“Why, what is the matter?”
“Sabbath breakin’,” answered Mr.
Banner with a curious leer.
“Ah!”
“But you yourself don’t take much account
of the Lord’s Day, seemingly. Bathin’,
f’r instance.”
“Indeed!” The Collector eyed his companion
reflectively. “You honoured me with your
observation this morning?”
Mr. Banner grinned. “Better say the whole
of Port Nassau was hon’rin’ you.
Oh, there’d be no lack of evidence!—but
I guess the magistrates were lookin’ the other
way. They allowed, no doubt, that even a Sabbath-breaker
might be havin’ friends at Court!”
The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth’s
impudence.
“May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped
by that advantage?”
“Well,” said Mr. Banner, “for lighter
cases it’s usually the stocks.”
Still the Collector smiled. “I am trying
to picture it,” said he, after a pause.
“But you don’t tell me they would put
a young girl in the stocks, merely for firing a gun
on the Lord’s Day, as you call it?”
“Wouldn’t they!” Mr. Banner chuckled.
“That, or the pillory.”
“You are a strange folk in Port Nassau.”
The Collector frowned, upon a sudden suspicion, and
his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr. Banner’s
unpleasant face. “By the way, you told
me just now that you were here upon some sort of a
dispensation. Forgive me if I do you wrong,
but was it by any chance that you might play the spy
upon this girl?”
“Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin’
for her.”
“Who is Shadbolt?”
“The Town Beadle. He’s watchin’
somewhere along the cliffs.”
Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland.
“It’s a scandal, and by all accounts has
been goin’ on for weeks.”
“So that is why you called me to witness?
Well, Mr. Banner, I have a horsewhip lying on the
turf yonder, and I warn you to forget your suggestion.
. . . Shall we resume our measurements?—and,
if you please, in silence. Your presence is
distasteful to me.”
They turned from the cliff and went back to their
work, in which—for they both enjoyed it—they
were soon immersed. It may have been, too, that
the wind had shifted. At any rate they missed
to hear, ten minutes later, a second shot fired on
the beach, not more distant but fainter than the first.
THE SCOURGE.
Next morning, at ten o’clock, the Collector’s
coach-and-six stood at the Inn gate, harnessed up
and ready for the return journey. In the road-way
beyond one of the grooms waited with a hand on Bayard’s
bridle.
The Collector, booted and spurred, with riding-whip
tucked under his arm, came up the pebbled pathway,
drawing on his gauntleted gloves. Dicky trotted
beside him. Manasseh followed in attendance.
Behind them in the porchway the landlady bobbed unregarded,
like a piece of clockwork gradually running down.
