"What's all this, Trevanion?" he cried.
"A pack of rascally Frenchmen have raided the place, Vicar," answered the Squire, "and are now holding the inn."
"Bless my life! What impudent scoundrels!"
He dismounted, nimbly for a man of his years.
"Give me a gun," he cried. "Here, you—I forget your name—get on my horse and ride to Truro as fast as you can and bring all the able-bodied men and any old soldiers you can find there. You, Benjamin Pound, go round to Doubledick's stables, take a horse, ride to Portharvan, and ask Sir Bevil from me to call out the yeomanry."
"Please, yer reverence, I can't ride a hoss," said the young fisher addressed.
"Can't ride! You must, or find someone who can. Off with you, or you shan't come to my dinner to-morrow. Bless my soul! Raiding on the day before Christmas! Can't we turn 'em out, Trevanion?"
"Impossible, Vicar, unless we're prepared to lose half our men. And then we'd fail. One man behind a wall is equal to four outside."
"What did Doubledick mean by letting the villains into the inn? How did they come here? I don't see any vessel."
Tonkin was explaining the circumstances when, down the stairs beside the inn wall, came Doubledick, pale, dishevelled, and covered with dust. Becoming alarmed for his safety when the inn was invaded by the Frenchmen, he had made his way out by a secret passage leading up the slope into a house abutting on the stairway. He came up to the group silently and unobserved, and listened to Tonkin's explanations and the further account given by the Squire of the attack on the Towers and the subsequent pursuit and capture of John Trevanion. Then he pressed forward to the Vicar's side.