sword of honour subscribed for by the merchants of the City of
London, whose mails he had gallantly saved.  These resources being
barely sufficient to maintain him, still less to permit his helping a
widowed sister whom he had partly maintained during his days of
service, he eked them out by school mastering; and a dreadful trade
he must have found it.  In person he was slight and wiry, of a clear,
ruddy complexion, with grey hair, and a grave simplicity of manner.
He wore a tightly buttoned, blue uniform coat, threadbare and frayed,
but scrupulously brushed, noticeably clean linen, and white duck
trousers in all weathers.  He walked with the support of a malacca
cane, dragging his wounded leg after him; and had a trick of talking
to himself as he went.

I need scarcely say that we mimicked him; but in school he kept far
better discipline than Stimcoe, for, with all his oddity, we knew him
to be a brave man.  Such mathematics as we needed he taught capably
enough and very patiently.  The "navigation," so far as we were
concerned, was a mere flourish of the prospectus; and his
qualifications as a teacher of English began and ended with an
enthusiasm for Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas."

Such was Captain Branscome: and, such as he was, he kept the school
running on days when Stimcoe was merely drunk and incapable.  He ever
treated Mrs. Stimcoe with the finest courtesy, and, alone among her
creditors, was rewarded with that lady's respect.

I knew, to be sure--we all knew--that she must be in arrears with
Captain Branscome's pay; but we were unprepared for the morning when,
on the stroke of the church clock--our Greenwich time--he walked up
to the door, resolutely handed Mrs. Stimcoe a letter, and as
resolutely walked away again.  Stimcoe had been maudlin drunk for a
week and could not appear.  His wife heroically stepped into the
breach, and gave us (as a geography lesson) some account of her uncle
the admiral and his career--"distinguished, but wandering," as she
summarized it.

I remember little of this lesson save that it dispensed--wisely, no
doubt--with the use of the terrestrial globe; that it included a
description of the admiral's country seat in Roscommon, and an
account of a ball given by him to celebrate Mrs. Stimcoe's arrival at
a marriageable age, with a list of the notabilities assembled; and
that it ended in her rapping Doggy Bates over the head with a ruler,
for biting his nails.  From that moment anarchy reigned.

It reigned for a week.  I have wondered since how our six day-boys
managed to refrain from carrying home a tale which must have brought
their parents down upon us _en masse_.  Great is schoolboy honour--
great, and more than a trifle quaint.  In any case, the parents must
have been singularly unobservant or singularly slow to reason upon
what they observed; for we sent their backward sons home to them each
night in a mask of ink.

Saturday came, and brought the usual half-holiday.  We boarders
celebrated it by a raid upon the back yard of Rogerses--Bully Stokes
being temporarily incapacitated by chicken-pox--and possessed
ourselves, after a gallant fight, of Rogerses' football.  Superior
numbers drove us back to our own door, where--at the invocation of
all the householders along Delamere Terrace--the constable
intervened; but we retained the spoil.

At the shut of dusk, as we kicked the football in triumph about our
own back yard, Mrs. Stimcoe sought me out with a letter to be
conveyed to Captain Branscome.  I took it and ran.

The lamplighter, going his rounds, met me at the corner of Killigrew
Street and directed me to the alley in which the captain's lodgings
lay.  The alley was dark, but a little within the entrance my eyes
caught the glimmer of a highly polished brass door-knocker, and upon
this I rapped at a venture.

Captain Branscome opened to me.  The house had no passage.  Its front
door opened directly upon a whitewashed room, with a round table in
the centre, covered with charts.  On the table, too, stood a lamp,
the light of which dazzled me for a moment.  On the walls hung the
captain's sword of honour (above the mantelpiece), a couple of
bookshelves, well stored, and a panel with a ship upon it--a brig in
full sail--carved in high relief and painted.  My eyes, however, were
not for these, but for a man who sat at the table, poring over the
charts, and lifted his head nervously to blink at me.  It was Captain
Coffin.

While I stared at him Captain Branscome took the letter from me.
It contained some pieces of silver, as I knew from its weight
and the feel of it--five shillings, as I judged, or perhaps
seven-and-sixpence.  As his hand weighed it I saw a sudden relief on
his face, and realized how grey and pinched it had been when he
opened the door to me.

He peised the envelope in his hand for a moment, then broke the seal
very deliberately, took out the coins, and, as if weighing them in
his palm, turned back to the table and laid Mrs. Stimcoe's letter
close under the lamp while he searched for his gold-rimmed
spectacles.  (There was a tradition at Stimcoe's, by the way, that
the London merchants, finding a small surplus of subscriptions in
hand after purchasing the sword of honour, had presented him with
these spectacles as a make-weight, and that he valued them no less.)

"Brooks," said he, laying down the letter and pushing the spectacles
high on his forehead while he gazed at me, "I want to ask you a
question in confidence.  Had Mrs. Stimcoe any difficulty in finding
this money?"

"Well, sir," said I, "I oughtn't perhaps to know it, but she pawned
Stim--Mr. Stimcoe's Cicero this morning, the six volumes with a
shield on the covers, that he got as a prize at Oxford."

"Good Lord!" said Captain Branscome, slowly.  As if in absence of
mind, he stepped to a side-cupboard and looked within.  It was bare
but for a plate and an apple.  He took up the apple, and was about to
offer it to me, but set it back slowly on the plate, and locked the
cupboard again.  "Good Lord!" he repeated quietly, and, linking his
hands under his coat-tails, strode twice backwards and forwards
across the room.

Captain Coffin looked up from his charts and stared at him, and I,
too, stared, waiting in the semi-darkness beyond the lamp's circle.

"Good Lord!" said Captain Branscome for the third time.  "And it's
Saturday, too!  You'll excuse me a moment."

With that he caught up the letter, and made a dart up the wooden
staircase, which led straight from a corner of the room through a
square hole in the ceiling to his upper chamber.

"Money again!" said Captain Coffin, turning his eyes upon me and
blinking.  "Nothing like money!"

He picked up a pair of compasses, spread them out on the paper of
figures before him, and looked up again with a sly, silly smile.

"You won't guess what I'm doing?" he challenged.

"No."

"I'm studyin' navigation.  Cap'n Branscome's larnin' it to me.  Some
people has luck an' some has heads; an' with a head on my shoulders
same as I had at your age, I'd be Prime Minister an' Lord Mayor of
Lunnon rolled into one, by crum!"  He reached across for Captain
Branscome's sextant, and held it between his shaking hands.
"_He_ can do it; hundreds o' men--thick-headed men in the ord'nary
way--can do it; take a vessel out o' Falmouth here, as you might say,
and hold her 'crost the Atlantic, as you might put it; whip her along
for thirty days, we'll say; an' then, 'To-morrow, if the wind holds,
an' about six in the mornin',' they'll say, 'there'll be an island
with a two-three palm-trees on a hill an' a spit o' sand bearing
nor'-by-west.  Bring 'em in line,' they'll say, 'an' then you may
fetch my shaving-water'--and all the while no more'n ordinary men,
same as you and me.  Whereby I allow it must come in time, though my
head don't seem to get no grip on it."

Captain Coffin stared for a moment at a sheet of paper on which he
had been scribbling figures, and passed it over to me, with a sigh.

"There!  What d'you make of it?"

At a glance I saw that nothing could be made of it.  The figures
crossed one another, and ran askew; here and there they trailed off
into mere illegibility.  In the left-hand bottom corner I saw a 3 set
under a 10, and beneath it the result--17--underlined, which, as a
sum, left much to be desired, whether you took it in addition,
subtraction, multiplication, or division.

"And yet," he went on plaintively, "there's hundreds can do it--even
ord'nary men."

He reached out a hand and gripped me by the elbow; and again his
brandy-laden breath sickened me as he drew me close.

"S'pose, now, _you_ was to do this for me?  You _could_, you know.
And there's money in it--lashin's o' money!"

He winked at me, glanced around the room, and with an indescribable
air of slyness dived a hand into his breast-pocket.

"It's here," he nodded, drawing out a small parcel wrapped about in
what at first glance appeared to me an oilskin bag, tied about the
neck with a tarry string.  "Here.  And enough to set you an' me up
for life."  His fingers fumbled with the string for two or three
seconds, but presently faltered.  "You come to me to-morrow," he went
on, with another mysterious wink, "and I'll show you something.
Up the hill, past Market Strand, till you come to a signboard,
'G. Goodfellow.  Funerals Furnished'--first turning to the right down
the court, and knock three times."

Here he whipped the parcel back into his pocket, picked up his
compasses, and made transparent pretence to be occupied in measuring
distances as Captain Branscome came down the stairs from the garret.

Captain Branscome gave no sign of observing his confusion, but
signalled to me to step outside with him into the alley, where he
pressed an envelope into my hand.  By the weight of it, I knew on the
instant that he was returning Mrs. Stimcoe's money,

"And tell her," said he, "that I will come on Monday morning at nine
o'clock as usual."

"Yes, sir."

I turned to go.  I could not see his face in the gloom of the alley,
but I had caught one glimpse of it by the lamplight within, and knew
what had detained him upstairs.  Honest man, he was starving, and had
been praying up there to be delivered from temptation.

"Brooks," said he, as I turned, "they tell me your father was once a
major in the Army.  Is he, by chance, the same Major Brooks--Major
James Brooks, of the King's Own--I had the honour to bring home in
the _Londonderry_, after Corunna?"

"That must have been my father, sir."

"A good man and a brave one.  I am glad to hear he is recovered."

I told him in a word or two of my father's health and of his
blindness.

"And he lives not far from here?"  I remembered afterwards that his
voice shook upon the question.

I described Minden Cottage and its position on the road towards
Plymouth.  He cut me short hurriedly, and remarked, with a nervous
laugh, that he must be getting back to his pupil.  Whereat I, too,
laughed.

"Do you think it wrong of me, boy?" he asked abruptly.

"Wrong, sir?"

"He insists upon coming; and he pays me.  He will never learn
anything.  By the way, Brooks, I have been inhospitable.  An apple,
for instance?"

I declared untruthfully that I never ate apples; and perhaps the lie
was pardonable, since by it I escaped eating Captain Branscome's
Sunday dinner.



CHAPTER V.


THE WHALEBOAT.

A barber's pole protruded beside the ope leading to Captain Coffin's
lodgings.  It was painted in spirals of scarlet and blue, and at the
end of it a cage containing a grey parrot dangled over the footway.

"Drunk again!" screamed the parrot, as I hesitated before the
entrance, for the directing-marks just here were so numerous as to be
perplexing.  To the right of the alley the barber had affixed his
signboard, close above the base of his pole; to the left a flanking
slopshop dangled a row of cast-off suits, while immediately overhead
was nailed a board painted over with ornate flourishes and the
legend--

      "G. Goodfellow.  Carpenter and House-Decorator, &c.
       Repairs Neatly Executed.  Instruction in the Violin.
       Funerals at the Shortest Notice.  Shipping Supplied."

"Drunk again!" repeated the parrot.  "Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss
me!  Oh, you nasty image!  Kiss me, kiss me!  Who killed the
Portugee?"

"He don't mean you," explained the barber, reassuringly, emerging at
that moment from his shop with a pannikin of water for the parrot's
cage, which he lowered very deftly by means of a halliard reeved
through a block at the end of the pole.  "He means old Coffin.
Nice bird, hey?"

He slipped a hand through the cage-door, and caressed him, scratching
his head.

"If you please, sir," said I, "it's Captain Coffin I'm looking for."

"Drunk again!" screamed the bird.  "Damn my giblets, drunk again!"

"He don't like Coffin, and that's a fact," said the barber.

"He don't appear to, sir," I agreed.

"You'll find the old fellow down the yard.  That is, if you really
want him."  The barber eyed me doubtfully.  "He's sober enough, just
now; been swearin off liquor for a week.  I dare say you know his
temper's uncertain at such times."

I did not know it, but was too far committed to retreat.

"Well, you'll find him down the yard--green door to the right, with
the brass knocker.  He's out at the back, hammering at his ship, but
he'll hear you fast enough: he's wonderful quick of hearing."

A man, even though he possessed a solid brass knocker, had need to be
quick of hearing in that alley.  Without, street-hawkers were bawling
and carts rattling on the cobbled thoroughfare; from the entrance the
parrot vociferated after me as I went down the passage beneath an
open window whence an invisible violin repeated the opening phrase of
"Come, cheer up, my lads!" plaintively and persistently; while from
the far end, somewhere between it and the harbour side, an irregular
hammering punctuated the music.

I knocked, and the hammering ceased.  The rest of the din ceased not,
nor abated.  In about a minute the green door opened--a cautious inch
or two at first, then wide enough to reveal Captain Coffin.  He wore
a dirty white jumper over his upper garments, and held a formidable
mallet.  I observed that either his face was unnaturally white or the
rims of his eyes were unnaturally red, and that sawdust besprinkled
his hair and collar.  I recalled the tavern sawdust which had
bepowdered his hat on the night of our first meeting, and jumped to a
wrong conclusion.

"Eh?  It's Brooks--the boy Brooks!  Glad to see you, Brooks!
Come inside."

"Thank you, sir," said I, feeling a strong impulse to bolt as he
shook me by the hand, so hot was his and so dry, and so feverishly
it gripped me.

"You're sure no one tracked ye here?" he asked, as he closed the door
behind us.

"There was a barber, sir, at the head of the passage.  I stopped to
ask him the way."

"_He's_ all right, or would be but for that cursed bird of his.
How a man can keep such a bird--"  Captain Coffin broke off.
"I had a two-three nails in my mouth when you knocked.  Nearly made
me swallow 'em, you did.  They was copper nails, too."

I suppose I must have stared at this, for he paused and peered at me,
drawing me over to the window, through which--so thickly grimed it
was--a very little light dribbled from the courtyard into the room.
Yet the room itself was clean, almost spick and span, with a
seaman-like tidiness in all its arrangements--a small room, crowded
with foreign odds-and-ends, among which I remember a walking-stick
even more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walks
abroad (it was white in colour, with lines of small grey
indentations, and he afterwards told me it was a shark's backbone);
a corner-cupboard, too, painted over with green-and-yellow tulips.

"Copper nails, I tell you.  Nothing but the best'll do for your
friend Coffin."  He leaned back, still eyeing me, and tapped me twice
on the chest.  "You heard me say that?  'Your friend' was my words."

"Thank you, sir."

"But you made me jump, you did--me being that way given when off the
liquor."  He hesitated a moment, with a glance over his shoulder at
the tulip-painted cupboard.  "Brooks," he went on earnestly, "you and
me being met on a matter of business, and the same needin'
steadiness--head and hand, my boy, if ever business did--what d'ye
say to a tot of rum apiece?"

Without waiting for my answer, he hobbled off to the cupboard, and
had set two glasses on the table and brimmed them with neat spirit
before I had finished protesting.  The bottle-neck trembled on the
rims of the glasses and struck out a sort of chime as he paused.

"You won't?" he asked, gulping down his own portion; and the liquor
must have been potent, for it brought a sudden water to his eyes.
"Well, so be it--if you've kept off it at your age.  But at mine"--
he drank off the second glassful and wiped his mouth--"I've had
experiences, Brooks.  When you've heard 'em, you wouldn't be
surprised, not if it took a dozen to steady me."

He filled again, and came close to me, holding the glass, yet so
tremulously that the rum spilled over his fingers.

"Ingots, lad--golden ingots!  Bars and wedges of solid gold!
Gems, too, and cath-e-deral plate, with crucifixions and priests'
vestments stiff with pearls and rubies as if they was frozen.
I've seen 'em lyin' tossed in a heap like mullet in a ground-net.
Ay, and blazin' on the beach, with the gulls screamin' over 'em and
flappin', and the sea all around.  I seen it with these eyes, boy" He
stood back and shivered.  "And behind o' that, the Death!  But it
comes equal to all, the Death.  Not if a man had learned every trick
the devil can teach could he lay his course clear o' that.  Could he,
now?"

His words, his uncouth gestures, which were almost spasms, and the
changes in his face--from cupidity to terror, and from terror again
to a kind of wistful hope--fairly frightened me, and I stammered
stupidly that death was the common lot, and there couldn't be a doubt
of it; that or something of the sort.  But what I said does not
matter.  He was not listening, and before I had done he drained and
set down the glass and gripped my arm again.

"I seen all that--ay, an' felt it!"  He drew away and stretched out
both hands, crooking his fingers like talons.  "Ay, an' I seen
_him!_"

"Him?" I echoed.  "But you were talking of Death, sir."

"You may call him that.  There's men lyin' around in the sand--
Did ever you hear, boy, of a poison that kills a man and keeps him
fresh as paint?"

"No, sir."

He nodded.  "No, I reckon you never did.  Fresh as paint it keeps
'em, and white as a figure-head.  The first heap as ever I dug,
believin' it to be the treasure--my reckoning was out by a foot or
two--I came on one o' them.  Three foot beneath the sand I came on
him, an' the gulls sheevoing all the while over my head.  _They_
knew.  And the sea and the dreadful loneliness around us all the
while.  There was three of us, Brooks--I mention no names, you
understand--three of us, and _him_.  Three to one.  Yet he got the
better of us all--as he got the better of the first lot, and _they_
must ha' been a dozen.  Four of them we uncovered afore we struck the
edge of the treasure--uncovered 'em and covered 'em up again pretty
quick, I can tell you.  Fresh as paint they were, in a manner o'
speaking, just as though they'd died yesterday; whereas by Bill's
account they must ha' lain there for more'n a year.  And the faces on
'em white and shinin'--"

Here Captain Coffin shivered, and, glancing about him, poured out
another go of rum.

"You wouldn't blame me for wantin' it, Brooks--not if you'd seen 'em.
That was on the Keys, as they're called--half a dozen banks to
no'thard of the island, and maybe from half a mile to three-quarters
off the shore, which shoals thereabout--sand, all the lot of 'em, and
nothin' but sand; sand and sea-birds, and--what I told you.  But the
bulk lies in the island itself, in two caches; and where the bigger
cache lies _he_ don't know, and nobody knows but only Dan Coffin."

Captain Coffin winked, touched his breast, and wagged his forefinger
at me impressively.

"That makes twice," he went on.  "Twice that devil has got the better
of every one.  But the third time's lucky, they say.  He may be dead
afore this; he'll be getting an oldish man, anyway, and life on that
cursed island can't be good for his health.  We won't go in a crowd
this time, neither; not a dozen, nor yet four of us, but only you an'
me, Brooks.  It's the safer way--the only safe way--an' there'll be
the fatter sharin's.  Now you know--hey?--why Branscome's givin' me
lessons in navigation."

