Mary Ann Thornycroft sat in the large, luxurious, comfortable drawing-room of the Red Court Farm. The skies without were grey and wintry, the air was cold, the sea was of a dull leaden colour; but with that cheery fire blazing in the grate, the soft chairs and sofas scattered about, the fine pictures, the costly ornaments, things were decidedly bright within. Brighter a great deal than the young lady's face was; for something had just occurred to vex her. She was leaning back in her chair; her foot, peeping out from beneath the folds of her flowing dress, impatiently tapping the carpet: angry determination written on every line of her countenance. Between herself and Richard there had just occurred a passage at arms--as is apt to be the case with brother and sister, when each has a dominant and unyielding will.
At home for good, Miss Thornycroft had assumed her post as mistress of the house in a spirit of determination that said she meant to maintain it. The neighbours came flocking to see the handsome girl, a woman grown now. She had attained her nineteenth year. They found a lady-like, agreeable girl, with Cyril's love for reading, Isaac's fair skin and beautiful features, and Richard's resolute tone and lip. Very soon, within a week of her return, the servants whispered to each other that Miss Thornycroft and her brothers had already begun their quarrelling, for both sides wanted the mastery. They should have said her brother--very seldom indeed was it that Isaac interfered with her--Cyril never.
She had begun by attempting to set to rights matters that probably never would be set right; regularity in regard to the serving of the meals. They set all regularity at defiance, especially on the point of coming in to them. They might come, or they might not; they might sit down at the appointed hour, or they might appear an hour after it. Sometimes the dinners were simple, oftener elaborate; to-day they would be alone, to-morrow six or eight unexpected guests, invited on the spur of the moment, would sit down to table; just as it had been in the old days. Mr. Thornycroft's love of free-and-easy hospitality had not changed. To remedy this, Mary Anne did not attempt--it had grown into a usage; but she did wish to make Richard and Isaac pay more attention to decorum.
"They cannot be well-conducted, these two brothers of mine," soliloquized Miss Thornycroft, as she continued to tap her impatient foot. "And papa winks at it. I think they must have acquired a love for low companions. I hear of their going into the public-house, and, if not drinking themselves, standing treat for others. Last night they came in to dinner in their velveteen coats, and gaiters all mud--after keeping it waiting for five-and-forty minutes. I spoke about their clothes, and papa--papa took their part, saying it was not to be expected that young men engaged in agriculture could dress themselves up for dinner like a lord-in-waiting. It's a shame!"
Richard and Isaac did indeed appear to be rather loose young men in some things; but their conduct had not changed from what it used to be--the change lay in Miss Thornycroft. What as a girl she had not seen or noticed, she now, a young woman come home to exact propriety after the manner of well-conducted young ladies, saw at once, and put a black mark against. Their dog-cart, that ever-favourite vehicle, would be heard going out and coming in at all sorts of unseasonable hours; when Richard and Isaac lay abed till twelve (the case occasionally) Miss Thornycroft would contrive to gather that they had not gone to it until nearly daylight.
The grievance this morning, however, was not about any of these things: it concerned a more personal matter of Miss Thornycroft's. While she was reading a letter from Susan Hunter, fixing the day of the promised visit, Richard came in. He accused her of expecting visitors, and flatly ordered her to write and stop their coming. A few minutes of angry contention ensued, neither side giving way in the smallest degree: she said her friends should come, Richard said they should not. He strode away to find his father. The justice was in the four-acre paddock with his gun.
"This girl's turning the house upside down," began Richard. "We shall not be able to keep her at home."
"What girl? Do you mean Mary Anne?"
"There's nobody else I should mean," returned the young man, who was not more remarkable for courtesy of speech, even to his father, than he used to be. "I'd pretty soon shell out anybody else who came interfering. She has gone and invited some fellow and his sister down to stay for a week, she says. We can't have prying people here just now."
"Don't fly in a flurry, Dick. That's the worst of you."
"Well, sir, I think it should be stopped. For the next month, you know--"
"Yes, yes, I know," interposed the justice. "Of course."
"After that, it would not so much matter," continued Richard. "Not but that it would be an exceedingly bad precedent to allow it at all. If she begins to invite visitors here at will, there's no knowing what the upshot might be."
"I'll go and speak to her," said Mr. Thornycroft. "Here, take the gun, Dick."
Walking slowly, giving an eye to different matters as he passed, speaking a word here, giving an order there, the justice went on after the fashion of a man whose mind is at ease. It never occurred to him that his daughter would dispute his will.
"What is all this, Mary Anne?" he demanded, when he reached her. "Richard tells me you have been inviting some people to stay here."
Miss Thornycroft rose respectfully.
"So I have, papa. Susan Hunter was my great friend at school; she is remaining there for the holidays, which of course is very dull, and I asked her to come here for a week. Her brother will bring her."
"They cannot come," said Mr. Thornycroft.
"Not come!"
"No. You must understand one thing, Mary Anne--that you are not at liberty to invite people indiscriminately to the Red Court I cannot sanction it."
A hard look of resentment crossed her face; opposition never answered with the Thornycrofts, Cyril excepted: he was just as yielding as the rest were obstinate.
"I have invited them, papa. The time for the visit is fixed, the arrangements are made."
"I tell you, they cannot come."
"Not if Richard's whims are to be studied," returned Miss Thornycroft, angrily, for she had lost her temper. "Do you wish me to live on in this house for ever, papa, without a soul to speak to, save my brothers and the servants? And cordial companions they are," added the young lady, alluding to the former, "out, out, out, as they are, night after night! I should like to know where it is they go to. Perhaps I could find out if I tried."
A fanciful person might have thought that Mr. Thornycroft started. "Daughter!" he cried, in a hoarse whisper, hoarse with passion, "hold your peace about your brothers. What is it to you where they go or what they do? Is it seemly for you, a girl, to trouble yourself about the doings of young men? Are you going to turn out a firebrand amongst us? Take care that you don't set the Red Court alight."
The words might have struck her as strange, might indeed have imparted a sort of undefined fear, but that she was so filled with anger and resentment as to leave no room for other impressions. Nevertheless, there was that in her father's face and eye which warned her it would not do to oppose him now, and her rejoinder was spoken more civilly.
"Do you mean, papa, that you will never allow me to have a visitor?"
"I do not say that. But I must choose the times and seasons. This companion of yours may come a month later, if you wish it so very much. Not her brother. We have enough young men in the house of our own. And I suppose you don't care for him."
Miss Thornycroft would have liked to say that he was the one for whom she did care--not the sister--but that was inexpedient. A conscious flush dyed her face; which Mr. Thornycroft attributed to pain at her wish being opposed. He had not yet to learn how difficult it was to turn his daughter from any whim on which she had set her will.
