“Behind us, I dare say. We shall nab him at least.”
“Cary, promise me that if we do, you will keep out of sight, and let me manage him.”
“My boy, I only want Evan Morgans and Morgan Evans. He is but the cat’s paw, and we are after the cats themselves.”
And so they went on another dreary six miles, till the land trended downwards, showing dark glens and masses of woodland far below.
“Now, then, straight to Chapel, and stop the foxes’ earth? Or through the King’s Park to Stow, and get out Sir Richard’s hounds, hue and cry, and queen’s warrant in proper form?”
“Let us see Sir Richard first; and whatsoever he decides about my uncle, I will endure as a loyal subject must.”
So they rode through the King’s Park, while Sir Richard’s colts came whinnying and staring round the intruders, and down through a rich woodland lane five hundred feet into the valley, till they could hear the brawling of the little trout-stream, and beyond, the everlasting thunder of the ocean surf.
Down through warm woods, all fragrant with dying autumn flowers, leaving far above the keen Atlantic breeze, into one of those delicious Western combes, and so past the mill, and the little knot of flower-clad cottages. In the window of one of them a light was still burning. The two young men knew well whose window that was; and both hearts beat fast; for Rose Salterne slept, or rather seemed to wake, in that chamber.
“Folks are late in Combe to-night,” said Amyas, as carelessly as he could.
Cary looked earnestly at the window, and then sharply enough at Amyas; but Amyas was busy settling his stirrup; and Cary rode on, unconscious that every fibre in his companion’s huge frame was trembling like his own.
“Muggy and close down here,” said Amyas, who, in reality, was quite faint with his own inward struggles.
“We shall be at Stow gate in five minutes,” said Cary, looking back and down longingly as his horse climbed the opposite hill; but a turn of the zigzag road hid the cottage, and the next thought was, how to effect an entrance into Stow at three in the morning without being eaten by the ban-dogs, who were already howling and growling at the sound of the horse-hoofs.
However, they got safely in, after much knocking and calling, through the postern gate in the high west wall, into a mansion, the description whereof I must defer to the next chapter, seeing that the moon has already sunk into the Atlantic, and there is darkness over land and sea.
Sir Richard, in his long gown, was soon downstairs in the hall; the letter read, and the story told; but ere it was half finished—
“Anthony, call up a groom, and let him bring me a horse round. Gentlemen, if you will excuse me five minutes, I shall be at your service.”
“You will not go alone, Richard?” asked Lady Grenville, putting her beautiful face in its nightcoif out of an adjoining door.
“Surely, sweet chuck, we three are enough to take two poor polecats of Jesuits. Go in, and help me to boot and gird.”
In half an hour they were down and up across the valley again, under the few low ashes clipt flat by the sea-breeze which stood round the lonely gate of Chapel.
“Mr. Cary, there is a back path across the downs to Marsland; go and guard that.” Cary rode off; and Sir Richard, as he knocked loudly at the gate—
“Mr. Leigh, you see that I have consulted your honor, and that of your poor uncle, by adventuring thus alone. What will you have me do now, which may not be unfit for me and you?”
“Oh, sir!” said Amyas, with tears in his honest eyes, “you have shown yourself once more what you always have been—my dear and beloved master on earth, not second even to my admiral Sir Francis Drake.”
“Or the queen, I hope,” said Grenville, smiling, “but pocas palabras. What will you do?”
“My wretched cousin, sir, may not have returned—and if I might watch for him on the main road—unless you want me with you.”
“Richard Grenville can walk alone, lad. But what will you do with your cousin?”
“Send him out of the country, never to return; or if he refuses, run him through on the spot.”
“Go, lad.” And as he spoke, a sleepy voice asked inside the gate, “Who was there?”
“Sir Richard Grenville. Open, in the queen’s name?”
“Sir Richard? He is in bed, and be hanged to you. No honest folk come at this hour of night.”
“Amyas!” shouted Sir Richard. Amyas rode back.
“Burst that gate for me, while I hold your horse.”
Amyas leaped down, took up a rock from the roadside, such as Homer’s heroes used to send at each other’s heads, and in an instant the door was flat on the ground, and the serving-man on his back inside, while Sir Richard quietly entering over it, like Una into the hut, told the fellow to get up and hold his horse for him (which the clod, who knew well enough that terrible voice, did without further murmurs), and then strode straight to the front door. It was already opened. The household had been up and about all along, or the noise at the entry had aroused them.
Sir Richard knocked, however, at the open door; and, to his astonishment, his knock was answered by Mr. Leigh himself, fully dressed, and candle in hand.
“Sir Richard Grenville! What, sir! is this neighborly, not to say gentle, to break into my house in the dead of night?”
“I broke your outer door, sir, because I was refused entrance when I asked in the queen’s name. I knocked at your inner one, as I should have knocked at the poorest cottager’s in the parish, because I found it open. You have two Jesuits here, sir! and here is the queen’s warrant for apprehending them. I have signed it with my own hand, and, moreover, serve it now, with my own hand, in order to save you scandal—and it may be, worse. I must have these men, Mr. Leigh.”
“My dear Sir Richard—!”
“I must have them, or I must search the house; and you would not put either yourself or me to so shameful a necessity?”
“My dear Sir Richard!—”
“Must I, then, ask you to stand back from your own doorway, my dear sir?” said Grenville. And then changing his voice to that fearful lion’s roar, for which he was famous, and which it seemed impossible that lips so delicate could utter, he thundered, “Knaves, behind there! Back!”
This was spoken to half-a-dozen grooms and serving-men, who, well armed, were clustered in the passage.
“What? swords out, you sons of cliff rabbits?” And in a moment, Sir Richard’s long blade flashed out also, and putting Mr. Leigh gently aside, as if he had been a child, he walked up to the party, who vanished right and left; having expected a cur dog, in the shape of a parish constable, and come upon a lion instead. They were stout fellows enough, no doubt, in a fair fight: but they had no stomach to be hanged in a row at Launceston Castle, after a preliminary running through the body by that redoubted admiral and most unpeaceful justice of the peace.
“And now, my dear Mr. Leigh,” said Sir Richard, as blandly as ever, “where are my men? The night is cold; and you, as well as I, need to be in our beds.”
“The men, Sir Richard—the Jesuits—they are not here, indeed.”
“Not here, sir?”
“On the word of a gentleman, they left my house an hour ago. Believe me, sir, they did. I will swear to you if you need.”
“I believe Mr. Leigh of Chapel’s word without oaths. Whither are they gone?”
“Nay, sir—how can I tell? They are—they are, as I may say, fled, sir; escaped.”
“With your connivance; at least with your son’s. Where are they gone?”
“As I live, I do not know.”
“Mr.