"I can't say anything about that. My father has nothing to do with him."
"Well, well, these family quarrels are common enough. Come along beside me."
Nothing could have been more unfortunate than the intervention of the riding-officer. Purely accidental as it was, the villagers regarded it as another proof of the new alliance between the Towers and the enemy. John Trevanion did not fail to describe to the elder Tonkin, the next time he met him, how savagely Mr. Polwhele had laid his whip upon Jake, and the irate smuggler swore that if he encountered the riding-officer he would make him pay for it.
That evening Dick consulted Joe Penwarden on the situation, as he had intended. Joe was much distressed to think that he was the cause of the bitterness with which the village folk now regarded the family at the Towers.
"I don't know what you can do," said he. "But let things bide; maybe they'll see by long and late they've misread 'ee."
"But we can't have our fishing spoilt time after time, Joe."
"'Tis a pretty stoor, be dazed to it!" said Joe, angrily. "And all for a wambling old carcase like me! Ah! I warn't allus like as I be now. When Lord Admiral Rodney spoke to me on Plymouth Hoe I was as limber a young feller as you'd see in Devon or Cornwall. He was goin' along with two handsome females——but there, I think I've telled 'ee. What I say is, why did Maister John come home, cuss him? There was none o' this afore."
"I don't think that's fair, Joe. They'd have run a cargo all the same, if he were at the ends of the earth; and I couldn't have done differently."
"Ye may say so, but I hold to it, whatever ye say. He's ill-wished 'ee, that's the truth, and a pity it is he ever showed his face here."
Two evenings later, when Dick was struggling with a piece of Latin prose for Mr. Carlyon, there was a knock at the outer door, and Reuben admitted Penwarden, with Jake Tonkin firmly in his clutch.