He chuckled, and was moving off mysteriously to a back doorway behind
the dresser, but halted and came back to the table beside which I
stood, making no motion to follow him.

"Look ye here, Brooks," said be.  "If there's anything you don't get
the hang of--anything that takes ye aback, so to speak, in what I'm
tellin' you--you just hitch on an' trust to old Dan Coffin; to old
Dan, as'll do for you more than ever your godfathers an' godmothers
did at your baptism.  You'll pick up a full breeze as you go on.
Man, the treasure's there!  Man, I've handled it, or enough of it to
keep you in a coach-an'-six, with nothing to do but loll on cushions
for the rest o' your days, an' pick your teeth at the crowd.
And look ye here."  He waved a hand around the room.  "I'm old Danny
Coffin, ain't I? poor old drunken Danny Coffin, eh?  Yet cast an eye
about ye.  Nice fittin's, ben't they?  Hitch down my coat off the peg
there; feel the cloth of it; take it between finger and thumb.
Ay, I don't live upon air, nor keep house an' fixtures upon nothin'
at all.  There--if you want more proof!"  He dived a hand into his
trouser-pocket, and held out a golden coin under my nose.
"There! that very dollar came from the island, and I'm offerin' you
the fellows to it by the thousand.  Why? says you.  Because, says I,
you're a good lad, and I've took a fancy to see you in Parlyment.
That's why.  An' it's no return I'm askin' you, but just to believe!"

He made for the back door again, and opened it, letting in the
sunlight; but the sunlight fell in two slanting rays, one on either
side of a dark object which all but filled the entrance, blocking out
my view of the back court beyond.  It was the stern of a tall boat.

The boat, in fact, filled the small back court, leaving an alley-way
scarcely more than two feet wide along either party-wall.  She rested
on the stocks, about three-parts finished, in shape very like a
whaleboat, and in measurement--so Captain Coffin informed me, with a
proprietary wave of the hand--some twenty-nix feet over all, with a
beam of nine feet six inches amidships.  And even to a boy's eye she
showed herself a pretty model, though (as I say) unfinished, with a
foot and more of her ribs standing up bare and awaiting the top
strakes.

"Designed her myself, Brooks.  Eh, but your friend Dan'l Coffin has
an eye for the shape of a boat, though no hand at pencilling, nor
what you might call the cabinet-making part of the job.  There's a
young carpenter lives up the court here--a cleverish fellow.
I got him to help me over the niceties, you understand; but on my
lines, lad.  Climb up and cast your eye over the well I've put in
her.  That's for the treasure; and there'll be side-lockers round the
stern-sheets, and a locker forward big enough to hold a man.
The fellow don't guess their meanin', an' I don't let him guess.
He thinks they're for air-compartments, to keep her buoyant; says
she'll need more ballast than I've allowed her, and wants to know
what sense there is in buildin' a boat so floatey.  _We'll_ ballast
her, Brooks; all in good time.  We'll ship her aboard the Kingston
packet, bein' of a size that she'll carry comfortable as deck-cargo;
and soon as we get to Kingstown we'll--"

"Avast there, cap'n!" interrupted a cheerful voice; and I glanced up,
to see a sandy-haired youth with an extremely good-natured face
nodding at us across the coping of the party-wall.  "Avast there!
Busy with visitors, eh? No?  Well, I've been thinkin' it over, and
I'll take sixpence an hour."

"I don't give a ha'penny over fippence," answered Captain Coffin,
patently taken aback by the interruption.

"Fivepence, then, as a pro-temporary accommodation," said the youth,
and, throwing a leg over the wall, heaved himself over and into the
back yard.  "But it's taking advantage of me; and you know that if I
weren't in love and in a hurry it wouldn't happen."

"You can take fippence, or go to the devil!" said Captain Coffin.
"By the way, Brooks, this is my assistant, Mr. George Goodfellow."



CHAPTER VI.


MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE CHART.

"Good day," said Mr. George Goodfellow, nodding affably.  "I hope I
see you well."

"Pretty well, thank you, sir," I answered.

"And where might you come from, makin' so bold?"

I told him that I was a boarder at Mr. Stimcoe's.

"Then," said Mr. Goodfellow, taking off his coat and extracting a
pencil and a two-foot rule from a pocket at the back of his
small-clothes, "I'm sorry for you.  What a female!"  He chose out a
long and flexible plank from a stack laid lengthwise in the alley-way
along the base of the wall, lifted it, set it on three trestles, and
began to measure and mark it off.  "She's calculated to destroy one's
belief in human nature, that's what she is!  Fairly knocks the gilt
off.  Sometimes I can't hardly realize that she and Martha belong to
the same sex.  Martha is my young woman."

"Yes, sir?"

"Yes.  At present she's living in Plymouth, assistant in a
ham-and-beef shop, as you turn down to the Barbican.  That's her
conscientiousness, instead of sitting at home and living on her
parents.  Don't tell me that women--by which I mean some women--ain't
the equals of men.

"Because," continued Mr. Goodfellow, after a pause, "I know better.
Ever been to Plymouth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Live there?"

"No, sir."

He seemed to be disappointed.

"You go past the bottom of Treville Street, and there the shop is,
slap in front of you.  You can't miss it, because it has a
plaster-of-Paris cow in the window, and the proprietor's called
Mudge.  I go to Plymouth every week on purpose to see her."

"By coach, sir?" I asked, suddenly interested, and eager to compare
notes with him on the Royal Mail and its rivals, the Self-Defence and
Highflyer.

"Coach?  Not a bit of it.  Shank's mare, my boy, every step of the
way; and Martha's worth it.  That's the best of bein' in love; it
makes you want to do things.  By the way," he asked "you ain't
thinkin' to learn the violin, by any chance?"

"No, sir."

"No," he said reflectively.  "You wouldn't--not at Stimcoe's.
Not, mind you, that I believe in coddling.  Nobody ever coddled
Nelson, and yet what happened?"  He shut one eye, put his pencil to
it for an imaginary telescope, and took a nautical survey of the back
premises.

"That rain-shute's out of order," he said, addressing Captain Coffin.
"Give me a shilling to put it right for you, and you'll save yourself
a lot of trouble."

"That's the landlord's affair," answered Captain Coffin, "and I'm not
paying you fippence an' hour to talk.

"But, sir," I put in, "if you walk to Plymouth you must pass the
house where I live--a low-roofed house about three miles this side of
St. Germans village, with a thatch on it, and windows opening right
on the road, and 'Minden Cottage' painted over the door."

"Know it?  Bless my soul, to be sure I know it!  Why, the last time
but one I passed that way, taking note that one of the window-hinges
was out of gear, I knocked and asked leave to repair it.  A lady with
side-curls opened the door, and after the job was done took me into
the parlour an' gave me a jugful of cider over and above the sixpence
charged.  I believe she'd have made it a shillin', too, only when I
told her she lived in a very pretty house, and asked if she owned it
or rented it, she turned very stiff in her manner.  Touchy as tinder
she was; and if that comes of being a lady, I'm glad my Martha's more
sociable."

"That was Plinny--Miss Plinlimmon, I mean.  You didn't catch sight of
my father--Major Brooks?"

"No, I didn't.  But I stopped to pass the time o' day with the
landlord of the Seven Stars Inn, a mile along the road, and there I
heard about 'en.  So you're Major Brooks's son?  Well, then, by all
accounts you've got a thunderin' good father.  Old English gentleman,
straight is a ramrod--pays his way, fears God and honours the King--
such was the landlord's words; and he told me the cottage, as you
call it, was rented at twenty-five pounds a year, with a walled
garden an' a paddock thrown in, which I call dirt cheap."

"I don't see that it's any business of yours what my father pays for
his house!"  said I, my flush of pleasure changing to one of
annoyance.

I glanced round for Captain Coffin's support, but he had walked
indoors, no doubt in despair of Mr. Goodfellow's loquacity.

"No?" queried Mr. Goodfellow.  "No, I dare say not; but you just wait
till you fall in love.  It's a most curious feelin'.  First of all it
makes you want to pull off your coat and turn a hand to anything,
from breakin' stones to playing the fiddle--it don't matter what, so
long as you sweat an' feel you're earnin' money.  Why, just take a
look at my business card!"  He stepped to his coat, pulled one from
his pocket, and glanced over it proudly: 'George Goodfellow,
Carpenter and Decorater--Cabinet Making in all its Branches--Repairs
neatly executed--Funerals and Shipping supplied--Practical Valuer,
and for Probate--Fire Office claims prepared and adjusted--Good
Berths booked on all the Packets, and guaranteed by personal
inspection--Boats built and designed--Instruction in the Violin--Old
instruments cleaned and repaired, or taken in exchange--Rowboat for
hire.'  "There, put it in your pocket and take it away with you.
I've plenty more in my desk."

"That's what it feels like, bein' in love," continued Mr. Goodfellow.
"And, next thing, it makes you take a termenjus interest in houses--
houses an' furnicher an' the price o' things--right down to butter,
as you might say.  I never see a house, now--leastways, a house that
takes my fancy--but I want to be measuring it an' planning out the
furnicher, an' the rent, an' where to stow the firewood, an' sitting
down cosy in it along with Martha--in the mind's eyes, as you may
say--one on each side o' the fire, an' making two ends meet.  I pity
any man that ends a bachelor."  He glanced towards the house.
"By the way, how do you get along with Coffin?"

"He--he seems very kind."

"Tis'n his way with boys as a rule." Mr. Goodfellow tapped his
forehand with the end of his two-foot rule.  "Upper story," he
announced.

"You think so?"

"Sure of it.  Cracked as a bell.  Not," said Mr. Goodfellow, picking
up a saw and making ready to cut the plank lengthwise to his
measurements--"not that there's any harm in the man, until he gets
foul of the drink.  The tale is he gets his money out o' Government--
a sort of pension.  Was mixed up in the Spithead Mutiny, by one
account, an' turned informer; but there's another tale he earned it
by some hanky-panky over in Lisbon, when the Royal Family there
packed up traps from the Brazils; and that's the story I favour, for
(between you and me) I've seen Portugal money in his possession."

So, indeed, had I.  But Captain Coffin himself cut short the talk at
this point by appearing and announcing from the back doorstep that he
had a treat for me if I would come inside.

The treat consisted in a dish of tea--a luxury in those times, rarely
afforded even at Minden Cottage--and a pot of guava-jelly, with
Cornish cream and a loaf of white, wheaten bread.  Such bread, I need
scarcely say, with wheat at 140 shillings a quarter, or thereabouts,
never graced the table of Copenhagen Academy.  But the dulcet,
peculiar taste of guava-jelly is what I associate in memory with that
delectable meal; and to this day I cannot taste the flavour of guava
but I find myself back in Captain Coffin's sitting-room, cutting a
third slice from the wheaten loaf, with the corals and shells of
mother-of-pearl winking at me from among the china on the dresser,
and Captain Coffin seated opposite, with the silver rings in his
ears, and his eyes very white in the dusk and distinct within their
inflamed rims.

"Nothing like tea," he was saying--"nothing like tea to pull a man
round from the drink and cock him back like a trigger."

His right hand was at his breast as he spoke.  It came out swiftly,
as upon a sudden impulse.  His left hand closed upon it and partly
covered it for a moment; then the two hands spread apart and
disclosed an oilskin case.

"Brooks!" he whispered hoarsely.  "Brooks, look at this!"

His fingers plucked at the oilskin wrapper, uncovered it, unfolded an
inner parcel of parchment, and, trembling, spread it out on the
table.

I leaned closer, and I saw a chart of the Island of Mortallone in the
Bay of Honduras dated MDCCLXXVII.  From the scale on the chart, the
island was some eight to ten miles long in the north-south direction,
and perhaps eight miles broad at the widest point.  At the north end
of the island, around a promontory called Gable Point, there were
five small islands called The Keys.  To the south was a wide inlet
with a ship seemingly in the act of sailing towards it.
The eastward edge of this inlet was labelled Cape Fea and just around
from this, in an easterly direction wa a small cove called Try-Again
Inlet.  In the sea to the west of the island was drawn a mythical
sea-monster.

Twice, while I leaned across and stared at it, Captain Coffin's
fingers all but closed over the parchment to hide it from me.
The afternoon light was falling dim, and I stood up to walk around
the edge of the table for a better look.  As I pushed back my chair
he clutched his treasure away, and hid it away again in the breast of
his jumper, at the same moment falling back and passing a hand over
his damp forehead.

"No, no, Brooks!  You mustn't think--Only you took me sudden.
But my promise I've passed, and my promise I'll stand by.
Come to-morrow, lad."

Outside in the back yard I could hear Mr. Goodfellow, the slave of
love, sawing for dear life and Martha.



CHAPTER VII.


ENTER THE RETURNED PRISONER.

Strange to say, although I paid six or eight visits after this to
Captain Coffin, and by invitation, and watched his whaleboat
building, and ate more of his delectable guava-jelly, I saw nothing
more of the chart for several months.

On each occasion he treated me kindly, and made no secret of his
having chosen me for his favourite and particular friend; but
somehow, without any words, he contrived to set up an understanding
that further talk about the chart and the treasure must wait until
the boat should be ready for launching.  In truth, I believe, a kind
of superstitious terror restricted him.  He trusted me, yet was
afraid of overt signs of trust.  You may put it that during this
while he was testing, watching me.  I can only answer that I had no
suspicion of being watched, and that in discussing the boat's
fittings with me--her tanks, wells, and general storage capacity--he
took it for granted that I followed and understood her purpose.
If indeed he was testing me, in my innocence I took the best way to
reassure him; for I honestly looked upon the whole business as
moonshine, and made no doubt that he was cracked as a fiddle.

Christmas came, and the holidays with it.  As Miss Plinlimmon sang--

     "Welcome, Christmas!  Welcome, Yule!
      It brings the schoolboy home from school.
         [N.B.--Vulgarly pronounced 'schule' in the West of England.]
      Puddings and mistletoe and holly,
      With other contrivances for banishing melancholy:
      Boar's head, for instance--of which I have never partaken,
      But the name has associations denied to ordinary bacon."

Dear soul, she had been waiting at the door--so Sally, the cook,
informed me--for about an hour, listening for the coach, and greeted
me with a tremulous joy between laughter and tears.  Before leading
me to my father, however, she warned me that I should find him
changed; and changed he was, less perhaps in appearance than in the
perceptible withdrawal of his mind from all earthly concerns.
He seldom spoke, but sat all day immobile, with the lids of his blind
eyes half lowered, so that it was hard to tell whether he brooded or
merely dozed.  On Christmas Day he excused himself from walking to
church with us, and upon top of his excuse looked up with a sudden
happy smile--as though his eyes really saw us--and quoted Waller's
famous lines:

     "The soul's dark cottage, battered and decay'd,
      Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made. . . ."

To me it seemed rather that, as its home broke up, the soul withdrew
little by little, and contracted itself like the pupil of an eye, to
shrink to a pinpoint and vanish in the full admitted ray.

This our last Christmas at Minden Cottage was a quiet yet a
singularly happy one.  It was good to be at home, yet the end of the
holidays and the return to Stimcoe's cast no anticipatory gloom on my
spirits.  To tell the truth, I had a sneaking affection for
Stimcoe's; and to Miss Plinlimmon's cross-examination upon its
internal economies I opposed a careless manly assurance as hardly
fraudulent as Mr. Stimcoe's brazen doorplate or his lady's
front-window curtains.  The careful mending of my linen, too--for
Mrs. Stimcoe with all her faults was a needlewoman--helped to disarm
suspicion.  When we talked of my studies I sang the praises of
Captain Branscome, and told of his past heroism and his sword of
honour.

"Branscome?  Branscome, of the _Londonderry?_" said my father.
"Ay, to be sure, I remember Branscome--a Godfearing fellow and a good
seaman.  You may take him back my compliments, Harry--my compliments
and remembrances--and say that if Heaven permitted us to meet again
in this world, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to crack a
bottle with him."

I duly reported this to Captain Branscome, and was taken aback by his
reception of it.  He began in a sudden flurry to ask a dozen
questions concerning my father.

"He keeps good health, I trust?  It would be an honour to call and
chat with the Major.  At what hour would he be most accessible to
visitors?"

I stared, for in truth he seemed ready to take me at my word and
start off at once, and at my patent surprise he grew yet more nervous
and confused.

"I have kept a regard for your father, Brooks--a veneration, I might
almost call it.  Sailors and soldiers, if I may say it, are not apt
to think too well of one another; but the Major from the first
fulfilled my conception of all a soldier should be-a gentleman
fearless and modest, a true Christian hero.  Minden Cottage, you say?
And fronting the road a little this side of St. Germans?  Tell me,
pray--and excuse the impertinence--what household does he keep?"

It is hard to write down Captain Branscome's questions on paper, and
divest them, as his gentle face and hesitating kindly manner divested
them, of all offensiveness.  I did not resent them at the time or
consider then impertinent.  But they were certainly close and minute,
and I had reason before long to recall every detail of his catechism.

Captain Coffin, on the other hand, welcomed me back to Falmouth with
a carelessness which disappointed if it did not nettle me.
He fetched out the tea and guava-jelly, to be sure, but appeared to
take no interest in my doings during the holidays, and was
uncommunicative on his own.  This seemed the stranger because he had
important news to tell me.  During my absence he and Mr. Goodfellow
between them had finished the whaleboat.

The truth was--though I did not at once perceive it--that upon its
completion the old man had begun to drink hard.  Drink invariably
made him morose, suspicious.  His real goodwill to me had not
changed, as I was to learn.  He had paid a visit to Captain
Branscome, and give him special instructions to teach me the art of
navigation, the intricacies of which eluded his own fuddled brain.
But for the present he could only talk of trivialities, and
especially of the barber's parrot, for which he had conceived a
ferocious hate.

"I'll wring his neck, I will!" he kept repeating.  "I'll wring his
neck one o' these days, blast me if I don't!"

I took my leave that evening in no wise eager to repeat the visit;
and, in fact, I repeated it but twice--and each time to find him in
the same sullen humour--between then and May 11, the day when the
_Wellingboro'_ transport cast anchor in Falmouth roads with two
hundred and fifty returned prisoners of war.

