“Button off a man’s coat,” he said shortly. “Less than that’s been enough to send any one to the gallows. But I don’t want to send him.”
“No,” said Geoffrey; “the horror of what what he has done—the murder of his own child—will stay with him to his grave.”
“If he ever has one,” muttered Prawle.
Geoffrey looked at him searchingly, but the old man’s face was as inscrutable as that of a sphinx; and, leading the way back, he went down into his favourite place by the boat below the face of the cliff, and as soon as Geoffrey had made a hasty breakfast, which he found Bessie had prepared, he went off to the cottage to see Mrs Mullion, and tell her of the events of the past night.
Chapter Fifty Nine.
Jonah.
The threatening storm was giving abundant promise that it would soon visit Carnac; and warned by its harbingers, the various red-sailed luggers were making fast for the little port. Several had made the shelter behind the arm of masonry which curved out from the shore, and one of the last to run in was the boat owned by Tom Jennen and three more.
They had just lowered the last sail, and, empty and disappointed, they were about to make a line fast to one of the posts, when John Tregenna ran quickly down to where Tom Jennen stood upon the stone pier, rope in hand.