His coat was burning. It was the lantern. Like a fool he had forgotten to blow it out, and an abominable smell of oil and burning cloth now arose from his pocket. He stifled the smouldering fire, pulled out the lantern, and looked at his watch.
It wanted twenty minutes to eleven.
He had plenty of time; so, having extinguished the lantern, and bestowed it in another pocket, he caught up his burden and began to walk up the road at a leisurely pace.
His terrors had cooled, but nevertheless he wished himself well out of the scrape. The report of the gun still rang in his ears and in fancy he could hear again the buzz of that bullet by his ear. More than once a shadow lying across the white road gave him a twinge of fear; and when a placid cow poked its nose over the hedge above him, and lowed confidentially, he leapt almost out of his skin.
The task before him, too, gave him no small anxiety. The directions in the letter were plain enough, but not so the intention of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys. Did she mean him to elope with her? He did not care to face the question. The Admiral, though an indulgent father, was not extravagant; and Sam had but seven-and-sixpence in his pocket. This was an excellent sum for long whist at threepenny points, but would hardly defray the cost of an elopement. Besides, he did not want to elope.
"No words of mine will repay you." Now he came to consider, these words wore an awkward look. Good Heavens! he had a mind to drop the portmanteau and run home. What had he done to be tempted so? And why had these people ever come to Troy?
Ah! Sam, that was the question we should have asked ourselves months ago. Some time before, at a concert in the Town Hall, I remember that Mr. Moggridge sang the line—
"Too late the balm when the heart is broke!"
"Too late the balm when the heart is broke!"
And a Trojan voice at the back assented—