“He tried to slip down past the town and escape from our shores by sea. Somewhere in this darkness and storm a ship is cruising up and down waiting to carry him away. It seems that he desired to go back to France but was too old and broken to undertake the overland journey to Canada.”
“Come, friend,” put in another of the little party, nudging Allen as he spoke, in a vain attempt to check the story that he was pouring out. “We are delaying here and time is precious. Let Master Simon give us a light from his lantern.”
“A moment first,” said Margeret’s father. “I must know who it was that found out all this.”
“Who but the wisest and craftiest man in Hopewell,” answered Allen. “Who but that clever shoemaker, Samuel Skerry? The priest became bewildered in the dark and by some chance wandered to the cobbler’s door. Roger Bardwell was from home and the shoemaker there alone, but it did not take him long to make the simple old Frenchman believe that he was a friend and so to draw the whole story from him. Then Skerry came in haste to rouse the town, but before we could return with him the priest had taken alarm and was off and away again. Now we are searching everywhere for him and when we find him—” He chanced to catch Margeret’s horrified eyes fixed upon him in the lantern light and so concluded lamely, “It is no matter to be talked of before little maids.”
“It is no work for honest men,” rejoined Master Simon hotly, “to hunt a lost, frightened, old man up and down through the storm as though he were a wild thing. Have you no pity, Neighbour Allen, and no kindness of heart?”
“I have both,” answered the other, “but I have also a soul, a soul that will be lost for all eternity should I suffer this priest to go unpunished.”
Margeret started and was scarcely able to repress a cry. Something had brushed by her in the dark close to the hedge, something small and quick and panting.
“It is he, it is he!” cried the man nearest her. “I hear something rustling by the hedge. Your light, Master Simon, for the love of Heaven.”
“Yes,” said Master Simon.
The thin, flickering ray from his lantern swung across the wet wind-swept bushes nearer—and nearer, and then suddenly went out, leaving them all groping in the blind darkness.