"Hold your tongue, fellow," said Justice Best. "You interrupt me in explaining to Captain Smallpiece that it would be wrong, discourteous, and perhaps illegal, to search Sir John Newark's house without information that an attainted person was actually here. All the suspicions were of yourself; and, if they turn out to be groundless, my functions in the case cease. If Captain Smallpiece, indeed, thinks fit to take upon himself--"
Before he could finish the sentence, one of the corporals of the regiment, followed by the men who had been down on the beach with him, pushed his way through the crowd round the door, and saluted in military fashion his commanding officer.
"Well, what the devil do you want, Corporal? I told you to keep watch outside."
"I have come to report that they have got off, sir," said the man. "We could not overtake them before they got into a boat and away."
"Who, who, who?" shouted the magistrate. "Who do you mean by 'they'?"
"Why, the Earl and his servant, I suppose, your worship," replied the corporal. "I got hold of one of them by the neck; but then up comes the other, flashed the light of a dark lantern in my eyes, and, before I could draw sword, knocked me head foremost down the hill. Good luck to the bush that stopped me. They ran away together down through the wood, and passed Jim, here, who fired his pistol at them."
"Ay, that I did," said a man behind him.
"They ran away down to the water, however," added the other, "and, before we could overtake them, had jumped into a boat and were rowing away out to sea."
"There, there, now," cried Mr. Best. "I told you how it would be." And he looked straight at Captain Smallpiece, as if the whole of this mischance had been of that officer's bringing about.
"No, you did not," rejoined the Captain. "You did not say anything of the kind. You were cock-sure, like all the rest of them, that this lackey was the Earl disguised, and that you would pounce upon him here like a hawk on a hedge-sparrow."