For the moment, I was quite congratulatory to Fate on its having found so strong an instrument as myself to help it with its schemes. I even, I think, took credit for that brilliant conception of shifting the whole burden as soon as possible upon Mr. Sant’s shoulders. Through the glaze of repletion I saw, bedimmed, and even perhaps glorified, the figures of two ghostseers scuttling home that afternoon, with their tails between their legs, before the vision of a vengeance they had evoked. Now I laughed and snapped my fingers at the shadow of that vengeance left standing outside the window.
But it came to be just a leetle a different matter when it fell evening, and when shadow enwrapped the shadow, and I must go out into the first, perhaps after all to find the second also claiming and involving me. We were still, Harry and I, bound unrelieved to our secret, and must be so till late night, at least. For Mr. Sant was to return from London but in time to keep his evening engagement at the church, or, rather, the schoolrooms adjoining—to which, since their completion, the lectures had been relegated—and no opportunity could be ours to speak with him till after the entertainment. In the meanwhile, we had arranged to meet at the Flask, when I went to fetch Joshua, that Harry might be introduced; and about half-past seven I set out.
I confess I looked over my shoulder more than once as I sped for the inn. The night was very black, with a sense of creeping inquisitive mists in it. I had brought a lantern for myself and one for Joshua; but for some reason I did not want to light them as yet. Perhaps it was the thought of my moving a marked object through the gloom which prevented me. However, I reached my destination without mishap, and finding Harry already waiting for me there, took him up at once to our visitor’s bedroom.
We found Mr. Pilbrow dressed, and expecting me with some eagerness. He was quite spruce, so far as the contents of the little hand-bag, his sole baggage, it seemed, could make him. But he had been shaved and brushed, and his boots cleaned; and if his heavy green surtout was worn and smeared with a hundred stains, the character of it was redeemed by that of the little, alert, forcible face, which looked out of the frayed collar.
“So,” he said, pleased, but stiffly, “here’s the lantern, and here’s Harry, I presume?”
“How dee do, sir?” said my friend, grinning rather shy, but in his frank, attractive way. “I hope you’ll like Dunberry. We haven’t much in the way of local sights to recommend us; but what there is we’ll show you, if you’ll let us.”
“I’m obliged to ye,” said Joshua. “My young friend here mentioned some ruins.”
“Yes, there’s the ruins,” said Harry; “and—and—what else is there, Dick?”
I had hoped, under the circumstances, we might have let the ruins alone. I did not care much to think of them, for my part.
“O,” I said, airily, “there’s the wreck on the sands. It’s the only other thing I can call to mind.”