"Write to-day and stop their coming. Tell Miss--what's the name?"
"Hunter," was the sullen answer.
"Tell Miss Hunter that it is not convenient to receive her at the time arranged, but that you hope to see her later. And--another word, Mary Anne," added Mr. Thornycroft, pausing in the act of leaving the room; "a word of caution; let your brothers alone; their movements are no business of yours, neither must you make it such. Shut your eyes and ears to all that does not concern you, if you want to live in peace under my roof."
"Shut my eyes and ears?" she repeated, looking after him, "that I never will. I can see how it is--papa has lived so long under the domineering of Richard that he yields to him as a habit. It is less trouble than opposing him. Richard is the most selfish man alive. He thinks if we had visitors staying at the court, he must be a little more civilized in dress and other matters, and he does not choose to be so. For no other reason has he set his face against their coming; there can be no other. But I will show him that I have a will as well as he, and as good a right to exercise it."
Even as Miss Thornycroft spoke, the assertion, "there can be no other," rose up again in her mind, and she paused to consider whether it was strictly in accordance with facts. But no; look on all sides as she would, there appeared to be no other reason whatever, or shadow of reason. It was just a whim of Richard's; who liked to act, in small things as in great, as though he were the master of the Red Court Farm--a whim which Miss Thornycroft was determined not to gratify.
And, flying in the face of the direct command of her father, she did not write to stop her guests.
The contest had not soothed her, and she put on her things to go out. The day was by no means inviting, the air was raw and chill, but Miss Thornycroft felt dissatisfied with home. Turning off by the plateau towards the village, the house inhabited by Tomlett met her view. It brought to her remembrance that the man was said to have received some slight accident, of which she had only heard a day or two ago. More as a diversion to her purposeless steps than anything else, she struck across to inquire after him. Mrs. Tomlett, an industrious little woman with a red face and shrill voice, as you may remember, stood at the kitchen table as Miss Thornycroft approached the open door, peeling potatoes. Down went the knife.
"Don't disturb yourself, Mrs. Tomlett. I hear your husband has met with some hurt. How was it done?"
For a woman of ordinary nerve and brain, Mrs. Tomlett decidedly showed herself wanting in self-possession at the question. It seemed to scare her. Looking here, looking there, looking everywhere like a frightened bird, she mumbled out some indistinct answer. Miss Thornycroft had seen her so on occasions before, and as a girl used to laugh at her.
"When did it happen, Mrs. Tomlett?"
"Last week, miss; that is, last month--last fortnight I meant to say," cried Mrs. Tomlett, hopelessly perplexed.
"What was the accident?" continued Miss Thornycroft. "Well, it was a--a--a pitching of himself down the stairs, miss."
"Down which stairs? This house has no stairs."
Mrs. Tomlett looked to the different points of the room as if to assist her remembrance that the house had none.
"No, miss, true; it wasn't stairs. He got hurted some way," added the woman, in a pang of desperation. "I never knowed clear how. When they brought him home--a carrying of him--his head up, as one might say, and his legs down, my senses was clean frightened out o' me: what they said and what they didn't say, I couldn't remember after no more nor nothing. May be 'twas out o' the tallet o' the Red Court stables he fell, miss: I think it was."
Miss Thornycroft thought not; she should have heard of that. "Where was he hurt?" she asked. "In the leg, was it not?"
"'Twas in the arm, miss," responded Mrs. Tomlett. "Leastways, in the ankle."
The young lady stared at her as a natural curiosity. "Was it in both, Mrs. Tomlett?"
Well, yes, Mrs. Tomlett thought it might be in both. His side also had got grazed. Her full opinion was, if she might venture to express it, that he had done it a climbing up into his boat. One blessed thing was--no bones was broke.
Miss Thornycroft laughed, and thought she might as well leave her to the peeling of the potatoes, the interruption to which essential duty had possibly driven her senses away.
"At any rate, whatever the hurt, I hope he will soon be about again," she kindly said, as she went out.
"Which he is a'most that a'ready," responded Mrs. Tomlett, standing on the threshold to curtsey to her guest.
No sooner was the door shut than Tomlett, a short, strong, dark man, with a seal-skin cap on, and his right arm bandaged up, came limping out of an inner room. The first thing he did was to glare at his wife; the second, to bring his left hand in loud contact with the small round table so effectually that the potatoes went flying off it.
"Now what do you think of yourself for a decent woman?"
Mrs. Tomlett sat down on a chair and began to cry. "It took to me, Ben, it did--it took to me awful," she said, deprecatingly, in the midst of her tears; "I never knowed as news of the hurt had got abroad."
"Do you suppose there ever was such a born fool afore as you?" again demanded Mr. Tomlett, in a slow, subdued, ironical, fearfully telling tone.
"When she come straight in with the query--what was Tomlett's hurt and how were it done?--my poor body set on a twittering, and my head went clean out o' me," pleaded Mrs. Tomlett.
"A pity but it had gone clean off ye," growled the strong-minded husband; "'tain't o' no good on."
"What were I to say, took at a pinch like that? I couldn't tell the truth; you know that, Tomlett."
"Yes, you could; you might ha' told enough on't to satisfy her:--'He was at work, and he fell and hurt hisself.' Warn't that enough for any reasonable woman to say? And if she'd asked where he fell, you might ha' said you didn't know. Not you! He 'throwed hisself down the stairs,' when there ain't no stairs to the place; he 'fell out o' the tallet;' he 'done it a climbing up into his boat!' Yah!"
"Don't be hard upon me, Tomlett, don't."
"'And the hurt,' she asked, 'was that in the leg?'" mercilessly continued Mr. Tomlett. "'No, it weren't in the leg, it were in the arm, leastways, in the ankle,' says you; and a fine bobbin o' contradiction that must ha' sounded to her. Yah again! Some women be born fools, and some makes theirselves into 'em."
"It were through knowing you'd get a listening, Tomlett. Nothing never scares the wits out o' me like that. When I see the door open a straw's breadth, I knew your ear was at it; and what with her afore me talking, and you ahind me listening, I didn't know the words I said no more nor if it wasn't me that spoke 'em. Do what I will, I'm blowed up."
"Blowed up!" amiably repeated Mr. Tomlett; "if you was the wife o' some persons, you'd get the blowing up and something atop of it. Go on with them taturs."
Leaving them to their domestic bliss and occupations--though from the above interlude Tomlett must not be judged: he made in general a good husband, only he had been so terribly put out--we will go after Miss Thornycroft. As she struck into the road again she saw Anna Chester talking to one of her two elder brothers, it was too far off to distinguish which; and indeed Richard and Isaac were so much alike in figure, that the one was often taken for the other. That it was the latter, Miss Thornycroft judged; there appeared to be a sort of intimacy--a friendship--between Isaac and Anna that she by no means approved of, and Isaac had taken to go rather often to Captain Copp's.
