It was young Rodda, and he ran to his brother Nathaniel with a sob, and clasped him about the legs.
"Hullo!" cried Nathaniel. "Why, Hick, lad, what's taken 'ee?"
Said Roger carelessly, "I was going to hang him. But I can afford to stretch a point now. Carry the cur to the gate and fling him outside."
"Dang it all, Mr. Stephen," spoke up Nat; "you may be master in your own house, but I reckon Hick and I didn' come here for our own pleasure, and I see no sport in jokin' a lad till you've scared 'en pretty well out of his five senses. Why, see here, friends—he's tremblin' like a leaf!"
"He—he meant it!" sobbed Hickory.
"Meant it? Of course I meant it—the dirty, thievin', letter-writer!" Roger's eyes blazed with madness, and the men by the hearth growled and shrank away from him. He pulled out his pistol and, walking up, presented it at Nat Rodda's head. "Am I captain here, or amn't I? Very well, then: I caught that cur to-day writin' a letter—never you mind of what sort. 'Twas a sort of which I'd promised that the man I caught writing one should never write a second."
"You're mighty tender to women, all of a sudden!" Nat—to do him credit— answered up pluckily enough for a man addressing the muzzle of a pistol not two feet from his nose.
"We'll see about that by-and-by," said Roger grimly. "You've helped do me a favour, and I'll cry quits with you and your brother for't. But I want no more of you or your haveage: yon's the door—walk!"
"Oh, if that's how you take it,"—Nat Rodda shrugged his shoulders and obeyed, his brother at his heels. One or two of the men would have interfered, but Trevarthen checked them. Malachi alone went with the pair to let them forth and bar the gates behind them.
"I thank ye, Master Stephen," said Nat, turning in the doorway with a short laugh. "You've let two necks of your company out o' the halter." He swung round and stepped out into the darkness.