So much, with interminably slow pauses, we accomplished before the light waned in the summer-house and Isabel called us in to supper, which we ate together in a low-ceiled parlour overlooking the garden. At a quarter to nine, on pretence that I had still to make up arrears of sleep, she signed to me to wish her father good-night and escorted me out into the passage. A slip of the bolt, and I was free of the night.
I found the spot where I had dropped into the road, and cautiously mounted the hedge, putting the brambles aside and peering through them into the fast falling twilight. A low whistle sounded, and Mr. Rogers stepped into view on the footbridge. But he left a companion behind him in the shadow of the alders, and who this might be I could neither see nor guess.
"Is that you, Master Revel?"
There was no help for it now; so over the hedge I climbed and met him.
"How did you find out—"
—"Your name? Miss Brooks told me, this morning. But, for that matter, it's placarded all over Plymouth and at every public and forge and signpost along the road. You're a notorious character, my son."
I began to quake.
"Parson," he went on, turning and addressing the figure in the shadow, "here's the boy. Better make haste, if you have any questions to ask him before we get to business."
There stepped forward, not Mr. Whitmore (as I was fearfully expecting), but a figure unknown to me; an old shovel-hatted man leaning on a stick and buttoned to the chin in a black Inverness cape. I felt his eyes peering at me through the dusk.
"He seems very young to be a trustworthy witness," croaked this old gentleman in a voice which seemed to be affected by the night air.