“Only taking shelter for the night, sir. I’m sorry if I ha’ done wrong.” The tone was less defiant than the pose. “I thought—seeing that this place was a ruin, like . . .”
“Too much of a ruin to be an honest man’s sleeping-place! Why did you not seek shelter in some more fitting spot, some outhouse or barn?”
“And what is amiss with your leg?” queried Mr. Thistleton, glancing down at it.
The fugitive Mark Thompson answered neither question; he said, even more meekly than before, “I didn’t intend no harm here, I assure you, sir.”
“You are likely to do harm to yourself, then, making a bedchamber of that damp hole,” retorted the Precentor.
“But I was meaning to sleep up on this level, sir, in a corner; then when I heard the young lady coming in, fearing I should frighten her, I slips down into yonder hole, so as she shouldn’t see me.”
“You are a very plausible fellow, whatever else you are,” remarked Dr. Meredith. “But you have not yet told me what you, a stranger, are doing in this neighbourhood?”
“I was hoping to find work at a farm, sir,” replied the young man, even as he had earlier replied to Dr. Meredith’s daughter.
“Then why have you not gone to one?”
“I have, sir, and . . . they set the dog on me.” He gave a glance down at his leg, and Nest drew a long, almost audible breath. “So I thought, sir, that maybe an Englishman like me had not a good chance here, and that I would do better to be pushing on in the morning towards Haverfordwest or Pembroke.”
“Set a dog on you!” exclaimed Dr. Meredith. “I do not believe there is any farmer here who would do such a thing—unless indeed he caught you trying to steal! I expect that is the explanation, if you would only admit it. At what farm did it occur?”
The ex-privateersman looked slightly confused; perhaps he was regretting his accusation. “I can’t get hold of these Welsh names, sir, saving your presence,” he explained. “And I dare say they didn’t like the look of me, though indeed I had no thought of stealing and only wanted to find work.”
“Hold the lantern a little higher, will you, Thistleton,” suddenly said the Precentor. “I cannot help thinking that I have seen this man somewhere before.”
“Just my own impression,” observed Mr. Thistleton, complying. “He reminds me somewhat of those seamen whom we saw landing this morning from the Dutch prize.”
In the outer doorway Nest clasped her hands tightly together. Oh, he was lost, poor man, and through her unwitting fault! She had sent him to a prison, to a flogging, perhaps to keelhauling, which sounded a terrible punishment enough, though she was not sure of its nature . . . and her dog had already bitten him severely!
But on the face now so mercilessly illuminated by the lantern beams there dawned a look of bewilderment. “What Dutch prize, sir? Was you thinking as I came off a ship?”
“Nesta,” said Dr. Meredith suddenly over his shoulder, “Nesta, are you there? Come here then, and tell us whether you do not think that this is one of the men who landed at Porthstinian this morning? You were watching them longer than we were.”
Oh, if only she had not stayed within call—if only she could slip away now! But her father had seen her standing there on the threshold. She came forward feeling as though her limbs might have belonged to the stone Queen Philippa above the doorway. Whatever her desire prompted her to do, she could not lie outright to her father!
“What did you say, Papa?” Her voice seemed to stick in her throat.
Dr. Meredith repeated his question, while Nest, half looking, half not looking at the captive, felt the latter’s gaze scorching her like a burning glass.
“The man whom we saw in the boat——” she began, very slowly, dropping her eyes to the ground.
“Well, look at him, my dear!” exhorted her father a trifle impatiently. “There was one younger than the rest, I remember, and I have a strong impression——”
For one fleeting second the eyes of witness and accused met. In Nest’s at any rate there was anguish. Next moment the Precentor was the recipient of a strong impression of another sort, which reached him through the agency of a human fist, in the middle zone of his waistcoat; and though this partook far more of the character of a vigorous shove than of an actual blow, it loosened his hold of its author like magic and sent him staggering back several paces. Simultaneously, or almost so, the lantern was wrenched from Mr. Thistleton’s hold and sent clattering down into the vault; and in the resulting darkness a form rushed past Nest and leapt down the steps. The captured intruder was gone.
The Precentor was too much winded, Mr. Thistleton too lame, both of them too much taken by surprise, to set out in pursuit; indeed the former, more damaged, however, in his dignity than in his bodily frame, was leaning gasping against the doorway with his hands to his diaphragm.
“Papa, Papa!” cried Nest, running to him, “are you hurt? Did he really hit you?”
But the Precentor, though breathless and outraged, was still a truthful Christian gentleman. “He . . . he pushed me . . . exceedingly hard. Young scoundrel . . . certainly up to no good . . . must make sure that all our . . . doors and windows . . . securely fastened!” Having recovered a little, he finished by saying: “Come along, Thistleton; ’tis of no use to pursue him now; we had best get back to the house as soon as possible.”
In the press of this intention the question of the assailant’s identity was, fortunately for the unwilling witness, crowded out. Abandoning all considerations of æsthetics or archæology—though not, indeed, quite unconcerned with ethics—the three hurried back to the Precentory, to find it wrapped in perfect security and calm, and Aunt Pennefather already retired to her bedroom for the night. Nest, conscience-stricken and unhappy, did the same; but she had hardly reached her room before her father came to her door to reassure her.
“You must try not to let that unpleasant little episode keep you awake, my dear child,” he said. “Mr. Thistleton suggests that the vagabond was probably a gipsy, and I recall now that the young sailor from the prize, whom I thought at first that he resembled, was not nearly so dark complexioned. I do not imagine that there is the slightest likelihood now of his trying to break in and steal, so do not dream of robbers, my dear.”
Nest did not dream of robbers, nor of gipsies. But she lay a long time sleepless in her little dimity-draped bed wondering if after all Papa were not right, and whether the young man from the Fair Penitent had not been lurking in the precincts with some ill intent. Why else should he have concealed himself there instead of going to seek work on a farm? For since she had the best of reasons for knowing it to be untrue that a farmer had set a dog at him, it was probably equally untrue that he had been to a farmhouse at all. . . . Yet suppose he had said: “Your daughter’s dog attacked me”? He had not; he had preferred to tell a lie. And he had made his dash for freedom just in time to save her from either betraying his identity or herself telling a deliberate falsehood on his behalf. The look in his eyes, which she still remembered with vividness . . . had it meant that he wished to spare her that difficult alternative? At the moment she had half fancied so.
But for the first time it came to Nest, what if behind his taking the violent step of deserting from the privateer there were something more than just distaste for the hard life there? For he had not looked effeminate—far from it; and he had described the fight with the French brig with undoubted gusto.
In any case speculation was wasted on a man whom she would never see again, for it was very unlikely that Mark Thompson would ask now for employment at any farm in the neighbourhood. And since she did not feel that, after her deceitful silence, she could tell her father anything about him, she only hoped that with time the burden of that deceit would grow lighter, and that she would not, as just now, feel ashamed