"Your hand, sir," he replied readily, "was ever at your pocket on the road if we galloped—on the sea if we passed a ship."
It was truth that he said—every word of it—and it caused me no small humiliation. For here was I entrusted with a mission of some consequence, and I had betrayed a portion of my business at the outset.
"There is another thing," I continued sharply. "How comes it that you, Cumberland-born and Cumberland-bred, have so much knowledge of the sea?"
I looked at him steadily as I spoke, and I saw his face change, but not to any expression of suspicion or alarm. Rather it softened in a manner that surprised me; a look, tender and almost dreamy, came into his eyes, a regretful smile flickered on his lips. It was as though the soul and spirit of a poet peeped out at you from a busy, practical countenance.
"I should have been a sailor," he said, in a low, musing voice. "All my life I have longed for that one thing. The very wind in the branches for me does no more than copy the moan of the surf. But my parents would not have it so, and I live inland, restless, unsatisfied, like a man kept out of his own." He checked himself hastily, and continued in a flurry, for no reason which I could comprehend, "Still, I made such use as I could of the opportunities that presented. At Whitehaven and at Workington I learnt the handling of a boat."
"But," I interrupted him, "this is not the first time you have sailed from Dunkirk to England."
"No, sir," he answered, and his face hardened at my questioning. It was as though a lid had been slammed down upon an open box. "I have crossed more than once with young Mr. Rookley."
"That will do," I said; and he drew a breath of relief.
The explanation, I assured myself, was feasible enough, but—but—I could not get from before my eyes the vision of him creeping stealthily from the tiller to the bows. As he lay sleeping just where I had lain—for all that day we remained hidden within the cliffs—I saw him continually stoop beneath the sail; I saw his face sink out of the moonlight down and down to mine, and his hands hover above my breast. And with that a light flashed in on me. He knew of the letter I was carrying! He knew of the pocket I carried it in! I sat staring at him dumfounded. Was this the link? Was he playing me false?
"If I had only closed my eyes!" I cried, and in my perturbation I cried the words aloud.