His silence chilled the boy.
"D'you believe me, sir?" he flashed out at last.
"Believe the boy!" cried the Parson fiercely. "Why, I saw the fight. I was dancing mad at the foot of the cliff. Great heavens, sir!—didn't you hear me holloa? I should have thought they'd have heard me in France. Why, for the first and last time in my life, I wanted to be a sailor myself!"
Kit finished with a free heart, withholding nothing: the death of Black Diamond; the fight with the privateers; the end of old Ding- dong; and the scene with the Gentleman on the cliff.
The Parson drank in the lad's words. His eyes were grave; his brow furrowed. So stern he seemed, his face so smileless under those laughing curls, that Kit hardly recognised in him the boy-hearted swordsman of a few minutes since.
The story finished, he sat long unmoving; his mouth set, and eyes inward.
Then he began to pace up and down again.
"My prayer is heard," he said at last, and stopping turned to the boy.
"Kit Caryll, d'you know what I am?"
"You look like a—kind of a clergyman, sir."