She had sailed from Bordeaux on April 20, in company with five other
transports bound for Plymouth, and her putting into Falmouth to
repair her steering-gear came as a surprise to the town, which at
once hung out all its bunting and prepared to welcome her poor
passengers home to England with open arm.  A sorry crew they looked,
ragged, wild eyed, and emaciated, as the boats brought them ashore at
the Market Stairs to the strains of the Falmouth Artillery Band.
The homes of the most of them lay far away, but England was England;
and a many wept and the crowd wept with them at sight of their
tatters, for I doubt if they mustered a complete suit of good English
cloth between them.

Stimcoe, I need scarcely say, had given us a whole holiday; and
Stimcoe's and Rogerses met in amity for once, and cheered in the
throng that carried the home-comers shoulder high to the Town Hall,
where the Mayor had arrayed a public banquet.  There were speeches at
the banquet, and alcoholic liquors, both affecting in operation upon
his Worship's guests.  Poor fellows, they came to it after long
abstinence, with stomachs sadly out of training; and the streets of
Falmouth that evening were a panoramic commentary upon the danger of
undiscriminating kindness.

Now at about five o'clock I happened to be standing at the edge of
the Market Stairs, watching the efforts of a boat's crew to take a
dozen of these inebriates on board for the transport, when I heard my
name called, and turned to see Mr. George Goodfellow beckoning to me
from the doorway of the Plume of Feathers public-house.

"It's Coffin," he explained.  "The old fool's sitting in the taproom
as drunk as an owl, and I was reckonin' that you an' me between us
might get him home quiet before the house fills up an' mischief
begins; for by the looks of it there'll be Newgate-let-loose in
Falmouth streets to-night."

I answered that this was very thoughtful of him; and so it was, and,
moreover, providential that he had dropped in at the Plume of
Feathers for two-pennyworth of cider to celebrate the day.

We found Captain Coffin seated in a corner of the taproom settle,
puffing at an empty pipe and staring at vacancy.  "Drunk as an owl"
described his condition to a nicety; for at a certain stage in his
drinking all the world became mirk midnight to him, and he would
grope his way home through the traffic at high noon in profound,
pathetic belief that darkness and slumber wrapped the streets; on
which occasions the dialogue between him and the barber's parrot
might be counted on to touch high comedy.  I knew this, and knew also
that in the next stage he would recover his eyesight, and at the same
time turn dangerously quarrelsome.  If Mr. Goodfellow and I could
start him home quietly, he would have reason to thank us to-morrow.

We were bending over him to persuade him--at first, with small
success, for he continued to stare and mutter as our voices coaxed
without penetrating his muddled intelligence--when a party of
'longshoremen staggered into the taproom, escorting one of the
returned prisoners, a thin, sandy-haired, foxy-looking man, with
narrow eyes and a neck remarkable for its attenuation and the number
and depth of its wrinkles.  This neck showed above the greasy collar
of a red infantry coat, from which the badges and buttons had long
since vanished; and for the rest the fellow wore a pair of dirty
white drill trousers of French cut, French shoes, and a round
japanned hat; but, so far as a glance could discover, neither shirt
nor underclothing.  When the 'longshoremen called for drink he
laughed with a kind of happy shiver, as though rubbing his body round
the inside of his clothes, cast a quick glance at us in our dim
corner, and declared for rum, adding that the Mayor of Falmouth was a
well-meaning old swab, but his liquor wouldn't warm the vitals of a
baby in clouts.

As he announced this I fancied that our persuasions began to have
effect on Captain Coffin, for his eyes blinked as in a strong light,
and he seemed to pull himself together with a shudder; but a moment
later he relapsed again and sat staring.

"Hallo!" said one of the 'longshoremen.  "Who's that you're a-coaxin'
of, you two?  Old Coffin, eh?  Well, take the old shammick home, an'
thank 'ee.  We're tired of 'en here."

As I looked up to answer I saw the returned prisoner give a start,
turn slowly about, and peer at us.  He seemed to be badly scared,
too, for an instant; for I heard a sudden, sharp click in his
throat--

"E-e-eh?  Coffin, is it?  Danny Coffin?  Oh, good Lord!"

He came towards our corner, still peering, and, as he peered,
crouching to that he spread his palms on his knees.

"Coffin?  Danny Coffin?" he repeated, in a voice that, as it lost its
wondering quaver, grew tense and wicked and wheedling.

Captain Coffin's face twitched, and it seemed to me that his eyes,
though rigid, expanded a little.  But they stared into the stranger's
face without seeing him.

The fellow crouched a bit lower, and still lower, as he drew close
and thrust his face gradually within a yard of the old man's.

"Shipmate Danny--messmate Danny--tip us a stave!  The old stave,
Danny!--

     "'And alongst the Keys o' Mortallone!'"

As his voice lifted to it in a hoarse melancholy minor (times and
again since that moment the tune has put me in mind of sea-birds
crying over a waste shore), I saw the shiver run across Captain
Coffin's face and neck, and with that his sight came back to him, and
he bounced upright from the settle, with a horrible scream, his hands
fencing, clawing at air.

The prisoner dropped back with a laugh.  Mr. Goodfellow, at a choking
sound, put out a hand to loosen Captain Coffin's neckcloth; but the
old man beat him off.

"Not you!  Not you!  Harry!"

He gripped me by the arm, and, ducking his head, fairly charged me
past the 'longshoremen and out through the doorway into the street.
As we gained it I heard the stranger in the taproom behind me break
into a high, cackling laugh.



CHAPTER VIII.


THE HUNTED AND THE HUNTER.

All the drunkenness had gone out of Captain Danny.  Gripping my arm,
he steered me rapidly through the knots of loafers, up Market Strand
into the crowded Fore Street, across it and up the hill towards open
country, taking the ascent with long strides which forced me now and
again into a run.  Twice or thrice I glanced up at his face, for I
was scared, and badly scared.  His mouth worked, and I observed small
beads of sweat on his shaven upper lip; but he kept his eyes fastened
straight ahead, and paid no heed to me.

At the head of the street the town melted off into a suburb of
scattered houses, modest domiciles of twenty-five pounds or thirty
pounds rentals, detached, each with its garden and narrow
garden-door, for Falmouth in those days boasted few carriage-folk.
He paused once hereabouts, in the roadway between two walls, and
stood listening, while his right hand trembled on his stick; but
presently gripped my arm again and hurried me forward, nor halted
until we reached the summit, and the open country lay before us, with
the Channel and its long horizon on our left.  Here, in a cornfield
on the very knap of the hill, and some two hundred yards back from
the road, stood the shell of an old windmill, overlooking the sea--
deserted, ruinous, without sails, a building many hundreds of years
older than the oldest house in Falmouth, serving now but as a
landmark for fishermen, and on Sundays a rendezvous for courting
couples.  At the stile leading into the cornfield, Captain Coffin
released me, climbed over, hurried up the footpath to the windmill,
and, having satisfied himself that the building was empty, motioned
me to seat myself on the side where its long shadow pointed down
across a bank of nettles, and beyond the edge of the green young
barley sheeting the slope towards the harbour.

"Brooks," he began--but his voice rattled like a dried pea in a pod,
and he had to moisten his under-lip with his tongue before he could
proceed--"Brooks, are you in any way a superstitious kind o' boy?"

"That depends, sir," said I, diplomatically.

"After all these years, too," he groaned, "an' agen' all likelihood
o' natur'.  But you saw him--hey?  You heard what he said, an' that
cussed song, too?  Sang it, he did; slapped it out at the top of his
voice in a public tavern.  I tell you, Brooks--knowin' what _he_
knows--a man must have all hell runnin' cold in him to sing them
words aloud an' not care who heard."

"Why, he sang but a line of it," said I, "and that harmless enough,
though dismal."

"Is that so, lad--is that so?"  Captain Danny put out a hand like a
bird's claw and hooked me by the cuff.  "Wasn' there nothing in it
about Execution Dock; nothing about ripe medlars--'medlars a-rottin'
on the tree'?  No?"--for I shook my head.  "Well, then, I could be
sworn I heard him singin' them words for minutes, an' me sittin' all
the while wi' the horrors on me afore I dared look in his damned
face.  An' you tell me he piped but a line of it?"  His eyes searched
mine anxiously.  "Brooks," he went on, in a voice almost coaxing,
"I'd give five hundred pound at this moment if you could look me in
the face an' tell me the whole scare was nothing but fancy--that _he_
wasn't there!"

His grasp relaxed as I shook my head again.  Despair grew in his
eyes, and he pulled back his hand.

"I'll put it to you another way," said he, after seeming to reflect
for a while.  "Suppose there was a couple o' men mixed up in an ugly
job--by which I don't mean to say there was any real harm in the
business; leastways not to start with; but, as it went on, these two
men were forced to do something that brought them within reach o' the
law.  We'll put it that, when the thing was done, the one o' this
pair felt it heavy upon his mind, but t'other didn' care no more than
a brass button; an' the one that took it serious--as you might say--
lost sight o' the other for years, an' meantime picked up with a
little religion, an' made oath with hisself that all the profits o'
the job (for there were profits) should come into innocent hands--
You catch on to this?"

I nodded.

"Well, then"--he leant forward, his palm resting amid a bed of
nettles.  He did not appear to feel their sting, although, while he
spoke, I saw the bark of his hand whiten slowly with blisters--
"well, then, you can't go for to argue with me that the A'mighty
would go for to strike the chap that repented by means o' the chap
that didn'.  Tisn' reasonable nor religious to think such a thing--is
it now?"

"He might punish the one first," said I, judicially, "and keep the
other--the wicked man--for a worse punishment in the end.  A great
deal," I added, "might depend on what sort of crime they'd committed.
If 'twas a murder, now--"

"Murder?"  He caught me up sharply, and his eyes turned from watching
me, to throw a quick glance back along the footpath, then fastened
themselves on the horizon.  "Who's a-talkin' of any such thing?"

"I was putting a case, sir--putting it as bad as possible.
'Murder will out,' they say; but with smaller crimes it may be
different."

"Murder?"  He sprang up and began to pace to and fro.  "How came that
in your head, eh?"  He threw me a furtive sidelong look, and halted
before me mopping his forehead.  "I'll tell you what, though: Murder
there'll be if you don't help me give that devil the slip."

"But, sir, he never offered to follow you."

"Because he reckoned I couldn' run--or wouldn', as I've never run
from him yet.  But with you in the secret I must give him leg-bail,
no matter what it costs me.  And, see here, Brooks: you're clever for
your age, an' I want your advice.  In the first place, I daren't go
home; that's where he'll be watchin' for me sooner or later.  Next,
our plans ain't laid for startin' straight off--here as we be--an'
givin' him the go-by.  Third an' last, I daren't go carryin' the
secret about with me; he might happen on me any moment, an' I'm not
in trainin'.  The drink's done for me, boy, whereas _he_'ve been
farin' hard an' livin' clean."  Captain Coffin, with his hands deep
in his pockets, stared down at the transport at anchor below, and
bent his brows.  "I can't turn it over to you, neither," he mused.
"That might ha' done well enough if he hadn' seen you in my company;
but now we can't trust to it."

He took another dozen paces forth and back, and halted before me
again.

"Brooks," he said, "how about your father?"

"The very man, sir," I answered; "that is, if you would trust him."

"Cap'n Branscome tells me he's one in a thousand.  I thought first o'
Branscome, but there's folks as know about my goin' to him for
navigation lessons; an' if Glass got hold o' that, 'twould be a hot
scent."

"Glass?" I echoed.

"That's his d--d name, lad--Aaron Glass; though he've passed under
others, and plenty of 'em, in his time.  Well, now, if I can slip out
o' Falmouth unbeknowns to him, an' win to your father--on the
Plymouth road, I've heard you say and a little this side of
St. Germans--"

"You might walk over to Penryn and pick up the night coach."

Captain Coffin shook his head as he turned out his pockets.

"One shilling, lad, an' two ha'pennies.  It won't carry me.  An' I
daren' go home to refit; an' I daren' send _you_."

"I could take a message to Captain Branscome," I suggested; "an' he
might fetch you the money, if you tell him where to look for it."

"That's an idea," decided Captain Coffin, after a moment's thought.
He unbuttoned his waistcoat, dived a hand within the breast of his
shirt, and pulled forth a key looped through with a tarry string.
This string he severed with his pocket-knife.  "Run you down to the
cap'n's lodgings," said he, handing me the key, "an' tell him to go
straight an' unlock the cupboard in the cornder--the one wi' the
toolips painted over the door.  You know it?  Well, say that on the
second shelf he'll find a small bagful o' money--he needn't stay to
count it--an' 'pon the same shelf, right back in the cornder, a roll
o' papers.  Tell him to keep the papers till he hears from me, but
the bag he's to give to you, an' you're to bring it along quick--
_with_ the key.  Mind, you're not to go with him on any account; an'
if you should run against this Glass on your way, give him a wide
berth--go straight home to Stimcoe's--do _anything_ but lay him on to
my trail by comin' back to tell me.  Understand?  There, now, hark to
the town clock chimin' below there!  Six o'clock it is--four bells.
If you're not back agen by seven I shall know what's happened an'
take steps accordin'.  An' _you'll_ know that I'm on my way to your
father by another tack.  'What tack?' says you.  'Never you mind,'
says I.  If the worst comes to the worst, old Dan Coffin has a shot
left in his locker."

I took the key and ran.  The alley where Captain Branscome lodged lay
a gunshot on this side of the Market Strand; and while I ran I kept--
as the saying is--my eyes skinned for a sight of the enemy.
The coast, however, was clear.

But at Captain Branscome's door a wholly unexpected disappointment
awaited me.  It was locked, and I had not hammered on its shining
brass knocker before a neighbouring housewife put forth her head from
a window in the gathering dusk, and informed me that the captain was
not at home.  He had gone out early in the afternoon, and left his
doorkey with her, saying that he was off on a visit, and would not
return before to-morrow afternoon at earliest.  For a moment I was
tempted to disobey Captain Danny's injunctions, and fetch the money
myself, or at least make a bold attempt for it; but, recollecting how
earnestly he had charged me, and how cheerfully at the last he had
assured me that he had still a shot in his locker, I turned and
mounted the hill again, albeit dejectedly.

The moon was rising as I climbed over the stile into the footpath,
and, recognizing my footstep, the old man came forward to meet me,
out of the shadow on the western side of the windmill, to which he
had shifted his watch.

My ill-success, depressing enough to me, he took very cheerfully.

"I was afraid," said he, "you might be foolin' off for the money on
your own account.  Gone on a visit, has he?  Well, you can hand him
the key to-morrow, with my message.  An' now I'll tell you my next
notion.  The St. Mawes packet"--this was the facetious name given to
a small cutter which plied in those days between Falmouth and the
small village of St. Mawes across the harbour--"the St. Mawes packet
is due to start at seven-thirty.  I won't risk boardin' her at Market
Strand, but pick up a boat at Arwennack, an' row out to hail her as
she's crossin'.  She'll pick me up easy, wi' this wind; but if she
don't, I'll get the waterman to pull me right across.  Bogue, the
landlord of The Lugger over there, knows me well enough to lend me
ten shillin', an' wi' that I can follow the road through Tregony to
St. Austell, an' hire a lift maybe."

I could not but applaud the plan.  The route he proposed cut off a
corner, led straight to Minden Cottage, and was at the same time the
one on which he was least likely to be tracked.  We descended the
hill together, keeping to the dark side of the road.  At the foot of
the hill we parted, with the understanding that I was to run straight
home to Stimcoe's, and explain my absence at locking-up--or, as Mr.
Stimcoe preferred to term it, "names-calling"--as best I might.

Thereupon I did an incredibly foolish thing, which, as it proved,
defeated all our plans and gave rise to unnumbered woes.  I was
already late for names-calling; but for this I cared little.
Stimcoe had not the courage to flog me; the day had been a holiday,
and of a sort to excuse indiscipline; and, anyway, one might as well
suffer for a sheep as for a lamb.  The St. Mawes packet would be
lying alongside the Market Strand.  The moon was up--a round, full
moon--and directly over St. Mawes, so that her rays fell, as near as
might be, in the line of the cutter's course, which, with a steady
breeze down the harbour, would be a straight one.  From the edge of
Market Strand I might be able to spy Captain Coffin's boat as he
boarded.  Let me, without extenuating, be brief over my act of folly.
Instead of making at once for Stimcoe's, I bent my steps towards
Market Strand.  The St. Mawes packet lay there, and I stood on the
edge of the quay, watching her preparations for casting off--the
skipper clearing the gangway and politely helping aboard, between the
warning notes of his whistle, belated marketers who came running with
their bundles.

While I stood there, a man sauntered out and stood for a moment on
the threshold of the Plume of Feathers.  It was the man Aaron Glass,
and, recognizing him, I (that had been standing directly under the
light of the quay-lamp) drew back from the edge into the darkness.
I had done better, perhaps, to stand where I was.  How long he had
been observing me--if, indeed, he had observed me--I could not tell.
But, as I drew back, he advanced and strolled nonchalantly past me,
at five yards distance, down to the quay-steps.

"All aboard for St. Mawes!" called the skipper, drawing in his plank.

"All but one, captain!" answered Glass, and, disdaining it, without
removing his hands from his pockets, put a foot upon the bulwark and
sprang lightly on to her deck.



CHAPTER IX.


CHAOS IN THE CAPTAIN'S LODGINGS.

I leave you to guess what were my feelings as foot by foot the
packet's quarter fell away wider of the quay.  If, as the skipper
thrust off, I had found presence of mind to jump for her, who knows
what mischief might have been prevented?  I could at least--whatever
the consequences--have called a warning to Captain Coffin to give his
enemy a wide-berth.  But I was unnerved; the impulse came too late;
and as the foresail filled and she picked up steerage way, I stood
helpless under the lamp at the quay-head--stood and stared after her,
alone with the sense of my incredible folly.

Somewhere out yonder Captain Coffin was waiting in his shore-boat.
I listened, minute after minute, on the chance of hearing his hail.
A heavy bank of cloud had overcast the moon, and the packet melted
from sight in a blur of darkness.  Worst of all--worse even than the
sting of self-reproach--was the prospect of returning to Stimcoe's
and wearing through the night, while out there in the darkness the
two men would meet, and all that followed their meeting must happen
unseen by me.

This ordeal appeared so dreadful to me in prospect that I began to
cast about among all manner of impracticable plans for escaping it.
Of these the most promising--although I had no money--was to give the
Stimcoes leg-bail and run home; the most alluring, too, since it
offered to deaden the torment of uncertainty by keeping me employed,
mind and body.  I must follow the coach-road.  In imagination I
measured back the distance.  If George Goodfellow walked to Plymouth
and back once a week, why might not I succeed in walking to Minden
Cottage?  Home was home.  I should get counsel and comfort there;
counsel from my father and comfort most assuredly from Plinny.
I needed both, and in Falmouth just now there was none of either.
Even Captain Branscome, who might have helped me--

At this point a sudden thought fetched me up with a jerk.  The enemy,
by pursuing after Captain Danny, had at least left me a clear coast.
I was safe for a while against his spying, and consequently the
embargo was off.  I had no need to wait for morning.  I could go
myself to the old man's lodgings, unlock the corner cupboard, and
bring away the roll of papers.

