Goodman Allen looked at Roger and Margeret standing there together and laughed aloud.
“No eye but one so blinded with malice as is yours, Samuel Skerry,” he said, “could fail to see why the lad has lingered here!”
Margeret blushed vividly, but Roger smiled upon them all. Now that the cloud over his past had been dispelled and his secret had been discovered and forgiven, he had no more need to hide his love. But the shoemaker was not yet silenced.
“Let him not deceive you,” he insisted, “he—”
“Wait,” cried Roger, holding up his hand, “before you denounce me, Samuel Skerry, think well. Remember that for one who harbours such a transgressor of the law as I was, there is a fine of forty shillings for each hour spent by the sinner in that man’s house. Think, my good master, how long I dwelt with you, how many hours of toil I spent tending your field, drawing your water, mending your rows of broken shoes. Count up what your fine would be and whether there is enough to pay it in that strong-box of yours behind the—”
“Cease,” screamed Skerry in sudden panic. His terror was so plain that Roger relented and the listeners roared with laughter. The shoemaker began to look about him uneasily and to sidle toward the door. This meeting that he had called together for the ruin of his enemies had become suddenly no happy place for him. One or two of the younger men began to crowd him into a corner whence he could not escape, the anger in their eyes boding ill for the mischief-making cobbler. But Master Simon interfered.
“No, no, lads,” he said. “Wherefore humiliate him further? The matter is at an end so here let it rest.”
It was an odd look, half gratitude and half baffled fury, that Samuel Skerry bent upon them as he slipped away. As Master Simon stood looking after him, some one brushed against his arm. It was the Indian whose entrance Margeret had noticed earlier in the afternoon. She recognised him suddenly now as the one who had led the band of his comrades when they came to say good-bye to the priest. With silent dignity he stepped forth, wrapped in his blanket, his black eyes shining in the candlelight.
“There is one more word to be said in this affair of Monsieur Simon,” he began, “and that word is mine.”
His English was good, but had, beside his own guttural accent, a foreign flavour as though he had been taught by one whose native tongue was French.