IT was some two hours later when Chirk came back to the toll-house, and he found the Captain alone, Ben having been sent, protesting, to bed an hour before. The very faintest clink of spurred heels was all that warned John of the highwayman’s return; he caught the sound, and looked up from his task of applying blacking to his top-boots, just as the door opened, and Chirk once more stood before him. In answer to the questioning lift of an eyebrow, he nodded, and, setting the boot down, lounged over to the cupboard, from which he produced a couple of bottles. Whatever suspicions had still lurked in Chirk’s mind at parting, seemed to have been laid to rest. He cast off his coat, without taking the precaution of removing his pistol from its pocket, and, leaving it over the back of a chair beside the door, walked to the fire, and stirred the smouldering logs with one foot. “Where’s the bantling?” he asked.
“Asleep,” John replied, lacing two glasses of port with gin. “He wanted to wait for you to come back, but I packed him off—as soon as he’d shown me your Mollie.” He handed one of the glasses to his guest. “A neatish little mare: strong in work, I should think.”
Chirk nodded. “Ay. Takes her fences flying and standing. Clever, too. She’s the right stamp for a man of my trade. She wouldn’t do for a man of your size. What do you ride, Soldier?”
“Seventeen stone,” John said, with a grimace.
“Ah! You’ll need to keep your prancers high in the flesh, I don’t doubt.” He lifted his glass. “Here’s your good health! It ain’t often I get given flesh-and-blood: it’s to be hoped I don’t get flustered.” He drank, smacked his lips, and said approvingly: “A rum bub! Rose said as I was to tell you she’d be along in the morning to fetch your shirt. Proper set-about she was, when I told her I’d made your acquaintance: combed my hair with a joint-stool, pretty well!” He smiled reminiscently, looking down into the fire, one arm laid along the mantelshelf. Then he sighed, and turned his head. “Seems I’ll have to put a bullet into that Coate, Soldier. Rose is mortal set on getting rid of him.”
“She’s not more set on it than I am, but if you go about the business with your barking-iron I’ll break your neck!” promised John genially. “As good take a bear by the tooth!”
“The old gager—the Squire—saw him tonight,” said Chirk. “Sent for him to go to his room, which has put them all in a quirk, for fear it might send him off in a convulsion. It hadn’t—not while I was there, anyways.” He drained his glass, and set it down. “I’ll pike off now, Soldier, but you’ll be seeing me again. Maybe there’s one or two kens where I might get news of Ned.” A wry smile twisted his mouth. “I’m to take my orders from you, unless I’m wishful to raise a breeze up at Kellands. So help me bob, I don’t know why I don’t haul my wind before that climber mort of mine’s turned me into a regular nose!”
John smiled, and held out his hand. “We shall do!” he said.
“You may do! I’m. more likely to be nippered!” retorted Chirk; but he gripped John’s hand, adding: “No help for it! Fall back, fall edge, I’ve pledged my word to Rose I’ll stand buff. Women!”
Upon this bitterly enunciated dissyllable he was gone, as noiselessly as he had come.