I dived my hand into my breech-pocket for the forgotten key.  It was
small, and of a curious, intricate pattern.  Almost before my fingers
closed upon it my mind was made up.  Stimcoe's--that is, if I decided
to return to Stimcoe's--might wait.  I might yet decide to break
ship--as Captain Danny would have put it--and make a push for home;
but that decision, too, must wait.  Meanwhile, here was an urgent
errand, and a clear coast for it; here was occupation and
inexpressible relief.  It's an ill wind that blows nobody some good.

I set off at a run.  On my way I met and passed half a dozen gangs of
hilarious ex-prisoners and equally hilarious townsmen escorting them
to the waterside, where the coxswains of the transport's boats were
by this time blowing impatient calls on their whistles.  But the
upper end of the street was well-nigh deserted.  A dingy oil lantern
overhung the pavement a few yards from the ope, and above the ope the
barber's parrot hung silent, with a shawl flung over its cage.
I dived into the dark passage, and, stumbling my way to Captain
Danny's door, found that it gave easily to my hand.

For a moment I paused on the threshold, striving to remember where he
kept his tinder-box and matches.  But the room was small.  I knew the
geography of it, and could easily--I told myself--grope my way to the
corner, find the cupboard, and, feeling for the keyhole, insert the
key.  I was about to essay this when the thought occurred to me that,
as Captain Danny had left the door on the latch, so very likely with
equal foresight he had placed his tinder-box handy--on the table, it
might be.  I put out my hand in the direction where, as I
recollected, the table stood.  It reached into empty darkness.  I
took another step and groped for the table with both hands.
Still darkness, nothing but darkness!  I took yet another step and
struck my foot against a hard object on the floor; and, as I bent to
examine this, something sharp and exceeding painful thrust itself
into my groin--a table-leg, upturned.

Recovering myself, I passed a hand over it.  Yes, undoubtedly it was
a table-leg and the table lay topsy-turvy.  But how came it so?
Who had upset it, and why?  I took another step, sideways, and my
boot struck against something light, and, by its sound, hollow and
metallic.  Stooping very cautiously--for by this time I had taken
alarm and was holding my breath--I passed a hand lightly over the
floor.  My fingers encountered the object I had kicked aside.
It was a tinder-box.  I clutched it softly, and as softly drew myself
upright again.  Could I dare to strike a light?  The overturned
table: What could be the meaning of it?  It could not have been
overturned by Captain Coffin?  By whom then?  Some one must have
visited the lodgings in his absence.

Some one, for aught I knew, was in the room at this moment!--
Some one, back there against the wall, waiting only for me to strike
a light!  I declare that at the thought I came near to screaming
aloud, casting the tinder-box from me and rushing out blindly into
the court.

I dare say that I stood for a couple of minutes, motionless,
listening not with my ears only but with every hair of my head.
Nevertheless, my wits must have been working somehow; for my first
action, when I plucked up nerve enough for it, was an entirely
sensible one.  I set the tinder-box on the floor between my heels,
felt for the table, and righted it; then, picking up the box again,
set it on the table and twisted off the lid.  I found flint and steel
at once, dipped my fingers into the box to make sure of the tinder
and the brimstone matches, and so, after another pause to listen,
essayed to strike out the spark.

This, for a pair of trembling hands, proved no easy business, and at
first promised to be a hopeless one.  But the worst moment arrived
when, the spark struck, I stooped to blow it upon the tinder, the
glow of which must light up my own face while it revealed to me
nothing of the surrounding darkness.  Still, it had to be done; and,
keeping a tight hold on what little remained of my courage, I thrust
in the match and ignited it.

While the brimstone caught fire and bubbled I drew myself erect to
face the worst.  But for what met my eyes as the flame caught hold of
the stick, even the overturned table had not prepared me.

The furniture of the room lay pell-mell, as though a cyclone had
swept through it.  The very pictures hung askew.  Of the drawers in
the dresser some had been pulled out bodily, others stood half open,
and all had been ransacked; while the fragments of china strewn along
the shelves or scattered across the floor could only be accounted for
by some blind ferocity of destruction--a madman, for instance, let
loose upon it, and striking at random with a stick.  As the match
burned low in my fingers I looked around hastily for a candle,
scanning the dresser, the mantel-shelf, the hugger-mugger of linen,
crockery, wall-ornaments, lying in a trail along the floor.  But no
candle could I discover; so I lit a second match from the first and
turned towards the sacred cupboard in the corner.

The cupboard was gone!

I held the match aloft, and stared at the angle of the wall; stared
stupidly, at first unable to believe.  Yes, the cupboard was gone!
Nothing remained but the mahogany bracket which had supported it.
I gazed around, the match burning lower and lower in my hand till it
scorched my fingers.  The pain of it awakened me, and, dropping the
charred end, I stumbled out into the passage, almost falling on the
way as my feet entangled themselves in Captain Coffin's best
table-cloth.

A moment later I was rapping at Mr. George Goodfellow's door.
I knew that he sometimes sat up late to practice his violin-playing;
and in my confusion of terror I heeded neither that the house was
silent nor that the window over his doorway showed a blank and unlit
face to the night.  I knocked and knocked again, pausing to call his
name urgently, at first in hoarse whispers, by-and-by desperately,
lifting my voice as loudly as I dared.

At length a voice answered; but it came from the end of the passage
next, the street, and it was not Mr. Goodfellow's.

"D--n my giblets!" it said, in a kind of muffled scream.
"Drunk again!  Oh, you nasty image!"

It was the barber's accursed parrot.  I could hear it tearing with
its beak at the bars of its cage, as if struggling to pull off the
cloth which covered it.

A window creaked on its hinges, some way up the court.

"Hallo!  Who's there?" demanded a gruff voice.

I took to my heels, and made a dash up the passage for the street.
The cage, as I passed under it, swayed violently with the parrot's
struggles for free speech.

"Drunk again!" it yelled.  "Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me--here's a
pretty time o' night to disturb a lady!"

No longer had I any thought of braving the night and the perils of
the road, but pressed my elbows tight against my ribs and raced
straight for Stimcoe's.



CHAPTER X.


NEWS.

By great good fortune, Mr. Stimcoe had been drinking the health of
the returned prisoners until his own was temporarily affected.
In fact, as I reached Delamere Terrace, panting and excogitating the
likeliest excuse to offer Mrs. Stimcoe, the door of No. 7 opened, and
the lady herself emerged upon the night, with a shawl swathed
carelessly over her masculine neck and shoulders.

I drew up and ducked aside to avoid recognition, but she halted under
the lamp and called to me, in no very severe voice--

"Harry!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"You are late, and I have been needing you.  Mr. Stimcoe is suffering
from an attack."

"Indeed, ma'am?" said I.  "Shall I run for Dr. Spargo?"

She stood for a moment considering.  "No," she decided; "I had better
fetch Dr. Spargo myself.  Being more familiar with the symptoms, I
can describe them to him."

More familiar with the symptoms, poor woman, she undoubtedly was,
though I was familiar enough; and so, for the matter of that, was the
doctor, whose ledger must have registered at least a dozen similar
"attacks."  But I understood at once her true reason for not
entrusting me with the errand.  It would require all her courage, all
her magnificent impudence, to browbeat Dr. Spargo into coming, for I
doubt if the Stimcoes had ever paid him a stiver.

"But you can be very useful," she went on, in a tone unusually
gentle.  "You will find Mr. Stimcoe in his bedroom--at least, I hope
so, for he suffers from a hallucination that some person or persons
unknown have incarcerated him in a French war-prison, such being the
effect of to-day's--er--proceedings upon his highly strung nature.
The illusion being granted, one can hardly be surprised at his
resenting it."

I nodded, and promised to do my best.

"You are a very good boy, Harry," said Mrs. Stimcoe--a verdict so
different from that which I had arrived expecting, or with any right
to expect, that I stood for some twenty seconds gaping after her as
she pulled her shawl closer and went on her heroic way.

I found Mr. Stimcoe in _deshabille_, on the first-floor landing,
under the derisive surveillance of Masters Doggy Bates, Bob
Pilkington, and Scotty Maclean, whose graceless mirth echoed down to
me from the stair-rail immediately overhead.  Ignoring my preceptor's
invitation to bide a wee and take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang
syne, I ran up and knocked their heads together, kicked them into the
dormitory, turned the key on their reproaches, and--these
preliminaries over--descended to grapple with the situation.

Mr. Stimcoe, in night garments, was conducting a dialogue in which he
figured alternately as the tyrant and the victim of oppression.
In the character of Napoleon Bonaparte he had filled a footbath with
cold water, and was commanding the Rev. Philip Stimcoe to strip--as
he put it--to the teeth, and immerse himself forthwith.  As the Rev.
Philip Stimcoe, patriot and martyr, he was obstinately, and with even
more passion, refusing to do anything of the kind, and for the
equally cogent reasons that he was a Protestant of the Protestants
and that the water had cockroaches in it.

"Of course," said Mr. Stimcoe to me, "if you present yourself as
Alexander of Russia, there is no more to be said, always provided"--
and here he removed his nightcap and made me a profound bow--"that
your credentials are satisfactory."

Apparently they were.  At any rate, I prevailed on him to return to
his room, when he took my arm, and, seating himself on the bedside,
recited to me the paradigms of the more anomalous Greek verbs with
great volubility for twenty minutes on end--that is to say, until
Mrs. Stimcoe returned with the doctor safely tucked under her wing.

At sight of me seated in charge of the patient, Dr. Spargo--a mild
little man--lifted his eyebrows.

"Surely, madam--" he began in a scandalized tone.

"This is Harry Brooks." Mrs. Stimcoe introduced me loftily.
"If you wish him to retire, be kind enough to say so, and have done
with it.  Our boarders, I may say, have the run of the house--it is
part of Mr. Stimcoe's system.  But Harry has too much delicacy to
remain where he feels himself _de trop_.  Harry, you have my leave to
withdraw."

I obeyed, aware that the doctor--who had pushed his spectacles high
upon his forehead--was following my retreat with bewildered gaze.
As I expected, no sooner had I regained the dormitory than my
fellow-boarders--forgetting their sore heads, or, at any rate,
forgiving--began to pester me with a hundred questions.  I had to
repeat the punishment on Doggy Bates before they suffered me to lie
down in quiet.

But the interlude, in itself discomposing, had composed my nerves for
the while.  I expected no sleep; had, indeed, an hour ago, deemed it
impossible I should sleep that night.  Yet, in fact, my head was
scarcely on the pillow before I slept, and slept like a top.

The town clock awoke me, striking four.  To the far louder sound of
Scotty Maclean's snoring, in the bed next to mine, I was
case-hardened.  I lay for a second or two counting the strokes, then
sprang out of bed, and, running to the window, drew wide the curtain.
The world was awake, the sun already clear above the hills over St.
Just pool, and all the harbour twinkling with its rays.  My eyes
searched the stretch of water between me and St. Mawes, as though for
flotsam--anything to give me news, or a hint of news.  For many
minutes I stood staring--needless to say, in vain--and so, the
morning being chilly, crept back to bed with the shivers on me.

Two hours later, in the midst of my dressing, I looked out of the
window again, and I saw the St. Mawes packet reaching across towards
Falmouth merrily, quite as if nothing had happened.  Yet something--
I told myself--_must_ have happened.

The Copenhagen Academy enjoyed a holiday that day, for Captain
Branscome failed to present himself, and Mr. Stimcoe lay under the
influence of sedatives.  At eleven in the morning he awoke, and began
to discuss the character of Talleyrand at the pitch of his voice.
Its echoes reached me where I sat disconsolate in the deserted
schoolroom, and I went upstairs to the bedroom door to offer my
services.  Doggy Bates, Pilkington, and Scotty Maclean had hied them
immediately after breakfast to the harbour, to beg, borrow, or steal
a boat and fish for mackerel; and Mrs. Stimcoe, worn out with
watching, set down my faithful presence to motives of which I was
shamefully innocent.  In point of fact, I had lurked at home because
I could not bear company.  I preferred the deserted schoolroom,
though Heaven knows what I would not have given for the dull
distraction of work--an hour of Rule of Three with Captain Branscome,
or Caesar's Commentaries with Mr. Stimcoe.  But Mr. Stimcoe lay
upstairs chattering, and Captain Branscome appeared to be taking a
protracted holiday.  It hardly occurred to me to wonder why.

It was borne in upon me later that during this interval of anarchy in
the Stimcoe establishment--it lasted two days, and may have lasted
longer for aught I know--I wasted little wonder on the continued
absence of Captain Branscome.  I was indeed kept anxious by my own
fears, which did not decrease as the hours dragged by.  From the
window of Mr. Stimcoe's sickroom I watched the St. Mawes packet
plying to and fro.  I had a mind to steal down to the Market Strand
and interrogate her skipper.  I had a mind--and laid more than one
plan for it--to follow up my first impulse of bolting for home, to
discover if Captain Coffin had arrived there.  But Mrs. Stimcoe,
misinterpreting my eagerness to be employed, had by this time
enlisted me into full service in the sick-room.  After the first hint
of surprised gratitude, she betrayed no feeling at all, but bound me
severely to my task.  We took the watching turn and turn about, in
spells of three hours' duration.  I was held committed, and could not
desert without a brand on my conscience.  The disgusting feature of
this is that I was almost glad of it, at the same time longing to
run, and feeling that this, in a way, exonerated me.

At about seven o'clock on the evening of the second day, while I sat
by Mr. Stimcoe's bedside, there came a knock at the front door, and,
looking out of the window--for Mrs. Stimcoe had gone to bully another
sedative out of the doctor, and there was no one in the house to
admit a visitor--I saw Captain Branscome below me on the doorstep.

"Hallo!" said I, as cheerfully as I might, for Mr. Stimcoe was awake
and listening.

"Is--is that Harry Brooks?" asked Captain Branscome, stepping back
and feeling for his gold-rimmed glasses.  But by some chance he was
not wearing them.  After fumbling for a moment, he gazed up towards
the window, blinking.  Folk who habitually wear glasses look
unnatural without them.  Captain Branscome's face looked unnatural
somehow.  It was pale, and for the moment it seemed to me to be
almost a face of fright; but a moment later I set down its pallor to
weariness.

"Mrs. Stimcoe has gone off to the doctor," said I, "and Mr. Stimcoe
is sick, and I am up here nursing him.  There is no one to open, but
you can give me a message."

"I just came up to make sure you were all right."

"If you mean Stim--Mr. Stimcoe, he's better, though the doctor says
he won't be able to leave his bed for days.  How did you come to hear
about it?"

"I've heard nothing about Mr. Stimcoe," answered Captain Branscome,
after a hesitating pause.  "I've been away--on a holiday.  Nothing
wrong with you at all?" he asked.

I could not understand Captain Branscome.  Why on earth should he be
troubling himself about my state of health?

"Nothing happened to upset you?" he asked.

I looked down at him sharply.  As a matter of fact, and as the reader
knows, a great deal had happened to upset me, but that any hint of it
should have reached Captain Branscome was in the highest degree
unlikely, and in any case I could not discuss it with him from an
upstairs window and in my patient's hearing.  So I contented myself
with asking him where he had spent his holiday.

The question appeared to confuse him.  He averted his eyes and,
gazing out over the harbour, muttered--or seemed to mutter, for I
could not catch the answer distinctly--that he had been visiting some
friends; and so for a moment or two we waited at a deadlock.  Indeed,
there is no knowing how long it might have lasted--for Captain
Branscome made no sign of turning again and facing me--but, happening
just then to glance along the terrace, I caught sight of Mrs. Stimcoe
returning with long, masculine strides.

She held an open letter in her hand, and was perusing it as she came.

"It's for you," she announced, coming to a standstill under the
window and speaking up to me after a curt nod towards Captain
Branscome--"from Miss Plinlimmon; and you'd best come down and hear
what it says, for it's serious."

I should here explain that Mr. and Mrs. Stimcoe made a practice of
reading all letters received or despatched by us.  It was a part of
the system.

"I picked it up at the post-office on my way," she explained, as I
presented myself at the front door and put out a hand for the letter.
"Look here, Harry: I know you to be a brave boy.  You must pull
yourself together, and be as brave as ever you can.  Your father--"

"What about my father?"  I asked, taking the letter and staring into
her face.  "Has anything happened?  is he--is he dead?"

Mrs. Stimcoe lifted her hand and lowered it again, at the same moment
bowing her head with a meaning I could not mistake.  I gazed dizzily
at Captain Branscome, and the look on his face told me--I cannot tell
you how--that he knew what the letter had to tell, and had been
expecting it.  The handwriting was indeed Miss Plinlimmon's, although
it ran across the paper in an agitated scrawl most unlike her usual
neat Italian penmanship.

     "My dearest Harry,

     "You must come home to me at once, and by the first coach.
      I cannot tell you what has happened save this--that you must
      not look to see your father alive.  We dwell in the midst of
      alarms which A. Selkirk preferred to the solitude of Juan
      Fernandez; but in this I differ from him totally, and so will
      you when you hear what we have gone through.  Come at once,
      Harry, with the bravest heart you can summon, Such is the
      earnest prayer of:"

     "Your sincere friend in affliction,"
            "Amelia Plinlimmon."

     "P.S.--Pray ask Mrs. Stimcoe to be kind enough to advance the
      fare if your pocket-money will not suffice."

"And I doubt if there's two shillings in the house!" commented Mrs.
Stimcoe, candid for once, "and God knows what I can pawn!"

Captain Branscome plunged his hand into his pocket and drew out a
guinea.  Captain Branscome--who, to the knowledge of both of us,
never had a shilling in his pocket--stood there nervously proffering
me a guinea!



CHAPTER XI.


THE CRIME IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE.