Anna came on alone; her gentle face beaming, her pretty lips breaking into smiles. But Miss Thornycroft was cold.
"Which of my brothers were you talking to?"
"It was Isaac," answered Anna, turning her face away, for the trick of colouring crimson at Isaac's name, acquired since her return, was all too visible.
"Ah, yes, I knew it must be Isaac. What good friends you seem to be growing!"
"Do you think so?" returned Anna, stooping to do something or other to her dainty little boot, and speaking as lightly as the circumstances permitted. "He stopped me to say that Captain Copp was going to dine at the Red Court this evening, and so asked if I would accompany him."
"Oh, it's to be one of their dinner gatherings this evening, is it?" replied Mary Anne, alluding to her brothers with her usual scant ceremony. "Well, I hope you will come, Anna; otherwise I shall not go in."
"Thank you. Yes."
"But look here. If you get telling Isaac things again that I tell you, you and I shall quarrel. What is he to you that you should do it?"
Not for a long while had Anna felt so miserably bewildered. She began ransacking her memory for all she had said. At these critical moments, discovery seemed very near.
"This morning, Richard chose to question me about Susan Hunter's coming down. He had heard of it from Isaac. Now I had not mentioned it to Isaac, or to any one else at home: time enough for that when the day was fixed; and Isaac could only have learnt it from you."
"I--I am not sure--I can't quite tell--it is possible I did mention it to him," stammered poor Anna. "I did not think to do harm."
"I dare say not. But it has done harm; it has caused no end of mischief and disturbance at home, and got me into what my brothers politely call a 'row.' Kindly keep my affairs to yourself for the future, Anna."
She turned away with the last words, and the poor young wife, in a sea of perplexity and distress, continued her way. The life she was leading was exceedingly unsatisfactory; never a moment, save in some chance and transitory meeting in the village or on the heath, did she obtain one private word with Isaac. Isaac was rather a frequent dropper-in now at Captain Copp's; but the cautious sailor, remembering the warning hint of his mother, took care to afford no scope for private talking; or, as he phrased it, sweethearting; and Mrs. Copp--her terror of discovery being always fresh upon her guarded Anna zealously. Could she have had her way, they would have passed each other with a formal nod whenever they met.
"Never again," murmured Anna. "I must never again speak to him about his home--unless it be of what the whole world knows. How I wish this dreadful state of things could terminate! I have heard of secrets--concealments--wearing the life away; I believe it now."
The former resident superintendent of the coastguard, Mr. Dangerfield, had left Coastdown, and been replaced by Mr. Kyne. Private opinion ran that Coastdown had not changed for the best; Mr. Supervisor Dangerfield (the official title awarded him by Coastdown) having been an easy, good-tempered, jolly kind of man, while Mr. Supervisor Kyne was turning out to be strict and fussy on the score of "duty." Justice Thornycroft, the great man of the place, had received him well, and the new officer evidently liked the good cheer he was made welcome to at the Red Court Farm.
On this same morning Mr. Thornycroft, strolling out from his home, saw the supervisor on the plateau, and crossed the rails to join him. Mr. Kyne, a spare man of middle age, with a greyish sort of face and hair cut close to his head, stood on the extreme edge of the plateau, attentively scanning the sea. He slowly turned as Mr. Thornycroft approached.
"Looking out for smugglers?" demanded the justice, jestingly. For this new superintendent had started the subject of smuggling soon after he came to Coastdown, avowing a suspicion that it was carried on; the justice had received it with a fit of laughter, and lost no opportunity since of throwing ridicule on it.
"Shall I tell him, or not?" mentally debated Mr. Kyne. "Better not, perhaps, until we can get hold of something more positive. He would never believe it; he would resent it as a libel on Coastdown."
The fact was, Mr. Kyne had received information some short while before, from what he considered a reliable source, that smuggling to a great extent was carried on at Coastdown, or on some part of the coast lying nearly contiguous to it. He was redoubling his own watchfulness and his preventive precautions: to find out such a thing would be a great feather in his cap.
"You won't ridicule me out of my conviction, sir."
"Not I," said the justice; "I don't want to."
"I shall put a man on this plateau at night."
Mr. Thornycroft opened his eyes. "What on earth for?"
"Well--I suspect that place below."
"Suspect that place below!" repeated the justice, advancing to the edge and looking down. "What is there on it to suspect?"
"Nothing--that's the truth. But if contraband things are landed, that's the most likely spot about. There is no other at all that I see where it could be done."
"And so you look at it on the negative principle," cried the justice, curling his lip. "Don't be afraid, Kyne. If the Half-moon had but a bale of smuggled goods on it, there it must be until you seized it. Is there a corner to hide it in, or facility for carrying it away?"
"That's what I say to myself," rejoined Mr. Kyne. "It's the only thing that makes me easy."
"Don't, for humanity's sake, leave your poor men here on a winter's night; it would be simply superfluous in the teeth of this impossibility! The cold on this bleak place might do for some of them before morning, or a false step in the dark send them over the cliff. Not to speak of the ghost," added the justice, with a grim smile.
The supervisor gave an impromptu grunt, as if the latter sentence had jarred on his nerves.
"That ghost tale is the worst part of it!" cried he. "Cold they are used to, danger they don't mind; but there's not one of them but shudders at the thought of seeing the ghost. I changed the men when I found how it was; sent the old ones away, and brought fresh ones here; well, will you believe me, justice, that in two days after they came they were as bad as the old ones? That fellow, Tomlett, with two or three more that congregate at the Mermaid, have told them the whole tale. I can hardly get 'em on here since, after nightfall--though it's only to walk along the plateau and back again."
Mr. Thornycroft looked straight out before him. The supervisor noticed the grave change that had come to his face; and remembered that this, or some other superstitious fear, was said to have killed the late Mrs. Thornycroft. What with this story, what with the other deaths spoken of, taking their rise remotely or unremotely in the ghost, what with the uncomfortable feeling altogether that these things left on the mind in dark and lonely moments, Mr. Supervisor Kyne might have confessed, had he been honest enough, to not caring to stay himself on the plateau at night. But for this fact, the place would have been better guarded, since his men, in spite of the ghost, must have remained on duty.
"Do you happen to know a little inlet of a spot lying near to Jutpoint?" asked Mr. Thornycroft. "They say that used to be famous for smuggling in the old days. If any is carried on still--a thing to be doubted--there's where you must look for it."
"Ay, I've heard before of that place," remarked the supervisor. "They say it's quiet enough now."
"I should have supposed most places were," said the justice, a mocking intonation again in his tone, which rather told on the ears it was meant for. "We revert to smuggling now as a thing of the past, not the present. What fortunes were made at it!"
