"Are we women?" asked Mr. Macfarlane.
"Out with your story," cried another.
Dick Parmiter shrank back and turned his eyes towards the door, but one man shut it to and leaned his shoulders against the panels, while the others caught at the lad's hesitation as at a new game, and crowded about him as though he was some rare curiosity brought by a traveller from outlandish parts.
"He shall tell his story," cried Clutterbuck. "It is two years since I was stationed at the Scilly Islands, two years since I dined in the mess-room of Star Castle with Captain Hathaway of his Majesty's Invalids, and was bored to death with his dissertations on Diodorus Siculus. Two years! The boy must have news of consequence. There is no doubt trouble with the cray fish, or Adam Mayle has broken the head of the collector of the Customs House----"
"Adam Mayle is dead. He was struck down by paralysis and never moved till he died," interrupted Dick Parmiter.
The news sobered Clutterbuck for an instant. "Dead!" said he, gaping at the boy. "Dead!" he repeated, and so flung back to his noise and laughter, though there was a ring of savagery in it very strange to his friends. "Well, more brandy will pay revenue, and fewer ships will come ashore, and very like there'll be quiet upon Tresco----"
"No," interrupted Parmiter again, and Clutterbuck turned upon him with a flush of rage.
"Well, tell your story and have done with it!"
"To you," said the boy, looking from one to other of the faces about him.
"No, to all," cried Clutterbuck. The drink, and a certain anger of which we did not know the source, made him obstinate. "You shall tell it to us all, or not at all. Bring that table, forward, Macfarlane! You shall stand on the table Dick, like a preacher in his pulpit," he sneered, "and put all the fine gentlemen to shame, with a story of the rustic virtues."