“I can’t tell that, but I’ve reason to suspect that whatever it is, it’s a damned serious business! Be a good fellow, now, and go up to Kellands! And discover, if you can, if all’s well there!”
“What about that cove?” Chirk asked, with another jerk of his thumb towards the kitchen.
“He’s putting up at the Blue Boar. I’ll get rid of him somehow. There’s nothing much amiss with him but a splitting head, but if necessary, I’ll mount him on the mare, and lead him to the village. You be off to Kellands before Rose has gone to bed!”
“You won’t be satisfied till you see me in York Gaol, will you, Soldier?” said Chirk, with a wry smile. “What with one thing and another, it seems to me I’m getting out of my depth—and I was never much of a swimmer. It’s to be hoped that cove in there didn’t twig what my lay is.”
“He knows that well enough, but he don’t know your name, and in any event I believe he wouldn’t cry rope on you. If it hadn’t been for you, he’d be cold meat now, and that he knows too! You go to Kellands!”
Mr. Chirk, not as loth to obey this command as he chose to pretend, allowed himself to be thrust out of the tollhouse; and the Captain, first satisfying himself that Ben was still sunk in the heavy sleep of weary youth, softly opened the door into the kitchen. Mr. Stogumber, his head fallen a little sideways, was breathing stertorously, his legs stretched out before him, and one arm hanging limply outside the chair, its hand almost touching the floor. The Captain shut the door again, and went to sit on the bench outside the house. Heavy snores presently assailed his ears. He got up, and went to collect a cigarillo from his bedroom, and, having kindled it at the lamp burning on the table in the office, retired again to the bench, and for a long time sat smoking, and gazing with slightly knit brows at the star-scattered sky.
It must have been three quarters of an hour later when the snores ceased; and the Captain had twice struck a light from his tinderbox to enable him to read his watch. He waited for a minute, for once or twice the snores had stopped with a choking snort, only to start again almost immediately, but this time there was no recurrence of the rhythmic sounds. He went back into the kitchen, and found Stogumber yawning, and tenderly feeling his head.
“Well, you look a degree better,” he remarked, going over to the fire, and stirring the logs to a blaze. “How’s your head?”
“Setting aside it’s got a lump on it the size of your fist, it ain’t so bad,” responded Stogumber. “It’s a mighty hard head, d’ye see? I been asleep. Where’s t’other cove?”
“Gone,” said John, pouring the cold coffee, carefully saved by Mrs. Skeffling from his breakfast-table, into a pan, and bringing it to the fire.