“There is Wagram,” went on the Squire as a step and a whistled bar or two sounded outside; and then the door opened.
“Ah! how are you, Monsignor? They told me you had arrived.”
The old prelate’s keen, kindly glance took in the man before him as they shook hands, and there was sadness in his heart, though sign thereof did not appear. Yes; he took in the tall, straight form and the refined, thoughtful face, and realised what a blow hung over their owner. Should it fall, how would he take it? How? He thought he knew. But—it would be terrible, disastrous, ruinous. Heaven in mercy avert it!
“What do you think, father?” said Wagram as they were seated at lunch. “You remember that fellow who escaped from that wreck we were reading about the other day—the fellow with the quaint name—Develin Something—ah, Hunt—that was it? Well, he’s staying in Bassingham. Charlie Vance pointed him out to me. Says he’s stopping at the Golden Crown. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Very. That’s the man at whose expense you perpetrated that infamous pun, isn’t it, Wagram?” answered the Squire, with a twinkle of the eyes, and as complete an insouciance as though the man’s very existence were not a matter of life and death to them.
“Well, I wasn’t as bad as Haldane. I only fired it off once; but Haldane—you know, Monsignor, Haldane spent the rest of the day suggesting to everyone within hail that a chap named Develin Hunt must have had a bad time throughout life in that he would be continually in the way of being told that he had the Develin him.”
“Capital—capital!” said Monsignor Culham, with a hearty laugh. “I read the case in the papers at the time. And what sort of a fellow did this shipwrecked mariner strike you as being, Wagram?”
“Oh, he looked a hard-bitten, unscrupulous sort of pirate. They say he’s been a West African back-country trader—a life, I imagine, likely to turn a man that way.”
The prelate laughed again, so did the Squire. Thus admirably did they keep their own counsel these two finished old diplomats. But—beneath!