"And lost," said the supervisor.
Mr. Thornycroft shrugged his shoulders. "Were they? Through bad management, then. Before that exposure of the custom-house frauds, both merchants and officers lined their pockets. And do still, no doubt."
They were slowly walking together, side by side on the brow of the plateau, as they talked. Mr. Thornycroft stole a glance at his companion. The supervisor's face was composed and cold; nothing to be gathered from it.
"It has its charms, no doubt, this cheating of the revenue," resumed the justice. "Were I a custom-house officer, and had the opportunity offered me, I might be tempted to embrace it. Look at the toil of these men--yours, for example--work, work, work and responsibility perpetually; and then look at the miserable pittance of pay. Why, a man may serve (and generally does) until he's fifty years of age, before he has enough salary doled out to him to keep his family in decent comfort."
"That's true," was the answer; "it keeps many of us from marrying. It has kept me."
"Just so. One can't wonder that illegitimate practices are considered justifiable. The world in its secret conscience exonerates you, I can tell you that, Mr. Supervisor."
Mr. Supervisor walked along, measuring his steps, as if in thought; but he did not answer.
"Why, how can it be otherwise?" continued the magistrate, warming with his subject and his sympathy. "Put the case before us for a moment as it used to be put. A merchant--Mr. Brown, let us say--has extensive dealings with continental countries, and imports largely. Every ship-load that comes for him must pay a duty of four hundred pounds, more or less, to the customs. Brown speaks to the examining officer' 'You wink at this ship-load, don't see it; and we'll divide the duty between us; you put two hundred in your pocket, and I'll put two.' Who is there among us that would not accede? Not many. It enables the poor, ill-paid gentleman to get a few comforts; and he does it."
"Yes; that is how many have been tempted."
"And I say we cannot blame them. No man with a spark of humanity within his breast could give blame. Answer for yourself, Kyne: were it possible that such a proposal could be made to you in these days, would you not fall in with it?"
"No," said the officer, in a low but decisive tone "I should not."
"No?" repeated Mr. Thornycroft, staring at him.
"It killed my father."
Mr. Thornycroft did not understand. The supervisor, looking straight before him as if he were seeing past events in the distance, explained, in a voice that was no louder than a whisper.
"He was tempted exactly as you have described; and yielded. When the exposures took place at the London Customs, he was one of the officers implicated, and made his escape abroad. There he died, yearning for the land to which he could not return. The French doctors said that unsatisfied yearning killed him; he had no other discoverable malady."
"What a curious thing!" exclaimed Mr. Thornycroft.
"There were some private, unhappy circumstances mixed with it. One was, that his wife would not share in his exile. I could not; I had already a place in the Customs. Just before he died I went over, and he extorted a solemn promise from me never to do as he had done. I never shall. No inducement possible to be offered would tempt me."
"It is a complete answer to the supposititious case propounded," said the justice, laughing pleasantly.
"Supposititious, indeed!" remarked Mr. Kyne. "It could not occur in these days."
"Certainly not. And therefore your theory of present smuggling must explode. I must be going. Will you come in to-night and dine with us, Kyne? Copp is coming, and a few more. We've got the finest turbot, the finest barrel of natives you ever tasted."
Inclination led Mr. Supervisor Kyne one way, duty another. He thought he ought not to accept it; the dinners at the Red Court were always prolonged until midnight at least, and his men would be safe to go off the watch. But--a prime turbot! and all the rest of it! Mr. Kyne's mouth watered.
"Thank you, sir; I'll come."
The evening dinner-gathering took place. Mr. Kyne and others, invited to attend it, assembled in the usual unceremonious fashion, and were very jolly to a late hour. Miss Thornycroft and Anna sat down to table, quitting the gentlemen as soon as dinner was over. Ladies, as a rule, were never invited to these feasts, but if Miss Thornycroft appeared at table, the justice had no objection to her asking a companion to join her. Generally speaking, however, her dinner on these occasions was served to her alone.
"My darling, I am unable to take you home tonight; I--I cannot leave my friends," whispered Isaac, finding himself by a happy chance alone with Anna. Going into the drawing-room for a minute, he found his sister had temporarily left it to get a book.
"Sarah is coming for me."
"Yes, I know."
His arms pressed jealously round her for the first time since they parted, his face laid on hers, he took from her lips a shower of impassioned kisses. Only for a moment. The sweeping trail of Miss Thornycroft's silk dress was even then heard. When she entered, Anna sat leaning her brow upon her raised fingers; Isaac was leaving the room, carelessly humming a scrap of a song. Yes, it was an unsatisfactory life at best--a wife and no wife; a heavy secret to guard; apprehension always.
The days went on. Miss Thornycroft, defiantly pursuing her own will, directly disobeying her father's command, did not write to stop the arrival of her guests; and yet an opportunity offered her of doing so. I fully believe that these opportunities of escape from the path of evil are nearly always afforded once at least in every fresh temptation, if we would but recognise and seize upon them.
It wanted but two days to that of the expected arrival, when a hasty note was received from Miss Hunter saying she was prevented coming; it concluded with these words: "My brother is undecided what to do; he thinks you will not want him without me. Please drop him just one line; or if he does not hear he will take it for granted that you expect him."
There was an opportunity!--"Just one line," and Mary Anne Thornycroft would have had the future comfort of knowing that she had (in substance at least) obeyed her father.
But she did not send it.
Dodging about between the village and the Red Court Farm, went Miss Thornycroft. Her mind was not at rest. The day on which she had expected her guests--or rather, one of them--had passed. It was on Saturday; here was Monday passing, and nobody had come. Each time the omnibus had arrived from Jutpoint, the young lady had not been far off. It had not brought anybody in whom she was interested. Forty-five minutes past three now; ten minutes more, and it would be in again. She was beginning to feel sick with emotional suspense.
But, for all this dodging, Miss Thornycroft was a lady; and when the wheels of the omnibus were at length heard, and it drew up at the Mermaid, she was at a considerable distance, apparently taking a cold stroll in the wintry afternoon. One passenger only got out; she could see that; and--was it Robert Hunter?
If so, he must be habited in some curious attire. Looking at him from this distance, he seemed to be all white and black. But, before he had moved a step; while he was inquiring (as might be inferred) the way to the Red Court Farm; the wild beating of Mary Ann Thornycroft's heart told her who it was.
They met quietly enough, shaking hands calmly while he explained that he had been unable to get away on Saturday. Miss Thornycroft burst into a fit of laughter at the coat, partly genuine, partly put on to hide her tell-tale emotion. It was certainly a remarkable coat; made of a smooth sort of white cloth, exceedingly heavy, and trimmed with black fur. The collar, the facings, the wrists and the back pockets had all a broad strip. He turned himself about for her inspection, laughing too.