Mrs. Stimcoe, having begged Captain Branscome to take watch for a
while over the invalid, and having helped me to pack a few clothes in
a handbag, herself accompanied me to the coach-office, where we found
the Royal Mail on the point of starting.  The outside passengers,
four in number, had already taken their seats--two on the box beside
the coachman, and two on the seat immediately behind; and by the
light of the lamp overhanging the entry I perceived that their heads
were together in close conversation, in which the coachman himself
from time to time took a share, slewing round to listen or interject
a word and anon breaking off to direct the stowage of a parcel or
call an order to the stable-boys.  Mrs. Stimcoe had stepped into the
office to book my place, and while I waited for her, watching the
preparations for departure, my curiosity led me forward to take a
look at the horses.  There, under the lamp, the coachman caught sight
of me.

"Whe-ew!" I heard him whistle.  "Here's the boy himself!  Going along
wi' us, sonny?" he asked, looking down on me and speaking down in a
voice which seemed to me unnaturally gentle--for I remembered him as
a gruff fellow and irascible.  The outside passengers at once broke
off their talk to lean over and take stock of me; and this again
struck me as queer.

"Jim!" called the coachman (Jim was the guard).  "Jim!"

"Ay, ay!" answered Jim, from the back of the roof, where he was
arranging the mail-bags.

"Here's an outside extry."  He lowered his voice, so that I caught
only these words: "The youngster . . . Minden Cottage . . .
I reckoned they'd be sending--"

"Hey?"

Jim the guard bent over for a look at me, and scrambled down by the
steps of his dickey, just as Mrs. Stimcoe emerged from the office.
She was pale and agitated, and stood for a moment gazing about her
distractedly, when Jim blundered against her, whereat she put out a
hand and spoke to him.  I saw Jim fall back a step and touch his hat.
He was listening, with a very serious face.  I could not hear what
she said.

"Cert'nly, ma'm'," he answered.  "Cert'nly, under the circumstances,
you may depend on me."

He mounted the coach again, and, climbing forward whispered in the
back of the coachman's ear.  The passengers bent their heads to
listen.  They nodded; the coachman nodded too, and stretched down a
hand.

"Can you climb, sonny, or shall we fetch the steps for you?
There, I reckoned you was more of a man than to need 'em!"

Mrs. Stimcoe detained me for a moment to fold me in a masculine hug.
But her bosom might have been encased in an iron corselet for all the
tenderness it conveyed.  "God bless you, Harry Brooks, and try to be
a man!"  Her embrace relaxed, and with a dry-sounding sob she let me
go as I caught the coachman's hand and was swung up to my seat; and
with that we were off and up the cobble-paved street at a rattle.

I do not know the names of my fellow-passengers.  Now and then one
would bend forward and whisper to his neighbour, who answered with a
grunt or a motion of his head; but for the most part, and for mile
after mile, we all sat silent, listening only to the horses' gallop,
the chime of the swingle-bars, the hum of the night wind in our ears.
The motion and the strong breeze together lulled me little by little
into a doze.  My neighbour on the right wore around his shoulders a
woollen shawl, against which after a while I found my cheek resting,
and begged his pardon.  He entreated me not to mention it, but to
make myself comfortable; and thereupon I must have fallen fast
asleep.  I awoke as the coach came to a standstill.  Were we pulling
up to change teams?  No; we were on the dark high-road, between
hedges.  Straight ahead of us blazed two carriage-lamps; and a man's
voice was hailing.  I recognized the voice at once.  It belonged to a
Mr. Jack Rogers, a rory-tory young squire and justice of the peace of
our neighbourhood, and the lamps must be those of his famous light
tilbury.

"Hallo!" he was shouting.  "Royal Mail, ahoy!"

"Royal Mail it is!" shouted back the coachman and Jim the guard
together.

"Got the boy Brooks aboard?"

"Ay, ay Mr. Rogers!  D'ye want him?"

"No; you'll take him along quicker.  My mare's fagged, and I drove
along in case the letter missed fire."  He came forward at a foot's
pace, and pulled up under the light of our lamps.  "Hallo! is that
you, Harry Brooks?"  He peered up at me out of the night.

"Yes, sir," I answered, my teeth chattering between apprehension and
the chill of the night.  I longed desperately to ask what had
happened at home, but the words would not come.

"Right you are, my lad; and the first thing when you get home, tell
Miss Plinlimmon from me to fill you up with vittles and a glass of
hot brandy-and-water.  Give her that message, with Jack Rogers's
compliments, and tell her that I'm on the road making inquiries, and
may get so far as Truro.  By the way"--he turned to Jim the guard--
"you haven't met anything that looked suspicious, eh?"

"Nothing on the road at all," answered Jim.

"Well, so-long! Mustn't delay his Majesty's mails or waste time of my
own.  Good night, Harry Brooks, and remember to give my message!
Good night, gentlemen all!"

He flicked at his mare.  Our coachman gathered up his reins, and away
we went once more at a gallop towards the dawn.  The dawn lay cold
about Minden Cottage as we came in sight of it; and at first, noting
that all the blinds were drawn, I thought the household must be
asleep.  Then I remembered, and shivered as I rose from my seat,
cramped and stiff from the long journey, and so numb that Jim the
guard had to lift me down to the porch.  Miss Plinlimmon, red-eyed
and tremulous, opened the door to me, embraced me, and led me to the
little parlour.

"Is--is my father dead?" I asked, staring vacantly around the room,
and upon the table where she had set out a breakfast.  She bent over
the urn for a moment, and then, coming to me, took my hand and drew
me to the sofa.

"You must be brave, Harry."

"But what has happened?  And how did it happen?  Was--was it sudden?
Please tell me, Plinny!"

She stroked my hand and shivered slightly, turning her face away
towards the window.

"We found him in the summer-house, dear.  He was lying face downward,
across the step of the doorway, and at first we supposed he had
fallen forward in a fit.  Ann made the discovery, and came running to
me in the kitchen, when she had only time to cry out the news before
she was overtaken with hysterics.  I left her to them," went on Miss
Plinlimmon, simply, "and ran out to the summer-house, when by-and-by,
having pulled herself together, she followed me.  By this time it had
fallen dusk--nay, it was almost dark, which accounts for one not
seeing at once what dreadful thing had happened.  Your poor father,
Harry--as you know--used often to sit in the summer-house until quite
a late hour, but he had never before dallied quite so late, and in
the end I had sent Ann out to remind him that supper was waiting.
Well, as you may suppose, he was heavy to lift; and we two women
being alone in the house, I told Ann to run up to the vicarage or to
Miss Belcher's, and get word sent for a doctor, and also to bring a
couple of men, if possible, to carry him into the house.  I had
scarcely bidden her to do this when she cried out, screaming, that
her hand was damp, and with blood.  'You silly woman!' said I, though
trembling myself from head to foot.  But when we fetched a candle, we
saw blood running down the step, and your father--my poor Harry!--
lying in a pool of it--a veritable pool of it.  Ah,  Harry, Harry!"
exclaimed Miss Plinlimmon, relapsing into that literary manner which
was second nature with her, "such a moment occurring in the pages of
fiction, may stimulate a sympathetic thrill not entirely disagreeable
to the reader, but in real life I wouldn't go through it again if you
offered me a fortune."

"Plinny," I cried--"Plinny, what is this you are telling me about
blood?"

"Your poor father, Harry--But be sure their sins will find them out!
Mr. Rogers is setting the runners on track--he is most kind.
Already he has had two hundred handbills printed.  We are offering a
hundred pounds reward--more if necessary--and the whole country is
up--"

"Plinny dear"--I tried to steady my voice as I stood and faced her--
"are you trying to tell me that--that my father has been murdered?"

She bowed her head and cast her apron over it, sobbing.

"Excuse me,  Harry--but in such moments!--And they have found the
cashbox.  It had been battered open, presumably by a stone, and flung
into the brook a hundred yards below Miss Belcher's lodge-gate."

"The cashbox?" My brain whirled.

"The key was in your father's pocket.  He had fetched the box from
his room, it appears, about two hours before, and carried it out to
the summer-house.  I cannot tell you with what purpose he carried it
out there, but it was quite contrary to his routine."

She poured out a cup of tea, and passed it to me with shaking hands.
She pressed me to eat, and all the time she kept talking, sometimes
lucidly, sometimes quite incoherently; and I listened in a kind of
dream.  My father had been well-nigh a stranger to me, and I divined
that I should never sorrow for his loss as those sorrow who have
genuinely loved.  But his death, and the manner of it, shocked me
dreadfully, and from the shock my brain kept harking away to Captain
Coffin and his pursuer.  Could they have reached Minden Cottage?
And, if so, had their visit any connection with this crime?
Captain Danny had started for Minden Cottage. . . . Had he arrived?
And, if so--

I heard Miss Plinlimmon asking: "Would you care to see him--that is,
dear, if you feel strong enough?  His expression is wonderfully
tranquil."

She led me upstairs and opened the door for me.  A sheet covered my
father from feet to chin, and above it his head lay back on the
pillow, his features, clear-cut and aquiline, keeping that massive
repose which, though it might seem to be deeper now in the shade of
the darkened room, had always cowed me while he lived.  It seemed to
me that my father's death, though I ought to feel it more keenly,
made strangely little difference to _him_.

"You will need sleep," said Plinny, who had been waiting for me on
the landing.

I told her that she might get my bed ready, but I would first take a
turn in the garden.  I tiptoed downstairs.  The floor of the
summer-house had been washed.  The vane on its conical roof sparkled
in the sunlight.  I stood before it, attempting to picture the
tragedy of which, here in the clear morning, it told nothing to help
me.  My thoughts were still running on Captain Coffin and the French
prisoner.  Plinny--for I had questioned her cautiously--plainly knew
nothing of any such man.  They might, however, have entered by the
side-gate.  I stepped back under the apple-tree by the flagstaff,
measuring with my eye the distance between this side-gate and the
summer-house.  As I did so, my foot struck against something in the
tall grass under the tree, and I stooped and picked it up--a pair of
gold-rimmed eyeglasses!



CHAPTER XII.


THE BLOODSTAIN ON THE STILE.

My father, in erecting a flagstaff before his summer-house, had
chosen to plant it on a granite millstone, or rather, had sunk its
base through the stone's central hole, which Miss Plinlimmon
regularly filled with salt to keep the wood from rotting.  Upon this
mossed and weather-worn bench I sat myself down to examine my find.

Yet it needed no examination to tell me that the eyeglasses were
Captain Branscome's.  I recognized the delicate cable pattern of
their gold rims, glinting in the sunlight.  I recognized the ring and
the frayed scrap of black ribbon attached to it.  I remembered the
guinea with which Captain Branscome had paid my fare on the coach.
I remembered Miss Plinlimmon's account of the stolen cashbox.

The more my suspicions grew, the more they were incredible.
That Captain Branscome, of all men in the world, should be guilty of
such a crime!  And yet, with this damning evidence in my hand, I
could not but recall a dozen trifles--mere straws, to be sure--all
pointing towards him.  He had been here in my father's garden: that I
might take as proven.  With what object?  And if that object were an
innocent one, why had he not told me of his intention to visit Minden
Cottage?  I remembered how straitly he had cross-examined me, a while
ago, on the topography of the cottage, on my father's household and
his habits.  Again, if his visit had been an innocent one, why, last
evening, had he said nothing of it?  Why, when I questioned him about
his holiday, had he answered me so confusedly?  Yet again, I recalled
his demeanour when Mrs. Stimcoe handed me the letter, and the
impression it gave me--so puzzling at the moment--that he had
foreknowledge of the news.  If this incredible thing were true--if
Captain Branscome were the criminal--the puzzle ceased to be a
puzzle; the guinea and the broken cashbox were only too fatally
accounted for.

Nevertheless, and in spite of the guinea, in spite even of the
eyeglass there in my hand, I could not bring myself to believe.
What?  Captain Branscome, the simple-minded, the heroic?  Captain
Branscome, of the threadbare coat and the sword of honour?  Poor he
was, no doubt--bitterly poor--poor almost to starvation at times.
To what might not a man be driven by poverty in this degree?
And here was evidence for judge and jury.

I glanced around me, and, folding the eyeglasses together in a
fumbling haste, slipped them into my breeches-pocket.  From my seat
beneath the flagstaff I looked straight into the doorway of the
summer-house; but a creeper obscured its rustic window, dimming the
light within; and a terror seized me that some one was concealed
there, watching me--a terror not unlike that which had held me in
Captain Coffin's lodgings.

While I stood there, summoning up courage to invade the summer-house
and make sure, my brain harked back to Captain Coffin and the man
Aaron Glass.  Captain Coffin had taken leave of me in a fever to
reach Minden Cottage.  That was close on sixty hours ago--three
nights and two days.  Why, in that ample time, had he not arrived,
and what had become of him?  Plinny had seen no such man.

I fetched a tight grip on my courage, walked across to the doorway,
and peered into the summer-house.  It was empty, and I stepped
inside--superstitiously avoiding, as I did so, to tread on the spot
where my father's body had lain.

Ann the cook--so Plinny told me--had found his chair overset behind
him, but no other sign of a struggle.  He had been stabbed in front,
high on the left breast and a little below the collar-bone, and must
have toppled forward at once across the step, and died where he fell.
The chair had been righted and set in place, perhaps by Ann when she
washed down the step.  A well-defined line across the floor showed
where the cleaning had begun, and behind it the scanty furniture of
the place had not been disturbed.  At the back, in one corner stood
an old drum, with dust and droppings of leaf-mould in the wrinkles of
its sagged parchment, and dust upon the drumsticks thrust within its
frayed strapping; in the corner opposite an old military chest which
held the bunting for the flagstaff--a Union flag, a couple of
ensigns, and half a dozen odd square-signals and pennants.  I stooped
over this, and as I did so I observed that there were finger-marks on
the dust at the edge of the lid; but, lifting it, found the flags
inside neatly rolled and stowed in order.  On the table lay my
father's Bible and his pocket Virgil, the latter open and laid face
downwards.  I picked it up, and the next moment came near to dropping
it again with a shiver, for a dry smear of blood crossed the two
pages.

Here, not to complicate mysteries, let me tell at once what Ann told
me later--that she had found the book lying in the blood-dabbled
grass before the step, when it must have fallen from my father's
hand, and had replaced it upon the table.  But for the moment,
surmising another clue, I stared at the page--a page of the seventh
"Aeneid"--and at the stain which, as if to underline them, started
beneath the words--

     "Hic domus, haec patria est.  Genitor mihi talia namque
     (Nunc repeto) Anchises fatorum arcana reliquit."

I set down the book as I had found it, stepped forth again into the
sunshine.  The scouring of the step had left a moist puddle below it,
where the ground, no doubt, had been dry and hard on the evening of
the murder.  At the edge of this puddle the turf twinkled with clean
dew--close, well-trimmed turf sloping gently to the stream which
formed the real boundary of the garden; but Miss Belcher, the
neighbouring land-owner, a person of great wealth and the most
eccentric good-nature, had allowed my father to build a wall on the
far side, for privacy, and had granted him an entrance through it to
her park--a narrow wooden door to which a miniature bridge gave
access across the stream.

There were thus three ways of approaching the summer-house; (1) by
the path which wound through the garden from the house, (2) across
the turf from the side-gate, which opened out of a lane, or
woodcutters' road, running at right angles from the turnpike and
alongside the garden fence towards the park; and (3) from the park
itself, across the little bridge.  From the bridge a straight line to
the summer-house would lie behind the angle of sight of any one
seated within; so that a visitor, stepping with caution, might
present himself at the doorway without any warning.

You may say that, my father being blind, it need not have entered
into my calculations whether his assailant had approached in full
view of the doorway or from the rear.  But the assailant--let us
suppose for a moment--was some one ignorant of my father's blindness.
This granted, as it was at least possible, he would be likeliest to
steal upon the summer-house from the rear.  I cannot say more than
that, standing there by the doorway, I felt the approach from the
streamside to be most dangerous, and therefore the likeliest.

In a few minutes, as I well knew, Plinny would be coming in search of
me, to persuade me back to the house to breakfast and bed.  I stepped
down to the streamside, where the beehives stood in a row on the
brink, paused for a moment to listen to the hum within them, and note
that the bees were making ready to swarm, crossed the bridge, and
tried the rusty hasp of the door.  It yielded stiffly; but as I
pulled the door inwards it brushed aside a mass of spider's web,
white and matted, that could not be less than a month old.  Also it
brushed a clump of ivy overgrowing the lintel, and shook down about
half an ounce of powdery dust into my hair and eyes.  I scarcely
troubled to look through.  Clearly, the door had not been opened for
many weeks--possibly not since my last holidays.

I recrossed the bridge and inspected the side-gate.  This opened, as
I have said, upon a lane never used but by the woodmen on Miss
Belcher's estate, and by them very seldom.  It entered the park by a
stone bridge across the stream and by a ruinous gate, the gaps of
which had been patched with furze faggots.  The roadway itself was
carpeted with last year's leaves from a coppice across the lane--
leaves which the winter's rains had beaten into a black compost; and
almost facing the side-gate was a stile whence a tangled footpath led
into the coppice.

I had stepped out into the lane, and was staring over the stile into
the green gloom of the coppice, when I heard Plinny's voice calling
to me from the house, and I had half turned to hail in answer when my
eyes fell on the upper bar of the stile.

Across the edge of it ran a dark brown smear--a smear which I
recognized for dried blood.

"Harry!  Harry dear!"

"Plinny!"  I raced back through the garden, and almost fell into her
arms as she came along the path between the currant-bushes in search
of me.  "Plinny--oh, Plinny!" I gasped.

"My dear child, what has happened?"

Before I could answer there came wafted to our ears from eastward a
sound of distant shouting, and almost simultaneously, from the
high-road near at hand, the trit-trot of hoofs approaching at great
speed from westward, and the "Who-oop!" of a man's voice, lusty on
the morning air.

"That will be Mr. Jack Rogers," said Plinny.  "He brings us news, for
certain!  Yes; he is reining up."

We ran through the house together, and reached the front door in time
to witness a most extraordinary scene.

Mr. Jack Rogers's tilbury had run past the house and come to a halt a
short gunshot beyond, where it stood driverless--for Mr. Jack Rogers
had dismounted, and was gesticulating with both arms to stop a man
racing down the road to meet him.  A moment later, as this runner
came on, a second hove in sight over the rise of the road behind
him--a short figure, so stout and round that in the distance it
resembled not so much a man as a ball rolling in pursuit.

"Hi!  Stop, you there!" shouted Mr. Rogers; but the first runner
might have been deaf, for all the attention he paid.

"Good Lord!" said I, catching my breath; "it's Mr. George
Goodfellow!"

"In the King's name!" Mr. Rogers shouted, making a dash to intercept
him.  And a moment later the two had collided, and were rolling in
the dust together.

