Through the open doorway sounded the tramp of a horse.
"My father!" said Dorothy.
I crammed the letter into my pocket without a glance at its conclusion, and ran down the pathway to the gate. As I opened the gate Mr. Curwen rode up to it.
"I am glad to have this chance of speaking to you alone," said he, as he dismounted. "I have been to-day to Whitehaven. My ship, the Swallow, is fitting out I have given orders that the work should be hurried, and the crew shipped with the least delay. The Swallow will sail the first moment possible, and lie off Ravenglass until you come. It is an arduous journey from here to Ravenglass, but safe."
A farm-servant came up and led away the horse.
"The Swallow should be at Ravenglass in six weeks from to-day," he continued.
"But, sir," said I in a whisper, though I felt an impulse to cry the news out, "there will be no need, I trust, for the Swallow. There is the grandest news to tell you;" and I informed him of the contents of my letter.
Mr. Curwen said never a word to me, but dropped upon his knees in the pathway.
"God save the King!" he cried in a quavering voice, and the fervour of it startled me. His hands were clasped and lifted up before him, and by the starlight I saw that there were tears upon his cheek. Then he stood up again and mopped his face with his handkerchief, leaning against the palings of the garden fence. "Mr. Clavering, I could add with a full heart, 'Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,' but that there is work even for an arm as old and feeble as mine." At that he stopped, and asked, in a very different tone of trepidation, "Does Mary Tyson know?"
"Miss Dorothy does."