I took it and deciphered these words, scrawled in an abominable hand:
"Meet me to-night, nine o'clock, at the place where we parted. J. R."
"Was Mr. Rogers going to Plymouth?" I asked.
"Yes, and in a hurry, by the pace he was driving."
As you may guess, this news discomposed me. Could Mr. Rogers be preparing a trap? No: certainly not for me. Whitmore, if anyone, was his quarry. But I mistrusted that, if he once started this game, it would lead him on to another scent. That Archibald Plinlimmon was innocent of the Jew's murder I felt sure. Still—what had he been seeking on the roofs by the Jew's house? It would be an ugly question, if Mr. Rogers blundered on it; and in the way of honest blundering I felt Mr. Rogers to be infinitely capable. Would that, trusting in his good nature, I had made a clean breast to him!
A clean breast? Isabel too, poor girl, was aching to make confession to her father. For weeks her secret had been a sword within her, wearing the flesh, and it eased her somewhat (as I saw) even to have made confession to me. But she would not speak to her father without first consulting Archibald. It was he, I gathered, who had enjoined silence. Major Brooks (and small blame to him) would assuredly have imposed a probation: old men with lovely daughters do not surrender them at call to penniless youths, even when the penniless youth happens to be the son of an old friend. I wished Master Archibald to perdition for a selfish fool.
I talked long with Isabel: first in the kitchen, and again on our way back to the summer-house, where her father sat awake and expecting me, book in hand.
There she left me, and he began to dictate at once as I settled myself to write.
"First, then, for site. Seek, and instal your Bee
Where nor may winds invade (for winds forbid
His homeward load); nor sheep, nor heady kid
Trample the flowers; nor blundering heifer pass,
Brush off the dew and bruise the tender grass;
Nor lizard foe in painted armour prowl
Round the rich hives. Ban him, ban every fowl—
Bee-bird with Procne of the bloodied breast:
These rifle all—our Hero with the rest,
Snapped on the wing and haled, a tit-bit, to the nest.
—But seek a green moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh;
And through the turf a streamlet fleeting by."
"First, then, for site. Seek, and instal your Bee
Where nor may winds invade (for winds forbid
His homeward load); nor sheep, nor heady kid
Trample the flowers; nor blundering heifer pass,
Brush off the dew and bruise the tender grass;
Nor lizard foe in painted armour prowl
Round the rich hives. Ban him, ban every fowl—
Bee-bird with Procne of the bloodied breast:
These rifle all—our Hero with the rest,
Snapped on the wing and haled, a tit-bit, to the nest.
—But seek a green moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh;
And through the turf a streamlet fleeting by."