"But wait," said the Collector sharply, on a sudden thought. "You are not meaning to walk all the way home, surely?"
"Yes."
"At this hour?"
"The wind has gone down. I do not mind the dark, and the distance is nothing. . . . Oh, I forgot: your Honour thinks that, with all this money, some one will try to rob me?"
The Collector smiled. "You would appear to be a very innocent young woman," he said. "I was not, as a fact, thinking of the money."
"Nobody will guess that I am carrying so much," she said simply; "so it will be quite safe."
"Nevertheless this may help to give you confidence," said he. Feeling in the breast pocket of his laced satin waistcoat, he drew forth a diminutive pistol—a delicate toy, with a pattern of silver foliated over the butt. "It is loaded," he explained, "and primed; though it cannot go off unless you pull back the trigger. At close quarters it can be pretty deadly. Do you understand firearms?"
"Grandfather has a fowling-piece," she answered; "and, now that his sight has failed, on Sundays I try to shoot sea-birds for him. He says that I have a good eye. But last week the birds had all flown inland, because of the gale."
"Then take this. It is nothing to carry, and you may feel the safer for it."
She put up a hand to decline. "Why should I need it?"