“You know them, perhaps?”
A moment’s pause.
“Ye—es, I know them.”
“I won’t affront you by asking whether you have any sympathy with them and their methods. With men that live by defrauding the revenue, and that scruple not to commit the most violent deeds in the exercise of their unlawful calling?”
The lieutenant’s tone was harsh and arrogant as he asked these questions. Miss Joan still sat with her eyelids down, giving him a new view of her beauty, unconsciously proving to him that her face was as handsome in repose, with the black eyelashes sweeping her rounded cheeks, as it was when her features were animated with the excitement of conversation. She was silent at first, and the lieutenant repeated his last question somewhat impatiently. There was another slight pause, however, and then a ponderous footstep was heard creeping up the companion-ladder.
“There’s my father!” cried Joan, as she started up, in evident relief at the opportune interruption.
Parson Langney, holding on valiantly to such support as came in his way, staggered towards them, and ended by hurling himself against the lieutenant with so much force that it was only by a most dexterous movement that the younger and slimmer man escaped being flung into the sea.
“I ask your pardon, captain,” cried the jolly parson, in good-humored apology, as, with the assistance of the young folk, he reached a place of safety. “Remember, you’re on your element, but I’m not on mine! Come and dine with my daughter and me to-morrow, and you shall see that my feet carry me well enough on the dry land.”
“I thank you, sir, and I would most willingly have accepted your kind offer, but I’m engaged to dine with one who is, I believe, a neighbor of yours—Squire Waldron, of Hurst Court.”
“Why, God bless my soul, so am I!” cried the parson, in amazement at his own momentary lapse of memory. “Then, sir, I shall be happy to meet you there; and I warrant you’ll be happy too, for the squire’s port wine, let me tell you, is a tipple not to be despised by his Majesty himself.”