"I fear I shall astonish the natives. But I never had so warm a coat in my life. I got it from the professor."
"From the professor!"
Mr. Hunter laughed. "Some crafty acquaintance of his, hard up, persuaded him into the purchase of two, money down, saying they had just come over from Russia--latest fashion. Perhaps they had; perhaps they are. The professor does not go in for fashion, but he cannot refuse a request made to him on the plea of unmerited poverty, and all that. I happened to be at his house when he brought them home in a cab. You should have heard Mrs. Mac."
"I should have liked to," said Mary Anne.
"First of all she said she'd have the fellow taken up who had beguiled the professor into it; next she said she'd pledge them. It ended in the professor making me a present of one and keeping the other."
"And you are going to sport it here!"
"Better here than in London; as a beginning. I thought it a good opportunity to get reconciled to myself in it. I should like to see the professor there when he goes out in his."
"They must have taken you for somebody in the train."
"Yes," said Mr. Hunter. "I and an old lady and gentleman had the carriage to ourselves all the way. She evidently took me for a lord; her husband for a card-sharper. But I think I shall like the coat."
Opinions might differ upon it--as did those of the old couple in the train. It was decidedly a handsome coat in itself, and had probably cost as much as the professor gave for it; but, taken in conjunction with its oddity, some might not have elected to be seen wearing it. Mr. Hunter had brought no other; his last year's coat was much worn, and he had been about to get another when this came in his way.
"And what about Susan?" Miss Thornycroft asked.
"Susan is in Yorkshire. Her aunt--to whom she was left when my mother died--was taken ill, and sent for her. I do not suppose Susan will return to London."
"Not at all?"
Mr. Hunter thought not. "It would be scarcely worth while; she was to have gone home in March."
Thus talking, they reached the Red Court Farm. When its inmates saw him arrive, his portmanteau carried behind by a porter, they were thunderstruck. Mr. Thornycroft scarcely knew which to stare at most, him or his coat. Mary Anne introduced him with characteristic equanimity. Richard vouchsafed no greeting in his stern displeasure, but the justice, a gentleman at heart, hospitably inclined always, could do no less than bid him welcome. Cyril, quiet and courteous, shook hands with him; and later, when Isaac came in, he grasped his hand warmly.
There is no doubt that the learning he was a connexion of Anna Chester's (it could not be called a relative) tended to smooth matters. As the days passed on, Mr. Hunter grew upon their liking; for his own sake he proved to be an agreeable companion; and even Richard fell into civility--an active, free, pleasant-mannered young fellow, as the justice called him, who made himself at home indoors and out.
Never, since the bygone days at Katterley, had Robert Hunter deserved the character; but in this brief holiday he could but give himself up to his perfect happiness. He made excursions to Jutpoint; he explored the cliffs; he went in at will to Captain Copp's and the other houses on the heath; he put out to sea with the fishermen in the boats; he talked to the wives in their huts: everybody soon knew Robert Hunter, and especially his coat, which had become the marvel of Coastdown; a few admiring it--a vast many abusing it.
Miss Thornycroft was his frequent companion, and they went out unrestrained. It never appeared to have crossed the mind of Mr. Thornycroft or his sons as being within the bounds of possibility that this struggling young engineer, who was not known to public repute as an engineer at all, could presume to be thinking of Mary Anne, still less that she could think of him; otherwise they had been more cautious. Anna Chester was out with them sometimes, Cyril on occasion; but they rambled about for the most part alone in the cold and frost, their spirits light as the rarefied air.
The plateau and its superstition had no terror for Mr. Hunter, rather amusement: but that he saw--and saw with surprise--it was a subject of gravity at the Red Court, he might have made fun of it. Mary Anne confessed to him that she did not understand the matter; her brothers were reticent even to discourtesy. That some mystery was at the bottom of it Mr. Hunter could not fail to detect, and was content to bury all allusion to the superstition.
He stood with Miss Thornycroft on the edge of the plateau one bright morning--the brightest they had had. It was the first time he had been so far, for Mary Anne had never gone beyond the railings. Not the slightest fear had she; for the matter of that, nobody else had in daylight; but she knew that her father did not like to see her there. In small things, when they did not cross her own will, the young lady could be obedient.
"I can see how dangerous it would be here on a dark night," observed Robert Hunter in answer to something she had been saying, as he drew a little back from the edge, over which he had been cautiously leaning to take his observations. "Mary Anne! I never in all my life saw a place so convenient for smuggling as that Half-moon below. I daresay it has seen plenty of it."
Before she could make any rejoinder Mr. Kyne came strolling up to them in a brown study, and they shook hands. Robert Hunter had dined with him at the Red Court.
"I was telling Miss Thornycroft that the place below looks as if it had been made for the convenience of smuggling," began Robert Hunter. "Have you much trouble here?"
"No; but I am in hopes of it," was the reply. And it so completely astonished Mr. Hunter, who had spoken in a careless manner, without real meaning, as we all do sometimes, that he turned sharply round and looked at the supervisor.
"I thought the days of smuggling were over."
"Not yet, here--so far as I believe," replied Mr. Kyne. "We have information that smuggling to an extent is carried on somewhere on this coast, and this is the most likely spot for it that I can discover. I heard of this suspicion soon after I was appointed to Coastdown, and so kept my eyes open; but never, in spite of my precautions, have I succeeded in dropping on the wretches. I don't speak of paltry packets of tobacco and sausage-skins of brandy, which the fishermen, boarding strange craft, contrive to stow about their ribs, but of more serious cargoes. I would almost stake my life that not a mile distant from this place there lies hidden a ton-load of lace, rich and costly as ever flourished at the Court of St. James."[2]
[Footnote 2: This was just before the late alteration in the Customs' import laws, when the duty on lace and other light articles was large: making the smuggling of them into England a clever and enormously profitable achievement, when it could be accomplished with impunity.]
Robert Hunter thought the story sounded about as likely as that of the ghost. The incredulous, amused light in his eye caused Mary Anne to laugh.
"Where can it be hidden?" she asked of the supervisor. "There's no place."
"I wish I could tell you where, Miss Thornycroft."
Anything but inclined to laugh did he appear himself. The fact was, Mr. Kyne was growing more fully confirmed in his opinion day by day, and had come out this morning determined to do something. Circumstances were occurring to baffle all his precautions, and he felt savage. His policy hitherto had been secrecy, henceforth he meant to speak of the matter openly, and see what that would do. It was very singular--noted hereafter--that Robert Hunter and this young lady should have been the first who fell in his way after the resolution to speak was taken. But no doubt the remark with which Mr. Hunter greeted him surprised him into it.
