"Would you trust anyone whom I trust?" I asked.
"In truth, yes."
"And would you take the service if I would?"
"Am I so rich that I can choose?" she said piteously.
"I have your promise to it?"
"Yes," she answered with no hesitation, nay, with a readiness that made me ashamed of my stratagem. Yet, as Barbara said, beggars cannot be choosers even in their stratagems, and, if need were, I must hold her to her word.
Now we were at the land and the keel of our boat grated on the shingle. We disembarked under the shadow of the cliffs at the eastern end of the bay; all was solitude, save for a little house standing some way back from the sea, half-way up the cliff, on a level platform cut in the face of the rock. It seemed a fisherman's cottage; thence might come breakfast, and for so much our guinea would hold good. There was a recess in the cliffs, and here I bade Barbara sit and rest herself, sheltered from view on either side, while I went forward to try my luck at the cottage. She seemed reluctant to be left, but obeyed me, standing and watching while I took my way, which I chose cautiously, keeping myself as much within the shadow as might be. I had sooner not have ventured this much exposure, but it is ill to face starvation for safety's sake.
The cottage lay but a hundred yards off, and soon I approached it. It was hard on six o'clock now, and I looked to find the inmates up and stirring. I wondered also whether Monmouth were gone to await Barbara and myself at the Merry Mariners in Deal; alas, we were too near the trysting-place! Or had he heard by now that the bird was flown from his lure and caged by that M. de Perrencourt who had treated him so cavalierly? I could not tell. Here was the cottage; but I stood still suddenly, amazed and cautious. For there, in the peaceful morning, in the sun's kindly light, there lay across the threshold the body of a man; his eyes, wide-opened, stared at the sky, but seemed to see nothing of what they gazed at; his brown coat was stained to a dark rusty hue on the breast, where a gash in the stuff showed the passage of a sword. His hand clasped a long knife, and his face was known to me. I had seen it daily at my uprising and lying-down. The body was that of Jonah Wall, in the flesh my servant, in spirit the slave of Phineas Tate, whose teaching had brought him to this pass.
The sight bred in me swift horror and enduring caution. The two Dukes had been despatched, sorely against their will, in chase of this man. Was it to their hands that he had yielded up his life and by their doing that he lay like carrion? It might well be that he had sought refuge in this cottage, and having found there death, not comfort, had been flung forth a corpse. I pitied him; although he had been party to a plot which had well nigh caused my own death and taken no account of my honour, yet I was sorry for him. He had been about me; I grieved for him as for the cat on my hearth. Well, now in death he warned me; it was some recompense; I lifted my hat as I stole by him and slunk round to the side of the house. There was a window there, or rather a window-frame, for glass there was none; it stood some six feet from the ground and I crouched beneath it, for I now heard voices in the cottage.