I ran towards them, with Plinny--brave soul!--at my heels, and
arrived to find Mr. Rogers, hatless and exceedingly dishevelled,
kneeling with both hands around the neck of his prostrate antagonist,
and holding his face down in the dust.

"You'd best stand up and come along quietly," Mr. Rogers adjured
him.

"Gug-gug--how the devil c-can I stand up if you won't lul-lul-let
me?" protested Mr. Goodfellow, reasonably enough.

"Very well, then." Mr. Rogers relaxed his grip.  "Stand up!
But you're my prisoner, so let's have no more nonsense!"

"I'd like to know what's taken ye to pitch into a man like this?"
demanded Mr. Goodfellow in a tone of great umbrage, as he shook the
dust out of his coat and hair.  "A fellow I never seen before, not to
my knowledge! Why--hallo!" said he, looking up and catching sight of
me.

"Hallo!" said I.

"Hallo!" said Mr. Rogers, in his turn.  "Do you two know each other?"

"Why, of course we do!" said Mr. Goodfellow.

"I don't know where 'of course' comes in." Mr. Rogers eyed him with
stern suspicion.  "Why were you running away from the constable?"

Mr. Goodfellow glanced towards the stout, round man, who by this time
had drawn near, mopping, as he came, a face as red as the red
waistcoat he wore.

"Him a constable?  Why, I took him for a loonatic!  They put the
loonatics into them coloured weskits, don't they?"

"Nothing of the sort.  You're thinking of the warders," Mr. Rogers
answered.

"Oh?  Then I made a mistake," said Mr. Goodfellow, cheerfully.

"Look here, my friend, if you're thinking to play this off as a joke
you'll find it no joking matter.  Madam"--he turned to Miss
Plinlimmon--"is this the man who called at the cottage two days ago."

"Yes," answered Plinny; "and once before, as I remember."

"And on each occasion did you observe something strange in his
manner?"

"Very strange indeed.  He kept asking questions about the house and
garden, and the position of the rooms and about poor Major Brooks,
and what rent he paid, and if he was well-to-do.  And he took out a
measure from his pocket and began to calculate--"

"Quite so." Mr. Rogers turned next to the constable.  "Hosken," he
asked, "you have been making inquiries about this man?"

"I have, sir; all along the road, so far as Torpoint Ferry."

"And you learnt enough to justify you in arresting him?"

"Ample, y'r worship.  There wasn't a public-house along the road but
thought his behaviour highly peculiar.  He's a well-known character,
an' the questions he asks you would be surprised.  He plies between
Falmouth and Plymouth, sir, once a week regular.  So, actin' on
information that he might be expected along early this morning, I
concealed myself in the hedge, sir, the best part of two miles
back--"

"You didn't," interrupted Mr. Goodfellow.  "I saw your red stomach
between the bushes thirty yards before ever I came to it, and
wondered what mischief you was up to.  I'm wondering still."

"At any rate, you are detained, sir, upon suspicion," said Mr. Rogers
sharply, "and will come with us to the cottage and submit to be
searched."

"Brooks," asked Mr. Goodfellow feebly, "what's wrong with 'em?
And what are you doing here?"

"Mr. Rogers," I broke in, "I know this man.  His name is Goodfellow;
he lives at Falmouth; and you are wrong, quite wrong, in suspecting
him.  But what is more, Mr. Rogers, you are wasting time.
There's blood on the stile down the lane.  Whoever broke into the
garden must have escaped that way--by the path through the
plantation--"

"Eh?" Mr. Rogers jumped at me and caught me by the arm.  "Why the
devil--you'll excuse me, Miss Plinlimmon--but why on earth, child, if
you have news, couldn't you have told it at once?  Blood on the
stile, you say?  What stile?"

"The stile down the lane, sir," I answered, pointing.  "And I
couldn't tell you before because you didn't give me time."

"Show us the way, quick!  And you, Hosken, catch hold of the mare and
lead her round to Miss Belcher's stables.  Or, stay--she's dead beat.
You can help me slip her out of the shafts and tether her by the gate
yonder.  That's right, man; but don't tie her up too tight.  Give her
room to bite a bit of grass, and she'll wait here quiet as a lamb."

"What about the prisoner, sir?" asked the stolid Hosken.

"D--n the prisoner!" answered Mr. Rogers, testily, in the act of
unharnessing.  "Slip the handcuffs on him.  And you, Miss Plinlimmon,
will return to the cottage, if you please."

"I'd like to come, too, if I may," put in Mr. Goodfellow.

"Eh?"  Mr. Rogers, in the act of rolling up one of the traces, stared
at him with frank admiration.  "Well, you're a sportsman, anyhow.
Catch hold of his arm, Hosken, and run him along with us.  Yes, sir,
though I say it as a justice of the peace, be d--d to you, but I like
your spirit.  And with the gallows staring you in the face, too!"

"Gallows?  What gallows?" panted Mr. Goodfellow in my ear a few
moments later, as we tore in a body down the lane.  "Hush!" I panted
in answer.  "It's all a mistake."

"It ought to be." We drew up by the stile, where I pointed to the
smear of blood, and Mr. Rogers, calling to Hosken to follow him,
dashed into the coppice and down the path into the rank undergrowth.
I, too, was lifting a leg to throw it over the bar, when Mr.
Goodfellow plucked me by the arm.  "Terribly hasty friends you keep
in these parts, Brooks," he said plaintively.  "What's it all about?"

"Why, murder!"  said I.  "Haven't you heard, man?"

"Not a syllable!  Good Lord, you don't mean--"  He passed a shaky
hand over his forehead as a cry rang back to us through the coppice.

"Here, Hosken, this way!  Oh, by the Almighty, be quick, man!"

I vaulted over the stile, Mr. Goodfellow close after me.  For two
hundred yards and more--three hundred, maybe--we blundered and
crashed through the low-growing hazels, and came suddenly to a
horrified stand.

A little to the left of the path, between it and the stream, Mr.
Rogers and the constable knelt together over the body of a man half
hidden in a tangle of brambles.

The corpse's feet pointed towards the path, and I recognized the
shoes, as also the sea-cloth trousers, before Mr. Rogers--cursing in
his hurry rather than at the pain of his lacerated hands--tore the
brambles aside and revealed its face--the face of Captain Coffin,
blue-cold in death and staring up from its pillow of rotted leaves.

I felt myself reeling.  But it was Mr. Goodfellow who reeled against
me, and would have fallen if Hosken the constable had not sprung upon
one knee and caught him.

"If you ask my opinion," I heard Hosken saying as he raised himself
and held Mr. Goodfellow upright, steadying him, "'tis a case o'
guilty conscience, an' I never in my experience saw a clearer."



CHAPTER XIII.


CLUES IN A TANGLE.

"Guilty or not," said Mr. Jack Rogers, sharply, "I'll take care he
doesn't escape.  Run you down to Miss Belcher's kennels, and fetch
along a couple of men--any one you can pick up--to help.  And don't
make a noise as you go past the cottage; the women there are
frightened enough already.  Come to think of it, I heard some fellows
at work as I drove by just now, thinning timber in the plantation
under the kennels.  Off with you, man, and don't stand gaping like a
stuck pig!"

Thus adjured, Constable Hosken ran, leaving us three to watch the
body.

"The man's pockets have been rifled, that's plain enough," Mr. Rogers
muttered, as he bent over it again, and with that I suppose I must
have made some kind of exclamation, for he looked up at me, still
with a horrified frown.

"Hallo!  You know him?"

I nodded.

"His name's Coffin.  He came here from Falmouth."

For a moment Mr. Rogers did not appear to catch the words.  His eyes
travelled from my face to Mr. Goodfellow's.

"You, too?"

"Knew him intimate.  Know him?  Why, I live but two doors away from
him in the same court."

"Look here," said Mr. Rogers, slowly, after a pause, "this is a black
business, and a curst mysterious one, and I wasn't born with the gift
of seeing daylight through a brick wall.  But speaking as a
magistrate, Mr. What's-your-name, I ought to warn you against saying
what may be used for evidence.  As for you, lad, you'd best tell as
much as you know.  What d'ye say his name was?"

"Coffin, sir."

"H'm, he's earned it.  The back of his head's smashed all to pieces.
Lived in Falmouth, you say?  And you knew him there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then what was he doing in these parts?"

"He started to call on my father, sir."

"Eh?  You knew of his coming?"

"Yes, sir.  We planned it together."

Mr. Rogers, still on his knees, leaned back and regarded me fixedly.

"You planned it together?" he repeated slowly.  "Well, go on.
He started to call on your father?  Why?"

"He wanted to show my father something," said I, with a glance at Mr.
Goodfellow.  "Are you sure, sir, there's nothing in his pockets?"

"Not a penny-piece.  I'll search 'em again if you insist, though I
don't like the job."

"He carried it in his breast-pocket, sir; there, on the left side."

"Then your question's easy to answer." Mr. Rogers turned back the
lapel and pointed.  The pocket hung inside out.  "But what was it he
carried?"

I hesitated, with another glance towards Mr. Goodfellow, who at the
same moment uttered a cry and sprang for a thicket of brambles
directly behind Mr. Rogers's back.  Mr. Rogers leapt up, with an
oath.

"No, you don't!" he threatened, preparing to spring in pursuit.

But Mr. Goodfellow, not heeding him, plunged a hand among the
brambles and drew forth a walking-stick of ebony, carved in rings,
ending with a ferrule in an iron spike--Captain Coffin's
walking-stick.

"I glimpsed at it, there, lyin' like a snake," he began, and let fall
the stick with another sudden, sharp cry.  "Ur-rh!  There's blood
upon it!"

Mr. Rogers picked it up and examined it loathingly.  Blood there
was--blood mixed with grey hairs upon its heavy ebony knob, and blood
again upon its wicked-looking spike.

"This settles all question of the weapon," he said.  "The owner of
this--"

We cried out, speaking together, that the stick belonged to the
murdered man; and just then a voice hailed us, and Constable Hosken
came panting up, with two of Miss Belcher's woodmen at his heels.

Mr. Rogers directed them to fetch a hurdle.  Then came the question
whither to carry the corpse, and after some discussion one of the
woodmen suggested that Miss Belcher's cricket pavilion lay handy, a
couple of hundred yards beyond the rise of the park, across the
stream.  "At this time of year the lady wouldn't object--"

Mr. Rogers shuddered.

"And the last time I saw the inside of it 'twas at Lydia's
Cricket-Week Ball--and the place all flags and lanterns, and a good
third of the men drunk!  Well, carry him there if you must, but damme
if I'll ever find stomach to dance there again!"

The men lifted their burden and carried it out into the lane, where
the rest of us pulled away the furze-bushes stopping he gate into the
park, and so followed the body up the green slope towards the rise,
over which, as we climbed, the thatched roof of the pavilion slowly
hove into sight.

"Hallo!"  Mr. Rogers halted and stared at the bearers, who also had
halted.  "What the devil noise is that?"

The noise was that of a sudden blow or impact upon timber.
After about thirty seconds it was repeated, and our senses told us
that it came from within the pavilion.

"I reckon, sir," suggested one of the woodmen, "'tis Miss Belcher
practising."

"Good Lord!  Come with us, Harry--the rest stay where you are,"
Mr. Rogers commanded, and ran towards the pavilion; and as we started
I heard a whizzing and cracking within, as of machinery, followed by
a double crack of timber.

"Lydia!  Lydia Belcher!"

"Hey! What's the matter now?" I heard Miss Belcher's voice demand, as
he burst in through the doorway.  "Take care, the catapult's loaded!"
A whiz, and again a crack.  "There now!  Oh, well fielded, indeed!
Well fiel--Eh?  Caught you on the ankle, did it?  Well, and you're
lucky it didn't find your skull, blundering in upon a body in this
fashion."

The first sight that met me as I reached the doorway was Mr. Jack
Rogers holding one foot and hopping around with a face of agony.
From him my astonished gaze travelled to Miss Lydia Belcher, whom I
must pause to describe.

I have hinted before that Miss Belcher was an eccentric; but I
certainly cannot have prepared the reader--as I was certainly
unprepared myself--for Miss Belcher as we surprised her.

She wore top-boots, but this is a trifle, for she habitually wore
top-boots.  Upon them, and beneath the short skirt of a red flannel
petticoat, she had indued a pair of cricket-guards.  Above the red
flannel petticoat came, frank and unashamed, an ample pair of stays;
above them, the front of a yet ampler chemise and a yellow bandanna
kerchief tied in a sailor's knot; above these, a middle-aged face
full of character and not without a touch of moustache on the upper
lip; an aquiline nose, grey eyes that apologized to nobody, a broad
brow to balance a broad, square jaw, and, on the top of all, a
square-topped beaver hat.  So stood Miss Belcher, with a cricket-bat
under her arm; an Englishwoman, owner of one of England's "stately
homes"; a lady amenable to few laws save of her own making, and to no
man save--remotely--the King, whose health she drank sometimes in
port and sometimes in gin-and-water.

"Good morning, Jack!  Sorry to cut you over with that off-drive; but
you shouldn't have come in without knocking.  Eh? Is that Harry
Brooks?"  Her face grew grave for a moment before she turned upon Mr.
Rogers that smile which, if usually latent and at the best not
entirely feminine, was her least dubitable charm.  "Now, upon my
word.  Jack, you have more thoughtfulness than ever I gave you credit
for."

Mr. Rogers stared at her.

"An hour's knockabout with me will do the child more good than moping
in the house, and I ought to have thought of it myself.  Come along,
Harry Brooks, and play me a match at single wicket.  Help me push
away the catapult there into the corner.  Will you take first
innings, or shall we toss?"

The catapult indicated by Miss Belcher was a formidable-looking
engine with an iron arm or rod terminating in a spoon-shaped socket,
and worked by a contrivance of crank and chain.  You placed your
cricket-ball in the socket, and then, having wound up the crank and
drawn a pin which released the machinery, had just time to run back
and defend your wicket as the iron rod revolved and discharged the
ball with a jerk.  The rod itself worked on a slide, and could be
shortened or extended to vary the trajectory, and the exercise it
entailed in one way and another had given Miss Belcher's cheeks a
fine healthy glow.

"Whew!" she exclaimed, tucking the bat under her arm and wiping her
forehead with a loose end of her yellow bandana.  "I'm feelin' like
the lady in 'The Vicar of Wakefield'; by which I don't mean the one
that stooped to folly, but the one that was all of a muck of sweat."

"My dear Lydia," gasped Mr. Rogers, "we haven't come to play cricket!
Put down your bat and listen to me.  There's the devil to pay in this
parish of yours.  To begin with, we've found another body--"

"Eh?  Where?"

"In the plantation under the slope here--close beside the path, and
about two gunshots off the lane."

"What have you done with it?"

"Two of your fellows are fetching it along.  I was going to ask you
as a favour to let it lie here for the time while we follow up the
search."

"Of course you may.  But who is it?"

"An old man in sea clothes.  Harry knows him; says he hails from
Falmouth, and that his name is Coffin.  And we've arrested a young
fellow on suspicion, though I begin to think he hasn't much to do
with it; but, as it happens, he comes from Falmouth too, and knows
the deceased."

Miss Belcher hitched an old riding-skirt off a peg and indued it over
her red flannel petticoat, fastening it about her waist with a
leathern strap and buckle.

"Well, the first thing is to fetch the body along, and then I'll go
down with you and have a look."

"I've halted the men about a hundred yards down the hill.  I thought
perhaps you'd step straight along with me to the house, so as to be
out of the way when they--But, anyhow, if you insist on coming, we
can fetch across the cricket-field and down to the left, so that you
needn't meet it."

"Bless the man!"--Miss Belcher had turned to another peg, taken down
a loose weather-stained gardening-jacket, and was slipping an arm
into the sleeve--"you don't suppose, do you, that I'm the sort of
person to be scared by a dead body?  Open the door, please, and lead
the way.  This is a serious business, Jack, and I doubt if you have
the head for it."

Sure enough, the sight of the dead body on the hurdle shook Miss
Belcher's nerve not at all, or, at any rate, not discernibly.

"Humph!" she said.  "Take him to the pavilion and cover him decently.
You'll find a yard or two of clean awning in the left-hand corner of
the scoring-box."  She eyed Mr. Goodfellow for a couple of seconds
and swung round upon Mr. Rogers.  "Is that the man you've arrested?"

Mr. Rogers nodded.

"Fiddlestick-end!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Fiddlestick-end!  Look at the man's face.  And you call yourself a
justice of the peace?"

"It was thrust upon me," said Mr. Rogers, modestly.  "I don't say
he's guilty, mind you; and, of course, if you say he isn't--"

"Look at his face!" repeated Miss Belcher; and, turning, addressed
Mr. Goodfellow.  "My good man, you hadn't any hand in this--eh?"

"No, ma'am; in course I hadn't," Mr. Goodfellow answered fervently.

"There!  You hear what he says?"

"Lydia, Lydia!  I've the highest possible respect for your judgment;
but isn't this what you might cull a trifle--er--summary?"

"It saves time," said Miss Belcher.  "And if you're going to catch
the real culprit, time is precious.  Now take me to see the spot."

But at this point Mr. Goodfellow's emotions overmastered him, and he
broke forth into the language of rhapsody.

"O woman, woman!" exclaimed Mr. Goodfellow, "whatever would the world
do without your wondrous instink!"

"Bless the man!"--Miss Belcher drew back a pace--"is he talking of
me?"

"No, ma'am; generally, or, as you might say, of the sex as a whole.
Mind you, I won't go so far as to deny that the gentleman here--or
the constable, for that matter--had some excuse to be suspicious.
But to think o' me liftin' a hand against poor old Danny Coffin!
Why, ma'am, the times I've a-led him home from the public when
incapable is not to be numbered; and only at this very moment in my
little shop, home in Falmouth, I've a corner cupboard of his under
repair that he wouldn't trust to another living soul!  And along
comes you an' say, 'That man's innocent!  Look at his face!' you
says, which it's downright womanly instink, if ever there was such a
thing in this world."

"A corner cupboard!" I gasped.  "You have the corner cupboard?"

Mr. Goodfellow nodded.  "I took it home unbeknowns to the old man.
Many a time he'd spoken to me about repairin' it, the upper hinge
bein' cracked, as you may remember.  But when it came to handin' it
over I could never get him.  So that afternoon, the coast bein' clear
and him sitting drunk in the Plume o' Feathers, as again you will
remember--"

But here Miss Belcher shot out a hand and gripped my collar to steady
me as I reeled.  I dare say that hunger and lack of sleep had much to
do with my giddiness; at any rate, the grassy slope had begun all of
a sudden to heave and whirl at my feet.