"But surely you do not think, Mr. Kyne, that boat-loads of lace are really run here!" exclaimed Robert Hunter.
"I do think it. If not in this precise spot,"--pointing with his finger to the Half-moon beach underneath--"somewhere close to it. There's only one thing staggers me--if they run their cargoes there, where can they stow it away? I have walked about there"--advancing to the edge cautiously and looking down--"from the time the tide went off the narrow path, leading to it round the rocks, until it came in again, puzzling over the problem, and peering with every eye I had."
"Peering?"
"Yes. We have heard of caves and other hiding-places being concealed in rocks," added the supervisor, doggedly; "why not in these? I cannot put it out of my head that there's something of the sort here; it's getting as bad to me as a haunting dream."
"It would be charming to find it!" exclaimed Mary Anne. "A cave in the rocks! Ah, Mr. Kyne, it is too good to be true. We shall never have so romantic a discovery at Coastdown."
"If such a thing were there, I should think you would have no difficulty in discovering it," said Mr. Hunter.
"I have found it difficult," returned Mr. Kyne, snappishly, as if certain remembrances connected with the non-finding did not soothe him. "There's only one thing keeps me from reporting the suspicions at head quarters."
"And that is--?"
"The doubt that it may turn out nothing after all."
"Oh, then, you are not so sure; you have no sufficient grounds to go upon," quickly rejoined Mr. Hunter, with a smile that nettled the other.
"Yes, I have grounds," he returned, somewhat incautiously perhaps, in his haste to vindicate himself. "We had information a short time back," he continued after a pause, as he dropped his voice to a low key "that a boat-load of something--my belief is, it's lace--was waiting to come in. Every night for a fortnight, in the dark age of the moon, did I haunt this naked plateau on the watch, one man with me, others being within call. A very agreeable task it was, lying perdu on its edge, with my cold face just extended beyond!"
"And what was the result?" eagerly asked Mr. Hunter, who was growing interested in the narrative.
"Nothing was the result. I never saw the ghost of a smuggler or a boat approach the place. And the very first night I was off the watch, I have reason to believe the job was done."
"Which night was that?" inquired Miss Thornycroft.
"This day week, when I was dining at the Red Court. I had told my men to be on the look-out; but I had certainly told them in a careless sort of way, for the moon was bright again, and who was to suspect that they would risk it on a light night? They are bold sinners."
The customs officer was so earnest, putting, as was evident, so much faith in his own suspicions, that Robert Hunter insensibly began to go over to his belief. Why should cargoes of lace, and other valuable articles, not be run? he asked himself. They bore enough duty to tempt the risk, as they had borne it in the days gone by.
"How was it your men were so negligent?" he inquired.
"There's the devil of it!" cried the supervisor. "I beg your pardon, young lady; wrong words slip out inadvertently when one's vexed. My careless orders made the men careless, and they sat boozing at the Mermaid. Young Mr. Thornycroft, it seems, happened to go in, saw them sitting there with some of his farm-labourers, and, in a generous fit, ordered them to call for what drink they liked. They had red eyes and shaky hands the next morning."
"How stupid of my brother!" exclaimed Mary Anne. "Was it Richard or Isaac?"
"I don't know. But all your family are too liberal: their purse is longer than their discretion. It is not the first time, by many, they have treated my fellows. I wish they would not do so."
There was a slight pause. Mr. Kyne resumed in a sort of halting tone, as if the words came from him in spite of his better judgment.
"The greatest obstacle I have to contend with in keeping the men to their duty on the plateau here, is the superstition connected with it. When a fellow is got on at night, the slightest movement--a night-bird flying overhead--will send him off again. Ah! they don't want pressing to stay drinking at the Mermaid or anywhere else. The fact is, Coastdown has not been kept to its duty for a long while. My predecessor was good-hearted and easy, and the men did as they liked."
"How many men do you count here?"
"Only three or four, and they can't be available all together; they must have some rest, turn on, turn off. There's a longish strip of coast to pace, too; the plateau's but a fleabite of it."
"And your theory is that the smugglers run their boats below here?" continued Robert Hunter, indicating the Half-moon beach.
"I think they do--that is, if they run them anywhere," replied Mr. Kyne, who was in a state of miserable doubt, between his firm convictions and the improbabilities they involved. "You see, there is nowhere else that privateer boats can be run to. There's no possibility of such a thing higher up, beyond that point to the right, and it would be nearly as impossible for them to land a cargo of contraband goods beyond the left point, in the face of all the villagers."
There was a silence. All three were looking below at the scrap of beach over the sharp edges of the jutting rocks, Miss Thornycroft held safe by Mr. Hunter. She broke it.
"But, as you observe, Mr. Kyne, where could they stow a cargo there, allowing that they landed one? There is certainly no opening or place for concealment in those hard, bare rocks, or it would have been discovered long ago. Another thing--suppose for a moment that they do get a cargo stowed away somewhere in the rocks, how are they to get it out again? There would be equal danger of discovery."
"So there would," replied Mr. Kyne. "I have thought of all these things myself till my head is muddled."
"Did you ever read Cooper's novels, Mr. Kyne?" resumed Miss Thornycroft. "Some of them would give you a vast deal of insight into these sort of transactions."
"No," replied the officer, with an amused look. "I prefer to get my insight from practice. I am pretty sharp-sighted," he added with complacency.
Robert Hunter had been weighing possibilities in his mind, and woke up as from sudden thought, turning to the supervisor.
"I should like to go down there and have a look at these rocks. My profession has taken me much amidst such places: perhaps my experience could assist you."
"Let us walk there now!" exclaimed the supervisor, seizing at the idea--"if not taking you out of your way, Miss Thornycroft."
"Oh, I should be delighted," was the young lady's reply. "I call it quite an adventure. Some fine moonlight night I shall come and watch here myself, Mr. Kyne."
"They don't do their work on a moonlight night. At least," he hastened to correct himself; with a somewhat crestfallen expression, "not usually. But after what happened recently, I shall mistrust a light night as much as a dark one."
"Are you sure," she inquired, standing yet within them on the plateau, "that a cargo was really landed the night you speak of?"
"I am not sure; but I have cause to suspect it."
"It must be an adventurous life," she remarked, "bearing its charms, no doubt."
"They had better not get caught," was the officer's rejoinder, delivered with professional gusto; "they would not find it so charming then."
"I thought the days of smuggling were over," observed Mr. Hunter: "except the more legitimate way of doing it through the very eyes and nose of the custom-house. Did you know anything personally of the great custom-house frauds, as they were called, when so many officers and merchants were implicated, some years ago?"
"I did. I held a subordinate post in the London office then, and was in the thick of the discoveries."
"You were not one of the implicated?" jestingly demanded Mr. Hunter.
