Round the table, on forms and stools, were seated five men, who all wore the red sashes of Cavalier officers. At the sound of Merrylips' step on the echoing floor, they looked up, every one of them. In her alarm, she came near dropping them a courtesy like a girl.
"Yonder's l-little Venner, whereof I told you, sir," spoke a voice that Merrylips remembered for Lieutenant Crashaw's.
Then a harsh voice that she did not remember struck in:—
"Come you hither, sirrah!"
A long, long way it seemed to Merrylips she went. She crossed the floor that echoed in a startling manner. She passed the faces that were bent upon her. At last she halted at the head of the table.
The man who sat there was dark, and ill-shaven, and bearded, and his hair was touched with gray. His leathern coat was worn and stained, and his great boots were muddied. Yet Merrylips did not doubt that he was commander in that place. This was the man whom even her big brother feared—the dreaded Captain Tibbott Norris.
For a moment Captain Norris looked at Merrylips, and she looked bravely back at him, for all that she breathed a little faster.
"So you're Venner's brother!" he said at last. "Well, an you grow to be as gallant a lad as Venner, your kinsmen need find no fault in you."
When Merrylips heard Captain Norris, whom Munn had feared, praise him so generously, now that he was gone, she wanted to cry. But she blinked fast and said, with only a little quaver:—
"I thank you—for my brother's sake, sir!"