"Drat the boy!  _He's_ beginning now!"

"Take me home,"  I implored her, stammering.  "Please, Miss Belcher!"

"Now, I'll lay three to one," said Miss Belcher, holding me off and
regarding me, "that no one has thought of giving this child an honest
breakfast.  And"--she turned on Mr. Jack Rogers--"you call yourself a
justice of the peace!"



CHAPTER XIV.


HOW I BROKE OUT THE BED ENSIGN.

We were seated in council in the little parlour of Minden Cottage--
Miss Belcher, Miss Plinlimmon, Mr. Jack Rogers, Mr. Goodfellow, and
I.  Mr. Goodfellow had been included at Miss Belcher's particular
request.  Constable Hosken had been despatched to search the
plantation thoroughly and to report.  Two other constables had
arrived, and were coping, in front and rear of the cottage, with a
steady if straggling incursion of visitors from the near villages and
hamlets of St. Germans, Hessenford, Bake, and Catchfrench, drawn by
reports of a second murder to come and stand and gaze at the
premises.  The report among them (as I learned afterwards) ran that a
second body--alleged by some to be mine, by others to be Ann the
cook's--had been discovered lying in its own blood in the attic; but
the marvel was how the report could have spread at all, since Miss
Belcher had sworn the two woodmen to secrecy.  Whoever spread it
could have known very little, for the sightseers wasted all their
curiosity on the house and concerned themselves not at all with the
plantation.

From the plantation Miss Belcher had led me straight to the house,
and there in the darkened parlour I had told my story, corroborated
here and there by Mr. Goodfellow.  In the intervals of my narrative
Miss Belcher insisted on my swallowing great spoonfuls of hot
bread-and-milk, against which--faint though I was and famished--my
gorge rose.  Also the ordeal of gulping it under four pairs of eyes
was not a light one.  But Miss Belcher insisted, and Miss Belcher
stood no nonsense.

I told them of my acquaintance with Captain Coffin; how he had
invited me to his lodgings and promised me wealth; of his studying
navigation, of his reference to the island and the treasure hidden on
it, and of the one occasion when he vouchsafed me a glimpse of the
chart; of the French prisoner, Aaron Glass, and how we escaped from
him, and of the plan we arranged together at the old windmill; how
Captain Danny had taken boat to board the St. Mawes packet; how the
man Glass had followed; how I had visited the lodgings, and of the
confusion I found there.  I described the ex-prisoner's appearance
and clothing in detail, and here I had Mr. Goodfellow to confirm me
under cross-examination.

"An' the cap'n," said he, "was afraid of him.  I give you my word,
ladies and gentlemen, I never saw a man worse scared in my life.
Put up his hands, he did, an' fairly screeched, an' bolted out o' the
door with his arm linked in the lad's."

Three or four times in the course of my narrative I happened to
thrust my hands into my breeches-pocket, and was reminded of the gold
eyeglass concealed there.  I had managed very artfully to keep
Captain Branscome entirely out of the story, but twice under
examination I was forced to mention him--and each time, curiously
enough, in answer to a question of Miss Belcher's.

"You are sure this Captain Coffin showed the chart to no one but
yourself?" she asked.

"I am pretty sure, ma'am."

"There was always a tale about Falmouth that Cap'n Danny had struck a
buried treasure," said Mr. Goodfellow.  "'Twas a joke in the publics,
and with the street boys; but I never heard tell till now that any
one took it serious."

"He was learning navigation," mused Miss Belcher.  "What was the name
of his teacher?"

"A Captain Branscome, ma'am.  He's a teacher at Stimcoe's."

"Lives in the house, does he?"

"No, ma'am."

"A _Captain_ Branscome, you say?"

"Yes, ma'am.  He's a retired packet captain, and lame of one leg.
Every one in Falmouth knows Captain Branscome."

"H'm!  Wouldn't this Captain Branscome wonder a little that a man of
your friend's age, and (we'll say) a bit wrong in his head, should
want to learn navigation?"

"He might, ma'am."

"He certainly would," snapped Miss Belcher.  "And wouldn't this
Captain Branscome know it was perfectly useless to teach such a man?"

"I dare say he would, ma'am," I answered, guiltily recalling Captain
Branscome's own words to me on this subject.

"Then why did he take the man's money, eh?  Well, go on with your
story."

I breathed more easily for a while, but by-and-by, when I came to
tell of the discussion by the old windmill, I felt her eyes upon me
again.

"Wait a moment.  Captain Coffin gave you a key, and this key was to
open the corner cupboard in his lodgings.  Wasn't it rather foolish
of him to send you, seeing that this Aaron Glass had seen you in his
company, and would recognize you if he were watching the premises,
which was just what you both feared?"

"He didn't count on me to go," I admitted; "at least, not first
along."

"On whom, then?"

"On Captain Branscome, ma'am."

"Oh!  Did he send you with that message to Captain Branscome?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then why didn't you tell us so?  Well, when you took the message,
what did Captain Branscome say?  And why didn't he go?"

"He was not at home, ma'am.  Mr. Stimcoe had given us a holiday in
honour of the prisoners."

"I see.  So Captain Branscome was off on an outing?  When did he
return?"

"I didn't see him that evening, ma'am."

"That's not an answer to my question.  I asked, When did he return?"

"Not until yesterday afternoon."

I had to think before giving this answer, so long a stretch of time
seemed to lie between me and yesterday afternoon.

"Where had he been spending his holiday meanwhile?"

"He didn't tell me, ma'am."

"At all events, he didn't turn up for school next day, nor the next
again, until the afternoon.  Queer sort of academy, Stimcoe's.
Did Mr. Stimcoe make any remark on his under-teacher's absence?"

"No, ma'am."

"The school went on just as usual?"

"No-o, ma'am "--I hesitated--"not quite just as usual.  Mr. Stimcoe
was unwell."

"Drunk?"

"My dear Miss Belcher!" put in the scandalized Plinny.  "A scholar,
and such a gentleman!"

"Fiddlestick-end!" snapped the unconscionable lady, not removing her
eyes from mine.  "Was this man Stimcoe drunk, eh?  No; I beg your
pardon," she corrected herself.  "I oughtn't to be asking a boy to
tell tales out of school. 'Thou shalt not say anything to get another
fellow into trouble'--that's the first and last commandment--eh,
Harry Brooks?  But, my good soul"--she turned on Plinny--"if 'drunk
and incapable' isn't written over the whole of that seminary, you may
call me a Dutchwoman!"


"There's a point or so clear enough," she announced, after a pause,
when I had finished my story.

"We must placard the whole country with a description of that
prisoner chap Glass," said Mr. Jack Rogers; "and I'd best be off to
Falmouth and get the bills printed at once."

"Indeed?" said Miss Belcher, dryly.  "And pray how are you proposing
to describe him?"

"Why, as for that, I should have thought Harry's description here,
backed up by Mr. Goodfellow's, was enough to lay a trail upon any
man.  My dear Lydia, a fellow roaming the country in a red coat,
drill trousers, and a japanned hat!"

"It would obviously excite remark: so obviously that the likelihood
might even occur to the man himself."

Mr. Rogers looked crestfallen for a moment.

"You suggest that by this time he has changed his rig?"

"I suggest, rather, that he started by changing it, say, as far back
as St. Mawes.  Some one must ride to St. Mawes at once and make
inquiries."  Miss Belcher drummed her fingers on the table.
"But the man," she said thoughtfully, "will have reached Plymouth
long before this."

"You don't think it possible he went back the same way he came?"

"In a world, Jack, where you find yourself a magistrate, all things
are possible.  But I don't think it at all likely."

"It's a rum story altogether," mused Mr. Rogers.  "A couple of
murders in this part of the world, and mixed up with an island full
of treasure!  Why, damme, 'tis almost like Shakespeare!"

"For my part," observed Miss Plinlimmon, with great simplicity,
"though sometimes accused of leaning unduly toward the romantic, I
should be inclined to set down this story of Captain Coffin's to
hallucination, or even to stigmatize it as what I believe is called
in nautical parlance 'a yarn.'"

"And small blame to you, my dear!" agreed Miss Belcher; "only, you
see, when folks go about killing one another, the hallucination
begins to look disastrously as if there were something in it."

"Yet I still fail to see," urged Plinny, "why our dear Major should
have fallen a victim."

"It's plain as a pikestaff, if you'll excuse me," Mr. Rogers answered
her.  "This Coffin carried the chart on him, meaning to deliver it
into the Major's keeping.  He came here, entered the garden by the
side-gate, found the Major in the summer-house, told his story,
handed over the chart, and was making his way back to the high-road
through the plantation, when he came full on this man Aaron Glass,
who had tracked him all the way from St. Mawes.  Glass fell on him,
murdered him, rifled his pockets, and, finding nothing--but having
some hint, perhaps--pursued his way to the garden here.  There in the
summer-house he found the Major, who meanwhile had fetched his
cashbox from the house and locked the chart up in it.  What followed,
any one can guess."

"Not a bad theory, Jack!" murmured Miss Belcher, still drumming
softly on the table.  "Indeed, 'tis the only explanation, but for one
or two things against it."

"For instance?"

"For instance, I don't see why the Major should want to go to the
house and bring back his cashbox to the garden.  Surely the simple
thing was to take the paper, or whatever it was, straight to the
house, lock it up, and leave the cashbox in its usual place? I don't
see, either, what that box was doing, later on, in the brook below my
lodge-gate; for, by every chance that I can reckon, the murderer--
supposing him to be this man Glass--would have pushed on in haste for
Plymouth, whereas my lodge-gate lies half a mile in the opposite
direction."

"Are those all your objections?" asked Mr. Rogers.  "Because, if so,
I must say they don't amount to much."

"They don't amount to much," Miss Belcher agreed, "but they don't, on
the other hand, quite cover all my doubts.  However, there's less
doubt, luckily, about the next step to be taken.  You send Hosken or
some one to Torpoint Ferry to inquire what strangers have crossed for
Plymouth during these forty-eight hours.  You meanwhile borrow my
roan filly--your own mare is dead-beat--clap her in the tilbury, and
off you go to St. Mawes, and find out how this man Glass got hold of
a change of clothes.  Take Mr. Goodfellow with you, and while you are
playing detective at St. Mawes, he can cross over to Falmouth and
fetch along the corner cupboard.  Harry has the key, and we'll open
it here and read what the captain has to say in this famous roll of
paper.  It won't do more than tantalize us, I very much fear, seeing
that the chart has disappeared, and likely enough for ever."


But it had not.

It so happened that while I stood by my father's bedside that morning
I had noticed a flag, rolled in a bundle and laid upon the chest of
drawers beside his dressing-table.  I concluded at once that Plinny
had fetched it from the summer-house to spread over his coffin.

Women know nothing about flags.  This one was a red ensign, in those
days a purely naval flag, carried (since Trafalgar) by the highest
rank of admirals.  Ashore, any one could hoist it, but the flag to
cover a soldier's body was the flag of Union.

This had crossed my mind when I caught sight of the red ensign on the
chest of drawers; and again in the summer-house, as I lifted the lid
of the flag-locker and noted the finger-marks in the dust upon it, I
guessed that Plinny had visited it with pious purpose, and,
woman-like, chosen the first flag handy.  I had meant to repair her
mistake, and again had forgotten my intention.

Mr. Jack Rogers had driven off for St. Mawes, with Mr. Goodfellow in
the tilbury beside him.  Constable Hosken was on his way to Torpoint.
Miss Belcher had withdrawn to her great house, after insisting that I
must be fed once more and packed straight off to bed; and fed I duly
was, and tucked between sheets, to sleep, exhausted, very nearly the
round of the clock.

Footsteps awoke me--footsteps on the landing outside my bedroom.
I sat up, guessing at once that they were the footsteps of the
carpenter and his men, arrived in the dawn with the shell of my
father's coffin.  Almost at once I remembered the red ensign, and,
waiting until the footsteps withdrew, stole across, half dressed, to
my father's room to change it.  The faint rays of dawn drifted in
through the closed blinds.  The coffin-shell lay the length of the
bed, and in it his body.  The carpenter's men had left it uncovered.
In the dim light, no doubt, they had overlooked the flag, which I
felt for and found.  Tucking it under my arm, I closed the door and
tiptoed downstairs, let myself out at the back, and stole out to the
summer-house.

There was light enough within to help me in selecting the Union flag
from the half-dozen within the locker.  I was about to stow the red
ensign in its place when I bethought me that, day being so near, I
might as well bend a flag upon the flagstaff halliards and half-mast
it.

So, with the Union flag under one arm, I carried out the red ensign,
bent it carefully, still in a roll, and hoisted it to the truck.
In half-masting a flag, you first hoist it in a bundle to the
masthead, break it out there, and thence lower it to the position at
which you make fast.

I felt the flag's toggle jam chock-a-block against the truck of the
staff, and gave a tug, shaking out the flag to the still morning
breeze.  A second later something thudded on the turf close at my
feet.

I stared at it; but the halliards were in my hand, and before picking
it up I must wait and make them fast on the cleat.  Still I stared at
it, there where it lay on the dim turf.

And still I stared at it.  Either I was dreaming yet, or this--this
thing that had fallen from heaven--was the oilskin bag that had
wrapped Captain Coffin's chart.

I stooped to pick it up.  At that instant the side-gate rattled, and
with a start I faced, in the half light--Captain Branscome.



CHAPTER XV.


CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION--THE MAN IN THE LANE.

He opened the gate and came across the turf to me.  I observed that
his hand trembled on his walking-cane, and that he dragged his
injured leg with a worse limp than usual; also--but the uncertain
light may have had something to do with this--his face seemed of one
colour with the grey dust that powdered his shoes.

"Good morning, Harry!"

"Good morning, sir," I answered, crushing the oilskin into my pocket
and waiting for his explanation.

"You are surprised to see me?  The fact is, I have something to tell
you, and could not rest easy till it was off my mind.  I have
travelled here by Russell's waggon,[1] but have trudged a good part
of the way, as you see."  He glanced down at his shoes.  "The pace
was too slow for my impatience.  I could get no sleep.  Though it
brought me here no faster, I had to vent my energies in walking."
His sentences followed one another by jerks, in a nervous flurry.
"You are surprised to see me?" he repeated.

"Why, as to that, sir, partly I am and partly I am not.  It took me
aback just now to see you standing there by the gate; and," said I
more boldly, "it puzzles me yet how you came there and not to the
front door, for you couldn't have expected to find me here in the
garden at this time in the morning."

"True, Harry; I did not."  He paused for a moment, and went on--"It is
truth, lad, that I meant to knock at your front door, by-and-by, and
ask for you.  But, the hour being over-early for calling, I had a
mind, before rousing you out of bed, to walk down the lane and have a
look over your garden gate.  Nay," he corrected himself, "I do not
put it quite honestly, even yet.  I came in search of something."

"I can save you the trouble, perhaps," said I, and, diving a hand
into my breech-pocket, I pulled out the gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

He made no offer to take them, though I held them out to him on my
open palm, but fell back a step, and, after a glance at them, lifted
his eyes and met mine honestly, albeit with a trouble in his face.

"You found them?"

"Yes."

"To whom have you shown them?"

"To nobody."

"Yet there has been some inquiry?"

I nodded.

"At which you were present?"

I nodded again.

"And you said nothing of this--this piece of evidence?  Why?

"Because"--I hesitated for a couple of seconds and then gulped
hesitation down--"because I could not believe that you--that you were
really--"

"Thank you, Harry."

"All the same, sir, your name was mentioned."

"Eh?"  He was plainly astonished.  "My name mentioned?  But why?
How? since no one saw me here, and if, as you say, you hid this only
evidence--"

"It came up, sir, when they examined me about Captain Danny.
You know--do you not?--that they have found his body, too."

"I heard the news being cried in Truro streets as we came through.
Poor old Coffin!  It is all mystery to me--mystery on mystery!
But how on earth should my name have come up in connection with him?"

"Why, about your teaching him navigation, sir."

Captain Branscome passed a hand over his forehead.

"Navigation?  Yes; to be sure, I taught him navigation--or, rather,
tried to.  But what of that?"

"Well, sir, Miss Belcher seemed to think it suspicious."

He reached out a hand, and, taking the glasses from me, sat down upon
the stone base of the flagstaff and began feebly to polish them.

"Impossible!" he said faintly, as if to himself; then aloud:
"The man was a friend of yours, too, wasn't he?"

"Yes, sir; if you mean Captain Coffin, he was a friend of mine."

"And of mine; and, as you say, he came to me to learn navigation.
Now, what connection there can be between that and his being murdered
a dozen miles inland--"

But here he broke off, and we both looked up and across the stream
as, with a click of the latch, the door there creaked and opened, and
Miss Belcher entered the garden.  She wore an orange-coloured
dressing-gown, top-boots to guard her ankles from the morning dew, a
red kerchief tied over her brow to keep her iron-grey locks in place,
and over it her customary beaver hat--_et vera incessu patit dea_.
Even thus attired did Miss Belcher, a goddess of the dawn, come
striding over the footbridge and across the turf to us; and the
effect of the apparition upon Captain Branscome's nerves, after a
night of travel alongside Russell's van, I can only surmise.
I did not observe it, having for the moment no eyes for him.

"Hallo!" said Miss Belcher, walking straight up to us, and halting,
with a hand planted, washerwoman fashion, on either hip, as Captain
Branscome staggered to his feet and saluted.  "Hallo! who's this?"

"Captain Branscome, ma'am," stammered I.

"I thought as much.  And what is Captain Branscome doing here?"

"By your leave, ma'am," said Captain Branscome, "I--I was just
dropping in for a talk here with my friend Harry Brooks."

"H'm!" sniffed Miss Belcher, and eyed him up and down for a full ten
seconds with an uncompromising stare.  "As an explanation, sir, you
will allow that to be a trifle unsatisfactory.  What have you been
eating lately?"

"Madam?"

Captain Branscome stared at her in weak bewilderment; and, indeed,
the snort which accompanied Miss Belcher's question seemed to accuse
him of impregnating the morning air with a scent of onions.

"You can answer a plain question, I hope?" said she.  "When did you
eat last, and what was it?"

"To be precise, ma'am--though I don't understand you--it was an
apple, and about--let me see--seven hours ago."

Miss Belcher turned to me and nodded.

"In other words, the man's starving.  I don't blame you, Harry
Brooks.  One can't look for old heads on young shoulders.  But, for
goodness' sake, take him into the house and give him something to
eat!"