"Why, no--or you would not see me here now. I was not sufficiently high in the service for it."
"Or else you might have been?"
"That's a home question," laughed Mr. Kyne. "I really cannot answer for what might have been. My betters were tempted to be."
He spoke without a cloud on his face; a different man now, from the one who had betrayed his family's past trouble to Justice Thornycroft. Not to this rising young engineer, attired in his fantastic coat, which the supervisor always believed must be the very height of ton and fashion in London; not to this handsome, careless, light-hearted girl, would he suffer aught of that past to escape. He could joke with them of the custom-house frauds, which had driven so many into exile, and one--at least, as he believed--to death. On the whole, it was somewhat singular that the topic should have been again started. Miss Thornycroft took up the thread with a laugh.
"There, Mr. Kyne! You acknowledge that you custom-house gentlemen are not proof against temptation, and yet you boast of looking so sharply after these wretched fishermen!"
"If the game be carried on here as I suspect, Miss Thornycroft, it is not wretched fishermen who have to do with it; except, perhaps, as subordinates."
"Let us go and explore the Half-moon beach below," again said Robert Hunter. Mr. Kyne turned to it at once: he had been waiting to do so. The engineer's experience might be valuable. He had had somewhat to do with rocks and land.
It was a short walk as they made their way down to the village, and thence to the narrow path winding round the projection of rock. The tide was out, so they shelved round it with dry feet, and ascended to the Half-moon beach. They paced about from one end of the place to the other, looking and talking. Nothing was to be seen; nothing; no opening, or sign of opening. The engineer had an umbrella in his hand, and he struck the rocks repeatedly: in one part in particular, it was just the middle of the Half-moon, he struck and struck, and returned to strike again.
"What do you find?" inquired Mr. Kyne.
"Not much. Only it sounds hollow just here."
They looked again: they stooped down and looked; they stood upon a loose stone and raised themselves to look; they pushed and struck at the part with all their might and main. No, nothing came of it.
"Did you ever see a more convenient spot for working the game?" cried the supervisor. "Look at those embedded stones down there, rising from the lower beach: the very things to moor a boat to."
"Who do you suspect does this contraband business?" inquired Robert Hunter.
"My suspicions don't fall particularly upon any one. There are no parties in the neighbourhood whom one could suspect, except the boatmen, and if the trade is pushed in the extensive way I think, they are not the guilty men. A week ago (more or less) they ran, as I tell you, one cargo; I know they did; and may I be shot this moment, if they are not ready to ran another! That's a paying game, I hope."
Ready to run another! The pulses of Mr. Kyne's hearers ran riot with excitement. This spice of adventure was intensely charming.
"How do you know they are?" asked Robert Hunter.
"By two or three signs. One of them, which I have no objection to mention, is that a certain queer craft is fond of cruising about here. Whenever I catch sight of her ugly sides, I know it bodes no good for her Majesty's revenue. She carries plausible colours, the hussey, and has, I doubt not, a double bottom, false as her colours. I saw her stern, shooting off at daybreak this morning, and should like to have had the overhauling of her."
"Can you not?"
"No. She is apparently on legitimate business."
"I thought that her Majesty could search any vessel, legitimate or illegitimate."
Again Mr. Kyne looked slightly crestfallen. "I boarded her with my men the last time she was here, and nothing came of it. She happened by ill-luck to be really empty, or we were not clever enough to unearth the fox."
The reminiscence was not agreeable to Mr. Kyne. The empty vessel had staggered him professionally; the reception he met with insulted him personally. Until the search was over, the captain, a round, broad Dutchman, had been civil, affording every facility to the revenue officers; but the instant the work was done, he ordered them out of the ship in his bad English, and promised a different reception if they ever came on it again. That was not all. The mate, another Dutchman, was handling a loaded pistol the whole time on full cock, and staring at the superintendent in a very strange manner. Altogether the remembrance was unpleasant.
The tide was coming up, and they had to quit the strip of beach while the road was open. Mr. Kyne wished them good morning and departed on his own way. Robert Hunter turned towards the plateau again, which surprised Miss Thornycroft. "Just for a minute or two," he urged.
They ascended it, and stood on the brow as before, Robert Hunter in deep thought. His face, now turned to the sea, now to the land, wore a business-like expression.
"We are now standing exactly above the middle of the rocks on the Half-moon beach below," he remarked presently, "just where they had a hollow sound."
"Yes," she replied.
"And the Red Court, as you see, lies off in a straight line. It is a good thing your father lives there, Mary Anne."
"Why?"
"Because if suspicious persons inhabited it, I should say that house might have something to do with the mystery. If Kyne's conclusions are right--that smuggled goods are landed on the beach below, they must be stowed away in the rocks; although the ingress is hidden from the uninitiated. Should this be really the case, depend upon it there is some passage, some communication, in these rocks to an egress inland."
"But what has that to do with our house?" inquired Mary Anne, wonderingly.
"These old castles, lying contiguous to the coast, are sure to have subterranean passages underneath, leading to the sea. Many an escape has been made that way in time of war, and many an ill-fated prisoner has been so conducted to the waves, and put out of sight for ever. Were I your father, I would institute a search. He might come upon the hoarding-place of the smugglers."
"But the smugglers cannot get to their caverns and passages through our house!"
"Of course not. There must be some other opening. How I should like to drop upon the lads!"
Mr. Hunter spoke with animation. Such a discovery presented a tempting prospect, and he walked across the plateau as one who has got a new feather stuck in his cap. In passing the Round Tower, he turned aside to it, and stepped in through the opening. He found nothing there that could be converted into suspicion by the most lively imagination. The worn grass beneath the feet was all genuine; the circular wall, crumbling away, had stood for ages. Satisfied, so far, they crossed the railings on their way home.
Mr. Thornycroft was in the dining-room writing a note; Richard, who had apparently just stepped in to ask a question, held a gun; Cyril lay back in an easy-chair, reading. When Mary Anne and their gentleman guest burst in upon them with eager excitement, the one out-talking the other, it was rather startling.
"Such an adventure! Papa, did you know we probably have smugglers on the coast here?"
"Have you ever explored underneath your house, sir, under the old ruins of the castle? There may be a chain of subterranean passages and vaults conducting from here to the sea."
"Not common smugglers, papa, the poor tobacco-and-brandy sailors, but people in an extensive way. Boat-loads of lace they land."
"If it be as the man suspects, there may be often a rare booty there. There may be one at this very moment; I would lay any money there is," added Robert Hunter, improving upon the idea in his excitement. "Mr. Richard, will you bet a crown with me?"
The words had been poured forth so rapidly by both, that it would seem their hearers were powerless to interrupt. Yet the effect they produced was great. Cyril started upright, and let his book drop on his knees; Mr. Thornycroft pushed his glasses to the top of his brow, an angry paleness giving place to his healthy, rosy colour; while Richard, more demonstrative, dashed the gun on the carpet and broke into an ugly oath. The justice was the first to find his tongue.
"What absurd treason are you talking now? You are mad, Mary Anne."
"It is not treason at all, sir," replied Mr. Hunter, regarding Richard with surprise. "It is a pretty well ascertained fact that contraband goods are landed and housed in the rocks at the Half-moon. It will be loyalty, instead of treason, if we can contrive to lay a trap and catch the traitors."
Richard Thornycroft moved forward as if to strike the impetuous speaker. It would seem that one of the fits of passion he was liable to was coming on. Cyril, calm and cool, placed himself across his brother's path.
"Be quiet, Richard," he said, in a tone that savoured of authority; "stay you still. Where did you pick up this cock-and-bull story?" he demanded with light mockery of Robert Hunter.
"We had it from the supervisor. He has suspected ever since he came, he says, that this station was favoured by smugglers, and now he is sure of it. One cargo they landed a few days ago, and there's another dodging off the coast, waiting to come in. He intends to drop upon that."
"It is a made-up lie!" foamed Richard. "The fellow talks so to show his zeal. I'll tell him so. Smuggled goods landed here!"
"Well, lie or no lie, you need not fly in a passion over it," said Mary Anne. "It is not our affair."
"Then, if it is not our affair, what business have you interfering in it?" retorted Richard. "Interpose your authority, sir, and forbid her to concern herself with men's work," he added, turning sharply to his father. "No woman would do it who retains any sense of shame."
"Miss Thornycroft has done nothing unbecoming a lady," exclaimed Mr. Hunter, in a tone of wonder. "You forget that you are speaking to your sister, Mr. Richard. What can you mean?"
"Oh, he means nothing," said Mary Anne, "only he lets his temper get the better of his tongue. One would think, Richard, you had something to do with the smugglers, by your taking it up in this way," she pursued, in a spirit of aggravation. "And, indeed, it was partly your fault that they got their last cargo in."
"Explain yourself," said Cyril to his sister, pushing his arm before Richard's mouth.
"It was a night when we had a dinner party here," she pursued. "Mr. Kyne was here; the only night he had been off the watch for a fortnight, he says. But he left orders with his men to look out, and Richard got treating them to drink at the Mermaid, and they never looked. So the coast was clear, and the smugglers got their goods in."
Cyril burst into a pleasant laugh. "Ah, ha!" said he, "new brooms sweep clean. Mr. Superintendent Kyne is a fresh hand down here, so he thinks he must trumpet forth his fame as a keen officer--that he may be all the more negligent by-and-bye, you know. None but a stranger, as you are, Mr. Hunter, could have given ear to it."
"I have given both ear and belief," replied Robert Hunter, firmly; "and I have offered Mr. Kyne the benefit of my engineering experience to help him discover whether there is or is not a secret opening in the rocks."
"You have!" exclaimed Justice Thornycroft. He glared on Robert Hunter as he asked the question. From quite the first until now he had been bending over his note, leaving the discussion to them.
"To be sure I have, sir. I have been with him now, on the Half-moon, sounding them; but I had only an umbrella, and that was of little use. We are going to-morrow better prepared. It strikes me the mystery lies right in the middle. It sounds hollow there. I will do all I can to help him, that the fellows may be brought to punishment."
"Sir!" cried the old justice, in a voice of thunder, rising and sternly confronting Robert Hunter, "I forbid it. Do you understand? I forbid it. None under my roof shall take act or part in this."
"But justice demands it," replied Mr. Hunter, after a pause. "It behoves all loyal subjects of her Majesty to aid in discovering the offenders: especially you, sir, a sworn magistrate."
"It behoves me to protect the poor fishermen, who look to me for protection, who have looked to me for it for years; ay, and received it," was the warm reply, "better than it behoves you, sir, to presume to teach me my duty! Richard, leave me to speak. I tell you, sir, I do not believe this concocted story. I am the chief of the place, sir, and I will not believe it. The coast-guard and the fishermen are at variance; always have been; and I will not allow the poor fellows to be traduced and put upon, treated as if they were thieves and rogues. Neither I nor mine shall take part in it; no, nor any man who is under my roof eating the bread of friendliness. I hope you hear me, sir."
Robert Hunter stood confounded. All his golden visions of discoveries, that should make his name famous and put feathers in his cap, were vanishing into air. But the curious part was the justice's behaviour; that struck him as being very strange, not to say unreasonable.
"It is not the first time, sir, that the coast-guard have tried it on," pursued Mr. Thornycroft. "When the last superintendent was appointed, Dangerfield, he took something of the sort in his head, and came to me to assist him in an investigation. 'Investigate for yourself,' I said to him. 'I shall not aid you to tarnish the characters of the fishermen.' It may be presumed that his investigation did not come to much," was the ironical conclusion; "since I heard no more about the smugglers from him all the years he was stationed here."
"And you think, sir, that Mr. Kyne is also mistaken?" cried Robert Hunter, veering round.
"What I think, and what I do not think, you may gather from my words," was the haughty reply. "I tell you that no man living under my roof shall encourage by so much as a word, let alone an act, anything of the sort. Mr. Kyne can pursue his own business without us."
"If it were one of my own brothers who did so, I would shoot him dead," said Richard, with a meaning touch at his gun. "So I warn him."
"And commit murder?" echoed Robert Hunter, who did not admire this semi-threat of Richard's.
"It would not be murder, sir; it would be justifiable homicide," interposed the justice, rather to Robert Hunter's surprise. "When I was a young man, a guest abused my father's hospitality. My brother challenged him. They went out with their seconds, and my brother shot him. That was not murder."
"But, papa, that must have been a different thing altogether," said Mary Anne, who had stood transfixed at the turn the conversation was taking. "It----"
"To your room, Miss Thornycroft! To your room, I say!" cried the passionate justice, pushing her from him. "Would you beard my authority? Things are coming to a pretty pass."
It was a stormy ending to a stormy interview. Confused and terrified, Mary Anne Thornycroft hastened up and burst into tears in her chamber. Richard strode away with his gun; Cyril followed him; and the justice bent over his writing again quietly, as though nothing had happened.
As for Robert Hunter he felt entirely amazed. Of course, putting it as the justice had put it, he felt bound in honour not to interfere further, and would casually tell Mr. Kyne so on the first opportunity, giving no reason why. Pondering over the matter as he strolled out of doors uncomfortably, he came to the conclusion that Mr. Thornycroft must be self-arrogant, both as a magistrate and a man: one of the old-world sort, who jog on from year's end to year's end, seeing no abuses, and utterly refusing to reform them when seen.