"Madam--" again began Captain Branscome, still a prey to that mental
paralysis which Mrs. Belcher's costume and appearance ever produced
upon strangers, and for which she never made the smallest allowance.

"Don't tell me!" she snapped.  "I breed stock and I buy 'em.  I know
the signs."

"I was about to suggest, ma'am, that--travel-stained as I am--a wash
and a shave would be even more refreshing."

"H'm!  You're one of those people--eh?--that study appearances?"
(In the art of disconcerting by simple interrogation I newer knew
Miss Belcher's peer, whether for swiftness, range, or variety.)
"Brought a razor with you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Take him to the house, Harry; but first show me where the hens have
been laying."

Half an hour later, as Captain Branscome, washed, brushed, and
freshly shaven, descended to the breakfast-parlour, Miss Belcher
entered the house by the back door, with her hat full of new-laid
eggs.

"Nothing like a raw egg to start the day upon," she announced.
"I suck 'em, for my part; but some prefer 'em beaten up in a dish of
tea."

She suited the action to the word, and beat up one in the Captain's
teacup while Plinny carved him a slice of ham.

"Ladies," he protested, "I am ashamed.  I do not deserve this
hospitality.  If you would allow me first to tell my story!"

"_You're_ all right," said Miss Belcher.  "Couldn't hurt a fly, if
you wanted to.  There! Eat up your breakfast, and then you can tell
us all about it."

The two ladies had, each in her way, a knack of making her meaning
clear without subservience to the strict forms of speech.

"It will be a weight off one's mind," declared Plinny, "even if it
should prove to be the last straw."

"There's one thing to be thankful for," chimed in Miss Belcher,
"and that is, Jack Rogers has gone to St. Mawes.  When there's
serious business to be discussed I always thank a Providence that
clears the men out of the way."

I glanced at Captain Branscome.  Assuredly he had come with no
intention at all of unbosoming himself before a couple of ladies.
He desired--desired desperately, I felt sure--to confide in me alone.
But Miss Belcher's off-handish air of authority completely nonplussed
him; he sat helplessly fidgeting with his breakfast-plate.

"To tell you the truth, ladies," he began, "I had not expected this--
this audience.  It finds me, in a manner of speaking, unprepared."
He ran a finger around the edge of his saucer after the manner of one
performing on the musical glasses, and threw a hunted glance at the
window, as though for a way of escape.  "My name, ladies, is
Branscome.  I was once well-to-do, and commanded a packet in the
service of his Majesty's Postmasters-General.  But times have altered
with me, and I am now an usher in a school, and a very poor man."

He paused; looked up at Miss Belcher, who had squared her elbows on
the table in very unladylike fashion; and cleared his throat before
proceeding--

"You will excuse me for mentioning this, but it is an essential part
of my story."

"The Stimcoes," suggested Miss Belcher, "didn't pay up--eh?"

"Mr. Stimcoe--though a scholar, ma'am--has suffered from time to time
from pecuniary embarrassment."

"--Traceable to drink," interpolated Miss Belcher, with a nod towards
Plinny.  "No, sir; you need not look at Harry: _he_ has told us
nothing.  I formed my own conclusions."

"Mrs. Stimcoe, ma'am--for I should tell you she keeps the purse--is
too often unable to make two ends meet, as the saying is.  I believe
she paid when she could, but somehow my salary has always been in
arrear.  I have used remonstrance with her, before now, to a degree
which it shames me to remember; yet, in spite of it, I have sometimes
found myself on a Saturday, after a week's work, without a loaf of
bread in the cupboard.  I doubt, ma'am, if any one who has not
experienced it can wholly understand the power of mere hunger to
degrade a man; to what lengths he can be urged, willy-nilly, as it
were, by the instinct to satisfy it.  There were Sabbaths, ma'am,
when to attend divine worship seemed a mockery; the craving drove me
away from all congregations of Christian men and out into the fields,
where--I tell it with shame, ma'am--I have stolen turnips and eaten
them raw, loathing the deed even worse than I loathed the vegetable,
for the taste of which--I may say--I have a singular aversion.
Well, among my pupils was Harry here, whom I discovered to be the son
of an old friend of mine.  I dare to call the late Major James Brooks
a friend in spite of the difference between our stations in life--a
difference he himself was good enough to forget.  Our acquaintance
began on the _Londonderry_ transport, which I commanded, and in which
I brought him home from Corunna to Plymouth in the January of 1809.
It ended with the conclusion of that short and anxious passage.
But I had always remembered Major Brooks as one who approached, if
ever man did, the ideal of an officer and a gentleman.  Now at first,
ladies, the discovery suggested no thought to me beyond the
pleasure of knowing that my old friend was alive and hale, and the
hope of seeing Harry grow up to be as good a man as his father.
But by-and-by I found a thought waking and growing, and awake again
and itching after I had done my best to kill it, that the Major might
be moved by the story of an old shipmate brought so low.  God forgive
me, ladies!"  Captain Branscome put up a hand to cover his brow.
"The very telling of it degrades me over again; but I came here to
make a clean breast, and there is no other way.  I had cross-examined
Harry about the Major and his habits--not always allowing to myself
why I asked him many trivial questions.  And then suddenly the
temptation came to a head.  Certain Englishmen discharged from the
French war-prisons were landed at Plymouth.  The town turned out to
welcome the poor fellows home, and the Mayor entertained them at a
banquet, to which also he invited some two hundred townsmen.
Among the guests he was good enough to include me; for it has been a
consolation to me, ladies, and a source of pride, that my friends in
Falmouth have not withdrawn in adversity the respect which in old
days my uniform commanded."

"Captain Branscome is not telling you the half of it," I broke in
eagerly.  "Every one in Falmouth knows him to be a hero.  Why, he has
a sword of honour at home, given him for one of the bravest battles
ever fought!"

"Gently, boy--gently!"  Captain Branscome corrected me, with a smile,
albeit a sad one.  "Youth is generous, ladies; it sees these things
through a haze which colours and magnifies them, and--and it's a very
poor kind of hero you'll consider me before I have done.  Where was
I?  Ah, yes, to be sure--the banquet.  His Worship can little have
guessed what his invitation meant to me, or that, while others
thanked him for a compliment, to me it offered a satisfying meal such
as I had not eaten for months.  Mr. Stimcoe had given the school a
holiday.  In short, I attended.

"I fear, ladies, that the food and the generous wine together must
have turned my head--there is no other explanation; for when the meal
was over and I sat listening to the speeches, but fumbling with a
glass of port before me, scarcely with the half-crown in my pocket
which must carry me over another week's house-keeping, all of a
sudden the man inside me rose in revolt.  I felt such poverty as mine
to be unendurable, and that I was a slave, a spiritless fool, to put
up with it.  There must be hundreds of good, Christian folk in the
world who had only to know to stretch out a hand of help and gladly,
as I would have helped such a case in the days of my own prosperity.
Remember, I am not putting this forward as a sober plea.  I know it
now to be false, self-cheating, the apology that every beggar makes
for himself, the specious argument that every poor man must resist
who would hold fast by his manhood.  But there, with the wine in me
and the juices of good meat, the temptation took me at unawares and
mastered me as I had never allowed it to master me while I hungered.
I saw the world in a sudden rosy light; I felt that my past
sufferings had been unnecessary.  I thought of Major Brooks--"

"Bless the man!" interjected Miss Belcher.  "He's coming to the point
at last."

"Your pardon, ma'am.  I will be briefer.  I thought of Major Brooks.
I took a resolve there and then to extend my holiday; to walk hither
to Minden Cottage, and lay my case before him.  The banquet had no
sooner broken up than I started.  I reached Truro at nightfall, and
hired a bed there for sixpence.  Early next morning I set forward
again.  By this time the impulse had died out of me, but I still
walked forward, playing with my intention, always telling myself that
I could relinquish it and turn back to Falmouth, cheating--yes, I
fear deliberately cheating--myself with the assurance until more than
half the journey lay behind me, and to turn back would be worse than
pusillanimous.  At St. Austell a carrier offered me a lift, and
brought me to Liskeard.  Thence I walked forward again, and in the
late afternoon came in sight of Minden Cottage.

"I recognized it at once from Harry's description, and at first
I was minded to walk up and knock boldly at the front door.
But remembering also the lad's account of the garden and how the
Major would spend the best part of his day there--and partly, I
fancy, being nervous and uncertain with what form of words to present
myself--I pulled up at the angle of the house, where the lane comes
up alongside the garden wall to join the road, and halted, to collect
myself and study my bearings.

"The time was about twenty minutes after five, and the light pretty
good.  But the lane is pretty well overgrown, as you know.  I looked
down and along it, and it appeared to end in a tangle or brambles.
I turned my attention to the house, and was studying it through my
glasses, taking stock of its windows and chimneys, and generally
(as you might say) reckoning it up, along with the extent of its
garden, when, happening to take another glance down the lane, to run
a measure of the garden wall--or perhaps a movement caught my eye--
I saw a man step across the path between the brambles, out of the
garden, as you might say, and into the plantation opposite.  The path
being so narrow, I glimpsed him for half a second only.  But the
glimpse of him gave me a start, for, if to suppose it had been
anywise possible, I could have sworn the man was one I had known in
Falmouth and left behind there."

"Captain Coffin!" I exclaimed.

"Ay, lad, Captain Coffin--Captain Danny Coffin.  But what should he
be doing at Minden Cottage?"

"The quicker you proceed, sir," said Miss Belcher, rapping the table,
"the sooner we are likely to discover."


[1] Russell's waggons--"Russell and Co., Falmouth to London"--were
huge vehicles that plied along the Great West Road under an escort of
soldiers, and conveyed the bullion and other treasure landed at
Falmouth by the Post Office packets.  They were drawn, always at a
foot-pace, by teams of six stout horses.  The waggoner rode beside on
a pony, and inside sat a man armed with pistols and blunderbuss.
Poor travellers used these waggons, walking by day, and sleeping by
night beneath the tilt.



CHAPTER XVI.


CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION--THE FLAG AND THE CASHBOX.

"Well, ma'am," resumed Captain Branscome, "so strong was the likeness
to old Coffin, and yet so incredible was it he should be in these
parts, that, almost without stopping to consider, I turned down the
lane on the chance of another glimpse of the man.  This brought me,
of course, to the stile leading into the plantation; but the path
there, as you know, takes a turn among the trees almost as soon as it
starts, and runs, moreover, through a pretty thick undergrowth.
The fellow, whoever he was, had disappeared.

"I can't say but what I was still puzzled, though the likeliest
explanation--indeed, the only likely one--seemed to be that my eyes
had played me a trick.  I had pretty well made up my mind to this when
I turned away from the stile to have a look at the garden gate on the
other side of the lane; and over it, across the little stretch of
turf, I caught sight of the summer-house and of Major Brooks standing
there in the doorway with a bundle between his hands-a bundle of
something red, which he seemed to be wrapping round with a piece of
cord.

"Here, then, was the very man I had come to see; and here was a
chance of getting speech with him and without the awkwardness of
asking it through a servant, perhaps of having to invent an excuse
for my visit.  Without more ado, therefore, I made bold to lift the
latch of the gate and step into the garden.

"At the sound of the latch--I can see him now--Major Brooks lifted
his head with a curious start, and tucked the bundle under his arm.
The movement was like that of a man taken at unawares, and
straightening himself up to meet an attack.  I cannot describe it
precisely, but that was just the impression it made on me, and it
took me aback for a moment, so that I paused as the gate fell-to and
latched itself behind me.

"'Halt there!' the Major commanded, facing me full across the turf.
'Halt, and tell me, please, why you have come back!'

"This puzzled me worse for a moment, for the light was good, though
drawing towards sunset, and it seemed impossible that, looking
straight at me, he could mistake me for the man who had just left the
garden.  Then I remembered what Harry had told me of his father's
blindness.

"My silence naturally made him more suspicious.

"'Who is it there?  Your name, please?' he demanded sharply.

"' Sir,' I answered, 'I beg your pardon for coming thus unannounced,
but my name is Branscome, and I had once the honour to be shipmate
with you on board the _Londonderry_ transport.'

"For a while he continued to stare at me in his blind way.

"'Yes,' he said slowly, at length; 'yes; I remember your voice, sir.
But what in the name of wonder brings you to my garden just now?'

"'Your son Harry, sir,' said I, 'some time ago gave me a message from
you.  If ever (he said) I found myself in the neighbourhood of Minden
Cottage you would be pleased to receive a visit from me.'

"'Yes,' said he, but still with a something in his voice between
wonder and suspicion; 'that's true enough.  I have always retained
the highest respect for Captain Branscome, and by your voice you are
he.  But--but--' He hesitated, and fired another question point-blank
at me: 'You come from Falmouth?'

"'I do, sir.'

"'Alone?'

"'Yes, sir.  I have walked all the way from Falmouth, and without a
companion.'

"'Look here, my friend,' he said, after seeming to ponder for a
moment, 'if you mean ill, you must have altered strangely from the
Captain Branscome I used to know, and if you mean well you have timed
your visit almost as strangely.'  He paused again.  'Either you know
what I mean, or you do not; if you do not, you will have to forgive a
great deal in this reception; and you will, to begin with, forgive my
asking you, on your word of honour, if on your journey hither you
have overtaken or met or recognized any one hailing from Falmouth.
You do not answer,' he added, after yet another pause.

"'Why, as to that, sir,' said I, 'since leaving Falmouth I have
neither met nor overtaken any one of my acquaintance.  But, since you
put it to me precisely, I will not swear that I have not recognized
one.  A few minutes ago, standing at the head of the lane here, I saw
a man cross it, presumably from this garden, and take the path
leading through the plantation yonder.  It certainly strikes me that
I knew the man, and I followed him down the lane here to make sure.'

"'Why?' the Major asked me.

"'Because, sir,'  said I, 'it did not seem possible to me that the
man I mean could have any business here; besides which, an hour or
two before leaving Falmouth I had passed him in the street, and
though he had, indeed, the use of his legs, he was too far gone in
liquor to recognize me.'

"'His name?' the Major asked.

"'Coffin, sir,' said I; 'usually known as Captain Coffin, or Captain
Danny.'

"'A drunkard?' he asked.

"'A man given to liquor,' said I, 'by fits and starts; but mild
enough in an ordinary way.  You might call him the least bit touched
in the upper story; of a loose, rambling head, at all events, as I
can testify, who have taught him navigation--or tried to.'

"The Major, though he could not see me, seemed to study me with his
blind eyes.  He stood erect, with the bundle clipped under his left
arm; and the bundle I made out to be a flag, rolled up and strapped
about with its own lanyard.

"'One more question, Captain Branscome,' said he.  'This Captain
Coffin, as you call him--is he, to the best of your knowledge, an
honest man?'

"I answered that I had heard question of Coffin's sanity, but never
of his honesty.

"'His sanity, eh?' said the Major; and I could see he was hung in
stays, but he picked up his wind after a second or two, and paid off
on another tack.  'Well, well,' he said, 'we'll drop talking of this
Coffin, and turn to the business that brings you here.  What is it?
For I take it you've walked all the way from Falmouth for something
more than the sake of a chat over old times.'

"I remember, ladies, the words he used, though not the tone of them.
To tell the truth, though my ears received 'em, I was not listening.
I stood there, wishing myself a hundred miles away; but his manner
gave me no chance to fob him off with an excuse, or pretend I had
dropped in for a passing call.  There was nothing for it but to out
with my story, and into it I plunged somehow, my tongue stammering
with shame.  He listened, to be sure, but without offering to help me
over the hard places.  Indeed, at the first mention of my poverty, I
saw all his first suspicions--whatever they had been--return and show
themselves in his blind eyes.  His mouth was set like a closed trap.
Yet he heard me out, and, when I had done, his suspicions seemed to
have faded again, for he answered me considerately enough, though not
cordially.

"'Captain Branscome,' he said, 'I may tell you at once that I never
lend money; and my reason is partly that good seldom comes of it, and
partly that I am a poor man--if you can call a man poor who is by a
few pounds richer than his needs.  But I have a great respect for
you'--the ladies will forgive me for repeating his exact words--'and
your voice seems to tell me that you still deserve it; that you have
suffered more than you say before being driven to make this appeal.
I can do something--though it be little--to help an old comrade.
Will you oblige me by stepping into the summer-house here, and taking
a seat while I go to the house?  I will not keep you waiting more
than a few minutes.'

"He picked up his walking-stick, which rested against a chair, just
within the doorway, and stood for a moment while I stepped past him
and entered the summer-house; and so, with a nod of the head, turned
and walked towards the house, using his stick very skilfully to feel
his path between the bushes, and still keeping the flag tucked under
his left arm.

"So I sat and waited, ladies, on no good terms with myself.  The way
of the borrower was hard, I found, and the harder because the Major's
manner had not been unkindly, but--if you'll understand my meaning--
only just kindly enough.  In short, I don't know but that I must have
out and run rather than endure his charity, had not my thoughts been
distracted by this mystery over Captain Coffin.  For the Major had
said too much, and yet not enough.  The man I had seen crossing the
lane was certainly Coffin, but to connect him with Minden Cottage I
had no clue at all beyond the faint one, Harry, that you and he were
acquaintances.  Besides, I had seen him, the morning before, in the
crowd around the prisoners, and could have sworn he was then--saving
your presence, ladies--as drunk as a fiddler.  If vehicle had brought
him, it could not be any that had passed me on the road, or for
certain I should have recognized him.  Well, here was a riddle, and I
had come no nearer to guessing it when the Major returned.

"He had left his bundle in the house, and in place of it he carried a
cashbox, which he set on the table between us, but did not at once
open.  Instead, he turned to me with a complete change of manner, and
held out his hand very frankly.

"'I owe you an apology, Captain,' said he.  'To be plain with you, at
the moment you appeared, I was half expecting a different kind of
visitor, and I fear you received some of the welcome prepared for
him.  Overlook it, please, and shake hands; and, to get our business
over,'--he unlocked the cashbox--'here are ten guineas, which I will
ask you to accept from me.  We won't call it a gift; we will call it
an acknowledgement for the extra pains you have put into teaching my
son.  Tut, man!' said he, as I protested.  'Harry has told us all
about that.  I assure you the youngster came near to wearying us,
last holiday, with praise of you.'"

"And so he did," Plinny here interrupted.  "That is to say, sir--I--I
mean we were only too glad to listen to him."

"I thank you, ma'am." Captain Branscome bowed to her gravely.
"I will not deny that the Major's words gave me pleasure for the
moment.  He, fo

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